Gemma Spike

speaker

12,680 appearances 27 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 4d ago

Gemma Spike’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 27 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 8.

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The Psychology of your 20s · 457. The psychology of 'false' memories · 12 Sep 2026 podcast

This is an example of something we do all the time. matched

We make an educated guess. matched

Our brain makes an educated guess for us without really consulting. matched

Like it doesn't want to present a memory and say, and then this thing, we don't really know what happened. matched

So sorry. matched

It just wants to fill it in. matched

Of course, our everyday memories are a lot more complex than an associated word list. matched

But the principle behind this is the same. matched

And there's a big reason why this happens. matched

This happens because we don't need to and we physically can't remember every single thing that has occurred to us since the day we were born. matched

Your brain simply does not have the cognitive capacity to do that. matched

Every single year, you know, thousands and thousands, millions of seconds upon millions of seconds upon millions of seconds, and the brain never changes size. matched

Like, it just is impossible. matched

So for this reason, our brain, our minds apply a subjective lens and we eliminate what doesn't feel necessary, both in the moment that it happens and then also in hindsight. matched

Our own imagination also strengthens this as well. matched

This previous process is why we often find that we lose memories or we shorten or sharpen memories. matched

We can also create completely new memories or expand a situation that matched

you know was once this very normal thing into something a lot bigger and more complex there was a 1996 study on this and in this study researchers asked participants to imagine a series of childhood events then they added in some that hadn't actually occurred and they asked participants questions like hey remember the time that you went to that beach party with these people and matched

How did you feel? matched

Can you imagine when that happened? matched

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