This weekend is the first episode in a three-part "Brain Games" series on the National Geographic channel.  Since National Geographic does not have a show on the 'science' of ghost hunting, and since statistics show 97% of Internet readers never finish an article, if you are not a regular Science 2.0 reader I am okay endorsing this and telling you in the first paragraph you will enjoy it, so you can set your DVR and move on to reading about the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor.   

"Brain Games" is geared toward consumer science media but you'll enjoy it even if you have a Ph.D. in neuroscience, because it is has science meatiness but is also clever and interesting and has Apollo Robbins.  More on that in a bit.

It seeks to do a few things which all great science narratives do; it tells you why they are talking about the brain and what it means, they throw in some clever examples, and then they show you some applied instances where you can improve your own thinking.

The fun part is that they can tell you exactly what will happen and why our brains work the way they do, and it still works on you.

The why it works is simple enough.  You all know it.  We have an ancient brain and we built a world completely unsuited to it.  As a result, our brains are over-matched a lot.  My poor skull contains a device that works on 1/3rd the energy of a refrigerator door light - if you have ever been called a dim bulb, there was a science basis - yet the world throws millions of things at it each day.  We have to parse those out into meaningful bits and that means we unconsciously filter a lot - so much a clever person or a test can trip you up and something strange, like an object that morphs or even spontaneously appears, may not register because things are not supposed to morph or spontaneously appear and, in a world of chaos, reality outliers get removed.



Enter Apollo Robbins in the first episode.  If you don't know Robbins, he is famous because he pick-pocketed the Secret Service while he entertained former president Jimmy Carter, and did not get shot in the face - because he did not get caught.  He robbed them blind; watches, a top secret itinerary, their wallets and some of their credibility.

While he is clearly an artist, what he does is pure neuroscience, and he shows you, as do all the participants in the three programs, while Neil Patrick Harris narrates you through the entire process. Watch this and be amazed.



On Harris, narrating is tricky business.  Anyone can be a talking head but few can be an Alan Alda, who can have a literate, interesting conversation on arcane subjects with nothing but 'shade tree' science knowledge and draw out notoriously short-of-temper subjects like Double Helix co-discoverer Dr. James Watson with ease.

But Alda is 75 years old so he shouldn't be tasked with being the go-to science guy forever.  Can Harris step in?  I have no idea if he knows anything at all about science, but he is a comfortable presence in the show and you never feel like you are listening to Barney from "How I Met Your Mother" or hearing some some unknown, generic voice. His delivery matches the tone of the segments nicely.

On the topic, the overall point they are making is that our attention span is 'mental money' and they want to show you how to use it wisely, so along the way you get interesting insights from experts into why we do what what we do, insight from non-experts who set out to consciously boost their mental power, and a variety of tricks, puzzles and exercises that can help you do the same, 11 of them in episode one alone.

Take a look here:



Now, at first I was thinking this was a bit unfair.  If you have traveled a lot, you may not register a hotel employee of any kind.  Like a stop light, you know they are there and you pay attention when it matters but a characteristic would be unnoticed.  However, even I, watching this with a notepad in hand and looking for the hook, only noticed that his shirt had changed and not that it was an entirely different person. The reason it works is because our brain instinctively disregards the supernatural - people do not morph into other people.

The above was so convincing to my daughter - and National Geographic likely wants to know if their show appeals to young people - that even when the camera was behind the counter she did not recognize what was happening.  She asked me to rewind the segment when it was clear something had happened and then she got it.  Our brains can be that convincing.   I have, at various times, told people I do not see brunette women, for example, and they have laughed.  I am not kidding; I live in a world of men, tall blonde women and then vague shimmers in the air and I did not know those optical distortions were women without blonde hair until I was 22 years old.  It took until 2011 for science to catch up to me.

There's a lot more than I can cover without giving everything away, even expert advice on how to mentally train yourself to have better memory.  There is three episodes worth, including more details on short term memory, like how we can remember the plot of a novel from 20 years ago but can't remember the digits on a dollar bill if you have to remember two bills.

Well, you can't until you watch "Brain Games", anyway.  First episode is Sunday, October 9th at 8 PM.

P.S. Don't miss the penguin! (but I bet you will)