James McGaugh

“Our modern technology has achieved a degree of sophistication beyond our wildest dreams. But this technology has exacted a pretty heavy price. We live in an age of anxiety, a time of stress. And with all our sophistication we are in fact, the victims of our own technological strength. We are the victims of shock … of future shock.” No, this isn’t a quote from a Huffington Post column on the Facebookization of modern communication. Nor is it pulled from an academic treatise on the phenomenologies of post-industrial existence. This statement was made by Orson Welles in the 1972 futurist documentary Future Shock, and, unlike some of the more dated elements of 1970s educational films, Future Shock remains shockingly current in verbalizing the concerns and anxieties that come along with rapid societal and technological change. (Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive)

Memory is the glue that binds our mental lives. But how does it work? Neuroscientists using cutting-edge techniques are exploring the precise molecular mechanisms of memory. By studying a range of individuals ranging-from an 11-year-old whiz-kid, Jake Hausler, who remembers every detail of his life to a woman who had memories implanted-scientists have uncovered a provocative idea.

Brad Williams is only the second person ever studied by neurologists for the newly-identified syndrome called "hyperthymesia", an extremely detailed form of autobiographical memory for events both global and personal, monumental and trivial. UNFORGETTABLE follows Brad's adventures as his rare mental gifts vault him from small-town anonymity to sudden mid-life notoriety.

The gripping story of Eileen Franklin who, while playing with her young daughter, suddenly had a memory of witnessing the rape and murder of her childhood best friend, 8-year-old Susan Nason, which led to a re-opening of a case that had gone unsolved for nearly 20 years.