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UnDisciplined: Why do humans use the past to inform the future?

The book cover for Why We Remember features a white cloud in a blue sky.

There is nothing more important to our ability to engage in the present and prepare for the future than our memories of the past. And yet memory is not a rigid, static picture of what came before. Rather, it’s a nebulous, ever-changing conceptualization of who we were, what we believed, what happened to us, and what was happening around us. And author Charan Ranganath says that those who misunderstand it do so at their own great peril.

Ranganath joins us to explore memory and more this week.

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Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something occurred to him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be so brutally depressing all the time. These days, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects with his work on UnDisciplined — Utah Public Radio's weekly program on science and discovery.