Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff. Mom never told you from house to books,
Speaker 1: not color. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline.
Speaker 1: Then I'm Kristin Kristen. A couple of years ago, I
Speaker 1: used to be obsessed with the qv show House until
Speaker 1: I realized that like every episode the same, but it
Speaker 1: is very entertaining. And and they had this great episode
Speaker 1: about this person who had this crazy, like beyond photographic memory,
Speaker 1: this person who could just like bring up any memory
Speaker 1: from any day that you gave them in the past
Speaker 1: and tell you what happened. Um, they ended up like
Speaker 1: quote unquote curing that person on the show. And so
Speaker 1: when you showed me this article from Wired about this woman,
Speaker 1: Jill Price, it reminded me, Hello a memory. It reminded
Speaker 1: me of that House episode. Jill Price has hyper thymestic syndrome.
Speaker 1: Hyperthymestic syndrome is essentially Greek for a really really, really
Speaker 1: really great memory. Uh. She was this woman who was
Speaker 1: in the news a lot a few years ago when
Speaker 1: she wrote an autobiography about this condition. Um and all
Speaker 1: of us started out in two thousand and six when
Speaker 1: some UC Irvine neuroscientists published an article about her called
Speaker 1: a case of unusual autobiographical remembering, and it turns out
Speaker 1: that there's a good chance she more has an O
Speaker 1: c D related memory issue because a lot of her
Speaker 1: photographic memory is focused solely on her early life, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But it was really fascinating, and they've done brain scans actually,
Speaker 1: and it shows that her hippocampus in the frontal cortex,
Speaker 1: which as we'll talk about, are really closely involved with
Speaker 1: the memory formation process. They're normally size, so it might
Speaker 1: be something more psychological than neurological going on. But I
Speaker 1: hadn't heard of hyperthymestic syndrome before. I hadn't either, And
Speaker 1: the guy who wrote the article, cognitive psychologist Gary Marcus,
Speaker 1: was a little bit skeptical when he heard of this
Speaker 1: price because he was like, you know, human memory has
Speaker 1: evolved to a certain point, to a certain degree, and
Speaker 1: it would be crazy to find someone who functions completely
Speaker 1: outside of that, you know, like it would have to
Speaker 1: be something insane to have formed this brain so differently.
Speaker 1: And in talking with her, that's when he realized, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this woman has a compulsion and obsessive compulsion to catalog
Speaker 1: her own memories because, like you said, those key areas
Speaker 1: of the brain that function to create in store memories
Speaker 1: were the same as everybody else's. Yeah, so why don't
Speaker 1: we talk a little bit about how the brain stores
Speaker 1: memories because in this conversation we're going to look into
Speaker 1: forgetfulness in men versus women, and not going so much
Speaker 1: into things like dementia and Alzheimer's, but just looking at
Speaker 1: basic memory because I wanted to call out this deal
Speaker 1: price story to start off with, because Okay, here's a
Speaker 1: woman who seems to be this rare case of a
Speaker 1: photographic memory, or as close as you can get to it.
Speaker 1: So does that mean maybe she's a gold standard of
Speaker 1: female memory or what's going on? How? How how to
Speaker 1: start out with do we make those memories? Well, the
Speaker 1: whole thing is kind of hazy, honestly, Like nobody is
Speaker 1: one percent shure as far as how our memory works
Speaker 1: and how we create memories. But it basically goes like this.
Speaker 1: We have this encoding that happens with the hippocampus and
Speaker 1: the frontal cortex. The hippocampus kind of integrates all your
Speaker 1: different perceptions into a single experience. So like if I
Speaker 1: were to remember this moment, you know, so I'm seeing you,
Speaker 1: I'm hearing you. I'm smelling the studio if it had
Speaker 1: a smell, it's pretend it smells like sandwiches. You're smelling
Speaker 1: my musk. I know, I'm so gross showered. I hope
Speaker 1: you're not. You can't smell me right now, so yes,
Speaker 1: site smell um sounds. The hip hippocampus integrates all of
Speaker 1: this different stuff, whereas the frontal cortex basically kind of
Speaker 1: helps you decide if someone is something is worth remembering.
Speaker 1: So like you know, if something crazy or emotion will
Speaker 1: happen in the studio, I might remember that a year
Speaker 1: from now, whereas like that would actually differentiate it from
Speaker 1: any other day in the studio. So that's the frontal
Speaker 1: cortex telling you, like, hey, you should hang onto that.
Speaker 1: So that's the encoding part. And add to it your
Speaker 1: short term memory, so remembering what you just said about
Speaker 1: your musk, Kristen, How do short term memory work? Usually
Speaker 1: the short term memory stores up to seven items for
Speaker 1: no more than twenty to thirty seconds at a time.
Speaker 1: This is one reason, for instance, why telephone numbers are
Speaker 1: broken down into the three digit area code and then
Speaker 1: three numbers followed by four numbers, because by breaking it
Speaker 1: down that makes it easier for us to remember. But
Speaker 1: if you were to tell me a cell phone number,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't remember it that long. It would probably stay
Speaker 1: in my mind unless I start repeating it over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. It's pretty fleeting. If it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be something important, it's just going to dissipate unless
Speaker 1: I retrieve that number over and over again so that
Speaker 1: those neural pathways get paved even more. Right, Exactly, Like
Speaker 1: when I was thinking about this, I realized I still
Speaker 1: remember my childhood best friend's phone number. You know, before
Speaker 1: we all had cell phones and didn't commit any phone
Speaker 1: numbers to memory, Like I actually remember a bunch of
Speaker 1: those old phone numbers. So it's because I called her
Speaker 1: all the time to talk about boys. So that means
Speaker 1: that your best friend's phone number is stored in your
Speaker 1: long term memory. But if your brain was not able
Speaker 1: to retrieve that phone number, that is what we call forgetting.
Speaker 1: For getting. Yeah, so the science of forgetting is just
Speaker 1: as interesting as the science of remembering. So your hippocampus
Speaker 1: loses about five per cent of nerve cells each decade,
Speaker 1: and this creates the you know, stereotypical age related memory
Speaker 1: loss and the breakdown actually begins in our twenties. So,
Speaker 1: so hey millennials out there, you're you're starting to lose
Speaker 1: your memory um making it worse though if you have
Speaker 1: unhealthy genes. They also said poisons, but things like you're
Speaker 1: drinking too much or you're smoking too much, all of
Speaker 1: these things can affect your memory. But the good news
Speaker 1: is the average seventy year old performs as well on
Speaker 1: certain cognitive tests as many twenty year olds because there
Speaker 1: are things like stimulating environ ments, exercise, et cetera that
Speaker 1: can help ward off that age related memory loss um.
Speaker 1: But in our day to day, Caroline, there's so many
Speaker 1: things in our environments and our lifestyles, especially in our
Speaker 1: twenty one century lifestyles, that can contribute to memory loss,
Speaker 1: not just that gradual wearing down of the hippocampus. Right,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that food can affect your memory um.
Speaker 1: One study showed that things like carbs that spike your
Speaker 1: insulin negatively affect your memory because it's that insulin spike,
Speaker 1: not the carve itself, for you know, not your pretzel.
Speaker 1: The pretzel is not causing you to forget things. That's
Speaker 1: the spike and insulin that affects your memory. Fish, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, helps, but not fried, So no fish
Speaker 1: and chips to help your memory actual like broiled or
Speaker 1: grilled and kind of related to that, kind of related
Speaker 1: to the food thing. Medication taking cholesterol lowering statins may
Speaker 1: actually lower that high insulin in the brain associated with dementia.
Speaker 1: So I can I can eat microssant and just pop
Speaker 1: some cholesterol film. Perfect. There we go. That's a recipe
Speaker 1: for a wonderful outcome. I'm sure Google could actually be
Speaker 1: another thing contributing to our memory loss. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: a two thousand eleven study out of Columbia University which
Speaker 1: found that our reliance on Internet search engines like Google
Speaker 1: can influence what's called our transactive memory. And these are
Speaker 1: those bits of minutia, the trivial details that we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily feel an immediate need to encode over and over
Speaker 1: it again to get into that long term memory storage,
Speaker 1: because we can rely on other people or now our smartphones, say,
Speaker 1: to retrieve that information for us. And this is something
Speaker 1: that I've started trying to do more often, Caroline, whether
Speaker 1: it's simple arithmetic or thinking up say a capital of
Speaker 1: a state that I don't immediately recall actually making myself
Speaker 1: sit there and think of what it is rather than
Speaker 1: just going to Google, right, because it's good for our
Speaker 1: brain to do that. It is good. But I mean,
Speaker 1: one concern expressed in that article about the Internet shaping
Speaker 1: our brains is that we are literally shaping our brains.
Speaker 1: That our brains are adapting to this new technology, and
Speaker 1: pretty soon we'll all be like, I don't know, with
Speaker 1: empty memories, just drooling on ourselves, just popping insulin pills.
Speaker 1: Let's eating baggetts. I mean, I mean, that doesn't sound terrible. One.
Speaker 1: One other thing to keep in mind is that sleep
Speaker 1: affects how we remember things also, and poor quality sleep,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine, is linked to poor memory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and different types of sleep correlate to different types of
Speaker 1: memory processes. For instance, slow way of sleep is linked
Speaker 1: to declarative memory, recalling facts and events, So if you
Speaker 1: don't get a good night's sleep, your memory might be
Speaker 1: a little hazy in the morning. And then rem sleep,
Speaker 1: for instance, is related to memory processing. There's this idea
Speaker 1: that the dreaming that tends to go on during rem
Speaker 1: sleep is your brain processing past events stead have happened,
Speaker 1: sort of cataloging things that frontal cortex saying okay, do
Speaker 1: we want to remember this or not? Right? And so, actually,
Speaker 1: if you get fewer than six hours of sleep a night,
Speaker 1: it'll likely have an adverse effect on memory. And I
Speaker 1: was actually just talking about sleep side note with a friend,
Speaker 1: and we were talking about how tired we were. Even
Speaker 1: though we've been going to bed earlier, like trying to
Speaker 1: get really good sleep, We've been even more tired the
Speaker 1: day after. Whereas sometimes if I get like four hours
Speaker 1: of sleep, I'm like rre and to go. But I
Speaker 1: honestly think maybe I'm just getting by on adrenaline. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. Although I have
Speaker 1: a feeling if we were chronically getting right the four
Speaker 1: hours of sleep, things would be bad and I would
Speaker 1: just look ragged. I would be cranky. I would be
Speaker 1: very cranky. And speaking of crankiness, stress is another big
Speaker 1: strain on our memories. Uh. There was a two thousand
Speaker 1: eight U See Irvine study on stress which found that
Speaker 1: acute stress activate something called cortico trope and releasing hormones
Speaker 1: that disrupt the process by which the brain collects and
Speaker 1: stores memories because it degrades the synapses, those connections between
Speaker 1: neurons that carry that sensory information that make up our memories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I act absolutely by that, Like I absolutely have felt
Speaker 1: that when I'm like super stressed out and I'm hitting
Speaker 1: a wall and I'm just like, it's the limits of
Speaker 1: my abilities. That's when i have to make to do
Speaker 1: lists and have to fill up my calendar because when
Speaker 1: I'm super stressed out, it almost feels like I can't
Speaker 1: hold onto anything and I've got to chart at all out.
Speaker 1: So I totally have experienced that. It's just your synapse
Speaker 1: is degrading. No big deal. Lord. Another thing health related
Speaker 1: is women with type two diabetes are actually at a
Speaker 1: greater risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, which is the
Speaker 1: stage between normal brain aging and dementia. And then, finally,
Speaker 1: to round out this list of things that are contributing
Speaker 1: to memory loss, UH and forgetfulness in general, depression. Depression
Speaker 1: is strongly linked to memorily lost because of increased amounts
Speaker 1: of cortisol and other stress hormone in our bloodstream, right,
Speaker 1: and that actually shrinks certain areas of the brain, particularly
Speaker 1: the hippocampus, which we said is responsible for a large
Speaker 1: part of our memory. And something I found very intriguing
Speaker 1: about this depression memory link is that depressed people remember
Speaker 1: mostly negative memory. I mean interesting, So you're if you're
Speaker 1: depressed that's linked to poor memory. However, you're really good
Speaker 1: at remembering the negative, which probably makes it even more
Speaker 1: it's kind of perpetuates that depressive cycle. Um, but what
Speaker 1: about sex differences, because obviously these kinds of things sleep, stress,
Speaker 1: google can affect men and women alike. But there's one
Speaker 1: area that memory researchers have really started zeroing in on,
Speaker 1: and that is sex differences. How are these memory formation
Speaker 1: processes different in male brains versus female brains? And then
Speaker 1: that brings up the question, while you know our men
Speaker 1: or women more forgetful, Uh, we're just different, were very different. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For instance, men will typically rely more on right hemisphere
Speaker 1: brain activity to encode memory, and so they tend to
Speaker 1: retain the gist of things better than details intrusferring. And
Speaker 1: an unfortunate thing that men are more likely to experience
Speaker 1: in terms of memory is a mild cognitive impairment, which
Speaker 1: we just mentioned a minute ago. A study tracking two
Speaker 1: thousand people over the age of seventy found that men
Speaker 1: were one point five times more likely to develop him
Speaker 1: C I, which is, like we said that stage between
Speaker 1: normal brain aging and dementia, we should say that m
Speaker 1: CI doesn't always develop into dementia Alzheimer's necessarily, but men
Speaker 1: are more likely to get it. And this is surprising
Speaker 1: since previous studies have found that more women suffer from dementia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to get into, like I said,
Speaker 1: the dementia and Alzheimer's aspect of memory loss today, but
Speaker 1: going back into earlier age, you know, we've said that
Speaker 1: men tend to remember the gist of things better, whereas
Speaker 1: women remember more details. And this was confirmed in a
Speaker 1: two thousand third team study out of McMaster University that
Speaker 1: looked at how men and women remember faces and facial features,
Speaker 1: and women were better at remembering faces because they look
Speaker 1: more at new faces and especially our facial features. And
Speaker 1: they figured this out the scientists did by using eye
Speaker 1: tracking technology to actually look and see where women were
Speaker 1: looking on the faces and for how long. And on
Speaker 1: top of that, women especially remember other women's faces better,
Speaker 1: which is so not surprising to me because just anecdotally,
Speaker 1: I find myself quote unquote checking out women a lot
Speaker 1: more than men, whether it's like looking at how her
Speaker 1: hair is done or makeup or what she's wearing. And
Speaker 1: my Boyfriendly would call me out on this. Sometimes if
Speaker 1: all like follow a woman with my eyes is walking
Speaker 1: down the street, I'm like, what are you doing? Like looking,
Speaker 1: I'm checking around. I'm just checking her out, just curious
Speaker 1: to see. That's funny because I actually had a really
Speaker 1: embarrassing This caused an embarrassing social situation. I met a
Speaker 1: friend of a friend, um, this guy, and I met
Speaker 1: him at a party, so there was drinking and whatever.
Speaker 1: And then the next time I encountered him, it was
Speaker 1: in a completely different context and he was like Caroline, hey,
Speaker 1: and I was just like hey, um stranger waving at me,
Speaker 1: and he's like, it's it's me. I remember it's so
Speaker 1: and So's friend. I was like, oh, yeah, hey, how
Speaker 1: are you doing. It's so weird that I'm seeing you
Speaker 1: here completely out of context. This happened three more times.
Speaker 1: That has never happened to me. I remember faces like no,
Speaker 1: I won't remember your name, but I remember faces like
Speaker 1: nobody's business. And this poor guy like such a friendly
Speaker 1: he's such a friendly FI and I recognize him now,
Speaker 1: although he doesn't like approach me this Like I read
Speaker 1: it to him in the grocery store one time, and
Speaker 1: I made a point of being like, hey, how are
Speaker 1: you doing? Because I had forgotten his face like seventeen times.
Speaker 1: Do you think if it had been a woman's face,
Speaker 1: if he had been a she, maybe you would remember
Speaker 1: it better. I mean maybe, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: deal was. It was actually really embarrassing, and I was
Speaker 1: mad at my memory. But now he's I'm sure in
Speaker 1: your brain. He is burned into my brain. He and
Speaker 1: his wife, like like the whole everybody that is surrounding him.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, remember these people because it was really embarrassing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would contradict this finding that women have superior episodic memories,
Speaker 1: that that memory, for instance, of going to that party,
Speaker 1: of who you met, who you talked to, who you
Speaker 1: saw right. Well, see, that's the thing. That's why I'm
Speaker 1: That's why I mentioned context, because like I remember that party,
Speaker 1: and so I remember meeting a person, you know, and
Speaker 1: then I remember the various times that I ran into
Speaker 1: him very clearly. It's just when I saw him, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, you're talking to me, like you know,
Speaker 1: me so embarrassing. But yeah, So speaking of episodic memory,
Speaker 1: that is a type of long term memory based on
Speaker 1: personal experiences. And according to a Swedish study looking at
Speaker 1: sex differences in different types of memory like episodic, semantic,
Speaker 1: and primary, they found that women outperformed men only an
Speaker 1: episodic memory, possibly due to our higher verbal ability. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they found that women excelled in remembering things like words, objects, pictures,
Speaker 1: or everyday events, whereas men outperformed women in remembering symbolic,
Speaker 1: non linguistic information. It goes back to the whole thing
Speaker 1: we think about a lot of times in terms of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, men can read maps really well, whereas women
Speaker 1: might get from point A to point B by using
Speaker 1: more landmarks. Right, So that would be called the type
Speaker 1: of symbolic memory that men uses visuo spatial processing. There,
Speaker 1: we got it out. That's a long word. And women's
Speaker 1: memory skills actually are reduced when we are forced to
Speaker 1: use visuospatial processing. So that's interesting. But that's not like
Speaker 1: an ingrained born with it. That is simply something that
Speaker 1: is different in the way you are educated, trained to think,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Another point, women are better recognizing familiar odors.
Speaker 1: Oh huh, yeah, because I mean, you know, you know
Speaker 1: how strongly like odor is attached to memory, Like I
Speaker 1: can smell something and be like kindergarten, lunch room, elementary school.
Speaker 1: You know, like I can have those memories. But apparently
Speaker 1: I can do that so well because I am a woman.
Speaker 1: Women are better at it. I wonder if that is
Speaker 1: linked it all. Then to palette, the taste palette. For
Speaker 1: some reason, the first thing that popped in my head
Speaker 1: when you said women and odor, I thought about, um
Speaker 1: Somalia's you know, the expert wine tasters, because you know,
Speaker 1: you have to smell the wine and take in all
Speaker 1: of the different notes and then you taste it right.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if podcast idea women and wine. Here
Speaker 1: we go. Oh, we'll have to do some really heavy
Speaker 1: duty research for that. But what's up with these sex differences?
Speaker 1: I've a sleep with things like videospatial You talked about
Speaker 1: how it can be made up for with socialization, just teaching,
Speaker 1: for instance, people how to read maps or other things. Um.
Speaker 1: But one thing that researchers are homing in on our
Speaker 1: sex hormones is it a difference between levels of estrogen
Speaker 1: and testosterone in the brain. Yes, sex hormones do have
Speaker 1: an effect to a degree, especially on our brains, not
Speaker 1: just our memory. Yeah, there was a blog posts over
Speaker 1: at the Encyclopedia Britannica that had a tidy explanation of
Speaker 1: how estrogen and testosterone hormones impact our memory formation, because
Speaker 1: it says that it really boils down to how the
Speaker 1: hormones influenced the flow of blood through blood vessels and
Speaker 1: how that influence how much blood reaches different parts of
Speaker 1: the brain, which in turn could affect the growth of
Speaker 1: neurons that are critical for memory formation. So it's like
Speaker 1: estrogen and testaccone might serve as gate keepers in a
Speaker 1: way of activating different synapses and neurons in different parts
Speaker 1: of the brain. So test saserone perhaps, And I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of going out on a limb here. Testas foe
Speaker 1: might light up those visuospatial aspects of the brain, whereas
Speaker 1: estrogen maybe is lighting up more of verbal centers and
Speaker 1: the odor sensors and the nose. The estrogen goes straight
Speaker 1: to the nose. Uh No, it actually doesn't. I was
Speaker 1: I was joking about that, But what I'm not joking
Speaker 1: about is how hormonal birth control can influence how we remember,
Speaker 1: and this idea of the influence of hormonal birth control
Speaker 1: was significant for researchers because they're like, Okay, here's a
Speaker 1: great way to see how we can control estrogen in
Speaker 1: a woman's body and progesterom and see whether or not
Speaker 1: that influences is their memory process, And yes, it totally does. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: this study on hormonal birth control found that women on
Speaker 1: birth control remembered the gist of emotional events more accurately,
Speaker 1: whereas naturally cycling women were more likely to remember specific details.
Speaker 1: And the science kind of in the middle of that
Speaker 1: is that hormonal birth control suppresses ganatotropin releasing hormone that
Speaker 1: suppresses the levels of estrogen and progeson, likely disrupting sex
Speaker 1: and stress hormone interactions and therefore cognitive performance and memory.
Speaker 1: And one way that this could be applied to future
Speaker 1: research is really exploring why women are more likely two
Speaker 1: to three times more likely to experience post traumatic stress disorder.
Speaker 1: They suspect that it has to do with sex hormones
Speaker 1: involved in that memory and coding process and just offer
Speaker 1: more evidence for how strongly tied uh the memory process
Speaker 1: might be to sex hormones. There have been some findings
Speaker 1: about the influence of menopause actually on memory, because a
Speaker 1: symptom of menopause or side effect of it is memory loss.
Speaker 1: Women who are not only having those hot flashes also
Speaker 1: report not having the best short term memory. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: actually linked. Researchers at University of Illinois, Chicago found that
Speaker 1: the number of hot flashes a woman has is linked
Speaker 1: to poorer memory performance. They also found, however, that hormone
Speaker 1: therapy does not appear to interact with memory function, and
Speaker 1: that's tied into a Melbourne University study that found that
Speaker 1: post menopausal women treated with a testosterone gel showed better
Speaker 1: improvement in verbal learning and memory compared to women who
Speaker 1: received a placebo. But the good news for any women
Speaker 1: listening who are going through menopause or approaching menopause, menopause
Speaker 1: related cognitive declines appear to be temporary. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like what happens with quote unquote pregnancy brain. A
Speaker 1: lot of pregnant women will report just being incredibly scatter
Speaker 1: brained and not remembering things that they normally would and
Speaker 1: that goes away. Similar type of things seems to be
Speaker 1: going on. Uh, post Menopausally, after you're out of it,
Speaker 1: your brain recovers, right. And there are some other things
Speaker 1: I found online that help older women who feel like
Speaker 1: they are experiencing this decline. Losing weight is one. After
Speaker 1: weight loss, women's brain activity changes in the regions that
Speaker 1: are vital for memory tasks. That's coming out of a
Speaker 1: Swedish study from earlier this year. And there's also been
Speaker 1: I feel like not only a lot of research, but
Speaker 1: a lot of more conversation and publicity about how for
Speaker 1: older adults brain activities keeping your your mind more active.
Speaker 1: My mom, for instance, has taken up sudoku so that
Speaker 1: she can just kind of exercise her brain a little
Speaker 1: bit more, just toward off memory loss. Again, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about things like to mention Alzheimer's, which do tend
Speaker 1: to affect older women more than older men um but
Speaker 1: there are definitely things that can be done to keep
Speaker 1: the brain sharp age absolutely exercise, staying active mentally and physically.
Speaker 1: So the episode title for this podcast is are men
Speaker 1: more forgetful? Because I think the stereotype is that, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's just a stereotype of your old woman, is
Speaker 1: that men tend to be more forgetful. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that's the case. I think it's just a difference
Speaker 1: in how we remember. They know that something happened, they
Speaker 1: can tell you the gist of what's going on, but
Speaker 1: maybe we just focus in more on the nitty gritty,
Speaker 1: the details. I wish I could remember where I put
Speaker 1: my keys though, and see, but see, that's I'm That's
Speaker 1: another reason why I'm an exception to the because women
Speaker 1: tend to remember more things like that, like where you
Speaker 1: put your keys. But I have to have a bowl
Speaker 1: next to the front door where I can drop my
Speaker 1: keys and my work badge and anything else important in
Speaker 1: because otherwise I'll be running around, like you know, last
Speaker 1: minute in the morning trying to find it. Yeah. I'm
Speaker 1: definitely a habitual list maker for that reason. The to
Speaker 1: do list is crucial for my day. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: that that whole like short term memory seven things, seven
Speaker 1: items thing is exactly why I have to make a
Speaker 1: grocery list too, because I'll go in. Yeah, I went
Speaker 1: to the grocery store the other day and I was like,
Speaker 1: I was mainly there for one thing, beans canned beans,
Speaker 1: and I ran into like I had some other things
Speaker 1: I wanted to get. I ran into a friend in
Speaker 1: the parking lot, got into a really long conversation, went in,
Speaker 1: got everything but the freaking being. Oh I hate it
Speaker 1: when that happens. I don't know. Maybe my list was
Speaker 1: eight items and I forgot the being. The beans tipped
Speaker 1: it over. That's all your brain could take. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in terms of of like who wins it remembering,
Speaker 1: I think it's a toss up there. But it's fascinating
Speaker 1: to look at the differences though, and and all the
Speaker 1: different things that affected. Maybe I should take up sudok
Speaker 1: who also. Yeah, I mean, and sometimes people get uh
Speaker 1: nervous with conversations about differences between the mole and the
Speaker 1: female brain, but the evidence seems pretty clear that there
Speaker 1: are some influences, possibly mediated by differences into how we
Speaker 1: process sense, reinformation and encoded into our brains. Yeah. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: if there are differences between naturally cycling women and women
Speaker 1: on hormonal birth control, I mean, yeah, they're obviously some
Speaker 1: spects hormone differences that affect memory, and differences don't necessarily
Speaker 1: imply superiority, absolutely not, So any thoughts about memory if
Speaker 1: you do, though, anecdotally find that men are more forgive
Speaker 1: al women more forgetful or if any of this resonated
Speaker 1: with you, email us. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com
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Speaker 1: of letters here from listeners about our episode on Instagram.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you are not following Being
Speaker 1: Caroline on Instagram, head over today we are at stuff.
Speaker 1: Mom never told you follow us. There are lots of
Speaker 1: adorable pictures. So this first one is from Ali and
Speaker 1: she writes, I'm a fashion designer and I work from
Speaker 1: home by myself. I love working from home, and there
Speaker 1: are two things that I think really make it work
Speaker 1: for me. Podcasts and Instagram. When you don't have any
Speaker 1: real colleagues, you missed that random chatter that happens at work.
Speaker 1: And I find that listening to a variety of podcasts
Speaker 1: and following other creative people on Instagram am fills this
Speaker 1: void in a way that creates two kinds of virtual colleagues.
Speaker 1: They're the colleagues that chat to you all day while
Speaker 1: you're working that's you, guys, and the ones you catch
Speaker 1: up with on your lunch breaker after work, the instagrammers.
Speaker 1: I love stopping work and sitting to see what everybody
Speaker 1: has been up to that day and what they've been
Speaker 1: working on. Because most of the people I follow are
Speaker 1: also small creative businesses, most of the photos in my
Speaker 1: feet are their finished products, work in progress, their workspaces, materials,
Speaker 1: and processes. It's interesting and inspiring and often motivates me
Speaker 1: to work harder because I want to have something pretty
Speaker 1: to show them to. I also love it because it's
Speaker 1: an extremely positive place when you follow the right people,
Speaker 1: and there are lots of pictures of dogs, so things
Speaker 1: are writing in there are pictures of dogs. I just
Speaker 1: love puppy pictures. I could waste an entire day looking
Speaker 1: at them. Alrighty, well, I have an email here from Brooke.
Speaker 1: She's says, I just listened to the episode on Instagram
Speaker 1: and enjoyed it. I wanted to mention another category of
Speaker 1: picks I frequently see on Instagram, mainly because I am
Speaker 1: one of the ones posting them pictures of adorable children
Speaker 1: winky face. I originally started posting pictures of my kids
Speaker 1: on blogs and Facebook for grandparents and relatives who don't
Speaker 1: get to see my two girls very often. But now
Speaker 1: I have incorporated Instagram as well. None of my relatives
Speaker 1: are on Instagram, but my friends enjoy seeing pictures of
Speaker 1: my kids, and I enjoy seeing pictures of their kids.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the pictures of our kids together, smiley faith. Now.
Speaker 1: I know this is the modern day equivalent to a
Speaker 1: proud parent pulling photos out of their wallets, but I
Speaker 1: figure if someone gets tired of seeing pictures of my kids,
Speaker 1: they can just stop following me. Winky face won't hurt
Speaker 1: my feelings anyway. Just wanted to mention this. Also, thank
Speaker 1: you for reading the listener mail from Joanna about miscarriage
Speaker 1: before my two kids were born. I experienced both infertility
Speaker 1: and a devastating loss at twenty one week, so I
Speaker 1: could really relate to what she said. I too, would
Speaker 1: like to hear a podcast on miscarriage and pregnancy laws.
Speaker 1: It helps to hear other stories and know you are
Speaker 1: not alone. So thanks so much to Brook for sharing
Speaker 1: her stories, and uh we hope we hear from more
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah, you can email us at Mom's Stuff
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com. You can also send us a
Speaker 1: message on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at mom
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast. We're on Tumbler as well at stuff mom
Speaker 1: Never Told You dot tumbler dot com, also of course
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Now check out all of our little ruble
Speaker 1: pictures at Mom's Stuff Podcasts there. And finally, we are
Speaker 1: on YouTube. We've got four brand new videos that come
Speaker 1: out every week, so you should head over to YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff Mom Never Told You and subscribe
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics dot com.
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