Dr. Alan Castel

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1,246 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 13 Jul

Dr. Alan Castel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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And this is something that's called metacognition, our awareness of our own cognition.

And as a personal anecdote, when I was in fifth or sixth grade, I had one line in the play, The Wizard of Oz.

It's a line I practiced again and again, listen everyone, there's a cyclone on the way, hurry and get into the cellar.

And of course on opening night, listen everyone, there's a cellar on the way, hurry and get into the cyclone.

Nice.

And I was thinking, how did I manage that?

Having memorized this line, most of the audience probably didn't even notice.

But that to me was an early exposure to memory is not always a function of what you do with the information.

And then, you know, in high school, I had another exposure to memory where I just memorized a lot of things.

And that got me pretty far in algebra and chemistry.

In fact, I almost memorized the entire periodic table.

But this was using mnemonics, you know, little rhymes or songs.

And I realized in my first year of college that I really didn't have a strong understanding of chemistry, even though I could use all these terms.

And thankfully, I took an introductory psychology class and I realized people studied learning and memory.

and kind of false memories and why memory can and cannot be accurate.

And I was hooked.

I found that so fascinating.

And I still do today.

I think it's almost a workaround.

And that's the first kind of problem people say is I can't remember names.

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