Memory is a strange and slippery thing. Our memories are vital to our understanding of ourselves and the story we tell about our lives. Yet they're imperfect (to put it mildly) and in some cases your entire set of memories and self knowledge can just up and disappear. Who would you be without your memories? Would you have the same morals, the same values? Would you turn a hearse into a mobile bachelor pad, sit on a flagpole for a month, and get a job announcing the evening news? That's what one fellow did and he named himself John Johnson while doing it. Or at least that's the story he told. See, because memory is so slippery, "amnesia" is also often a get-out-of-a-wife-and-kids-free card. It ain't a crime to forget stuff after all, even if that stuff is your wife the brutal debt you took on opening a tilapia farm in Wisconsin, only to see your face on Unsolved Mysteries while kicking it as a scuba diver in Key West. In this episode we're looking at a few case studies of amnesia, some of which are genuine and genuinely terrifying. But others, well, might have a little more to the story.
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