Amit Biligiri (left), with his great-grandfather, B. Raje Urs, on a trip to India.

Anand Biligiri

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Anand Biligiri

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Amit Biligiri, a junior at Evergreen Valley High School in San Jose, Calif., sits on a big, right-angle couch in his living room alongside his mom, Kalyani Urs. They’re recounting the story of a fight they’ve often had — that every teenager has with their parents.

Amit says he’s often up late, and his mom, who tends to work late, “would be mad at me and say, ‘Hey Amit, why are you going to sleep so late?'”

Urs laughs. Getting Amit to go to sleep, she says, has been “a constant battle.”

“I was like, ‘I’m not really sleepy,'” Amit remembers telling her. “And I looked into this, and I found out that the sleep cycle for teenagers is actually delayed by a few hours. And that means that teenagers — it’s healthier for them to sleep later and then also wake up later.”

Still, Urs remembers telling her son: “You need more sleep, you’re forgetting things.”

“I keep asking you, ‘Did you submit this? Did you submit that?’ You forget. And so it clearly shows your memory is affected,” Urs remembers telling Amit.

But recently, her son surprised her. He said, “I remember when I had fries with Scooter Muttha.”

The man known as Scooter Muttha is Amit’s great-grandfather — Urs’ grandfather — who died many years ago. Urs was raised by her grandparents, and the man remains a beloved figure in their family. Amit’s point to his mother that day was, if he is so forgetful, why does he still vividly remember such a small moment: being 6 and sharing fries with Scooter Muttha at a Burger King in Bangalore?

Urs didn’t know what to say. Memory is a mysterious thing.

In fact, this debate got Amit thinking: How does memory work? And Urs, an avid NPR listener, encouraged him to explore the question for NPR’s annual Student Podcast Challenge.