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Is the past ‘all over the place’? Is it the stories that keep buildings and communities alive? Are stories mental artefacts of the past? Did H.M. have expectations? Is understanding the past a process of comparing the unknown and the known? Is the surprising, strange, & non-normative, therefore, informative? How do archaeological artefacts carry traces of human behaviour? Are there patterns in culture? What gets demolished? Can lost languages be revitalized? Is the past always changing? Is the brain always predicting? How old is professional History? How/when do our beliefs or emotions revise what we perceive from our other senses? Might two historians see two very different things? Does multilingualism delay dementia? Are all stories political? How are they so effective? How does the past guide our behaviour today? What leads to the ‘resting state’? Is understanding both diachronic and synchronic? When is the past invoked? How do stories sometimes go haywire? Who has blond hair and blue eyes? Is Self = Individual? Are the pasts (& not the present) the gateways to the futures? How would we judge the current present? &, will we go to formal schools to master disciplines and seek Truth? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from neuroscience (Dr. Arpan Banerjee, NBRC, Manesar), anthropology (Dr. Abhijeet Paul, UC Berkeley, Berkeley) & history (Dr. Pushkar Sohoni, IISER, Pune). Listen in...