Memory

Below are two 60-minute documentaries, made twenty years apart, about Clive Wearing, a Brit with the worst-ever recorded case of amnesia. Clive's memories only last between seven and thirty seconds.

I first read about Wearing in the 90s in Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Sacks later spoke about him on an episode of Radio Lab, and wrote about him again in The New Yorker in 2007.

Prisoner of Consciousness, 1985:

The Man With the Seven Second Memory, 2005

Oliver Sacks: Music and Amnesia

From 2007: Oliver Sacks on Clive Wearing, an English musician struck by a devastating brain infection that left him with retrograde amnesia and a memory span of only seconds.

The New YorkerCondé Nast

Wearing is still alive as I write this. He's 86 and has been living with "the illness" for almost 40 years.

Clive Wearing - Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Contributors to Wikimedia projects

Radio Lab really hit it out of the park with this episode on memory and forgetting.

Due to a Transient Ischemic Attack (a TIA) I had in 2016, I have a particular interest in memory and recall.

Not only will this podcast episode challenge your understanding of what memories are, but you'll be surprised at how they're created, and how they're recalled.

The final segment of the episode is about Clive Wearing, who suffers from the most extreme case of amnesia ever recorded. His memories vanished after just seven seconds. "Every moment is his first waking moment." Heartbreaking.

Truly top-notch reporting.

Memory and Forgetting

Remembering is a tricky, unstable business. This hour: a look behind the curtain of how memories are made...and forgotten.