IDEAS IN ACTION with Jim Glassman

How to Remember Everything: A Discussion with Author and Memory Champion Josh Foer

JIM GLASSMAN:
Welcome to Ideas in Action a television series about ideas and their consequences. I'm Jim Glassman. This week: the art of total recall. In an age of mobile gadgetry is a good memory less important? Why search the mind for an answer when it can be found instantly on Google. Why remember directions? Just check GPS. Need a phone number? Hit a cell phone button. These methods are a far cry from those employed by ancient orators who memorized long speeches, or medieval scholars who remembered entire books. How do they do it? Do all of us have the capacity to perform similar feats? Joining me to answer these questions and more is Joshua Foer, journalist and author of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. The topic this week: super sizing memory; how not to forget. This is Ideas in Action.

ANNOUNCER:
Funding for Ideas in Action is provided by Investor's Business Daily. Every stock market cycle is led by America's never ending stream of innovative new companies and inventions. Investor's Business Daily helps investors find these new leaders as they emerge. More information is available at Investors.com.

JIM GLASSMAN:
At the annual USA Memory Championship contestants employ various techniques to remember large amounts of information in a very short time. Memory athletes recall the order of a deck of cards in less than two minutes. And memorize up to 500 random numbers in five minutes. This week's guest, Joshua Foer, went from observing the contest to participating in it. After a year of mental training, Joshua entered the 2006 tournament. To his surprise, he won. Josh, welcome. What does the title of your book, Moonwalking with Einstein, mean?

JOSHUA FOER:
Ok, so Moonwalking with Einstein refers to a memory device that I used myself when I competed in this strange event called the United States Memory Championship. I was trying to memorize the order of a shuffled pack of cards in-- as fast as I could and Moonwalking with Einstein helped me do that.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Good, and I want to get to that technique in a second but how did the book itself come about?

JOSHUA FOER:
Ok so I'm a science journalist and I was attending this competition called the United States Memory Championship. I thought it sounded kind of strange, kind of goofy. I didn't know what to expect. I figured it was going to be a bunch of rain men sort of sitting around memorizing poetry, memorizing random numbers. And I got there and these people who were competing told me you know we're not savants, we don't have photographic memory. We've all trained ourselves to perform these absolutely unbelievable feats of memory and anybody can do it. In fact once upon a time lots of people used to be able to do this sort of thing. Having a trained memory used to count for something in an age before printed books. And-- I don't know it was fascinating and I ended up spending the better part of the next year training with these techniques and then entering the competition the following year.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And you won.

JOSHUA FOER:
And I won--

JIM GLASSMAN:
I don't want to give it away but--

JOSHUA FOER:
No that's alright it-- it's an open secret.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And the fact that you won shows that-- you're not-- you weren't born this way, is that correct?

JOSHUA FOER:
None of these people who compete in these memory contests were born with great memories, and there's a good bit of science to back that up. When researchers have looked-- taken these individuals into the lab, put them in MRI scanners, looked at what-- is there something different about these people's brains? The answer is no. Then they said is there something different about how these people's brains operate? And the answer is yes. When these memory champions are-- using their memories they're actually activating different parts of the brain than you or I would. But that's a technique that anybody can learn.

JIM GLASSMAN:
So the notion that there are people out there who are born this way and have photographic memories or can remember you know what happened on a specific date in their lives-- there maybe a few people like that but not too many.

JOSHUA FOER:
No and photographic memory-- you know the idea that somebody can look at a page of text say and just take a mental snapshot as though their mind were a Xerox machine that appears to be a myth. The scientists have gone out looking for people with photographic memories and never found one.

JIM GLASSMAN:
So people who are watching this show can learn the same techniques that you've learned. You don't have to have a special propensity to do this?

JOSHUA FOER:
No these techniques are quite old. I mean these go back 2500 years to ancient Greece and they were once not only widely known but widely practiced. The sorts of techniques that I was using to memorize poetry, memorize random numbers, the same techniques that Cicero used.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Let's talk about those techniques like the memory palace for example.

JOSHUA FOER:
Ok, so the memory palace according to legend was invented in the 5th century B.C. by a Greek poet named Simonides and the story that was passed down to us is that Simonides was attending a banquet where he was the hired poet. He stands up, he delivers his ode, he walks out of the room at that moment the banquet hall collapses and Simonides is the sole survivor. He has this realization that in his mind's eye he's able to see where each of the guests at the banquet was sitting, and what he had figured out at that moment was something that I think we all intuitively know which is that we have incredibly good spatial memories and if you can use your well developed visual and spatial memory to structure and store the sorts of information that we're not as good at remembering like poetry or like a string of random numbers then that information can be made more memorable.

JIM GLASSMAN:
So spatial memory for example most people can remember the layout of the house that they grew up in--

JOSHUA FOER:
Sure.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And then how-- but how do you use that in order to remember let's say a deck of cards or a grocery list.

JOSHUA FOER:
Alright, well let's say you are Cicero standing up to deliver a bit of rhetoric in the Roman Forum you would at the-- say the front door of your house place an image in your mind's eye of the topic sentence of whatever the first thing that you're going to talk about is. In fact the word topic comes from the Greek word topos which means place. When we say in the first place when we're talking that's actually a reference--

JIM GLASSMAN:
A real place. Right-- Geographical--

JOSHUA FOER:
--A reference in the memory palace correct as an oratorical technique. So he would place the first topic sentence in-- outside of his front door and then he'd walk into his house and right inside the front door he might see an image somehow representing whatever the second thing he wanted to talk about was and so on and so forth. And as he would walk through his house he'd recall-- each of these topic sentences from his speech would be called to mind and that would help him remember it.

JIM GLASSMAN:
But the idea is you are born with a better spatial memory than-- let's say I don't know what you would call it-- let's say a memory for words or for a list of objects.

JOSHUA FOER:
You know our ancestors who made their livings as hunter gatherers it was probably more important for them to remember where the resources were, where the saber tooth tiger was hanging out, I don't know, then to know how to memorize phone numbers for example.

JIM GLASSMAN:
So in the contest in which you participated what did you have to do?

JOSHUA FOER:
So an international memory contest is called a mental decathlon because there are ten events and they're each testing your memory in a slightly different way. There are a lot of sports metaphors that are used in this competition. It's poetry, it's random numbers, shuffled decks of playing cards. They give you a bunch of people's photographs and names and you have to remember as many of them as possible. There's one event where they bring up five strangers on stage and just have them reel off all of this biographical information and you have to remember as much of it as possible. And that's a test that's actually pretty true to real life.

JIM GLASSMAN:
By the way one of the-- slight digression but one of the things I learned in your book is you can look at hundreds or even thousands of pictures of people and then be tested on whether a certain picture was in that original list and people are-- the average person is-- gets that accurate within certain 95% or 99%.

JOSHUA FOER:
What you're referring to is what's known as recognition memory. Right so we know it's a lot easier to recognize whether we've seen something or not than it is to say recall on the spot. And that points to the fact that we've got a lot of memories up there and sometimes we just don't know how to find them, but that doesn't mean that they've totally been forgotten. Sometimes with just the right cue something that you know you thought you didn't know can be brought back up-- pop up into consciousness.

JIM GLASSMAN:
So facial recognition is something that people do very well.

JOSHUA FOER:
We're much better at recognizing whether I've seen that person before than remembering their name.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Right.

JOSHUA FOER:
But there are techniques that you can use to help remember somebody's name.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Ok, that would be I think very helpful to our viewers because people are always saying-- in fact I say-- gee you know I just met the person at the party and now ten minutes later I can't remember his name.

JOSHUA FOER:
So there is a paradox that psychologists talk about called the Baker/baker paradox and it goes like this; if you take two people and you say to them remember that there is a guy whose last name is Baker, capital 'B', remember that word. You tell another person remember that there's a guy who is a baker as in that's his profession. And you come back to them at a later date and you say remember that word I told you? It's strange but the person who was told his name is less likely to remember the same word as the person who was told his profession. Why is that? The name Baker doesn't mean anything to you. It has nothing to tether it to all of the other things that you know. The word baker, the common noun baker, we know bakers. Right? Bakers. We can picture a baker in our head and so if you can turn capital 'B' Bakers into lower case 'b' bakers, figure out things that you can associate with a person's name and provide a kind of image in your mind's eye that will hopefully spring back to mind when you see the person next time.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Right so if I'm introduced to someone named Walworth for example I might think of what?

JOSHUA FOER:
Well I actually might think of Woolworths, just because maybe that's like kind of old fashioned. I-- do they even still exist Woolworths? The old--

JIM GLASSMAN:
I think they exist in the UK--

JOSHUA FOER:
I might picture you know somebody walking into a Wool-- I might picture this guy walking into a Woolworths and hopefully when I see him next time I'll-- that image will come to mind. I might have to search around for why that connection is there but if that association is there it's at least something that I can latch onto and hopefully call his name back up.

JIM GLASSMAN:
But you need something to latch onto that simply you know John Doe or something-- as simple as that name might be you're likely to forget it unless you think of a pile of dough, going back to the baker.

JOSHUA FOER:
Right. Well it's all about putting more associational hooks in whatever that piece of information is. When we know something, when we are able to remember it it's because it's connected in with all of the other things that we know and that's why the art of what's going on in these memory contests is simply in taking things that we already know and attaching them to things that we don't know and figuring out how to do that in the most efficient and quickest way possible.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And that brings us to Moonwalking with Einstein because in the book you talk about the best way to remember something is to make it kind of an outrageous image, a kind of wild image-- you know hair on fire. So what does Moonwalking with Einstein actually mean?

JOSHUA FOER:
Ok, so this is old advice actually that goes back all the way to the earliest Roman memory treatises written in Latin. The way to make things memorable is to make them so attention grabbing, so strange, so gory, beautiful, bizarre-- that you simply cannot shake them from your memory. So Moonwalking with Einstein you know if I picture in my mind's eye Albert Einstein with the big white fro, moonwalking like Michael Jackson you know wearing the penny loafers and the diamond studded white gloves that's such a bizarre image I won't be able to forget it. So if I can figure out a way to associate that with some playing cards well then when I see that image I'll remember those playing cards.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And it was memorizing playing cards that won you this contest correct? I mean you had to do all the other parts of it--

JOSHUA FOER:
Yeah I had to do all these different events-- memorizing playing cards turned out to be the one that I was best at.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And just-- what did you do specifically?

JOSHUA FOER:
Ok so they give you a shuffled pack of cards and they say we're going to click go on the stopwatch and you have to memorize it as fast as possible. I memorized the pack of cards in a minute and forty seconds, which I would have thought was totally impossible. I mean a year earlier I saw somebody do this and I was smacking my head saying that person must be some sort of a freak of nature to be able to do that. It's actually something that you can learn how to do. And in fact as good as I was at that-- on the international level where this is all sort of taken a bit more seriously than it is in America-- a minute and forty seconds is a pretty middling time. Best guys in the world do it in under 30 seconds now.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Really? But you set the U.S. record when you did this right?

JOSHUA FOER:
That's record has subsequently fallen several times over.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Is there a way you can kind of cash in on the fact that you can memorize cards so quickly? Can you go to Las Vegas?

JOSHUA FOER:
You know I haven't tried to go to Vegas, but I've been told that several of the memory champions are persona non grata in some of the casinos. So maybe that'll be my summer vacation.

JIM GLASSMAN:
So you found that these techniques are 2,500 years old and the reason was in those days they-- well there was no writing or there was very little writing so this was the only way to store things was to store them in your head is that the idea?

JOSHUA FOER:
Well sure. I mean once upon a time it was crucial to be able to hold things in your memory. Anything that was going to be passed down from one person to another, from generation to generation, was transmitted orally. Eventually you had writing come along and that changed our relationship to our memories and then--

JIM GLASSMAN:
And by the way Socrates you point out was very disturbed that writing would lead to people becoming less intellectually astute, correct?

JOSHUA FOER:
Well he thought that we would become forgetful. So-- there always is a contemporary argument about the latest technology is making us dumb, right, whether it's the television or twitter, and Socrates was probably the first person to make that argument and he worried that writing was going to make people forgetful. And I think there's actually some truth to that. Right? The process of being able to have information stored externally whether in printed books or in photographs or on CD-ROMs or on the Internet changes our relationship to that information. It's no longer important that we say "remember the works of Shakespeare," because you know what I can pick Shakespeare up off my bookshelf and read it when I want to read him. But that wasn't always the case and so it's changed us.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And you wrote that memorizing is a primal capacity from which too many of us have become estranged. So that seems to imply that memorizing is important even in an age when you can pull off a book of Shakespeare off the bookshelf or go to the internet and get it or you know you don't really need to know anybody's phone number because it's always stored on your phone-- so why is memorizing important?

JOSHUA FOER:
You know in the Middle Ages memory was thought of as sort of the greatest of the human faculties because having information in one's memory was necessary to create anything new to have a new idea to link to things that previously hadn't gone together. You know the Latin root invenio is the source of two words in modern English; one is invention and the other is inventory. You had to have an inventory in your mind if you were going to invent anything, and I think that's true. You know Google, as wonderful as it is, has never come up with a new idea. All it can do is help us find old ideas. If we want to make connections we've got to have stuff knocking around in our skulls.

JIM GLASSMAN:
So it's not simply-- you don't come up with a new invention simply by googling and sort of kind of leafing through Google?

JOSHUA FOER:
Well I mean Google is wonderful and helpful but to the extent--

JIM GLASSMAN:
But you need it in your brain somehow--

JOSHUA FOER:
Well I think to the extent that we no longer rely on our memories-- to the extent that we no longer feel that we don't need them I think that probably has some effect on our capacities to move through the world, appreciating it, making connections, and probably being creative.

JIM GLASSMAN:
So do you think that most people could benefit from learning the techniques that you're talking about?

JOSHUA FOER:
I think-- you know obviously it's not that useful to be able to remember decks of playing cards. But there are certain situations where these techniques come in handy. I think one place where they're pretty useful is for what they were originally invented which is oratory. If you're standing up to give a speech, it's really helpful to know how Cicero did it. You know to use a technique where you don't actually have to read a speech that's written down.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Do you-- by the way, do you do that? I mean I imagine you giving speeches--

JOSHUA FOER:
Well now I have to. Now unfortunately I have to-- but I actually think it's a really good skill to develop and I'm not going to say I'm perfect at but it's something I do try to do.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And how long does it take you to memorize a 20-minute speech?

JOSHUA FOER:
Well if you're going to do it the way Cicero did it, he said don't memorize a speech word for word. That's a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe for coming off sounding stilted. The way to do it is point by point. You figure out what are the things that you're going to say, know about those things well enough that you can talk slightly extemporaneously and then plot your way forward like that. And I think that's actually good advice.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And you can store those things in your memory palace.

JOSHUA FOER:
That's exactly how you do it; you keep all of your points in order in a memory palace.

JIM GLASSMAN:
It seems to me that the hardest memorization feat is learning poetry.

JOSHUA FOER:
Indeed it is. And in fact in these competitions that's the one event that everybody dreads and they're roughly two different strategies that are employed and they go back again probably 2000, 2500 years; one is to remember poetry verbatim, word for word for word for word, trying to create an image for every word and place each of those images in a memory palace. There was an ancient Greek named Metrodorus who practiced this technique. That's very hard to do. Some people also just try and sort of associate a different emotion, a different sort of bit of color imagery with each line of the poem and really try and feel what the poet was trying to say, and giving those extra associational hooks makes the poem more memorable.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Now we live in an age when a lot of people are worried about memory loss-- Alzheimer's or other kinds of diseases-- do these techniques help you remember and sort of stave off memory loss or senility?

JOSHUA FOER:
So, there is evidence that using your mind actually has some benefit for staving off Alzheimer's right? That we can build up what's known as cognitive reserve which doesn't prevent Alzheimer's but maybe delays the onset of the effects. I'm not going to tell you that doing these sorts of memory games is going to help you stave off Alzheimer's. I'm not entirely convinced of it myself. I think the-- probably the research is still out on that.

JIM GLASSMAN:
But you must have people asking you that all the time right?

JOSHUA FOER:
People ask me all sorts of things all the time now. Do you remember my name? No, I'm sorry I don't. I'm sorry.

JIM GLASSMAN:
No I meant people are worried about getting Alzheimer's ask you about--

JOSHUA FOER:
Sure I mean, this is the sort of greatest existential worry that we can have-- we will lose our memories and our memories are the seed of who we are and what happens when we lose our memories? I spent time with a guy who had no memory at all and it was a window into the extent to which we are the sum of our memories.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Do you think people who have superior memories lead better lives?

JOSHUA FOER:
That's an interesting question. I think-- you know I have a friend who is a tree person, what do you call that? Not a bot-- I guess maybe a botanist--

JIM GLASSMAN:
Tree hugger?

JOSHUA FOER:
Not a tree hugger no he's a botanist--

JIM GLASSMAN:
Arborist--

JOSHUA FOER:
An arborist maybe, yeah. He can walk through the park and point out each of the different trees and he knows something about their life history and what they're called and whether they're native to this region or not, and I was on a walk with him the other day and I realized this guy has such a richer experience of the park than I do. And I think that's true of pretty much any realm of human existence. The more you know, the more you have to filter the world as it's coming into you through, the richer your experience. So, I think there's something to be said for raw knowledge and a value there.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And do you think that memory has been-- you talked earlier about how we don't need our memories as much, but do you think that memory has been devalued in any way in this modern age?

JOSHUA FOER:
Yeah, I mean absolutely. I think we no longer have to rely on our memory so we don't. We don't trust them because we know that we've got all those numbers stored in our cell phone and all those facts stored on our bookshelf are on the internet and I think you've seen that devaluing in you know 20th century progressive education reform. Memory is-- the idea of memorizing something that's second only to corporal punishment as bad things that can happen in the classroom today.

JIM GLASSMAN:
But don't we admire people who have good memories?

JOSHUA FOER:
I do.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Yeah I do too.

JOSHUA FOER:
I hope people do.

JIM GLASSMAN:
No but that's what I mean by devalued. I'm not sure-- I mean certainly it's not as important-- it doesn't seem to be-- we're not taught to memorize poems and that sort of thing. But when you see somebody who's got a good memory it's not like we think that's a freak.

JOSHUA FOER:
Right that's true. Although in the Middle Ages the word genius was reserved almost exclusively for the people with the best memories. That was considered the highest accolade one could bestow on someone was saying that person has an incredible memory and I don't think you would find people saying that-- that sort of thing today.

JIM GLASSMAN:
But do you think that you can train yourself-- train your memory so that you can score perfect scores on the SAT test for example.

JOSHUA FOER:
I don't think it would help you very much with math. I do think with vocabulary yeah absolutely and I think actually what goes on in a lot of these sort of SAT prep classes is sort of teaching pneumonics to remember vocabulary.

JIM GLASSMAN:
What are some of the practical applications of a good memory in real life?

JOSHUA FOER:
We talked about speaking, remembering people's names is handy. That actually comes in handy. There aren't that many occasions when you're really tested in the way that you're tested in one of these memory contests on an everyday basis. It's a little bit like having a Lamborghini in the garage, you know? There just aren't that many opportunities to really take it out on the highway and floor it.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Well how have you used it besides in speaking? Or have you?

JOSHUA FOER:
Yeah, no, one place where I always use it is going to the grocery store. Just to like make sure that I remember my shopping list. When somebody says to me I need you to remember this, I'm going to tell you a bunch of things, that's useful. I think actually the place where these sort of techniques can be most useful is in school where you really are called upon to remember large amounts of information and-- but once you get out of school there just aren't that many opportunities to really have to memorize something.

JIM GLASSMAN:
And as far as the shopping list is concerned, obviously you could write them down--

JOSHUA FOER:
Right.

JIM GLASSMAN:
But you're doing this in order to keep your memory trained?

JOSHUA FOER:
Mostly just to flex and make sure that I don't totally let this skill go to pot, you know?

JIM GLASSMAN:
So how long a grocery list can you remember?

JOSHUA FOER:
Theoretically quite long--

JIM GLASSMAN:
Infinite.

JOSHUA FOER:
Longer than my wife can come up with. Yeah.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Ok what was the most important lesson that you took away from your experience and your research for this book?

JOSHUA FOER:
I think at a personal level the thing that I came away with is-- the basic principles behind why these sorts of memory techniques work; one of the principles is frankly you've got to be paying attention.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Right.

JOSHUA FOER:
You don't remember things that you don't pay attention to, and willing attention is not necessarily the easiest thing to do all the time but I think the first step is simply having that at the front of your mind that I'm going to be the kind of person who pays attention is an extraordinary useful just idea to have and to think about for making life not only more memorable but hopefully richer.

JIM GLASSMAN:
Thank you Josh. And that's it for this week's Ideas in Action. I'm Jim Glassman, thanks for watching. Keep in mind that you can watch Ideas in Action whenever and wherever you want. To watch highlights or complete programs just go to ideasinactiontv.com or download a podcast from the iTunes store. Ideas in Action because ideas have consequences.

ANNOUNCER:
For more information visit us at ideasinactiontv.com. Funding for Ideas in Action is provided by Investor's Business Daily. Every stock market cycle is led by America's never ending stream of innovative new companies and inventions. Investor's Business Daily helps investors find these new leaders as they emerge. More information is available at investors.com. This program is a production of Grace Creek Media and the George W. Bush Institute, which are solely responsible for its content.