Meryl Horne

And another thing that you hear a lot is about the power of exercise, that that can really help your memory too.

The truth is exercise is definitely good for the brain, but rather than it being like a silver bullet for memory specifically, it's more like if you generally want to feel like mentally sharper, you should definitely exercise.

Doing exercise in your 40s and 50s can create a buffer against cognitive decline when we age.

Yes.

And one more final piece of advice from Charan that I really loved, which is basically that like if you want to make your brain think something is important enough to remember, then you got to like pay attention to it in the first place.

Here's what I asked him.

I just had this really nice picnic last weekend with my family.

And I was thinking it would be like really nice to be able to like hold on to that memory in as much detail for the rest of my life, ideally.

Yeah.

Is there a way I could use one of these hacks to, like, cement this memory into my brain?

Like, while I'm living it, that's the first step.

They can go to our transcripts.

You can find links for it in the show notes.

And then also definitely check out Charan's book, Why We Remember, is really, really good.

Highly recommend that.

Great.

This episode was produced by me, Meryl Horne, with help from Wendy Zuckerman, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and Aketi Foster-Keys.

We're edited by Blythe Terrell.

Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka.

Fact-checking by Sam Lemenick.