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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 donned on him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be brutally depressing all the time. Today, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects by writing books about the intersection of science, human health and society, including the New York Times best-selling <i>Lifespan</i> with geneticist David Sinclair and the Nautilus Award-winning <i>Longevity Plan</i> with cardiologist John Day. His first solo book, <i>Superlative</i>, looks at what scientists are learning by studying organisms that have evolved in record-setting ways, and his is currently at work on another book about embracing the inevitability of human-caused climate change with an optimistic outlook on the future.<br/>