The Memory Hole: Why Society Sometimes Draws a Blank

A Little Bit Of Science

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

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