WEBVTT 00:00:00.273 --> 00:00:03.125 I'd like to invite you to close your eyes. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:03.125 --> 00:00:07.750 Imagine yourself standing 00:00:07.750 --> 00:00:11.000 outside the front door of your home. 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:14.792 I'd like you to notice the color of the door, 00:00:14.792 --> 00:00:18.404 the material that it's made out of. 00:00:18.404 --> 00:00:24.708 Now visualize a pack of overweight nudists on bicycles. 00:00:24.708 --> 00:00:28.708 They are competing in a naked bicycle race, 00:00:28.708 --> 00:00:32.458 and they are headed straight for your front door. 00:00:32.458 --> 00:00:34.208 I need you to actually see this. 00:00:34.208 --> 00:00:37.500 They are pedaling really hard, they're sweaty, 00:00:37.500 --> 00:00:39.250 they're bouncing around a lot. 00:00:39.250 --> 00:00:44.208 And they crash straight into the front door of your home. 00:00:44.208 --> 00:00:47.250 Bicycles fly everywhere, wheels roll past you, 00:00:47.250 --> 00:00:51.958 spokes end up in awkward places. 00:00:51.958 --> 00:00:54.583 Step over the threshold of your door 00:00:54.583 --> 00:00:57.208 into your foyer, your hallway, whatever's on the other side, 00:00:57.208 --> 00:01:01.375 and appreciate the quality of the light. 00:01:01.375 --> 00:01:07.083 The light is shining down on Cookie Monster. 00:01:07.083 --> 00:01:10.792 Cookie Monster is waving at you 00:01:10.792 --> 00:01:12.542 from his perch on top of a tan horse. 00:01:12.542 --> 00:01:13.417 It's a talking horse. 00:01:13.417 --> 00:01:19.083 You can practically feel his blue fur tickling your nose. 00:01:19.083 --> 00:01:23.083 You can smell the oatmeal raisin cookie that he's about to shovel into his mouth. 00:01:23.083 --> 00:01:27.167 Walk past him. Walk past him into your living room. 00:01:27.167 --> 00:01:30.958 In your living room, in full imaginative broadband, 00:01:30.958 --> 00:01:32.708 picture Brittany Spears. 00:01:32.708 --> 00:01:38.542 She is scantily clad, she's dancing on your coffee table, 00:01:38.542 --> 00:01:40.917 and she's singing "Hit Me Baby One More Time." 00:01:40.917 --> 00:01:44.208 And then follow me into your kitchen. 00:01:44.208 --> 00:01:48.000 In your kitchen, the floor has been paved over with a yellow brick road 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:52.125 and out of your oven are coming towards you 00:01:52.125 --> 00:01:54.792 Dorothy, the Tin Man, 00:01:54.792 --> 00:01:56.542 the Scarecrow and the Lion from "The Wizard of Oz" 00:01:56.542 --> 00:02:00.000 hand-in-hand skipping straight towards you. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:02.625 Okay. Open your eyes. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:02.625 --> 00:02:07.792 I want to tell you about a very bizarre contest 00:02:07.792 --> 00:02:10.875 that is held every spring in New York City. 00:02:10.875 --> 00:02:13.500 It's called the United States Memory Championship. 00:02:13.500 --> 00:02:15.875 And I had gone to cover this contest a few years back 00:02:15.875 --> 00:02:20.042 as a science journalist 00:02:20.042 --> 00:02:21.792 expecting, I guess, that this was going to be 00:02:21.792 --> 00:02:22.667 like the Superbowl of savants. 00:02:22.667 --> 00:02:26.792 This was a bunch of guys and a few ladies 00:02:26.792 --> 00:02:31.792 widely varying in both age and hygienic upkeep. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:31.792 --> 00:02:33.458 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:33.458 --> 00:02:38.667 They were memorizing hundreds of random numbers, 00:02:38.667 --> 00:02:40.417 looking at them just once. 00:02:40.417 --> 00:02:44.333 They were memorizing names of dozens and dozens and dozens of strangers. 00:02:44.333 --> 00:02:48.125 They were memorizing entire poems in just a few minutes. 00:02:48.125 --> 00:02:50.750 They were competing to see who could memorize 00:02:50.750 --> 00:02:54.750 the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards the fastest. 00:02:54.750 --> 00:02:55.625 I was like, this is unbelievable. 00:02:55.625 --> 00:02:59.750 These people must be freaks of nature. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:59.750 --> 00:03:03.375 And I started talking to a few of the competitors. 00:03:03.375 --> 00:03:04.750 This is a guy called Ed Cook 00:03:04.750 --> 00:03:05.625 who had come over from England 00:03:05.625 --> 00:03:07.375 where he had one of the best trained memories. 00:03:07.375 --> 00:03:11.417 And I said to him, "Ed, when did you realize 00:03:11.417 --> 00:03:13.833 that you were a savant?" 00:03:13.833 --> 00:03:16.458 And Ed was like, "I'm not a savant. 00:03:16.458 --> 00:03:17.958 In fact, I have just an average memory. 00:03:17.958 --> 00:03:20.583 Everybody who competes in this contest 00:03:20.583 --> 00:03:24.167 will tell you that they have an average memory. 00:03:24.167 --> 00:03:26.708 We've all trained ourselves 00:03:26.708 --> 00:03:30.375 to perform these utterly miraculous feats of memory 00:03:30.375 --> 00:03:32.125 using a set of ancient techniques, 00:03:32.125 --> 00:03:35.458 techniques invented 2,500 years ago in Greece, 00:03:35.458 --> 00:03:39.667 the same techniques that Cicero had used 00:03:39.667 --> 00:03:40.542 to memorize his speeches, 00:03:40.542 --> 00:03:44.583 that Medieval scholars had used to memorize entire books." 00:03:44.583 --> 00:03:48.375 And I was like, "Whoa. How come I never heard of this before?" NOTE Paragraph 00:03:48.375 --> 00:03:50.125 And we were standing outside the competition hall, 00:03:50.125 --> 00:03:55.125 and Ed, who is a wonderful, brilliant, 00:03:55.125 --> 00:03:58.375 but somewhat eccentric, English guy, 00:03:58.375 --> 00:04:03.333 says to me, "Josh, you're an American journalist. 00:04:03.333 --> 00:04:04.208 Do you know Brittany Spears?" 00:04:04.208 --> 00:04:09.375 I'm like, "What? No. Why?" 00:04:09.375 --> 00:04:13.333 "Because I really want to teach Brittany Spears 00:04:13.333 --> 00:04:14.208 how to memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards 00:04:14.208 --> 00:04:17.500 on U.S. national television. 00:04:17.500 --> 00:04:20.833 It will prove to the world that anybody can do this." NOTE Paragraph 00:04:20.833 --> 00:04:21.708 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:21.708 --> 00:04:28.875 I was like, "Well I'm not Brittany Spears, 00:04:28.875 --> 00:04:30.625 but maybe you could teach me. 00:04:30.625 --> 00:04:34.583 I mean, you've got to start somewhere." 00:04:34.583 --> 00:04:38.375 And that was the beginning of a very strange journey for me. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:38.375 --> 00:04:40.125 I ended up spending the better part of the next year, 00:04:40.125 --> 00:04:43.375 not only training my memory, 00:04:43.375 --> 00:04:45.125 but also investigating it, 00:04:45.125 --> 00:04:46.000 trying to understand how it works, 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:48.625 why it sometimes doesn't work 00:04:48.625 --> 00:04:49.500 and what its potential might be. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:49.500 --> 00:04:53.708 I met a host of really interesting people. 00:04:53.708 --> 00:04:55.167 This is a guy called E.P. 00:04:55.167 --> 00:04:58.583 He's an amnesic who had, very possibly, 00:04:58.583 --> 00:05:01.292 the very worst memory in the world. 00:05:01.292 --> 00:05:02.167 His memory was so bad 00:05:02.167 --> 00:05:03.917 that he didn't even remember he had a memory problem, 00:05:03.917 --> 00:05:06.958 which is amazing. 00:05:06.958 --> 00:05:07.833 And he was an incredibly tragic figure, 00:05:07.833 --> 00:05:11.292 but he was a window into the extent 00:05:11.292 --> 00:05:13.917 to which our memories make us who we are. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:13.917 --> 00:05:17.125 The other end of the spectrum: I met this guy. 00:05:17.125 --> 00:05:19.708 This is Kim Peek. 00:05:19.708 --> 00:05:22.333 He was the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in "Rain Man." 00:05:22.333 --> 00:05:25.292 We spent an afternoon together 00:05:25.292 --> 00:05:29.083 in the Salt Lake City Public Library memorizing phone books, 00:05:29.083 --> 00:05:31.708 which was scintillating. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:31.708 --> 00:05:34.958 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:34.958 --> 00:05:38.542 And I went back and I read a whole host of memory treatises, 00:05:38.542 --> 00:05:42.667 treatises written 2,000-plus years ago 00:05:42.667 --> 00:05:45.958 in Latin in Antiquity 00:05:45.958 --> 00:05:46.833 and then later in the Middle Ages. 00:05:46.833 --> 00:05:49.042 And I learned a whole bunch of really interesting stuff. 00:05:49.042 --> 00:05:50.792 One of the really interesting things that I learned 00:05:50.792 --> 00:05:54.083 is that once upon a time 00:05:54.083 --> 00:05:59.917 this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory 00:05:59.917 --> 00:06:04.083 was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today. 00:06:04.083 --> 00:06:09.917 Once upon a time people invested in their memories, 00:06:09.917 --> 00:06:14.958 in laboriously furnishing their minds. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:14.958 --> 00:06:17.542 Over the last few millenia 00:06:17.542 --> 00:06:20.519 we've invented a series of technologies -- 00:06:20.519 --> 00:06:23.375 from the alphabet to the scroll 00:06:23.375 --> 00:06:25.125 to the codex, the printing press, photography, 00:06:25.125 --> 00:06:27.500 the computer, the smartphone -- 00:06:27.500 --> 00:06:30.125 that have made it progressively easier and easier 00:06:30.125 --> 00:06:33.125 for us to externalize our memories, 00:06:33.125 --> 00:06:34.875 for us to essentially outsource 00:06:34.875 --> 00:06:37.542 this fundamental human capacity. 00:06:37.542 --> 00:06:42.125 These technologies have made our modern world possible, 00:06:42.125 --> 00:06:43.000 but they've also changed us. 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:46.042 They've changed us culturally, 00:06:46.042 --> 00:06:47.792 and I would argue that they've changed cognitively. 00:06:47.792 --> 00:06:51.542 Having little need to remember anymore, 00:06:51.542 --> 00:06:54.167 it sometimes seems like we've forgotten how. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:54.167 --> 00:06:56.583 One of the last places on earth 00:06:56.583 --> 00:06:58.333 where you still find people passionate about this idea 00:06:58.333 --> 00:07:03.083 of a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory 00:07:03.083 --> 00:07:05.750 is at this totally singular memory contest. 00:07:05.750 --> 00:07:06.625 It's actually not that singular, 00:07:06.625 --> 00:07:08.375 there are contests held all over the world. 00:07:08.375 --> 00:07:13.333 And I was fascinated, I wanted to know how do these guys do it. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:13.333 --> 00:07:17.375 A few years back a group of researchers at University College London 00:07:17.375 --> 00:07:21.583 brought a bunch of memory champions in the lab. 00:07:21.583 --> 00:07:22.458 They wanted to know: 00:07:22.458 --> 00:07:23.333 Do these guys have brains 00:07:23.333 --> 00:07:27.544 that are somehow structurally, anatomically different from the rest of ours? 00:07:27.544 --> 00:07:31.625 The answer was no. 00:07:31.625 --> 00:07:33.375 Are they smarter than the rest of us? 00:07:33.375 --> 00:07:36.625 They gave them a bunch of cognitive tests, 00:07:36.625 --> 00:07:37.500 and the answer was not really. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:37.500 --> 00:07:42.500 There was however one interesting and telling difference 00:07:42.500 --> 00:07:45.500 between the brains of the memory champions 00:07:45.500 --> 00:07:46.375 and the control subjects that they were comparing them to. 00:07:46.375 --> 00:07:49.667 When they put these guys in a fMRI machine, 00:07:49.667 --> 00:07:50.542 scanned their brains 00:07:50.542 --> 00:07:55.625 while they were memorizing numbers and people's faces and snowflakes, 00:07:55.625 --> 00:08:00.125 they found that the memory champions 00:08:00.125 --> 00:08:01.000 were lighting up different parts of the brain 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:02.750 than everyone else. 00:08:02.750 --> 00:08:05.958 Of note, they were using, or seemed to be using, 00:08:05.958 --> 00:08:10.375 a part of the brain that's involved in spatial memory and navigation. 00:08:10.375 --> 00:08:15.125 Why? And is there something the rest of us can learn from this? NOTE Paragraph 00:08:15.125 --> 00:08:19.125 The sport of competitive memorizing 00:08:19.125 --> 00:08:23.250 is driven by a kind of arms race 00:08:23.250 --> 00:08:27.125 where every year somebody comes up 00:08:27.125 --> 00:08:28.875 with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, 00:08:28.875 --> 00:08:29.750 and then the rest of the field has to play catchup. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:29.750 --> 00:08:33.500 This is my friend Ben Pridmore, 00:08:33.500 --> 00:08:35.250 three time world memory champion. 00:08:35.250 --> 00:08:37.083 On his desk in front of him 00:08:37.083 --> 00:08:40.208 are 36 shuffled packs of playing cards 00:08:40.208 --> 00:08:42.833 that he is about to try to memorize in one hour 00:08:42.833 --> 00:08:46.958 using a technique that he invented and he alone has mastered. 00:08:46.958 --> 00:08:49.792 He used a similar technique 00:08:49.792 --> 00:08:51.542 to memorize the precise order 00:08:51.542 --> 00:08:58.042 of 4,140 random binary digits 00:08:58.042 --> 00:08:59.667 in half an hour. 00:08:59.667 --> 00:09:02.875 Yeah. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:02.875 --> 00:09:05.500 And while there are a whole host of ways 00:09:05.500 --> 00:09:07.000 of remembering stuff in these competitions, 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:12.000 everything, all of the techniques that are being used, 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:15.500 ultimately come down to a concept 00:09:15.500 --> 00:09:19.333 that psychologists refer to as elaborative encoding. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:19.333 --> 00:09:21.167 And it's well-illustrated by a nifty paradox 00:09:21.167 --> 00:09:24.167 known as the Baker/baker paradox, 00:09:24.167 --> 00:09:25.375 which goes like this: 00:09:25.375 --> 00:09:28.333 If I tell two people to remember the same word, 00:09:28.333 --> 00:09:29.208 if I say to you, 00:09:29.208 --> 00:09:33.958 "Remember that there is a guy named Baker." 00:09:33.958 --> 00:09:34.833 That's his name. 00:09:34.833 --> 00:09:38.250 And I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy who is a baker." 00:09:38.250 --> 00:09:43.292 And I come back to you at some point later on, 00:09:43.292 --> 00:09:46.500 and I say, "Do you remember that word 00:09:46.500 --> 00:09:48.708 that I told you a while back? 00:09:48.708 --> 00:09:49.583 Do you remember what it was?" 00:09:49.583 --> 00:09:53.542 the person who was told his name is Baker 00:09:53.542 --> 00:09:55.292 is less likely to remember the same word 00:09:55.292 --> 00:09:58.958 than the person was told his job is that he is a baker. 00:09:58.958 --> 00:10:02.083 Same word, different amount of remembering; that's weird. 00:10:02.083 --> 00:10:03.083 What's going on here? NOTE Paragraph 00:10:03.083 --> 00:10:09.542 Well the name Baker doesn't actually mean anything to you. 00:10:09.542 --> 00:10:11.833 It is entirely untethered 00:10:11.833 --> 00:10:15.333 from all of the other memories floating around in your skull. 00:10:15.333 --> 00:10:16.792 But the common noun baker, 00:10:16.792 --> 00:10:19.417 we know bakers. 00:10:19.417 --> 00:10:21.000 Bakers where funny white hats. 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:22.750 Bakers have flour on their hands. 00:10:22.750 --> 00:10:23.625 Bakers smell good when they come home from work. 00:10:23.625 --> 00:10:25.875 Maybe we even know a baker. 00:10:25.875 --> 00:10:27.625 And when we first hear that word, 00:10:27.625 --> 00:10:31.208 we start putting these associational hooks into it 00:10:31.208 --> 00:10:33.833 that make it easier to fish it back out at some later date. 00:10:33.833 --> 00:10:37.083 The entire art of what is going on 00:10:37.083 --> 00:10:41.167 in these memory contests 00:10:41.167 --> 00:10:42.917 and the entire art of remembering stuff better in everyday life 00:10:42.917 --> 00:10:47.042 is figuring our ways to transform capital B Bakers 00:10:47.042 --> 00:10:48.792 into lower-case b bakers -- 00:10:48.792 --> 00:10:52.656 to take information that is lacking in context, 00:10:52.656 --> 00:10:54.208 in significance, in meaning 00:10:54.208 --> 00:10:55.958 and transforming it in some way 00:10:55.958 --> 00:10:58.333 so that it becomes meaningful 00:10:58.333 --> 00:11:03.333 in the light of all the other things that you have in your mind. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:03.333 --> 00:11:06.375 One of the more elaborate techniques for doing this 00:11:06.375 --> 00:11:11.417 dates back 2,500 years to ancient Greece. 00:11:11.417 --> 00:11:12.333 It came to be known as the memory palace. 00:11:12.333 --> 00:11:14.958 This story behind its creation goes like this: 00:11:14.958 --> 00:11:19.792 There was a poet called Simonides 00:11:19.792 --> 00:11:20.667 who was attending a banquet. 00:11:20.667 --> 00:11:23.208 He was actually the hired entertainment, 00:11:23.208 --> 00:11:26.958 because back then if you wanted to throw a really slamming party, 00:11:26.958 --> 00:11:28.708 you didn't hire a D.J., you hired a poet. 00:11:28.708 --> 00:11:33.625 And he stands up, delivers his poem from memory, walks out the door, 00:11:33.625 --> 00:11:39.583 and at the moment he does, the banquet hall collapses, 00:11:39.583 --> 00:11:42.833 kills everybody inside. 00:11:42.833 --> 00:11:44.583 It doesn't just kill everybody, 00:11:44.583 --> 00:11:48.708 it mangles the bodies beyond all recognition. 00:11:48.708 --> 00:11:49.583 Nobody can say who was inside, 00:11:49.583 --> 00:11:53.708 nobody can say where they were sitting. 00:11:53.708 --> 00:11:54.583 The bodies can't be properly buried. 00:11:54.583 --> 00:11:58.667 It's one tragedy compounding another. 00:11:58.667 --> 00:12:02.417 Simonides, standing outside, 00:12:02.417 --> 00:12:03.292 the sole survivor amid the wreckage, 00:12:03.292 --> 00:12:08.292 closes his eyes and has this realization, 00:12:08.292 --> 00:12:11.583 which is that in his mind's eye, 00:12:11.583 --> 00:12:16.375 he can see where each of the guests at the banquet had been sitting. 00:12:16.375 --> 00:12:19.333 And he takes the relatives by the hand 00:12:19.333 --> 00:12:21.083 and guides them each to their loved ones amid the wreckage. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:21.083 --> 00:12:24.917 What Simonides figured out at that moment 00:12:24.917 --> 00:12:29.042 is something that I think we all kind of intuitively know, 00:12:29.042 --> 00:12:30.792 which is that, as bad as we are 00:12:30.792 --> 00:12:34.917 at remembering names and phone numbers 00:12:34.917 --> 00:12:36.667 and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, 00:12:36.667 --> 00:12:43.542 we have really exceptional visual and spacial memories. 00:12:43.542 --> 00:12:45.292 If I asked you to recount the first 10 words 00:12:45.292 --> 00:12:49.417 of the story that I just told you about Simonides, 00:12:49.417 --> 00:12:51.167 chances are you would have a tough time with it. 00:12:51.167 --> 00:12:53.542 But I would wager 00:12:53.542 --> 00:12:56.333 that if I asked you to recall 00:12:56.333 --> 00:13:00.458 who is sitting on top of a talking tan horse 00:13:00.458 --> 00:13:01.333 in your foyer right now, 00:13:01.333 --> 00:13:05.458 you would be able to see them. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:05.458 --> 00:13:07.958 The idea behind the memory palace 00:13:07.958 --> 00:13:12.375 is to create this imagined edifice in your mind's eye 00:13:12.375 --> 00:13:13.250 and populate it with images 00:13:13.250 --> 00:13:17.083 of the things that you want to remember -- 00:13:17.083 --> 00:13:19.458 the crazier, weirder, more bizarre, 00:13:19.458 --> 00:13:23.750 funnier, raunchier, stinkier the image is, 00:13:23.750 --> 00:13:24.625 the more unforgettable it's likely to be. 00:13:24.625 --> 00:13:28.583 This is advice that goes back 2,000-plus years 00:13:28.583 --> 00:13:32.583 to the earliest Latin memory treatises. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:32.583 --> 00:13:33.458 So how does this work? 00:13:33.458 --> 00:13:35.875 Let's say that you've been invited 00:13:35.875 --> 00:13:40.250 to TED center stage to give a speech 00:13:40.250 --> 00:13:42.000 and you want to do it from memory, 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:46.583 and you want to do it the way Cicero would have done it 00:13:46.583 --> 00:13:51.750 if he had been invited to TEDX Rome 2,000 years ago. 00:13:51.750 --> 00:13:54.500 What you might do 00:13:54.500 --> 00:14:00.042 is picture yourself at the front door of your house. 00:14:00.042 --> 00:14:01.792 And you'd come up with some sort 00:14:01.792 --> 00:14:05.208 of an absolutely crazy, ridiculous, unforgettable image 00:14:05.208 --> 00:14:08.375 to remind you that the first thing you want to talk about 00:14:08.375 --> 00:14:11.167 is this totally bizarre contest. 00:14:11.167 --> 00:14:13.708 And then you go inside your house, 00:14:13.708 --> 00:14:16.375 and you would see an image of Cookie Monster 00:14:16.375 --> 00:14:18.708 on top of Mister Ed. 00:14:18.708 --> 00:14:19.583 And that would remind you 00:14:19.583 --> 00:14:23.167 that you would want to then introduce your friend Ed Cook. 00:14:23.167 --> 00:14:26.292 And then you'd see an image of Brittany Spears 00:14:26.292 --> 00:14:28.750 to remind you of this funny anecdote you want to tell. 00:14:28.750 --> 00:14:29.792 And you go into your kitchen, 00:14:29.792 --> 00:14:30.667 and the fourth topic you were going to talk about 00:14:30.667 --> 00:14:35.667 was this strange journey that you went on for a year, 00:14:35.667 --> 00:14:38.708 and you have some friends to help you remember that. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:38.708 --> 00:14:44.250 This is how Roman orators memorized their speeches -- 00:14:44.250 --> 00:14:46.875 not word-for-word, which is just going to screw you up, 00:14:46.875 --> 00:14:48.625 but topic-for-topic. 00:14:48.625 --> 00:14:51.917 In fact, the phrase topic sentence 00:14:51.917 --> 00:14:56.125 that comes from the Greek word topos, 00:14:56.125 --> 00:14:57.875 which means place. 00:14:57.875 --> 00:15:00.458 That's a vestige 00:15:00.458 --> 00:15:02.208 of when people used to think about oratory and rhetoric 00:15:02.208 --> 00:15:04.708 in these sorts of spacial terms. 00:15:04.708 --> 00:15:05.583 The phrase "in the first place," 00:15:05.583 --> 00:15:06.458 that's like in the first place of your memory palace. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:06.458 --> 00:15:11.417 I thought this was just fascinating, 00:15:11.417 --> 00:15:12.292 and I got really into it. 00:15:12.292 --> 00:15:15.542 And I went to a few more of these memory contests. 00:15:15.542 --> 00:15:16.417 And I had this notion that I might write something longer 00:15:16.417 --> 00:15:21.458 about this subculture of competitive memorizers. 00:15:21.458 --> 00:15:23.208 But there was a problem. 00:15:23.208 --> 00:15:26.417 The problem was that a memory contest 00:15:26.417 --> 00:15:30.500 is a pathologically boring event. 00:15:30.500 --> 00:15:32.583 (Laughter) 00:15:32.583 --> 00:15:36.625 Truly, it is like a bunch of people sitting around taking the SAT's. 00:15:36.625 --> 00:15:39.042 I mean, the most dramatic it gets 00:15:39.042 --> 00:15:42.083 is when somebody starts massaging their temples. 00:15:42.083 --> 00:15:42.958 And I'm a journalist, I need something to write about. 00:15:42.958 --> 00:15:47.083 I know that there's this incredible stuff happening in these people's minds, 00:15:47.083 --> 00:15:47.958 but I don't have access to it. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:47.958 --> 00:15:52.917 And I realized, if I was going to tell this story, 00:15:52.917 --> 00:15:54.667 I needed to walk in their shoes a little bit. 00:15:54.667 --> 00:15:58.833 And so I started trying to spend 15 or 20 minutes 00:15:58.833 --> 00:16:02.083 every morning before I sat down with my New York Times 00:16:02.083 --> 00:16:02.958 just trying to remember something. 00:16:02.958 --> 00:16:03.833 Maybe it was a poem. 00:16:03.833 --> 00:16:07.958 Maybe it was names from an old yearbook 00:16:07.958 --> 00:16:08.833 that I bought at a flea market. 00:16:08.833 --> 00:16:14.667 And I found that this was shockingly fun. 00:16:14.667 --> 00:16:17.083 I never would have expected that. 00:16:17.083 --> 00:16:19.708 It was fun because this is actually not about training your memory. 00:16:19.708 --> 00:16:23.792 What you're doing is you're trying to get better and better and better 00:16:23.792 --> 00:16:24.667 at creating, at dreaming up, 00:16:24.667 --> 00:16:28.792 these utterly ludicrous, raunchy, hilarious 00:16:28.792 --> 00:16:32.917 and hopefully unforgettable images in your mind's eye. 00:16:32.917 --> 00:16:33.792 And I got pretty into it. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:33.792 --> 00:16:39.542 This is me wearing my standard competitive memorizers training kit. 00:16:39.542 --> 00:16:44.000 It's a pair of earmuffs 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:46.917 and a set of safety goggles that have been masked over 00:16:46.917 --> 00:16:48.667 except for two small pinholes, 00:16:48.667 --> 00:16:54.500 because distraction is the competitive memorizers greatest enemy. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:54.500 --> 00:17:01.375 I ended up coming back to that same contest that I had covered a year earlier. 00:17:01.375 --> 00:17:02.250 And I had this notion that I might enter it, 00:17:02.250 --> 00:17:05.875 sort of as an experiment in participatory journalism. 00:17:05.875 --> 00:17:10.042 It'd make, I thought, maybe a nice epilogue to all my research. 00:17:10.042 --> 00:17:15.042 Problem was the experiment went haywire. 00:17:15.042 --> 00:17:15.917 I won the contest, 00:17:15.917 --> 00:17:17.667 which really wasn't supposed to happen. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:17.667 --> 00:17:26.208 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:17:26.208 --> 00:17:27.667 Now it is nice 00:17:27.667 --> 00:17:29.417 to be able to memorize speeches 00:17:29.417 --> 00:17:33.542 and phone numbers and shopping lists, 00:17:33.542 --> 00:17:36.333 but it's actually kind of beside the point. 00:17:36.333 --> 00:17:37.208 These are just tricks. 00:17:37.208 --> 00:17:41.333 They are tricks that work 00:17:41.333 --> 00:17:42.208 because they're based on some pretty basic principles 00:17:42.208 --> 00:17:46.292 about how our brains work. 00:17:46.292 --> 00:17:47.167 And you don't have to be building memory palaces 00:17:47.167 --> 00:17:52.250 or memorizing packs of playing cards 00:17:52.250 --> 00:17:53.125 to benefit from a little bit of insight 00:17:53.125 --> 00:17:56.292 about how your mind works. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:56.292 --> 00:17:57.167 We often talk about people with great memories 00:17:57.167 --> 00:18:01.292 as though it were some sort of an innate gift, 00:18:01.292 --> 00:18:02.167 but that is not the case. 00:18:02.167 --> 00:18:05.458 Great memories are learned. 00:18:05.458 --> 00:18:08.542 At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. 00:18:08.542 --> 00:18:13.333 We remember when we are deeply engaged. 00:18:13.333 --> 00:18:14.208 We remember when we are able 00:18:14.208 --> 00:18:17.625 to take a piece of information and experience 00:18:17.625 --> 00:18:18.500 and figure out why it is meaningful to us, 00:18:18.500 --> 00:18:19.375 why it is significant, why it's colorful, 00:18:19.375 --> 00:18:24.375 when we're able to transform it in some way 00:18:24.375 --> 00:18:26.792 that it makes sense 00:18:26.792 --> 00:18:28.542 in the light of all of the other things floating around in our minds, 00:18:28.542 --> 00:18:33.417 when we're able to transform Bakers into bakers. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:33.417 --> 00:18:35.167 The memory palace, these memory techniques, 00:18:35.167 --> 00:18:38.375 they're just shortcuts. 00:18:38.375 --> 00:18:40.125 In fact, they're not even really shortcuts. 00:18:40.125 --> 00:18:43.958 They work because they make you work. 00:18:43.958 --> 00:18:48.375 They force a kind of depth of processing, 00:18:48.375 --> 00:18:49.250 a kind of mindfulness, 00:18:49.250 --> 00:18:53.417 that most of us don't normally walk around exercising. 00:18:53.417 --> 00:18:53.917 But there actually are no shortcuts. 00:18:53.917 --> 00:18:59.250 This is how stuff is made memorable. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:59.250 --> 00:19:03.208 And I think if there's one thing that I want to leave you with 00:19:03.208 --> 00:19:04.958 it's what E.P., 00:19:04.958 --> 00:19:10.125 the amnesic who couldn't even remember that he had a memory problem, 00:19:10.125 --> 00:19:11.000 left me with, 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:13.375 which is the notion 00:19:13.375 --> 00:19:18.750 that our lives are the sum of our memories. 00:19:18.750 --> 00:19:24.583 How much are we willing to lose 00:19:24.583 --> 00:19:26.250 from our already short lives 00:19:26.250 --> 00:19:32.333 by losing ourselves in our blackberries, our iPhones, 00:19:32.333 --> 00:19:37.500 by not paying attention to the human being across from us 00:19:37.500 --> 00:19:40.583 who is talking with us, 00:19:40.583 --> 00:19:41.500 by being so lazy that we're not willing 00:19:41.500 --> 00:19:45.667 to process deeply? NOTE Paragraph 00:19:45.667 --> 00:19:48.250 I learned firsthand 00:19:48.250 --> 00:19:50.000 that there are incredible memory capacities 00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:53.250 latent in all of us. 00:19:53.250 --> 00:19:55.000 But if you want to live a memorable life 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.125 you have to be the kind of person 00:19:59.125 --> 00:20:00.875 who remembers to remember. NOTE Paragraph 00:20:00.875 --> 00:20:03.875 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:20:03.875 --> 00:20:06.473 (Applause)