Memory Motel

Ed Gavagan finds the hidden flaw in the Golden Rule.

When author Nick Flynn decides to interview his mother's ex-boyfriends, he discovers a memory central to his childhood was false.

When Jacqueline Freeman became a beekeeper, she needed guidance. She found it in one of the most unexpected and obvious places.

Since Season Two has not materialized, and the world is now a different place since the promise of Season Two, we have a season ready for you, but not a real season, whatever that means anyway, but an "unreal season," one centered around uncertainty, featuring Ophira Eisenberg from NPR's Ask Me Another, Nick Flynn, the author of "This Is The Night Our House Will Catch Fire," Moth storyteller Ed Gavagan and others. Stay tuned and stay safe and healthy!

Happy Valentine's Day! While we work on Season 2, we'd like to share two of our favorite love stories with you.

One day Paula receives a mysterious message in a bottle.

In 1973, a bank robbery captivated Sweden and led to the conception of "Stockholm Syndrome." In "The Ideal Hostage," Kristin Enmark, the woman first diagnosed with "Stockholm Syndrome," goes back to that bank to cast off the stigma of a syndrome that never made sense to her.

At 13, author Leigh Stein had a brief Internet friendship that she would never forget.

In the early 1950's, renowned dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham produced a series of solo dances, one of which was called "Changeling." Merce never taught it to any one else, and when the performances stopped less than ten years later, the dance disappeared. With the discovery of a video of the dance in 2014 by director Alla Kovgan, we explore, through the legacy of Merce Cunningham, how dance is particularly susceptible to decay, how it is remembered, and how to bring back work that wasn't necessarily meant to be recreated.

To celebrate LGBT History Month, Terence interviewed Eric Marcus, author of “Making Gay History,” on why he’s revisiting old tapes from the late 1980’s and listening to voices from the past today.

Despite Eric’s desire to forget, his past relationship with Chris threatens to return.

If forgetting helps us forgive, how will the internet's relentless memory impact our ability to accept other people's past crimes and mistakes? In Right to Oblivion: Part 2, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger reveals what's at stake when we undo forgetting, and Frank Ahearn shows us how the internet can forget our past if we're willing to use deception.

Evan Ratliff has always had a fascination with fake deaths. In his pursuit of a story for WIRED, Evan attempts to leave his old life behind and adopt a new identity and presence online. The challenge is to see if he could be found. Through this strangely suspenseful journey, Evan realizes that his fake life has become a part of his real life in unexpected ways… Featuring: Evan Ratliff

"The Wonder Years" married the bewilderment of a child with the nostalgia of an adult; and for a generation, the TV show created by Carol Black and Neal Marlens is a time machine back to the sixties, youth and innocence. In today's episode, we return to "The Wonder Years" with Carol Black and writer Titi Nguyen to reflect on childhood with the help of Kevin Arnold.

For this Extended Stay, "The Bike Incident," we continue the discussion of law and memory from episode #05 - "Court of Memory" - with another story of eyewitness misidentification that steered Caroline Sarnoff’s criminal justice career toward reforming the system.

In our daily lives, we often accept that our memories are poor. We move on if our memories don’t exactly match up with another person’s, agreeing to disagree. But that’s not an option in court. And yet memory is as fragile and poor there as it is when we’re struggling to remember where exactly we had that second date. In "Court of Memory," our host speaks with Nathan Brown, an exoneree, Karen Newirth, a Senior Staff Attorney from the Innocence Project, and Julia Shaw, author of the Memory Illusion, as he explores the high stakes of remembering in the criminal justice system.

When we choose who to remember with our obituaries, what cultural landscape do we create? In "Letters to the Dead," we explore the New York Times Obituary Desk, Iceland’s obsession with death, and a renegade obituarist who finds the extraordinary in the ordinary. Featuring: Vanessa Gould, director of Obit; Nanna Arnadottir, columnist for Reykjavik Grapevine; Karl Blöndal, Vice Editor of Morgunblaðið; Kay Powell, retired obit writer and editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and more.

Our exploration of memory and psychedelics that began in "Glass-Bottom Boat" continues in this bonus episode. What role might psychedelics play in your journey to find meaning out of the life you’ve lived and have left?

In "Glass-Bottom Boat," Jim McDermott returns to the memory of his first psychedelic experience in which he found himself back in an era he thought he’d missed: the sixties.

Since objects hold our memories, both joyful and heartbreaking, how do we decide what to throw out and what to keep? To explore memory's relationship to objects, we consider The Museum of Broken Relationships, The Significant Object Project and the phenomenon of tidying up expert Marie Kondo.