Why You Remember Pop Lyrics, but Forget Your Work Emails 🧠We unpack the BRAIN With Neurologist Dr Ben Van Niekerk

Why You Remember Pop Lyrics, but Forget Your Work Emails 🧠We unpack the BRAIN With Neurologist Dr Ben Van Niekerk

From The Good Morning Breakfast show by OFM

May 27, 2026 · 5 min

About this episode

The episode explores the mechanics of human memory with neurologist Dr Ben Van Niekerk, discussing why we remember pop lyrics better than work emails.

Ever wonder why you can perfectly recall a commercial jingle from 1998, but completely forget to reply to a crucial work email from 9:00 AM today? The Good Morning Greakfast sat down with renowned neurologist Dr Ben Van Niekerk to explore the staggering mechanics of human memory. It turns out, your brain isn't running out of space. In fact, while an average laptop holds about 250 gigabytes to one terabyte of data, the human brain boasts a jaw-dropping storage capacity of 2.5 million gigabytes. That is enough space to hold nearly one million songs! So, if our internal hard drive is that massive, why does it prioritize the nitty-gritties over our daily to-do lists? Dr Van Niekerk explains down how the brain fills its vast space, why emotional triggers and novelty keep useless memories alive for decades, and the scientific strategies you can use to "force-quit" the background noise and make space for what truly matters today.

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Host: OFM

Guest: Dr Ben Van Niekerk

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Organizations: The Good Morning Breakfast, OFM

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