What’s Your Name Again?

We’ve all forgotten someone’s name at a party or social gathering. It can be a special kind of embarrassment. One that makes you want to disappear and crawl under a rock. Daniel Willingham shares why we’re all terrible with names and how we can be better.

Not only are we humans terrible with names, we’re also not great at remembering unfamiliar faces. It’s why eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Mitchell Meltzer is working with his students to crack the code on what makes a good or bad eyewitness.

Students rely on learning and memory to absorb and retain information. But the advent of AI has thrown a wrench in that whole process. Kathleen Arnold explains how AI programs like ChatGPT have impacted learning and memory in her classroom.

Jeff Gibbons studies how memory affects the believability of news. He set up an experiment where participants read headlines that ranged from the outrageous to the ordinary. His findings open up a fascinating window into the human condition.