We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Truman Capote famously claimed to have nearly absolute recall of dialogue and used his prodigious memory as an excuse never to take… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
I met with amnesiacs and savants, educators and scientists, to try to understand what memory is, why it works, why it sometimes… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human. — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by …… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
As bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Sometimes I’d take off my earmuffs and memory goggles and turn around to discover that my father had been standing in the… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Notice that the process of chunking takes seemingly meaningless information and reinterprets it in light of information that is already stored away… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
Our lives are structured by our memories of events. Event X happened just before the big Paris vacation. I was doing Y… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
We've outsourced our memories to digital devices, and the result is that we no longer trust our memories. We see every small… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Thamus was reluctant to accept the gift. “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls,” he told the god.… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“If memory is our means of preserving that which we consider most valuable, it is also painfully linked to our own transience.… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
The best memorizers in the world - who almost all hail from Europe - can memorize a pack of cards in less… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
When I climb into my car, I enter my destination into a GPS device, whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“(The phrase “in the first place” is a vestige from the art of memory.)” — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
“Over the last few millennial, we've invented a series of technologies … that have made it progressively easier and easier for us… — 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… — Joshua Foer Copy Share Image
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
