0:00:00.273,0:00:03.125
I'd like to invite you to close your eyes.

0:00:03.125,0:00:07.750
Imagine yourself standing

0:00:07.750,0:00:11.000
outside the front door of your home.

0:00:11.000,0:00:14.792
I'd like you to notice the color of the door,

0:00:14.792,0:00:18.404
the material that it's made out of.

0:00:18.404,0:00:24.708
Now visualize a pack of overweight nudists on bicycles.

0:00:24.708,0:00:28.708
They are competing in a naked bicycle race,

0:00:28.708,0:00:32.458
and they are headed straight for your front door.

0:00:32.458,0:00:34.208
I need you to actually see this.

0:00:34.208,0:00:37.500
They are pedaling really hard, they're sweaty,

0:00:37.500,0:00:39.250
they're bouncing around a lot.

0:00:39.250,0:00:44.208
And they crash straight into the front door of your home.

0:00:44.208,0:00:47.250
Bicycles fly everywhere, wheels roll past you,

0:00:47.250,0:00:51.958
spokes end up in awkward places.

0:00:51.958,0:00:54.583
Step over the threshold of your door

0:00:54.583,0:00:57.208
into your foyer, your hallway, whatever's on the other side,

0:00:57.208,0:01:01.375
and appreciate the quality of the light.

0:01:01.375,0:01:07.083
The light is shining down on Cookie Monster.

0:01:07.083,0:01:10.792
Cookie Monster is waving at you

0:01:10.792,0:01:12.542
from his perch on top of a tan horse.

0:01:12.542,0:01:13.417
It's a talking horse.

0:01:13.417,0:01:19.083
You can practically feel his blue fur tickling your nose.

0:01:19.083,0:01:23.083
You can smell the oatmeal raisin cookie that he's about to shovel into his mouth.

0:01:23.083,0:01:27.167
Walk past him. Walk past him into your living room.

0:01:27.167,0:01:30.958
In your living room, in full imaginative broadband,

0:01:30.958,0:01:32.708
picture Britney Spears.

0:01:32.708,0:01:38.542
She is scantily clad, she's dancing on your coffee table,

0:01:38.542,0:01:40.917
and she's singing "Hit Me Baby One More Time."

0:01:40.917,0:01:44.208
And then follow me into your kitchen.

0:01:44.208,0:01:48.000
In your kitchen, the floor has been paved over with a yellow brick road

0:01:48.000,0:01:52.125
and out of your oven are coming towards you

0:01:52.125,0:01:54.792
Dorothy, the Tin Man,

0:01:54.792,0:01:56.542
the Scarecrow and the Lion from "The Wizard of Oz,"

0:01:56.542,0:02:00.000
hand-in-hand skipping straight towards you.

0:02:00.000,0:02:02.625
Okay. Open your eyes.

0:02:02.625,0:02:07.792
I want to tell you about a very bizarre contest

0:02:07.792,0:02:10.875
that is held every spring in New York City.

0:02:10.875,0:02:13.500
It's called the United States Memory Championship.

0:02:13.500,0:02:15.875
And I had gone to cover this contest a few years back

0:02:15.875,0:02:20.042
as a science journalist

0:02:20.042,0:02:21.792
expecting, I guess, that this was going to be

0:02:21.792,0:02:22.667
like the Superbowl of savants.

0:02:22.667,0:02:26.792
This was a bunch of guys and a few ladies,

0:02:26.792,0:02:31.792
widely varying in both age and hygienic upkeep.

0:02:31.792,0:02:33.458
(Laughter)

0:02:33.458,0:02:38.667
They were memorizing hundreds of random numbers,

0:02:38.667,0:02:40.417
looking at them just once.

0:02:40.417,0:02:44.333
They were memorizing the names of dozens and dozens and dozens of strangers.

0:02:44.333,0:02:48.125
They were memorizing entire poems in just a few minutes.

0:02:48.125,0:02:50.750
They were competing to see who could memorize

0:02:50.750,0:02:54.750
the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards the fastest.

0:02:54.750,0:02:55.625
I was like, this is unbelievable.

0:02:55.625,0:02:59.750
These people must be freaks of nature.

0:02:59.750,0:03:03.375
And I started talking to a few of the competitors.

0:03:03.375,0:03:04.750
This is a guy called Ed Cook

0:03:04.750,0:03:05.625
who had come over from England

0:03:05.625,0:03:07.375
where he had one of the best trained memories.

0:03:07.375,0:03:11.417
And I said to him, "Ed, when did you realize

0:03:11.417,0:03:13.833
that you were a savant?"

0:03:13.833,0:03:16.458
And Ed was like, "I'm not a savant.

0:03:16.458,0:03:17.958
In fact, I have just an average memory.

0:03:17.958,0:03:20.583
Everybody who competes in this contest

0:03:20.583,0:03:24.167
will tell you that they have just an average memory.

0:03:24.167,0:03:26.708
We've all trained ourselves

0:03:26.708,0:03:30.375
to perform these utterly miraculous feats of memory

0:03:30.375,0:03:32.125
using a set of ancient techniques,

0:03:32.125,0:03:35.458
techniques invented 2,500 years ago in Greece,

0:03:35.458,0:03:39.667
the same techniques that Cicero had used

0:03:39.667,0:03:40.542
to memorize his speeches,

0:03:40.542,0:03:44.583
that medieval scholars had used to memorize entire books."

0:03:44.583,0:03:48.375
And I was like, "Whoa. How come I never heard of this before?"

0:03:48.375,0:03:50.125
And we were standing outside the competition hall,

0:03:50.125,0:03:55.125
and Ed, who is a wonderful, brilliant,

0:03:55.125,0:03:58.375
but somewhat eccentric English guy,

0:03:58.375,0:04:03.333
says to me, "Josh, you're an American journalist.

0:04:03.333,0:04:04.208
Do you know Britney Spears?"

0:04:04.208,0:04:09.375
I'm like, "What? No. Why?"

0:04:09.375,0:04:13.333
"Because I really want to teach Britney Spears

0:04:13.333,0:04:14.208
how to memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards

0:04:14.208,0:04:17.500
on U.S. national television.

0:04:17.500,0:04:20.833
It will prove to the world that anybody can do this."

0:04:20.833,0:04:21.708
(Laughter)

0:04:21.708,0:04:28.875
I was like, "Well I'm not Britney Spears,

0:04:28.875,0:04:30.625
but maybe you could teach me.

0:04:30.625,0:04:34.583
I mean, you've got to start somewhere, right?"

0:04:34.583,0:04:38.375
And that was the beginning of a very strange journey for me.

0:04:38.375,0:04:40.125
I ended up spending the better part of the next year

0:04:40.125,0:04:43.375
not only training my memory,

0:04:43.375,0:04:45.125
but also investigating it,

0:04:45.125,0:04:46.000
trying to understand how it works,

0:04:46.000,0:04:48.625
why it sometimes doesn't work

0:04:48.625,0:04:49.500
and what its potential might be.

0:04:49.500,0:04:53.708
I met a host of really interesting people.

0:04:53.708,0:04:55.167
This is a guy called E.P.

0:04:55.167,0:04:58.583
He's an amnesic who had, very possibly,

0:04:58.583,0:05:01.292
the very worst memory in the world.

0:05:01.292,0:05:02.167
His memory was so bad

0:05:02.167,0:05:03.917
that he didn't even remember he had a memory problem,

0:05:03.917,0:05:06.958
which is amazing.

0:05:06.958,0:05:07.833
And he was this incredibly tragic figure,

0:05:07.833,0:05:11.292
but he was a window into the extent

0:05:11.292,0:05:13.917
to which our memories make us who we are.

0:05:13.917,0:05:17.125
The other end of the spectrum: I met this guy.

0:05:17.125,0:05:19.708
This is Kim Peek.

0:05:19.708,0:05:22.333
He was the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie "Rain Man."

0:05:22.333,0:05:25.292
We spent an afternoon together

0:05:25.292,0:05:29.083
in the Salt Lake City Public Library memorizing phone books,

0:05:29.083,0:05:31.708
which was scintillating.

0:05:31.708,0:05:34.958
(Laughter)

0:05:34.958,0:05:38.542
And I went back and I read a whole host of memory treatises,

0:05:38.542,0:05:42.667
treatises written 2,000-plus years ago

0:05:42.667,0:05:45.958
in Latin in Antiquity

0:05:45.958,0:05:46.833
and then later in the Middle Ages.

0:05:46.833,0:05:49.042
And I learned a whole bunch of really interesting stuff.

0:05:49.042,0:05:50.792
One of the really interesting things that I learned

0:05:50.792,0:05:54.083
is that once upon a time,

0:05:54.083,0:05:59.917
this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory

0:05:59.917,0:06:04.083
was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today.

0:06:04.083,0:06:09.917
Once upon a time, people invested in their memories,

0:06:09.917,0:06:14.958
in laboriously furnishing their minds.

0:06:14.958,0:06:17.542
Over the last few millenia

0:06:17.542,0:06:20.519
we've invented a series of technologies --

0:06:20.519,0:06:23.375
from the alphabet to the scroll

0:06:23.375,0:06:25.125
to the codex, the printing press, photography,

0:06:25.125,0:06:27.500
the computer, the smartphone --

0:06:27.500,0:06:30.125
that have made it progressively easier and easier

0:06:30.125,0:06:33.125
for us to externalize our memories,

0:06:33.125,0:06:34.875
for us to essentially outsource

0:06:34.875,0:06:37.542
this fundamental human capacity.

0:06:37.542,0:06:42.125
These technologies have made our modern world possible,

0:06:42.125,0:06:43.000
but they've also changed us.

0:06:43.000,0:06:46.042
They've changed us culturally,

0:06:46.042,0:06:47.792
and I would argue that they've changed us cognitively.

0:06:47.792,0:06:51.542
Having little need to remember anymore,

0:06:51.542,0:06:54.167
it sometimes seems like we've forgotten how.

0:06:54.167,0:06:56.583
One of the last places on Earth

0:06:56.583,0:06:58.333
where you still find people passionate about this idea

0:06:58.333,0:07:03.083
of a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory

0:07:03.083,0:07:05.750
is at this totally singular memory contest.

0:07:05.750,0:07:06.625
It's actually not that singular,

0:07:06.625,0:07:08.375
there are contests held all over the world.

0:07:08.375,0:07:13.333
And I was fascinated, I wanted to know how do these guys do it.

0:07:13.333,0:07:17.375
A few years back a group of researchers at University College London

0:07:17.375,0:07:21.583
brought a bunch of memory champions into the lab.

0:07:21.583,0:07:22.458
They wanted to know:

0:07:22.458,0:07:23.333
Do these guys have brains

0:07:23.333,0:07:27.544
that are somehow structurally, anatomically different from the rest of ours?

0:07:27.544,0:07:31.625
The answer was no.

0:07:31.625,0:07:33.375
Are they smarter than the rest of us?

0:07:33.375,0:07:36.625
They gave them a bunch of cognitive tests,

0:07:36.625,0:07:37.500
and the answer was not really.

0:07:37.500,0:07:42.500
There was however one really interesting and telling difference

0:07:42.500,0:07:45.500
between the brains of the memory champions

0:07:45.500,0:07:46.375
and the control subjects that they were comparing them to.

0:07:46.375,0:07:49.667
When they put these guys in an fMRI machine,

0:07:49.667,0:07:50.542
scanned their brains

0:07:50.542,0:07:55.625
while they were memorizing numbers and people's faces and pictures of snowflakes,

0:07:55.625,0:08:00.125
they found that the memory champions

0:08:00.125,0:08:01.000
were lighting up different parts of the brain

0:08:01.000,0:08:02.750
than everyone else.

0:08:02.750,0:08:05.958
Of note, they were using, or they seemed to be using,

0:08:05.958,0:08:10.375
a part of the brain that's involved in spatial memory and navigation.

0:08:10.375,0:08:15.125
Why? And is there something the rest of us can learn from this?

0:08:15.125,0:08:19.125
The sport of competitive memorizing

0:08:19.125,0:08:23.250
is driven by a kind of arms race

0:08:23.250,0:08:27.125
where every year somebody comes up

0:08:27.125,0:08:28.875
with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly,

0:08:28.875,0:08:29.750
and then the rest of the field has to play catchup.

0:08:29.750,0:08:33.500
This is my friend Ben Pridmore,

0:08:33.500,0:08:35.250
three-time world memory champion.

0:08:35.250,0:08:37.083
On his desk in front of him

0:08:37.083,0:08:40.208
are 36 shuffled packs of playing cards

0:08:40.208,0:08:42.833
that he is about to try to memorize in one hour,

0:08:42.833,0:08:46.958
using a technique that he invented and he alone has mastered.

0:08:46.958,0:08:49.792
He used a similar technique

0:08:49.792,0:08:51.542
to memorize the precise order

0:08:51.542,0:08:58.042
of 4,140 random binary digits

0:08:58.042,0:08:59.667
in half an hour.

0:08:59.667,0:09:02.875
Yeah.

0:09:02.875,0:09:05.500
And while there are a whole host of ways

0:09:05.500,0:09:07.000
of remembering stuff in these competitions,

0:09:07.000,0:09:12.000
everything, all of the techniques that are being used,

0:09:12.000,0:09:15.500
ultimately come down to a concept

0:09:15.500,0:09:19.333
that psychologists refer to as elaborative encoding.

0:09:19.333,0:09:21.167
And it's well illustrated by a nifty paradox

0:09:21.167,0:09:24.167
known as the Baker/baker paradox,

0:09:24.167,0:09:25.375
which goes like this:

0:09:25.375,0:09:28.333
If I tell two people to remember the same word,

0:09:28.333,0:09:29.208
if I say to you,

0:09:29.208,0:09:33.958
"Remember that there is a guy named Baker."

0:09:33.958,0:09:34.833
That's his name.

0:09:34.833,0:09:38.250
And I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy who is a baker."

0:09:38.250,0:09:43.292
And I come back to you at some point later on,

0:09:43.292,0:09:46.500
and I say, "Do you remember that word

0:09:46.500,0:09:48.708
that I told you a while back?

0:09:48.708,0:09:49.583
Do you remember what it was?"

0:09:49.583,0:09:53.542
the person who was told his name is Baker

0:09:53.542,0:09:55.292
is less likely to remember the same word

0:09:55.292,0:09:58.958
than the person was told his job is that he is a baker.

0:09:58.958,0:10:02.083
Same word, different amount of remembering; that's weird.

0:10:02.083,0:10:03.083
What's going on here?

0:10:03.083,0:10:09.542
Well the name Baker doesn't actually mean anything to you.

0:10:09.542,0:10:11.833
It is entirely untethered

0:10:11.833,0:10:15.333
from all of the other memories floating around in your skull.

0:10:15.333,0:10:16.792
But the common noun baker,

0:10:16.792,0:10:19.417
we know bakers.

0:10:19.417,0:10:21.000
Bakers wear funny white hats.

0:10:21.000,0:10:22.750
Bakers have flour on their hands.

0:10:22.750,0:10:23.625
Bakers smell good when they come home from work.

0:10:23.625,0:10:25.875
Maybe we even know a baker.

0:10:25.875,0:10:27.625
And when we first hear that word,

0:10:27.625,0:10:31.208
we start putting these associational hooks into it

0:10:31.208,0:10:33.833
that make it easier to fish it back out at some later date.

0:10:33.833,0:10:37.083
The entire art of what is going on

0:10:37.083,0:10:41.167
in these memory contests

0:10:41.167,0:10:42.917
and the entire art of remembering stuff better in everyday life

0:10:42.917,0:10:47.042
is figuring out ways to transform capital B Bakers

0:10:47.042,0:10:48.792
into lower-case B bakers --

0:10:48.792,0:10:52.656
to take information that is lacking in context,

0:10:52.656,0:10:54.208
in significance, in meaning

0:10:54.208,0:10:55.958
and transform it in some way

0:10:55.958,0:10:58.333
so that it becomes meaningful

0:10:58.333,0:11:03.333
in the light of all the other things that you have in your mind.

0:11:03.333,0:11:06.375
One of the more elaborate techniques for doing this

0:11:06.375,0:11:11.417
dates back 2,500 years to Ancient Greece.

0:11:11.417,0:11:12.333
It came to be known as the memory palace.

0:11:12.333,0:11:14.958
This story behind its creation goes like this:

0:11:14.958,0:11:19.792
There was a poet called Simonides

0:11:19.792,0:11:20.667
who was attending a banquet.

0:11:20.667,0:11:23.208
He was actually the hired entertainment,

0:11:23.208,0:11:26.958
because back then if you wanted to throw a really slamming party,

0:11:26.958,0:11:28.708
you didn't hire a D.J., you hired a poet.

0:11:28.708,0:11:33.625
And he stands up, delivers his poem from memory, walks out the door,

0:11:33.625,0:11:39.583
and at the moment he does, the banquet hall collapses,

0:11:39.583,0:11:42.833
kills everybody inside.

0:11:42.833,0:11:44.583
It doesn't just kill everybody,

0:11:44.583,0:11:48.708
it mangles the bodies beyond all recognition.

0:11:48.708,0:11:49.583
Nobody can say who was inside,

0:11:49.583,0:11:53.708
nobody can say where they were sitting.

0:11:53.708,0:11:54.583
The bodies can't be properly buried.

0:11:54.583,0:11:58.667
It's one tragedy compounding another.

0:11:58.667,0:12:02.417
Simonides, standing outside,

0:12:02.417,0:12:04.000
the sole survivor amid the wreckage,

0:12:04.000,0:12:08.292
closes his eyes and has this realization,

0:12:08.292,0:12:11.583
which is that in his mind's eye,

0:12:11.583,0:12:16.375
he can see where each of the guests at the banquet had been sitting.

0:12:16.375,0:12:19.333
And he takes the relatives by the hand

0:12:19.333,0:12:21.083
and guides them each to their loved ones amid the wreckage.

0:12:21.083,0:12:24.917
What Simonides figured out at that moment

0:12:24.917,0:12:29.042
is something that I think we all kind of intuitively know,

0:12:29.042,0:12:30.792
which is that, as bad as we are

0:12:30.792,0:12:34.917
at remembering names and phone numbers

0:12:34.917,0:12:36.667
and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues,

0:12:36.667,0:12:43.542
we have really exceptional visual and spatial memories.

0:12:43.542,0:12:47.138
If I asked you to recount the first 10 words

0:12:47.138,0:12:49.602
of the story that I just told you about Simonides,

0:12:49.602,0:12:51.167
chances are you would have a tough time with it.

0:12:51.167,0:12:53.542
But I would wager

0:12:53.542,0:12:56.333
that if I asked you to recall

0:12:56.333,0:13:00.827
who is sitting on top of a talking tan horse

0:13:00.827,0:13:02.841
in your foyer right now,

0:13:02.841,0:13:05.458
you would be able to see that.

0:13:05.458,0:13:07.958
The idea behind the memory palace

0:13:07.958,0:13:12.375
is to create this imagined edifice in your mind's eye

0:13:12.375,0:13:13.250
and populate it with images

0:13:13.250,0:13:17.083
of the things that you want to remember --

0:13:17.083,0:13:19.458
the crazier, weirder, more bizarre,

0:13:19.458,0:13:23.750
funnier, raunchier, stinkier the image is,

0:13:23.750,0:13:24.625
the more unforgettable it's likely to be.

0:13:24.625,0:13:28.583
This is advice that goes back 2,000-plus years

0:13:28.583,0:13:32.583
to the earliest Latin memory treatises.

0:13:32.583,0:13:33.458
So how does this work?

0:13:33.458,0:13:35.875
Let's say that you've been invited

0:13:35.875,0:13:40.250
to TED center stage to give a speech

0:13:40.250,0:13:42.000
and you want to do it from memory,

0:13:42.000,0:13:46.583
and you want to do it the way that Cicero would have done it

0:13:46.583,0:13:51.750
if he had been invited to TEDxRome 2,000 years ago.

0:13:51.750,0:13:54.500
What you might do

0:13:54.500,0:14:00.042
is picture yourself at the front door of your house.

0:14:00.042,0:14:01.792
And you'd come up with some sort

0:14:01.792,0:14:05.208
of an absolutely crazy, ridiculous, unforgettable image

0:14:05.208,0:14:08.375
to remind you that the first thing you want to talk about

0:14:08.375,0:14:11.167
is this totally bizarre contest.

0:14:11.167,0:14:13.708
And then you'd go inside your house,

0:14:13.708,0:14:16.375
and you would see an image of Cookie Monster

0:14:16.375,0:14:18.708
on top of Mister Ed.

0:14:18.708,0:14:19.583
And that would remind you

0:14:19.583,0:14:23.167
that you would want to then introduce your friend Ed Cook.

0:14:23.167,0:14:26.292
And then you'd see an image of Britney Spears

0:14:26.292,0:14:28.750
to remind you of this funny anecdote you want to tell.

0:14:28.750,0:14:29.792
And you go into your kitchen,

0:14:29.792,0:14:32.405
and the fourth topic you were going to talk about

0:14:32.405,0:14:35.667
was this strange journey that you went on for a year,

0:14:35.667,0:14:38.708
and you have some friends to help you remember that.

0:14:38.708,0:14:44.250
This is how Roman orators memorized their speeches --

0:14:44.250,0:14:46.875
not word-for-word, which is just going to screw you up,

0:14:46.875,0:14:48.625
but topic-for-topic.

0:14:48.625,0:14:51.917
In fact, the phrase "topic sentence,"

0:14:51.917,0:14:56.125
that comes from the Greek word topos,

0:14:56.125,0:14:57.875
which means place.

0:14:57.875,0:15:00.458
That's a vestige

0:15:00.458,0:15:02.208
of when people used to think about oratory and rhetoric

0:15:02.208,0:15:04.708
in these sorts of spatial terms.

0:15:04.708,0:15:05.583
The phrase "in the first place,"

0:15:05.583,0:15:06.458
that's like in the first place of your memory palace.

0:15:06.458,0:15:11.417
I thought this was just fascinating,

0:15:11.417,0:15:12.292
and I got really into it.

0:15:12.292,0:15:15.542
And I went to a few more of these memory contests.

0:15:15.542,0:15:16.417
And I had this notion that I might write something longer

0:15:16.417,0:15:21.458
about this subculture of competitive memorizers.

0:15:21.458,0:15:23.208
But there was a problem.

0:15:23.208,0:15:26.417
The problem was that a memory contest

0:15:26.417,0:15:30.500
is a pathologically boring event.

0:15:30.500,0:15:32.583
(Laughter)

0:15:32.583,0:15:36.625
Truly, it is like a bunch of people sitting around taking the SATs.

0:15:36.625,0:15:39.042
I mean, the most dramatic it gets

0:15:39.042,0:15:42.083
is when somebody starts massaging their temples.

0:15:42.083,0:15:42.958
And I'm a journalist, I need something to write about.

0:15:42.958,0:15:47.083
I know that there's this incredible stuff happening in these people's minds,

0:15:47.083,0:15:47.958
but I don't have access to it.

0:15:47.958,0:15:52.917
And I realized, if I was going to tell this story,

0:15:52.917,0:15:54.667
I needed to walk in their shoes a little bit.

0:15:54.667,0:15:58.833
And so I started trying to spend 15 or 20 minutes

0:15:58.833,0:16:02.083
every morning before I sat down with my New York Times

0:16:02.083,0:16:04.189
just trying to remember something.

0:16:04.189,0:16:06.273
Maybe it was a poem.

0:16:06.273,0:16:08.127
Maybe it was names from an old yearbook

0:16:08.127,0:16:10.156
that I bought at a flea market.

0:16:10.156,0:16:16.067
And I found that this was shockingly fun.

0:16:16.067,0:16:18.145
I never would have expected that.

0:16:18.145,0:16:19.708
It was fun because this is actually not about training your memory.

0:16:19.708,0:16:23.792
What you're doing is you're trying to get better and better and better

0:16:23.792,0:16:26.282
at creating, at dreaming up,

0:16:26.282,0:16:28.792
these utterly ludicrous, raunchy, hilarious

0:16:28.792,0:16:32.917
and hopefully unforgettable images in your mind's eye.

0:16:32.917,0:16:33.792
And I got pretty into it.

0:16:33.792,0:16:39.542
This is me wearing my standard competitive memorizer's training kit.

0:16:39.542,0:16:44.000
It's a pair of earmuffs

0:16:44.000,0:16:46.917
and a set of safety goggles that have been masked over

0:16:46.917,0:16:48.667
except for two small pinholes,

0:16:48.667,0:16:54.500
because distraction is the competitive memorizer's greatest enemy.

0:16:54.500,0:17:01.375
I ended up coming back to that same contest that I had covered a year earlier.

0:17:01.375,0:17:02.250
And I had this notion that I might enter it,

0:17:02.250,0:17:05.875
sort of as an experiment in participatory journalism.

0:17:05.875,0:17:10.042
It'd make, I thought, maybe a nice epilogue to all my research.

0:17:10.042,0:17:15.042
Problem was the experiment went haywire.

0:17:15.042,0:17:15.917
I won the contest,

0:17:15.917,0:17:19.190
which really wasn't supposed to happen.

0:17:19.282,0:17:26.208
(Applause)

0:17:26.208,0:17:27.667
Now it is nice

0:17:27.667,0:17:29.417
to be able to memorize speeches

0:17:29.417,0:17:33.542
and phone numbers and shopping lists,

0:17:33.542,0:17:36.333
but it's actually kind of beside the point.

0:17:36.333,0:17:37.208
These are just tricks.

0:17:37.208,0:17:41.333
They are tricks that work

0:17:41.333,0:17:42.208
because they're based on some pretty basic principles

0:17:42.208,0:17:46.292
about how our brains work.

0:17:46.292,0:17:47.167
And you don't have to be building memory palaces

0:17:47.167,0:17:52.250
or memorizing packs of playing cards

0:17:52.250,0:17:53.125
to benefit from a little bit of insight

0:17:53.125,0:17:56.292
about how your mind works.

0:17:56.292,0:17:57.167
We often talk about people with great memories

0:17:57.167,0:18:01.292
as though it were some sort of an innate gift,

0:18:01.292,0:18:02.167
but that is not the case.

0:18:02.167,0:18:05.458
Great memories are learned.

0:18:05.458,0:18:08.542
At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention.

0:18:08.542,0:18:13.333
We remember when we are deeply engaged.

0:18:13.333,0:18:14.208
We remember when we are able

0:18:14.208,0:18:17.625
to take a piece of information and experience

0:18:17.625,0:18:19.731
and figure out why it is meaningful to us,

0:18:19.731,0:18:22.154
why it is significant, why it's colorful,

0:18:22.169,0:18:24.375
when we're able to transform it in some way

0:18:24.375,0:18:26.792
that it makes sense

0:18:26.792,0:18:28.542
in the light of all of the other things floating around in our minds,

0:18:28.542,0:18:33.417
when we're able to transform Bakers into bakers.

0:18:33.417,0:18:35.167
The memory palace, these memory techniques,

0:18:35.167,0:18:38.375
they're just shortcuts.

0:18:38.375,0:18:40.125
In fact, they're not even really shortcuts.

0:18:40.125,0:18:43.958
They work because they make you work.

0:18:43.958,0:18:48.375
They force a kind of depth of processing,

0:18:48.375,0:18:49.250
a kind of mindfulness,

0:18:49.250,0:18:53.417
that most of us don't normally walk around exercising.

0:18:53.417,0:18:55.763
But there actually are no shortcuts.

0:18:55.763,0:18:59.250
This is how stuff is made memorable.

0:18:59.250,0:19:03.208
And I think if there's one thing that I want to leave you with,

0:19:03.208,0:19:04.958
it's what E.P.,

0:19:04.958,0:19:10.125
the amnesic who couldn't even remember that he had a memory problem,

0:19:10.125,0:19:11.000
left me with,

0:19:11.000,0:19:13.375
which is the notion

0:19:13.375,0:19:18.750
that our lives are the sum of our memories.

0:19:18.750,0:19:24.583
How much are we willing to lose

0:19:24.583,0:19:26.250
from our already short lives

0:19:26.250,0:19:32.333
by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones,

0:19:32.333,0:19:37.500
by not paying attention to the human being across from us

0:19:37.500,0:19:40.583
who is talking with us,

0:19:40.583,0:19:41.500
by being so lazy that we're not willing

0:19:41.500,0:19:45.667
to process deeply?

0:19:45.667,0:19:48.250
I learned firsthand

0:19:48.250,0:19:50.000
that there are incredible memory capacities

0:19:50.000,0:19:53.250
latent in all of us.

0:19:53.250,0:19:55.000
But if you want to live a memorable life,

0:19:55.000,0:19:59.125
you have to be the kind of person

0:19:59.125,0:20:00.875
who remembers to remember.

0:20:00.875,0:20:03.875
Thank you.

0:20:03.875,0:20:06.473
(Applause)