The investigation of episodic memory has proceeded along two broad research paths. In the more common approach, participants learn and retrieve materials within the psychology laboratory. This approach affords experimenter control, and it assumes that similar rules will govern the remembrance of any single experience, whether a word on a screen or a meal with a friend. An alternative approach is guided by the belief that to properly understand memory for lifetime events, one must forgo the control offered by list-learning tasks and instead ask participants to retrieve memories from their daily lives. What are the implications of this methodological choice for understanding human memory? This question will serve as the launching point for discussing the role of two functional brain networks in human learning and memory as studied by traditional task-related functional MRI, resting state functional connectivity MRI, and individual differences approaches.