
2007: Germaine Greer
Kim Hill Collection
Raising Money for a Forest Project and Building a Shed
The speaker discusses their efforts to raise money for building a shed in their own forest, including their involvement in Celebrity Big Brother and an advertisement for a pension scheme.
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Speaker 1
And oh, like, so like it can, it'll help you remember the lines. Some of us don't need all of that. You can just like hammer it over and over and your neurons will do it. But then like Kate just said, so maybe that's good at getting my memory in, but I haven't really created a lot of robust, interesting, rich details associated with it. So now it might be kind of tough to retrieve it because it just kind of exists on its own. Whereas if I had a lot of attachments to it, right, lots of embellishments, things that are associated with it, it might then really help me retrieve
Speaker 2
it later. I think that's a really great thing for anyone in school or for anyone in the arts that you know what I mean? Even for remembering names, it's like sometimes when I remember when I, I've always in my mind, I tell myself I'm terrible at names. And then someone said, well, just when someone says what their name is, just like, think of it as someone that you know, or if it sounds like someone you know, remember, like connect it to something else. And now that's, you know, it's actually a really good tool for, it's one of those things when people are talking about, you know, when you read those books, like how to succeed. Remember people's names. Speak their name when you're talking to them. So like if someone says, hi, my name's Sarah, you're like, oh, Sarah, it's so nice to meet you.
Speaker 1
Yes. Yes, you're hitting all of this exactly right. So it was because yes, when you say it out loud, you're giving your brain another experience with it. Oh, you're hearing it again. Oh, there it is again, Sarah. So it's going, it's activating those neurons again. Proper nouns are super hard for our brains to remember. So you can think like proper nouns, like names, movie titles, book titles, cities, they're kind of their abstract made up concepts. You can think of them as living in a house in a neurological cul-de-sac in your brain. You know, they might be associated with other things, but ultimately there's only one way to get to that house at the end of the street super hard to retrieve it.
Speaker 2
And once you've
Speaker 1
put once you've made the memory, whereas common names, common nouns, like spoon, dish, phone, computer, those live in Main Street, USA, millions of intersections in and out. There's a lot of ways to get there. So this is why we often have that tip of the tongue. Like, oh my God, what's his name? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I can't get that. What is it? Yeah.
Speaker 2
It'll come to me. It'll come to me. That's what I'm going to say. I got to let go.
Speaker 1
And then it comes. You got to let go. And you know, you do like that's the best. The best strategy when that happens actually is either Google it and it's okay to you. It's not cheating. It does not make you dumbard. It's not making your memory worse. It is. This is a normal glitch in memory retrieval. There's not all timers. Really leaving it alone is great because here's what's going on. If you don't leave it alone, you've probably landed on a loosely related word, something similar in sound or meaning or has the first, the same first letter and your brain is like hooked into that. We call it the ugly sister of the target. It's searching that other neural neighborhood now. So like one time I couldn't come up with the name of the famous surfer and I said, oh, is his name Lance? Laird Hamilton.
Speaker 3
Laird
Speaker 2
Hamilton.
Speaker 1
But I came up with Lance, which sent, actually it was my boyfriend, sent his brain to Lance Armstrong. And so now we're like, you know, we're in that neighborhood of cycling, tortoise,
Speaker 2
your brain's everywhere. So you
Speaker 1
got to, so you got to like stop it because like call off the hunt and then your brain can stop perseverating in the wrong neighborhood. And that's why later on,
Speaker 2
like hours later, it'll just, oh, there it is. What about multitasking? So I, my thing was, is it women are always like, oh, we're great. Multitaskers are more this and we're that. And I, I want people say that to me, I'm like, I am the worst multitasker. I don't want to do it. I'm not interested in doing it.
Australian feminist author Dr Germaine Greer became "the high priestess of feminism" with her 1972 book 'The Female Eunuch'. Throughout the 50 years since then, she hasn't been far from the headlines. Kim Hill spoke with her in 2007 about her life and career.