Feats of Memory Anyone Can Do

There are people who can quickly memorize lists of thousands of numbers, the order of all the cards in a deck (or ten!), and much more. Science writer Joshua Foer describes the technique — called the memory palace — and shows off its most remarkable feature: anyone can learn how to use it, including him.

Watch the following video with these questions in mind:

• Do some people have good memories and others have bad memories?
• Is a memory a fixed thing, meaning something that you can’t grow or change?
• What is the baker vs. Baker paradox?
• Why does the memory palace technique work?

“When information goes ‘in one ear and out the other,’ it’s often because it doesn’t have anything to stick to.”
— Joshua Foer