'The thing about these techniques is they only work if you remember to use them. memory champion, Foer says it needs to be a conscious decision. While you would think that those visual experiences would be easy to imprint, especially for a U.S. I still forget to put down the toilet seat.' 'I still forget why it was that I opened the refrigerator door. 'The sad truth is, I still forget where I parked my car all the time,' he says. It was sort of an experiment in participatory journalism, and I got my answer.'īut that doesn't mean he's no longer absent-minded. 'I basically hung up my cleats after winning that contest. 'I'm a fat schlub at this point,' he jokes. Instead of defending his title, Foer has taken a break from mnemonic tricks and is content just to watch. 'The best guys in the world can do this in under 30 seconds, which sounds almost extraterrestrial and is really something to behold,' says Foer. Though he has since lost the title, Foer set the record in speed cards - at least in the U.S. He was able to memorize the order of a shuffled deck of playing cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds, and then recall it within five minutes. It's not quite as sexy as a spelling bee, but it's definitely got its drama,' Foer says.įor Foer, that drama included being crowned the new national memory champion and setting the U.S. 'It's a lot of people sitting around at desks scribbling away answers furiously and then handing them in at the front of the room. It ended up feeling a bit like the SATs, he says. Memory ChampionshipsĪfter a year of training his mind with devices like these, Foer returned to the competition as a contender. It's not quite as sexy as a spelling bee, but it's definitely got its drama. It's a lot of people sitting around at desks scribbling away answers furiously and then handing them in at the front of the room.

to transform the kind of information we're not very good at remembering into the kinds of visual spatial memory that our minds are actually built for.'

'So the idea behind these memory techniques is. 'They all more or less come down to the notion that as bad as we are at remembering a poem or a phone number, we're really good at remembering certain kinds of visual and spatial information,' Foer says. In the Middle Ages, tricks like these enabled scholars to memorize entire books, Foer explains. Take, for example, the memory palace, a mnemonic device created in ancient Greece that transfers memorization to the spatial field of your brain. Other memorization techniques are far less silly and much more technical. If imagining Einstein walking on the moon seems funnier to you, that can work, too, he says. 'The idea is that an image that is so unlike any other image that you've ever thought of is one that's more likely to stick in your mind.'įor Foer, picturing Einstein moonwalking a la Michael Jackson did the trick. He was born in Washington, D.C., and now lives in New Haven, Conn. Joshua Foer is a freelance journalist and the founder of Atlas Obscura, a travel guide for eccentric locales. What was more, they insisted that anyone could do it - even Foer. But he was surprised to discover that most competitors did not even have photographic memories rather, they had simply trained their brains - which they claimed were 'average' - to think in more memorable ways. 'I should, I suppose, begin by explaining that there is a rather bizarre contest that's held every spring called the United States Memory Championship,' Foer says, 'in which people get together and try to see who can remember the most random numbers, the most lines of poetry, the most shuffled decks of playing cards.'įoer first attended the contest as a science journalist, expecting to find something akin to the Super Bowl of savants, he says. In his new book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Foer investigates the nature of memory and his own unexpected journey down memory lane. 'I certainly didn't expect the story would end up where it did,' Foer tells NPR's Robert Siegel. Journalist Joshua Foer took a stab at mental athleticism, and not only did he compete at the USA Memory Championship, he set a U.S. Ever since, writers have been taking up a whole range of athletic pursuits for the experience and for the material. In the 1960s, writer George Plimpton pitched to major league all-stars, tried out as an NFL quarterback, sparred with the great boxer Archie Moore - and wrote all about it.

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