The best memorizers in the world - who almost all hail from Europe - can memorize a pack of cards in less than a minute. A few have begun to approach the 30-second mark, considered the 'four-minute mile of memory.' — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Jonah Lehrer is one of the most talented explainers of science that we’ve got. What a pleasure it is to follow his investigation of… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“I don’t think I’m an exceptionally bad reader. I suspect that many people, maybe even most, are like me. We read and read and read, and we forget and forget and forget. So why do we bother? Michel de Montaigne expressed the dilemma of extensive reading in the sixteenth century: “I leaf through books, I do not study them,” he… — Joshua Foer Copy Share
Life seems to speed up as we get older because life gets less memorable as we get older. — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
With our blogs and tweets, digital cameras, and unlimited-gigabyte e-mail archives, participation in the online culture now means creating a trail of always present,… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“I Came away from the U.S. Memory Championship eager to find out how Ed and Lukas did it. Were these just extraordinary individuals, pridigies… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
The 'OK Plateau' is that place we all get to where we just stop getting better at something. Take typing, for example. You might… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“One book, printed in the Heart’s own wax / Is worth a thousand in the stacks.” — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process that leaves them teeming with irregularities, quirks, and words… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Invented languages have often been created in tandem with entire invented universes, and most conlangers come to their craft by way of fantasy and… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Perhaps, as Borges concludes in his story, it is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human.” — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
