54: Never Forget Anything. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer Made You Think

Dom DeLuise, celebrity fat man (and five of clubs), has been implicated in the following unseemly acts in my mind’s eye: He has hocked a fat globule of spittle (nine of clubs) on Albert Einstein’s thick white mane (three of diamonds) and delivered a devastating karate kick (five of spades) to the groin of Pope Benedict XVI (six of diamonds). Michael Jackson (king of hearts) has engaged in behavior bizarre even for him. He has defecated (two of clubs) on a salmon burger (king of clubs) and captured his flatulence (queen of clubs) in a balloon (six of spades). Rhea Perlman, diminutive Cheers bartendress (and queen of spades), has been caught cavorting with the seven-foot-seven Sudanese basketball star Manute Bol (seven of clubs) in a highly explicit (and in this case, anatomically improbable) two-digit act of congress (three of clubs).
In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. It is a fun book episode about how Joshua Foer came from nowhere to win the US memory championship with the challenge and coaching of Ed Cook. In the book Josh shows how to train our brain memory “muscle” and remember everything.
We cover a wide range of topics, including:
Why and how poetry, religion, and epics are interconnected because of memory Mnemonic techniques to remember numbers, names, cards, everything How to hack our brain to “live longer” Incredible memory stats How to impress your crush and make your dates memorable And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our fun episodes on Emergency by Neil Strauss, a book for preppers, as well as our recent episode on How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff, a short an easy book that shows how media can be manipulated.
Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more.
Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show How to win the U.S. memory championship [3:12] The Google Effect [8:40] Playstation [15:09] Twitter [19:35] LinkedIn [19:35] Pearl Harbor [21:35] 9/11 [21:36] Anki [26:34] Lindy Effect [29:10] Nat's book notes and Brain [48:49] Evernote [53:00] World Memory Records [59:17] Memrise [1:01:11] Ed Cook on Tim Ferriss Podcast [1:02:11] Duolingo [1:02:58] CMU [1:04:22] Fight Through the Suck – Justin Mares [1:07:28] 10000 Hour Rule on Google [1:12:15] The World Memory Championships [1:17:03] Joshua Foer TED talk [1:17:32] 21 (film) [1:18:04] Books mentioned Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [1:50] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [1:52] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [1:52] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter [2:21] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Emergency [2:32] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman [6:11] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Torah [11:00] The Quran [11:00] The Tower – Hotel Concierge [31:16] (article episode) Essays by Montaigne [47:27] 12 Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson [50:15] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Way of Zen by Alan Watts [50:16] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [50:17] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [50:18] (Neil’s notes) The 4 Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss [1:02:34] Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell [1:03:48] Peak by Anders Ericsson [1:03:56] Remember, Remember by Ed Cooke [1:15:52] The Memory Book by Harry Lorayne [1:16:32] People mentioned Joshua Foer Albert Einstein Ed Cook [3:40] Homer [5:36] Plato [5:50] Simba [16:13] Mufasa [16:33] Adil Majid [17:55] (Crypto episode) Sigmund Freud [18:20] Pepper the Poochon [23:06] Montaigne [47:12] Tiago Forte [51:46] C