The Memory Hole: Why Society Sometimes Draws a Blank

We all forget things sometimes. We leave the car keys in random places. We look all over the house for our sunglasses, only to find them already on our heads. And we’ve all experienced the angst of double booking, completely (or conveniently) forgetting about a dentist appointment booked for the time we were meant to meet up with friends at the pub.   Sometimes our brains just have enough stuff in there and there’s no room for anything new.   Kinda like how the world forgot about the time when millions of people died within a six month period from the Spanish Flu. Sure, we talk about it now but back then, when the pandemic was over, no one talked about it. 5 per cent of the population died, it sucked, let’s just forget about it…?    But how could a catastrophic event of this magnitude be collectively forgotten? And perhaps it’s not the only tragedy we’ve tossed into the black memory hole of history… CHAPTERS: 00:00 Exploring the concept of memory holes 00:44 The Spanish Flu: A case study of collective forgetting 02:31 Have we forgotten COVID-19? 03:36 Memory hole from George Orwell’s book, 1984 06:17 Beyond Pandemics: Forgetting wars and cockroaches 09:15 Collective forgetting of the Allied bombing of Germany 11:37 The science behind why we forget 13:16 Collective memory requires communication and narrative 16:00 Should we memorialise Covid-19? 19:48 What’s next on The Wholesome Show  PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED: Wittenoom: Australia's Asbestos Chernobyl Wiped Town Off The Map   SOURCES: Building a collective memory: the case for collective forgetting, by William Hirst and Alan  Coman in Current Opinion in Psychology  Collective Memory and Forgetting: A Theoretical Discussion by Cindy Minarova-Banjac Page 4 of 5 The rising of collective forgetting and cultural selectivity in inventors and physicists communities by Cristian Candia and Brian Uzzi  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.