When We First Hear [a] Word, We

When We First Hear [a] Word, We Start Putting These Associational Hooks Into It That Make It Easier To Fish It Back Out At Some Later Date.

I Met With Amnesiacs And Savants, Educators And Scientists, To Try To Understand What Memory Is, Why It Works, Why It Sometimes Doesn't, And What Its Potential Might Be.

What Makes Things Memorable Is That They Are Meaningful, Significant, Colorful.

To Attain The Rank Of Grand Master Of Memory, You Must Be Able To Perform Three Seemingly Superhuman Feats. You Have To Memorize 1,000 Digits In Under An Hour, The Precise Order Of 10 Shuffled Decks Of Playing Cards In The Same Amount Of Time, And One Shuffled Deck In Less Than Two Minutes. There Are 36 Grand Masters Of Memory In The World.

Once I'd Reached The Point Where I Could Squirrel Away More Than 30 Digits A Minute In Memory Palaces, I Still Only Sporadically Used The Techniques To Memorize The Phone Numbers Of People I Actually Wanted To Call. I Found It Was Just Too Simple To Punch Them Into My Cell Phone.