Charan Ranganath

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Introduction

The act of remembering can change the memory. If you remember some event and then I tell you something about the event, later on when you remember the event, you might remember some original information from the event as well as some information about what I told you. And sometimes if you're not able to tell the difference, that information that I told you gets mixed into the story that you had originally. So now I give you some more misinformation or you're exposed to some more information somewhere else and eventually your memory becomes totally detached from what happened. The following is a conversation with Charan Ranganath, a psychologist and neuroscientist at UC Davis specializing in human memory. He's the author of, Why We Remember. Unlocking Memory's Power To Hold On To What Matters. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Charan Ranganath. Danny Kahneman describes the experiencing self and the remembering self and that happiness and satisfaction you gained from the outcomes of your decisions do not come from what you've experienced, but rather from what you remember of the experience. So can you speak to this interesting difference that you write about in your book of the experiencing self and the remembering self?