Dr. David Eagleman

Each time we pull up a memory, it's changing, and it gets modified and colored by new information that we have.

So that's the bad news for the legal system.

And so the legal system has gotten really smart about this over the last 30 years and tried to make sure that they take care of things that happen, let's say, with eyewitness identification.

So one thing is, you know, police suggestibility.

So if I'm looking at a lineup and I say, gosh, you know, I think that's the guy and the police officer says, yeah, I think that's the guy.

You know, I agree with you on that.

Then what happens is when I go to court three months later, I say to the judge, yeah, I'm 100 percent confident, even though at the time of the lineup, I wasn't confident at all.

But I come to think I am.

There are many, many ways that things get implemented so that we can try to work around how lousy our memories are.

One thing is separating witnesses right away, because if you and I witness a crime,

And then you say, oh, my God, you know, I think the guy had long hair.

And I say, no, no, I think it was short hair or whatever.

We're influencing each other's memory.

And the things that we say end up changing what the other believes to be true.

One of the classes I teach is the brain and the law.

And I do this thing every year.

I sort of hate to give this away on a podcast, but here's what I do.

I'm teaching the class and a woman busts into the back of the classroom and starts screaming at me.

She says, are you Dr. Eagleman?

I say, yeah.