Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0216_ Ron White — The Ancient Roman Memory Technique That Could Transform Your Mind

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#0216_ Ron White — The Ancient Roman Memory Technique That Could Transform Your Mind · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Ron White, welcome to the show, man.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you. It's quite the honor.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: It's an honor to have you. I found you doom-scrolling Instagram,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I think maybe a month or two ago, and usually
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: my feed is all, everybody's gonna die, we're all fucked,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And then I saw you
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and I was like, dude, that looks interesting.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: You're just... think you were going up to people on
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: the street and have them memorize stuff and so that's
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: uh then i dug into you and i was like
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: holy shit and then we found out you memorized all
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: of the names of um our guys that were ka8
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: in afghanistan and uh so we decided to be an
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: awesome memorial day segment so that was that was like
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: two and a half hours you've you recited every single
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: service member's name who was killed in Afghanistan?
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: 7,000 words?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: About 7,500.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: 7,500 words. How many names?
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: The official count is around 2,461, the DOD official count.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: On my list, I got the names from a website, icasualties.org.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: And on there, they had some civilians in there. And
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Although the spirit of my list is the military names.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I didn't have the heart to take those names off.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: So my list is probably eight or nine more than
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the official count. Man.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Well, that was impressive to see, man. And I think
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to love seeing that.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: So thank you for doing it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you for the platform to do it. You know,
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of gold star families out there. that
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: some of those names are 25 years ago. You know,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Master Sergeant Evander Andrews, the first one was October of 2001. Wow.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: So that's 25 years ago. You know, I want Master
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Sergeant Evander Andrews' family and all those families that 20,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: 25 years ago to, hey, somebody still cares. We still care.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: And so, and you gave a platform for that. So,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: you know, thank you. It's my honor, man.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Seriously. But yeah, I was kind of joking around before this.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Gotta be careful what you say around this guy remembers everything.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: So what'd you have for dinner last night? That's a
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: good question, actually. You know, barbecue, we had barbecue. I
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: don't remember, who knows, barbecue. Right. You know, people think,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: you know, oh, this guy, you know, like you said,
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: what are you going to say? If my memory is
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: extraordinarily average, if I'm not using a system. Amy, who's
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: worked with me for 10 years, she tells, Ron, you
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: got to make this phone call today. Ron, you got
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: to email this person today. Ron, did you mail that
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: IRS format? I'm like, no, I didn't mail the IRS format.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So it's a system. How did you, we'll get into
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: all that stuff, but I am curious, what's your first memory.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: I do have a first memory. I was about two
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: years old, two years old, but it had to have
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: been two because I know where I was living. And
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: it's just a blip. It's just a four second memory
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: of me being in the living room and somebody going
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: to the door and my mom talking to that person
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: at the door. And when I was in my 20s,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I said, mom, I described the memory and she's like, oh,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: that was exactly the layout of our apartment. But I
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: think that's just a fluke. I don't think my memory
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: is anything special, but that is my, you know what though?
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: That memory's special to me in the sense that it was,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: you know, my mom, my family, but I guess who
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: else you're going to be around it too, right?
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Well, let me start you off with a introduction here.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Ron White.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: A two-time USA memory champion, a U.S. Navy veteran, and
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: one of the world's top memory experts. And you will
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: tell anybody who asks that you were not born with
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: a gifted brain, but you've built one. You joined the
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Navy Reserve after September 11th, served as an IS-1 intelligence specialist,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: and deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan in 2007. You memorized the names, ranks,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: and order of death of every American service member killed
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. 2,300 names, 7,000 words. You corrected that earlier.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: It was actually more than that. And have been writing
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: them from memory on a 52-foot wall across this country
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: since 2012. You've appeared on the History Channel, National Geographic,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Fox's Superhuman, and Good Morning America. And at every speaking event,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: you memorize 200 to 300 audience names before you walk
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: on stage. Ron White, welcome to the show, man.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And a couple of things to knock out here before
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: we get going. I have a Patreon account. Honestly, they're
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the reason I get to sit down with you today.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: And they've been here with me since the beginning. They've
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: turned into quite the community. And so what I do
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: is they get the opportunity to ask every single guest
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: a question. So this is from Scott. Ron, for someone
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: who was diagnosed with TBI who struggles with some short-term memory,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: What specific exercises or habits would you recommend to help
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: strengthen their brain and improve memory over time?
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, on something like that, you know, from
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: a non-doctor's point of view, I'm a memory champion. I
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: would focus just on, you know, good nutrition, health, you know,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: going for walks, staying healthy. That stuff is going to
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: impact your memory. You know, our hippocampus, which is responsible
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: for a lot of our long-term memory, I don't think
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: necessarily gets, and I don't know if it gets affected
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: in TBI or not, but what I do know is
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: that as we age, that actually can shrink. And one
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: of the things that can stop and even reverse the
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: shrinkage of our hippocampus is exercise, right? So exercise, staying
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: healthy is something that I would recommend to anybody, especially
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: somebody with TBI. drink plenty of water. A dehydrated brain
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: has trouble focusing. Our brain actually shrinks a little when
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: it's dehydrated. So a lot of my advice to him
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: would be good nutrition and exercise and just trying to
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: control your nerves a little bit. You know, stay calm.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Stress is the worst enemy to your memory. So I
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: guess it would be more general advice like that. And
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: there are memory systems such as the mind palace, which
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: I know we'll get to today. And I would, as
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: far as a system, that's the one thing I'd tell
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: him to focus on.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Roger that. One last thing. Everybody gets a gift.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, nice. Nice.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Not healthy, but it's Gummy Bears made in the USA,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: legal in all 50 states.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: So you're clean to take those home to Texas.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, I will. I will be enjoying these. So thank
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: you very much. Gummy Bears are my favorite. You know,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: I love them. It's like when you get a vitamin
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: and it's gummy bears. You're like, you just can't eat one.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: And like, you're like, dang, I just ate 5,000 of
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: my daily recommended allowance of vitamin C.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I'm so healthy. Thank you so much. I do the
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: same shit.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: But, wow. But let's, so I want to do a
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: little bit of a backstory on you because I know
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: this started as a kid, correct?
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: When I was 18, yeah, basically. 15.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: So I'd like to do that and then kind of
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: go through you know, a little bit of your life
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: story and then how this all works. So where'd you
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: grow up?
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: I was born in North Richland Hills, Texas or Fort Worth, Texas.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: I grew up in North Richland Hills, which is just
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: about 15 minutes away from Fort Worth.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: What were you into?
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Well, growing up, I was pretty uncoordinated kid, but I
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: loved baseball and I still do. You know, they put
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: me in right field and they'd hit the, It was
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: going to be a home run, and I'd be charging
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: in as fast as I could, thinking I was going
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: to have to make a diving catch because I just
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: wasn't too coordinated. But I really loved baseball as a kid.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: My dad was in the Army, and he was a
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: police officer. So I was just real into, you know,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: dressing up, you know, in his police uniforms and dressing
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: up in his Army uniforms. He was in during the
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Vietnam era, although he served in Korea during that time.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: So military... My family was a very patriotic family. You know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: we loved going on trips, going to visit stuff like
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: the Air Force Academy and things like that. And then
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: when I was about 15, 14, I took a job
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: as a paper boy. And that was kind of my
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: entry into supporting myself. And, you know, if I wanted
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: money to go to the movies or whatever, I had
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: to go collect money from my customers on my paper route.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: So it was a blue collar family. And, you know,
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: they gave me a good work ethic, I guess you'd say.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: And baseball, military, throwing papers.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: How'd you get into the memory stuff?
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Well, so it was two weeks out of high school.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: And my friend, Brian, he said, hey, man, I just
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: got a job as a company that cleans chimneys. Do
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: you want to get a job there with me? We
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: will be telemarketers. I said, yeah, sure. No problem. So
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: it was two weeks out of high school. We sit
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: down and I'm making 80 phone calls a day. Can
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: we clean your chimney? Can we clean your chimney? Can
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: we clean your chimney? So, you know, imagine it was
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: a thrilling job, right? And one day I called this
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: guy and I said, hey, you know, we've got a
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: crew in the area. We want to clean your chimney.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: And he said, I don't want our chimney cleaned. We're
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: trying to sell our house anyways. Thanks for calling. And
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: I said, sir, don't hang up the phone. If you're
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: trying to sell your house, you should have a clean chimney.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: I heard a little chuckle on the other end of
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: the line. And he said, you know what? I've got
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: a room full of telemarketers and none of these guys,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: when they hear an objection, do they try to overcome it?
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: They just accept it and hang up the phone. He said,
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: do you want to go to work for me? And
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: this was him talking to me. He said, do you
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: want to go to work for me? I sell memory
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: training seminars. That's it. That's it. Yeah. And he said,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: he said, I'll pay you more than you're making now,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: you know, which was a pretty safe bet, right? Okay.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Anybody could have said that to me and they would
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: have been right. You know, I'd say all the time,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: if you would have robbed me back then, you would
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: have just been practicing. You know, so I started taking
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: down his information and my sales manager was like, hey,
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: did you make a sale? I'm like, no, I got
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: a new job. I'm going to teach memory seminars. And
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: my freshman year of college, I had a 0.9 GPA. So,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: you know, Albert Einstein is not in my family tree.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: And the telemarketer, she said, good luck with that. You know,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: you're going to be back here in two weeks. And
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: that was 35 years ago.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: So I've been doing my career, I guess you would say,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: for 35 years. And I'm glad you asked that question
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: because a lot of people, when they see me recite
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: the names or you mentioned recite two or 300 names,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: they think, oh, this guy has some special gift. He
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: has some special ability that I don't have. No, no, no, no, no.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I was a telemarketer. A guy hired me over the
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: phone because I was a good salesman. He taught me
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: the system. I genuinely believe anybody can improve their memory
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: that way.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: So everybody that you sold the STEM program to probably
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: could do this, huh?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: I've never. That's what I'm going to start calling it now,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: the damn program.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: But no shit. That's how it happened. So you just
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: took the program that you were selling. Yeah. And it worked.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I took his course. He laid it out. He
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: laid out the system. And I did it. I perfected it.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: I probably had an advantage. I was talking to your
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: security guy today and I said, man, I'm kind of
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: jealous of you in a way. I like jujitsu, but
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: I can always think of an excuse not to train, right?
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: And just take it easy, be lazy. I'm like, you
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: are forced to constantly keep your training up. I like that.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: And that's kind of the way it was with me
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: with memory. I got lucky in a way. I took
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: a job for a memory company, right? So then I
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: was forced to get good at it and perfected it.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Had I just taken a memory seminar, I don't know
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: if I would have had the drive that early on
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: to perfect it to the level that I did.
• 12:56
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• 16:03
  Speaker 1: So did you actually... I mean, this turned into... You're teaching...
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: How to memorize the Bible, how to memorize the Bill
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: of Rights, how to memorize jujitsu moves, how to speed read.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, was it all of that or did you
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: develop a lot of this on your own too, the
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: newer stuff?
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You've evolved the course, I guess is what I'm saying.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Correct. The course I took was a general memory course.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Over time, the things that I was interested in, I
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: applied it to. So one of the things that, you know,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: in Psalms, in the Bible, you know, in Psalms chapter one,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: it says that the man who meditates on scripture will
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: prosper in whatever he does. So I'm like, okay, I
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: think I'm gonna memorize and meditate upon some scripture. So
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: I applied it to the things I was interested in.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: And that's where those niche products that you mentioned evolved from.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Interesting, interesting. So what are some of the, tell me
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: about the course. You know, what, What does it teach you?
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a series of modules. And, you know, sometimes
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: it's in person. You know, sometimes I'll teach it in
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: person at a conference. You mentioned the memorizing of 200 names.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: When people arrive for a conference, I'll memorize 200 or
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: 300 names. So oftentimes I don't have to even talk
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: to them. I can just read their name tag, and
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: it says Shawn. or it says Brent, or it says Sarah,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: or it says Terry, or it says Darren, and I'll
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: just read their name tags. I don't even have to say,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: and then I'll get up on stage and I'll say,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: if you're one of the two or 300 people I met,
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: stand up, two or three people stand up, and then
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: I'll run around and I'll call off their names. So
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I like every course I teach always starts off with, hey,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: look at this, so it gets their interest. But then
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: it's just a series of modules that walks them through
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: how to memorize. You know, one lesson I'm going to
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: talk about how to visualize, how to turn stuff into
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: a picture. If you want to remember something, you need
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: to be able to see it. For example, you meet
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: me today and six weeks from now, you're out at
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: your favorite restaurant and you look over there and you think, man,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: I've seen that guy before. I know that guy. Who
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: is that guy? I've seen his face. Two hours later,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: you're driving home and you're thinking, ah, that was Ron White.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: We remember the face, but we don't remember the name.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Sometimes remember it later because you remember what you see.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: So the course teaches you how to think in pictures, right?
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Turn Steve into a stove, Lisa the Mona Lisa. When
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: you hear the number 21, you think of a deck
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: of cards. And that's an overly simplified examples. But it
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: teaches you how to think in pictures and then apply
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: techniques known as the memory palace or the mind palace.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: But it's really geared towards, it's not geared toward, hey,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: you want to memorize your grocery list. How's having a
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: better memory going to help? If all you do is
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: memorize your grocery list, how's that going to impact your life?
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: But think about it. You're viewers right now who want
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: to give a speech or a presentation without notes, or
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: they want to learn anything faster, or they want to
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: quote Bible verses or memorize poems. That's the things that
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: developing a good memory can help you with. And so
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: that's what I like to focus on.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Man, I mean, I could use this just for this alone.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, so much information's coming in and out of
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: this damn thing that it's just, it's like, it's impossible
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: for me to keep up, you know, but something like that,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: to be able to just reach in the archives and
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: retrieve something and spout it off a statistic or a
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: fact or whatever it may be, I mean, that would
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: be very useful.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: And when I memorized the Afghanistan National and I know
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: we'll get more into it later, but a simple overview
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: that goes to what you're saying. I used this room
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: that we're in to help me memorize the names, right?
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: So I visualized locations. Your flag right there is Corporal
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Dagan Page. These lights right here are Staff Sergeant Darren Hoover.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: So I placed what I wanted to remember and I
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: visualized it interacting with this. So when I said the
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: final 13 names, the Abbey Gate names, I was sitting
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: here with my eyes closed and I was going around
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: this room like that and I was talking about what
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: I saw in each location. I bring that up because
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: you just mentioned Ah, this would help me in what
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: I do. Well, what you could do is the same thing.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: You could number spots around this room, right? So this
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: shelf over here could be a spot, this flag, this flag,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: these things. Then you're talking to somebody. And as they're talking,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: you're thinking, oh, that reminds me of something. I want
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: to ask them. But you don't want to like interrupt
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: them right when they're talking, right? they say that they
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: played baseball, right? And you want to talk, remember to
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: ask them that question, but you don't want to interrupt them.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: So now all of a sudden you see a baseball
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: crashing through and hitting that flag right there, and the
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: flag falls on the floor. They continue to talk for
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: another two minutes or one minute, and then you can
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: look up there and remember what you wanted to talk about.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I'll be damned.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: That right there comes in handy for I'm always trying
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: to hang on to questions.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: And I probably lose 75% of them.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: 100%, 100%. Visualize, as they're talking, visualize whatever's behind them.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: So over here, I might see it interacting with the flag.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: I might see it interacting with this picture over here.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: You're talking, I'm still listening to you, but now I've
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: got the two or three things that I want to
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: talk about. And then when I get a moment, I
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: ask you about those things.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Interesting, interesting. And so you started... So you were working
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: for a telemarketing company selling memory courses, but did you
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: start selling your own too as a teen? Well, so
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I went to work for them at the age of 18.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And I worked for them for about a year and
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: a half, two years. And things happened that led to
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: me leaving that company.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: It was my decision. It wasn't their decision for me
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: to leave. I needed to leave. And when I left
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: that company, I was 20 years old. And I thought,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: I love this. I love this. But I'm 20, you know,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: I'm 20 years old. Can I do this? But there
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: was so much that I didn't know about running a business.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: If I had known everything that I didn't know, I
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: was too dumb to know what I didn't know. I thought,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: how hard could it be? So I went down to
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: the courthouse. I registered a company name. I opened myself
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: up a bank account. The difficult part of that, well,
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of difficult things about it. But back then,
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: there was no online course. It was just me speaking, right?
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: But I was 19 years old, 20 years old, and
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: I looked like I was 12 years old. So, you know,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: I've started shaving my head right here, you know, giving
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: myself a little bit of age and, you know, the
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: other things have given me some age. But when I
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: was 19 years old, I remember giving my first speech.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: I walked into this company and I said, hey, my
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: name's Ron White. I'm with the company I was with,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: the memory company. And the guy said, okay, Ron, whenever
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: the speaker gets here, let us know. We'll all go
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: in together. And I said, sir, I'm the speaker. He said,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: are you out of high school? I said, yes, sir.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Matter of fact, last month, it's been a year. And
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: he was like, he looked at me and he said,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: he said, he said, Ron, I appreciate what you're doing.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: I like your go-to your go-getter attitude, but my guys
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: are pros in there. You know, if, if, if, They're
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: seasoned salesmen. I don't know if I'm going to look
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: good bringing you in. And I went in and I
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: memorized the names in the room and then I repeated
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: them and I looked at him and he went, okay,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: like you can go. But early on, I guess I
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: had to overcome that, a little bit of credibility. You know,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: what's my credibility? I had won no memory championships. I
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: had set no records. I clearly looked like I was
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: in high school, but I loved what I was doing.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: And I learned something about back then too. If you
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: get good at something, regardless of your age, if you
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: get good at something, regardless of your age, be so
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: good they can't ignore you, right? And with time came age,
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: and everything worked out.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Right on. Right on. And then you joined the military.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: I did. So I started my business, or I started
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: this business when I was 18. And when I was
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: 28 years old, I'd been in my career for a decade. So...
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: That's when I joined the military. Hold on.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Do we need to rewind? We need to rewind, don't we?
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Ten years?
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: You were in business for ten years before you joined
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the military?
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, I was. Okay.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to that first.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I thought that you, yeah. Let's go back to the business.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: So you made the decision to start your own business.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: I did. And if I knew what I knew now,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't have done it. right? But I'm glad
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: I did. I'm glad I didn't know because there were
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: so many things I had to learn. For the first decade,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: I was behind on my IRS taxes all the time.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I just didn't know how to get all set up
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: and have a good accountant. I was trying to do
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: it all myself. I made so many mistakes and it
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: held me back so much. There's so much now. Fortunately,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: I got a great accountant. I just go make the
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: money and she does all that stuff. But as an 18,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: 19-year-old kid, The job I had, people always ask, what
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: did you do before you taught memory seminars? I said, well,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: I had a paper route. And then I worked at
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Taco Bueno. I rolled burritos, you know. You couldn't just
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: tell them you don't remember? So I had no business experience, right?
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: I just had the, I wasn't afraid to make cold calls.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: That first 10 years, I was making 80 cold calls
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: a day. So 500. five days a week. So 400
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: calls a week, you know, maybe 1,600, 2,000 calls a month,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: 20 plus thousand calls a year. Wow. So over, and
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: I was just calling people, hey, can I speak for
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: your conference? Can I speak for your conference? Can I
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: speak for your conference? Can I speak for your conference?
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: And it was a little bit different of a sales
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: pitch than that. But also, you know, I didn't know
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: what I didn't know. I didn't know that it's better
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: when somebody else is saying, hey, you should have Ron White.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: He's a great presenter, right? But I just went through
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: it and I just made the cold calls. You know,
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: people today, they'll ask me, they'll say, Ron, they want
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: to be a speaker. And they'll say, Ron, tell me,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I want to do what you do. How did you
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: do this, where you speak? And I said, well, I
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: got leads. I made call 80 a day. I made
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: 400 cold calls a week, 2000 plus, around 2000 a month.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: And they said, no, they'll interrupt me. No, no, no, no, no, no, Ron. Ron,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: I don't want to do that. I want to do
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: what you do now.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: We want to skip all the journey and just go
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: to this.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. It's crazy. And probably you too, right?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean, all you've accomplished in your life,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: and I heard you say it recently, people will say... that, oh, Sean,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: look how you just blew up and your YouTube channel
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: took off. And then I heard you talk about, hey,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: you didn't get to see the stuff in the attic
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you get the, I don't know, whatever you want
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: to call them. Oh, this guy came out of nowhere. Oh,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: you just popped up out of nowhere. Dude, I've been
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: doing this shit for over 10 fucking years now.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Media stuff. Been doing the
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: podcast since 2019. I didn't just pop out of nowhere.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Dumped everything into this as i'm sure you have too
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: you know and and so it's a lot of fucking.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Work they're seeing the finished product yeah everybody everybody it's
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: it's it's like that saying everybody wants to be a
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: gangster until it's time to do gangster shit yeah and
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And in full honesty, if I was starting today, I
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: don't know if I would make those cold calls. We
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: have so much at our disposal now, right? With the
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: YouTube and social media and Instagram and all that kind
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: of stuff. But it's still an important part. You got
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: to get out there and you got to talk to
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: people and you got to be willing to hear rejection
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: and that kind of stuff. And those were lessons that
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: fortunately I learned going door to door selling newspapers, but,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: and I implemented that and use that during that 10 years.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: So it was a lot of, um, I was broke
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: for 10 years. I was broke. I would be sitting
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: at home and working or whatever. The electricity would go off.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, man, I did it again. The first time,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: I spoke for free for pretty much the whole decade.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: But a whole decade? Decade. Wow. So I would call
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: real estate companies, car dealerships. I mean, you think about it.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: A car dealership, they need to memorize their scripts, right?
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Their customers' names, that kind of thing. So I would
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: call them and I'd say, hey, can I speak for free?
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: By the way, I don't do this anymore. But I'd say, hey,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: can I speak for free for your company? Teach them
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: how to remember names and that kind of stuff. And
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: then I'd go speak for free and sell tickets to
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: a workshop or something like that. It was about five
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: years into that. There was a rental company, color time
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: they like you could go rent um i don't know
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: maybe furniture or something like that there but this was
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: 1998 they said well i was living in seattle and
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: they doing my business and they said will you speak
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: for our conference in reno nevada and um I said, yeah,
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: I would. I was trying to do the math. How
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: would I get there? Speak for free. And they said,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: we'll pay you $ 2, 500. Now, this was almost 20 years ago, right?
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, $ 2, 500. Oh, my gosh.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: They're going to pay me $ 2, 500 to speak for what
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: I've been doing for free? Boy, they don't know I'm
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: giving this speech for free in Seattle. And they said, OK,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: just buy your plane ticket. And, you know, then send
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: us the invoice or whatever. I didn't have money to
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: buy a plane ticket. I literally did not have money
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: to buy a plane ticket.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: I was broke. I went broke living in Seattle. I
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: had a guy who turned out to be a professional
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: con artist and he swindled me out of some money.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: He was very disappointed when he got my bank account.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: He thought it was more of a high roller, but
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: I didn't. worked during the day selling memory seminars. And
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: then at night, I took a job as a waiter
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: at a restaurant. So I was waiting tables. I said
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: yes to this company in Nevada, in Reno. I'll speak
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: at your conference. They said, buy your plane ticket. And
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: I'm like, why do I tell them? If I tell
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: them I don't have enough money to buy a plane ticket,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: they're not going to have me speak. They're going to
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: think nobody's paying me to speak, which nobody was. So
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: I said, I got to figure this out. So I
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: emailed them back and I said, you know what? I
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: got family halfway through there. So I'm just going to
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: drive and I'm going to stop and see my family,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: you know, on the way. And you could tell they
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: were like, that's the long drive, dude. That's the craziest
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I'd ever heard. But they said, that's fine. But I
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: didn't have the money. So I started picking up doubles,
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: waiting tables and my tires, my tires on my car
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: had the metal, the metal was coming out of the tires.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: So I thought, okay, I got to buy some tires
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: and then I got to get enough money for gas money.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: I don't care if I make it back. I just
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: have to get there and accomplish this goal. So I've
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: got my money. I got enough money to buy my tires.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: I picked up all these doubles and I go out
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: to where my Jeep was parked and it was gone.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: It got towed. So then I had to use all
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: my money that I spent for the tires to get
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: my Jeep out. And I just had enough money for gas.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: I literally had just enough money for gas. And I
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: drove down there the whole time thinking my tire's going
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: to pop. My tires are going to pop. I got there.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: My tires didn't pop. I memorized the names. I gave
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: the speech. They handed me a check. It felt so
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: good to get paid to do this. And I got
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: in my car. got a little bit of money, cashed
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: the check, got a little bit of money. And as
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: I drove back into Seattle with those tires worn out,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: when the skyline of Seattle popped up, I'm like, I
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: did it, man. Oh, man.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Right on. That's what the first 10 years was like.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: No kidding. So where do we go from there?
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, after that first 10 years of trial
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: and error, it clicked in my brain that, people are
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: going to pay me to do this. You know, at
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: the time I was selling, I was going speaking for
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: free for these companies at the end saying, Hey, if
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: you want to learn more, sign up for my two
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: day workshop. And they would go to my, go to
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: my workshop, but it clicked in my mind, dude, you
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: don't have to rent a room at the holiday end.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: You don't have to, you don't have to do all
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: the details of getting people set up. People will pay
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: you to speak for their conference.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: So I was like, that is, that is, uh, That
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: sounds so much easier. And it was. At that point,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: I got to just focus on what I'm good at, right?
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Making cold calls all day, renting room at the Holiday Inn,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: signing people in when they arrive, making sure they got
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: their name badge, none of that anymore. And that speech
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: changed everything for me because I realized I could switch
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: my business model. And that's when really my business changed
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: because then I could just focus on what I'm good at.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: And what am I good at? Demonstrating the power of
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: the trained memory. and showing that anybody can do it,
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: and then teach other people to do it.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, so what else did you need to focus on?
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Is it exercises? Is it developing the courses? What exactly
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: are you focusing on?
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: At that point, there was a guy named Billy Burden,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: and I don't know if Billy Burden's still alive or not,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: but he was one of the leaders in the memory
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: world at the time. And I called him up on
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: the phone and I said, Billy, I'm a 25-year-old guy
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: I'm doing memory. What advice could you give me? He
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: was very, very generous considering I just told him, I
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: am starting in your industry. Now he was maybe getting
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: near retirement age, but I was still telling him I was,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, probably he didn't fear me either, right? But
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: he was still very generous and kind to me. He said, Ron,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: these are the things I will do. And then he
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: told me one thing that really changed everything for me.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: He said, when you get done with your seminar, people
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: are going to want to learn more. You need to
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: have something for them to take with them. That's crucial.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: I said, what do you, what do I do? He said,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: create a memory course on cassette. And that right there
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: was a massive game changer for me. Um, because I
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: realized it was a way for me to make money
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: without me having to show up. Right. First of all,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I would sell it at my events. I, I, um,
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: You know, every time you hear a motivational speaker and
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: they say, I used to live in a van down
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: by the river, right? I really did go homeless during
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: that time. And that's when I was, I had, I
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: set my computer up at a friend's house. I didn't
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: stay there, but he was kind enough to let me
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: set it up. And during the day I would go
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: in and I would type out my course, type out
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: my audio program. And that audio program made a difference.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: And here's how I, was selling it on cassettes, and
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: people were benefiting from it, but it was really only
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: if they were at my workshop, right? Well, one day,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: a friend of mine named Chris called me and said, hey, Chris.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: He didn't say that. He said, hey, Ron, my name
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: is Ron. His name is Chris. See, aren't you glad
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: to see the memory guy is just a normal memory?
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: He calls himself the wrong name sometimes. He said, hey, Ron,
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: There's a company called Jim Rohn International. Jim Rohn was
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: a great business philosopher. He passed away in 2008. He said,
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: do you know who Jim Rohn is? I said, yes,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: I know who Jim Rohn is. In my industry, he
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: was a legend, not from memory, but business conferences. And
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: he said, the owner of that company is Kyle Wilson.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Kyle has an office 15 minutes from where you live.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: I just called Kyle and I told him that you
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: were going to bring your memory course on cassette to him.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Go drop it off. I'm like, oh, so I had
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: such imposter syndrome. I'm like, Chris, there is no way
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: Kyle Wilson, Jim Rohn International is going to have any
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: interest in me. Why would they want to pay any?
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: They got a wall full of speakers trying to present
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: them stuff. I'll never forget it. I walked in, I
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: opened up the door at Kyle Wilson's office. And his
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: assistant Crystal was right there. And I had one foot
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: in and one foot out. And I said, hey, could
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: you give this to Kyle Wilson? And she said, he's here.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Do you want to talk to him? I'm like, no,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: I don't want to talk to him. I was so intimidated.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: She gave that cassette to Kyle Wilson. Kyle had this
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: massive email for Jim Rohn International email list. And he
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: just sent out a blast. And he sold some. He
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: called me on the phone. He said, Ron, what price
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: could I get for 2,000 of those? And I'm trying
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: to maintain my composure. I'm like, 2,000 of these. I
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: haven't sold 200. I gave him a price. Two weeks later,
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: he called again. Ron, I need 2,000 more. Two weeks later,
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: he called again. He's still, to this day, a master
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: genius marketer. And he sold out of them. And one
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: button up on this story. If there was no Kyle Wilson,
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: I would not be sitting here today. There would be
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: no Afghanistan memory walk. I would never have served in
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Naval Intelligence. And the reason for that is, is we
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: became friends. And one day he called and said, you
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: want to drive to Shreveport, which is three hours east
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: of Dallas, to go to the casino. I had no money.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: I had no money. And we get to the casino.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: And he says, Ron, I like to gamble in private.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go to this table, you go over there.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, thank goodness, because I didn't want to
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: let him know he was going to pick up really quick.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: I didn't have any money. So I sat at the
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: bar and drank while he was gambling. On the way back,
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: he said, hey, man, how'd you do? I said, I
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: left where I came with. I can't leave where I
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: came with. And we did that a couple of times.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: And one of those trips, he said, Ron, something's bothering you.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: What's bothering you? I said, Kyle, I'm getting ready to
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: get kicked out of the Navy. I'm getting ready to
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: lose my security clearance for IS-1, Naval Intelligence. I said,
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: I owe the IRS $ 40, 000. I have no way of
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: paying this. And I'm going to be so embarrassed. My
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: family was so proud of me that I was in
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: the Navy, and now I'm going to be embarrassed. And
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: he listened to me. We go to his office. He
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: walks into his office. He writes me a check for $ 36, 000,
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: which was the exact amount. He said, here you go, Ron.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Pay off your IRS bill. This is not a gift.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: This is an advance on commissions. I'm going to sell
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: your course. and take out your commissions as an advance.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Thank you for letting me tell that story. It didn't
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: even pop in my mind, but that's a powerful story
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: to me and an important one in my life.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: You're welcome. What is it that was in the courses
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: that were gaining so many people's attention that wanted to
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: buy it?
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Well, you think about it, a business person, a leader,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: They want the ability to stand up on a stage
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: and give a speech or a presentation and not use
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: any notes. Imagine you're at a conference or you're at
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: a presentation and that guy is standing up there on
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: stage and he's reading his notes or he's reading his PowerPoint.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: It happens all the time, but it's not a dynamic speaker.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: So with the memory system, you're able to take what
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: you want to say and speak without notes. A lot
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: of people like learning how to do that. But salespeople,
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: think about it. You've got people who are taking a
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: job at a car dealership, or they're taking a job
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: as a salesperson. They're getting in front of their customer.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: And as soon as they get in front of their customer,
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: what happens? They lock up. They can't remember what they're
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: supposed to say. And then their customer walks away, and
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: then they remember what they're supposed to say. So sales scripts,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: remember what you're supposed to say, giving speeches or presentations
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: without notes. I think one of the biggest things that
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: people like about memory, about learning how to improve your memory,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: is being able to remember names and faces. You meet
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: somebody today, and then you meet their wife, and two
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: weeks later, you see them out, and you're like, Sean, Katie,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: how are you doing? You know, it's magical. You show
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: the person that you care. So Zig Ziglar used to say,
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: people don't care how much you know until they first
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: know how much you care. And those are the business reasons,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: I think, the primary ones. But there's another group, and
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: that group is the students. The students, one of your
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Patreon members asked me on a question today, how do
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: you study for this test, the MCAT? And I was
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: able to lay it out. Students, and then maybe the
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: final category, which I've already mentioned, is scripture memory, right?
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: For people who have a religious faith in whatever their
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: religion is, that's important to them, right? What did Jesus
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: do when he was tempted? He quoted scripture, right? So
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: the ability to have the word of God written on
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: your heart and in your mind is a lot of
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: things for for a lot of people of faith. So
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: faith-based students and those business people who want to just
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: close more deals.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Makes sense. What about the speed reading?
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Speed reading is possible. Now I've gone, my opinion on
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: this has shifted over the years. First, I believed it's
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: not possible. That's what I believed for two decades I
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: believed that. I've been doing this for 35 years. I
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: always joke, I say, I know that sounds impossible because
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: I look like I'm 27, but I've been doing this
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: 35 years, right? But for the first 20 years or so,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: I didn't think it was possible. People would, after my class, hey, Ron,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: can you teach me how to speed read? And I'd
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: just tell them, hey, look, I don't think it's possible,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: and I'm not gonna sell something that I don't think
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: is possible. So for 20 years, I said no to
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: that product line, because I just didn't think it was possible.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Then after about 20 years, I thought, people are asking
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: me this question. You're just saying it's not possible because
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: you don't think it's possible. What do you know about it, right?
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay, I'm going to try this out
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: and see if I can do it. And then I
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: was able to do it and actually doubled my reading speed.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: And I'll give you a real quick Cliff Notes version
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: of how to speed read. So when we're reading, what
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: happens is, is something called visual regression. You're reading a
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: line or something. The boy went to the store. but
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: your eye's not trained. It bounces around a lot, and
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: it's called visual regression. So the boy went to the store.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: Your brain would read that. The boy went. The boy
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: went to. The boy went to the store. It's bouncing around.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: And people all say, Ron, I don't do that. I
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: just read straight through. You probably don't, but you're probably
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: doing it so fast you don't realize it. But because
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: you're doing it, it's slowing you down, right? So the
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: best speed reading strategy I could give a person, and
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: there's many, but if I could give the best one,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: it's put your finger... Underneath the words that you're reading
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: or a pencil and force your finger to follow the
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: words You've people probably seen speed reading people and they're
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: going like this across the page What they're doing is
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: they're forcing their eye to follow their finger So they're
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: going like that and there's some other things that you
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: that alone might double your reading speed On a laptop
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: or a computer you could do it with the cursor
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: But some other things are don't don't sub vocalize the words,
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: you know, don't say the words don't read to yourself
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: If you're reading to yourself, if you're saying the words,
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: you're going to be limited to how fast you can talk,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: not how fast you can read. And the average person
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: is reading about 200 words a minute. Almost everybody, by
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: using their finger and just staying a little bit more focused,
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: can read twice as fast, almost anybody. So that's when
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: I developed a speed reading course, when I realized, hey, okay,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: you can sell this and feel good about it. And
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: that's what I did.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Makes sense. Makes sense. Where do we go from here?
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the first 10 years, I would say. And, um,
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: after that, that's when September 11th happened and that's when
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: I enlisted in the military. So I guess I could
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: talk a little bit about that.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was 28 years old. I'd been teaching
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: memory for a decade and, um, mainly for free, but
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: right about that time I'd learned people were paying for this.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: And so I moved back from Seattle and I was
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: sitting in my friend's living room. Brian McMahon, he's been
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: one of my closest friends since he was 12, complete numbskull.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: If there's any proof you don't have to be a
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: genius to do this, Brian McMahon is the proof. He's
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: gonna fold, he's a black belt in jujitsu. He's gonna
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: fold me up for saying that, but.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: We were sitting in his living room right after September 11th.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: And he said, he said, don't laugh at me, but
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: tomorrow or this week, I'm going to join the army.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: And it was one of those moments. I was 28
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: years old. I was a decade into my career. I
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: wasn't looking for a new career. I wasn't looking for
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: a new opportunity, but it was September 11th, right? And
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: so we were just months removed. This was probably December.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: So just a few months removed from September 11th. And
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: he said, don't laugh at me. I'm going to join
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: the army tomorrow or this week. And it was a
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: split second decision. I said, dude, I'm going to go
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: with you. So we went down to the recruiting station
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: the next day. He joined the army. I joined the
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: Navy because I have an IQ, right? Army's great. My
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: dad was army, but I wanted to join the Navy.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you the real reason I joined the Navy. Well,
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: my grandfather served in World War II in the Navy.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: So to this day, I have his uniform hanging up
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: on the walls, World War II uniform. But one of
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: the big sellers for me joining the Navy and not
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: the Army was the Army wanted to make me a mailman.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: I learned that day, it's the recruiters have, they're told,
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: this is the slots you need to fill. And whoever
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: walks through that door, right, that's the job they're going
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: to give them. And I walked through that door and
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: he said, we want to make you a mailman. And
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I was like, sir, I'm joining the Navy.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with that job. And I'm not disparaging
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: that job at all. But it's not what I wanted
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: to do. And I joined as a reservist. And he said, well, Ron,
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: if you join as a reservist and you deliver mail,
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: you will get to go to Germany for your two
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: weeks every summer. I'm like, sir, if I want to join,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: go to Germany. I'll go to Germany. So I walked out.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: And I walked by the Navy recruiting station. And on
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: the door to the Navy, it said, No boot camp.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, they were doing, this was right after September 11th.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: They were doing anything to get people in those doors.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: No boot camp. I said, that sounds very interesting. I
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: went in and they said, for a reservist, your two
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: weeks is your boot camp. I did a 17-day boot camp.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: And they asked me some questions and I took some,
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: you know, you got to take some tests, you know,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: to get in the military. And after all that was done,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: they said, do you want to be in Naval Intelligence?
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: And that's when I said, I'm going for the Navy.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: And so that's what I did.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Right on, right on. I think we skipped something.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: The Guinness Book of World Records.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: Maybe I ignored that. What happened then? Oh, gosh, that
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: was a fiasco. That was a fiasco. So it was 2001,
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: February 2001, something like that. I was at the grocery
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: store with my girlfriend at the time. And she was shopping,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: and I pulled the Guinness Book of World Records off
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: the shelf. As fate would have it, I opened it up,
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: and when I was flipping, I saw a memory record.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Gert Metring memorized a 27-digit number, and it said the
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: digits were flashed on the screen for three seconds. And
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: I looked at it, and I said, three seconds, 27 digits.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: So three times 27, that's a minute and 21 seconds.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: I could beat that.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: I could beat that easy. That's a slam. dunk. So
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: I told my girlfriend, I said, there's a guy in
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: the Guinness World Records. I do this every day at
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: my speeches. I can break this record. She's like, yeah, whatever, pal.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: You know, if you could do it, why don't you
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: do it? And I said, you know what? I'm going
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: to do it. So I called the Fox Good Day
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: Dallas show. And I said, I showed them the Guinness record.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I can break this record. And they said, okay,
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: let's practice it right here in the studio. And we
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: did it, and I didn't get it right. And then
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: they said, okay, we'll consider this. And then I went
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: back to my friend Brian, the guy that I joined
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: the military with. I said, dude, we got to train
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: for this. So for a week, he just said numbers.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: I memorized them. Not once did I get it right.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: I went back to the producers. I said, can I
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: be on the show? They said, you can be on
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: the show this day. They said, let's try it again.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Let's practice. I didn't get it right. In a week
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: or 10 days of practice, not once did I get
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: it right. Not once. Brian, my friend said, Ron, or
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: he calls me Ronnie, Ronnie, you don't have to do this.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: I said, I'm going to do this. The producer said,
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: you don't have to do this. I said, just put
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: me on the air. And we were sitting in chairs
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: like this. They said a 27 digit number. We did
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: one more digit, 28 digits. And right. So I thought
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: it was 27 digits, three seconds each. So I said,
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: do 28 and let's just make sure I do under
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: one minute and 21. And I got it. Lady said
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: the number, I said it, I repeated it to her.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: And she said, we got a new Guinness record live
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: on Good Day. And I didn't want to say it,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: but lady, that's the first time I ever got that right.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: You know, but I picked the right time.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: And, um, uh, uh, So I was telling everybody, I was,
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: you know, hey, book a Guinness record breaker, Ron White,
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: for your next conference, right? I put it all over
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: my website. I put it all over this. And then
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: I finally got around. I'm not the most organized man
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: you would think I would be. A couple years down
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: the road, I got to around submitting it to Guinness.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: So here's my record. Here's the proof. Here's the TV show.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: And Guinness came back to me, and they said, Ron,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: you didn't break the record. Not even close. It wasn't
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: three seconds per digit. It wasn't this digit flashed on
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: for three seconds, this digit flashed on for three seconds,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: this digit flashed on for three seconds, for a total
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: of minute 21. The entire 27-digit number flashed on the
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: screen for three seconds, and then it disappeared. And then
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: he said it from memory. And I thought, oh no,
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: you've got to be kidding me. Because there was no
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: way I could make this right. There was no way
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: I was going to make that right. There was no
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: way I could train and get that. Today, I kind
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: of know how he did it. I could get closer
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: to that, but I still don't know if I could
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: break it today. So that became a thing in the
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: back of my mind. You know, I felt like a
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: dishonest person. For three years on all my marketing material,
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: Guinness record breaker, we scrubbed it from everything. but people
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: would still bring it up and I would always correct them.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: But I felt it was an honest mistake, but people
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: don't know if it's an honest mistake or not, right?
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: So I had this, I hate to even say the word,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: but just not authentic, but it wasn't true. But that
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: was the perception I felt like I had. So that
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: really motivated me to, I got to make this right.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: I've got to do something that says, you just read
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: that introduction today. Ron's one of the top memory experts
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: in the world. Well, I was saying that back around
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: this time, 25 years ago. And I said to myself,
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: this isn't authentic, man. This is not authentic. You're getting
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: introduced right now as one of the top memory experts
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: in the world. You have no degree from a college
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: on something related to memory. You've broken no records. You've
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: competed in no tournaments. You've done nothing other than giving
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: yourself a marketing title like any business person would do.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: And that marketing title is, you're the best. So I said,
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: you've got to do something to earn this title. And
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: that's when I set my sights on the USA Memory
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: Championship and some records like that.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Right on, right on. Wow. That's humble, but that was humbling, huh?
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: It was humbling. I also just felt foolish. You know,
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: sometimes attention. I was foolish that I thought that that
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: Guinness record would be that simple because a minute, 27
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: seconds for a 27 digit numbers.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Not it.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: Not that impressive, even though that was the first time
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: I ever got it right. I was embarrassed that I
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: thought that was a Guinness record. Damn.
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: Damn.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Well, Ron, on that note, let's take a break. When
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: we come back, we'll pick back up with their naval career.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: If you've listened to this show for a while, you've
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: probably heard me talk about functional mushrooms before and why
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in that whole space. So when I started
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: using Mudwater, it made a lot of sense to me
• 54:33
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• 54:36
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• 54:40
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• 54:49
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  Speaker 1: low-caf coffee blend with only 45 milligrams of caffeine plus, L-theanine,
• 55:01
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• 55:06
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• 55:13
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• 56:05
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Hollywood vs.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Reality. They do it, right? What does he do in
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this wrong, because
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: I don't watch any of this s * * *.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: A little flick like that, right? Seems pretty cool. It
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: is pretty f * * * ing cool.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: Gotta silence it.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Proprietary f * * * ing magazines. Supposedly the best
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: engineering in the f * * * ing world. When
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: that breaks, you're f * * * ed.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: And.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Now we're bringing him back. It does look pretty cool.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: I got to admit that.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: I lost my entire family, my mom, my dad, my brother,
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: in 18 months. What? Yeah. Just in 2022, 2023. And
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: it just, you know, a memory guy, it just wrecked
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: my brain. And... Your whole family? Yeah. Damn, dude. Not
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: all at once, you know. They had the decency to
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: space it out six months, you know, six months each.
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: But it really threw me off. Who was it? It
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: was my mom, my dad, and my brother. Jeez. Yeah,
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: they all passed real quick. But it threw me off.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: It threw my business off. It threw my game off.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: I'll bet it did.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I had a relationship at the time. It
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: ended because I Couldn't focus, right? So then I lost
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: the fourth relationship. But all that to say, it threw
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: my business off. And being here really forced me to
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: focus on those Afghanistan names. It's really helped me to
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: start getting my focus back. You know, I hear you
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: talk about Gabe. And I lost my brother to the
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: same thing you lost Gabe to.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, fuck, dude.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, man. Yeah. But this is helping me get
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: my focus back.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Good. I'm grateful for it. I'm happy to hear that, man. Damn,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: that's tough. I'm sorry that you went through that.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Well, we all go through loss, right? And it's just
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: normally not all back to back.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: So your military career.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: Where do you want to start? You're an intelligence specialist.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: I was an L.S., So you went to school at
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Damn Neck?
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right next door to us.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, I never did the job of an OS,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: because I went to Bud's right after that. But yeah,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be an intelligence specialist. But then when
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: I saw how long the school was, I was like,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not fucking doing that.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: So you picked something much easier. What can I do
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: that's going to be a walk in the park, right? Oh, shit. Well, I...
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: wanted to be a SEAL, but I just did not
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: have the qualifications for that. I didn't. I'm an honest man.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: I didn't. The funniest thing is, is you're in the military.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: I remember being with an IS. We were all sitting out,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: and this guy's out there smoking. He's an IS, and
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: we're talking. And he's like, yeah. He said, yeah, I
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: was going to be a SEAL, but I just, you know,
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: he's on the fat boy program right now, you know,
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: in the Navy to lose weight. He's like, yeah, I
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: was going to be a SEAL, but I just couldn't
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: do it because my eyes. My eyes are bad, you know?
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: And then I said, well, you know why I didn't
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: do it? Because I can't fucking do it. So I
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: was happy with naval intelligence, though.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: So did the memorization process skill that you've learned help
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: with being an intelligence specialist?
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: Well, um, a little bit, a little bit. So a lot,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: a lot. Um, uh, you, you talked about the school,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: the intelligence school, right? So you go through this, uh,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: Brit is what they call it at the time. Uh,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: I believe it was basic reserve intelligence training. It was
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: a course.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: No, actually, sorry. We were there at the same damn
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: time because I went in the Navy July of 2001
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: and graduated boot camp right at September 11th because I
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: actually had a hernia surgery I was supposed to fly
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: home for. I hit it through all the boot camp
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: because I thought they were going to kick me out.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: because of a hernia, so I lied to him, told
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: him I was fine until the very end. It was
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: like going by the fucking softball company.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: You know, and I was like, anyway, so by the
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: time I had gotten through, like, the couple weeks or
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: whatever rehab it was, it would have been, what, probably October,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: November 2001, that I was at damn neck and OS school.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: Were you there that time?
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: I wasn't. So my enlistment date wasn't actually until March
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: of 2002. Okay. Because I was a little bit delayed.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: I enlisted around December, but I didn't actually, my official
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: date wasn't until March. But, you know, you asked the question,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: does the memory help with the school? It does, but
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: I guess backing up a little bit, you know, I...
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: I told you I almost got kicked out of the Navy.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: So during that time, I'm in my, the intelligence training
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: and the master chief comes in, the SSO comes in
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: and says, Ron, come with me, bring your badge. Everybody's
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: like looking at me like, what's going on? And we
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: go back to her office. And I guess a little
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: bit before that part of the story that needs to
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: be told is when you, you know, going into, this community,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: they ask you a series of questions on a piece
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: of paper. And the questions are, have you ever smoked weed?
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: Have you ever had a speeding ticket? Have you ever
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: been arrested? Have you ever been 90 days late on
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: your credit? Have you, you know, all these type of things.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: And so she handed me the form in a piece
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: of paper and I went, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: And I handed it back to her. And at the time,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't really realize what was going on. She didn't
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: even pay attention to my answers because she got so
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: sidetracked with something else. So I didn't put it all
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: together at the time. She said, Ron, I have never,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: she said, I've been doing this for 10 years or something.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: I've never seen somebody answer those questions this quickly, that quickly.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: They're going through it and they're saying, did I really
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: get arrested or did I not? Was I really 90
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: days late or was it 89 or was it 91?
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: She were like, you're just yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: I've never seen it that fast. I said, well, and
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about it. It was yes or no questions, right?
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: So she, guess I didn't pay attention to it. She
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: puts it in her file folder. Fast forward a couple
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: months later, she walks in, Ron, get your badge, come
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: with us. And we sat down And she said, Ron,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: we've been doing investigations on you, and you've been arrested.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: You've had over 50 speeding tickets. I was arrested for
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: warrants for speeding tickets, nothing. I wasn't knocking over a 7-Eleven,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: you know. But you've been arrested. You've been 90 days
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: late on your credit, all these things. And I said, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: I told you that. She said, there's no way you
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: told us that. I said, it's on the form. And
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: she got the form and she was like, I can't
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: believe this. He told us this. But that was actually
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: quite a selling point for me. Because the whole reason
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: they don't want you to have IRS debt or all
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: this other stuff, right, is so nobody's going to bribe you, right?
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: Nobody's going to go to you and say, hey, China's
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: not going to say, hey, if you don't. Nobody's bribing U.S.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Government officials, Ron.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: Come on. Who the fuck would do that? It's all
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: above board, right? Right. But they figured, well, if somebody
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: goes to Brian Braun, he's just going to tell them. Yeah,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: I was laying on my credit. Tell them. I don't care.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: But because of that and because I cleaned up those things,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: I got to stay in. And in the basic reserve training,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: the brick training, I did use the memory system. I
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: told you I used rooms. Mm-hmm. to memorize. So I
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: would make a house in my brain, and the house
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: would be China. And this room would be China's aircraft carriers.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: This room would be China's aircraft. This room would be
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: other important details that I wanted to know about China's military. Well,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: then I got 10 pieces of furniture mapped out in
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: this room. So now I take the 10 facts about
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: the aircraft carriers, the shape of them, the size, the capabilities,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: whatever that I think is important to know, and I
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: memorize them around those 10 pieces of furniture. The next room,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: the 10 features of their aircraft I would wanna know.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: So I'd have facts about this house is China, this
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: house is Iran, this house is another country. And so
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: I really did breeze through that training. They would give
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: me the test, and the test would be something in
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: regards to what's the capability of this aircraft in Iran's arsenal?
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: How far can it fly on a tank of gas?
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: How far can its weapons go? And I would just
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: think back to that room in that house, and boom,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: answer the question. So it really did help me, mainly
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: in my training. It helped a little bit... prior to
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: getting in the country of Afghanistan, because I would read
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: books on Afghanistan and I just memorized certain facts about it.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: Massoud was the leader of the Northern Alliance, right? So
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: I would know little facts like that to just give
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: me context on the country. One day, one day, it
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: wasn't as well received as I thought. They made me
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: a briefer. I was the personal briefer for an 06,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: an army colonel. He was the highest-ranking intelligence officer in Afghanistan,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: and I was his personal briefer. So at the end
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: of every 12-hour shift, I would give him a briefing.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: And they selected me for that role just because in
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: my civilian career, you know, I give briefings, right? We
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: don't call it that, but they thought, okay, that's what
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: we'll do. But I... One day I had this idea
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: that I'm going to give this briefing without reading my notes.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: So at the end of every 12-hour shift, I would
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: brief him. We call them SIGACs. I don't know if
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: that's a broad term in the military, significant acts. So SIGACs,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: the significant acts during the day. And I would prepare
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: a report for him. this is everything that happened. We
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: had this happen in Helmand. We had this in Kandahar.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: We lost this number of the United States military in
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: this incident or this battle. Some of it was from
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: direct fire. Some of it was from indirect fire. This
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: is how many of the Afghans lost. And I would
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: prepare this report. And at the end of the day,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: I would brief him on what happened. Well, I had
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: this big idea that I'd do it without notes and
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: I'd win favor with the colonel. So I gave my
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: briefing without notes, and I got it. I got it perfect.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: But I learned something that day, and that was there's
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: no harm in holding a piece of paper when you're
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: given a military briefing. And when it's that detailed, even
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: though I had it right, he didn't have full confidence
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: in me that I got it perfectly right. And he said, White,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: that was good. I appreciate the work you put into that,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: but use paper next time. I want to have full
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: confidence knowing that what you're saying is 100% accurate. I said, yes, sir.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: With that said, I used it in so many other ways. Interesting.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Interesting. Anything significant you want to talk about in your
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: military career?
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: When a United States Navy SEAL says, is there anything
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: significant in your career, you blush a little and have
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: a little bit of imposter syndrome, right? I gave a
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: lot of PowerPoint briefings and I did do 51 convoys,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: but nothing happened on those convoys. And I'm perfectly happy
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: that nothing happened on those convoys. I will say that
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: the airport in Kabul, where Abbey Gate was. I've been
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: to that airport 10 times on a convoy. I went
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: on a convoy there one day and nothing happened. We leave,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: we get back to the base and somebody from our base,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: I was at ISAF headquarters in Kabul, right next to
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Hamid Karzai's palace, right next to the embassy and a
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: base called Camp Eggers. I learned later when I memorized
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: everybody who died in the war in Afghanistan, That's Captain
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: Daniel Eggers. I didn't know it at the time, but
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: he passed. He was the 135th name I said. The
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: guy left from Camp Eggers, and he goes to that
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: airport in Kabul, Abbey Gate, that area, and he died.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: It was a vehicle-borne IED. And as an intelligence guy,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: I remember that video, and I remember thinking, man, I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: was just there. I was just there, and now he's there,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: and he's dead. And then two days later, we shut
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: down convoys for a couple of days. And then two
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: days later, I went back. And, you know, that was,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: I think that's when I first, I always had been
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: briefing the names of the fallen. And I didn't say
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: the names of the fallen in my briefings, but I
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: was always aware of the deaths, probably more than the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: average person who was deployed. Because I had to know
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: every day how many who died. I never knew that
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: guy's name until about, six weeks ago, and I went
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: and figured it out. Who is he on the Afghanistan wall?
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: Based on the time and based on where he died,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: it was Corporal Adam Quinn. And so that name has
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: an attachment to me now. I think there was one
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: other time that really all this led up to me
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: wanting to memorize the names. I had teeth problems. I
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: still have teeth problems, but I had a tooth problem
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: when I was in the base. And it's a question.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: Do you want to go tell your chief that you
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: have to go to the dentist when you know that's
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: going to require other men getting in a convoy, doing
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: a completely unnecessary convoy because your teeth is bad? Their
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: lives are at risk so you can go to the dentist.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: So I kept prolonging it as long as I could.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: Maybe I can just get to this deployment without having
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: these guys go off base, right? Finally, I've decided I
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: had to get my teeth fixed. And I went in.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: to the room, the intelligence center. And I sat down,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: it was 10 o'clock at night and it was full
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: of people, full of people. And I sat down and
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: I said, what's going on? I mean, high ranking, high
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: ranking guys. So what's going on? And they said, somebody
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: is about to get schwacked. And we had these monitors
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: on the screens. The whole room was just TV monitors.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: It was like the TV show 24, just a lot
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: less fancy, right? And they had all the monitors were
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: on the same house. And somebody in that house, a
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: high value target was getting ready to get killed. And
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: I sat down and I was just watching. And the
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: guy said on the phone, he was communicating. And he said,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: three minutes out. And then this is, you know, I
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: didn't experience death in the same way you did. in
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: your deployment. I experienced death in a very sanitized way
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: on a television screen. But even at that, I thought, wow,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: these people are about to die. And they have no idea.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: That person who just walked out of the house to
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: go to the bathroom or whatever just saved his life.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: And he has no clue. That car that just pulled
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: up and they went in, they're about to die. And
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: then I heard two minutes out. And as a guy
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: who just gave PowerPoint briefings, I'm like, whoa, 60 seconds
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: out and then boom. And you see these people running
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: and you see them being chased by I guess a
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: helicopter or some type of, and they're shooting at them
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: and then you see them fall. And I just went
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: back to my room that night and I just wrote
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: in my journal, why do people kill each other? Why
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: is there war? Why is this happening? I understand if
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: we don't kill the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, they're going to
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: kill us. But why? Why? Why? And it bothered me
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: so much. And that bother in my heart for any death,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: not just the United States military. And I get the
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: people who are listening, they're going to say, it's just,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: it's a person, you know? But I understand there's some
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: bad people too. But Those questions and all these stories
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: that I just mentioned is what led up to me
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: wanting to do the Afghanistan War, to focus on the
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: death of war. So my military career really led to
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: the tribute I do today.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Right on, right on. That bothered you that much?
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: Well, it didn't bother me in a PTSD way, right?
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not picking that up. No, there's none. Nothing.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: It wasn't... It's the first time we've seen real death.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: It was our guys killing bad guys, correct?
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: It bothered me in the sense it was, you know,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: it wasn't traumatic, right? It wasn't traumatic. It wasn't necessarily
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: something that I even lost sleep over other than... But
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: I did, it did start getting that philosophical question in
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: my brain. Why is there war? Why must people kill?
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: It goes back to, you know, it's a story as
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: old as time, you know, Cain and Abel, right? It's not,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: you know, Harry, Billy Joel, we didn't start the fire.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: I realized this didn't just start with us. You know,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: the world's been burned. How's the song go? The world's
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: been burning since the world's been turning. But yeah, it's,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: I think that those moments is what made me want
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: to focus later on the Afghanistan war. Gotcha. Gotcha.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: Makes sense. Are you familiar with Polly Markets?
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I am. All right.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: This is about war. Oh, man.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: Here's the question.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: Polymarket gives only a 5% chance that the Iranian regime
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: falls by June 30th. You deployed to Kabul as an
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: intelligence specialist. You've seen what these conflicts actually cost. When
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: you look at what's happening in Iran right now, what
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: does your gut tell you? Will the regime fall by
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: June 30th?
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: I cannot, my honest answer is I don't know, but
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: I do have an opinion. I don't have an answer
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: on the timeframe, but I do have an opinion. It
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: is my sincere hope that there are no boots on
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: the ground. and that there are no names to learn.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: There are already some names to learn. I have no
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: idea how it's gonna turn out. I have zero idea
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: and I have no educated guess. My only other thought
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: on this is, and I don't even know, you've talked
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: to so many people, Sarah Adams and Joe Kent, and
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: you've talked to so many people who know so much
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: about the background of this war. And I don't necessarily
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: know that. But if it's true, and I don't know
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: if it's true, that we don't want them to get
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: nuclear weapons, which seems to be the thrust of the idea, right?
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: I'm not a fan of war, and I'm not even
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: saying we should have done this, because I'm saying I'm
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: just hoping for the best right now. I will say this, though.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: I do fear a nuclear war. If you say there's
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: only a 0.2% chance of a nuclear war every year, 0.2%,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: every year there's a 99.8% chance of no nuclear war,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: no nuclear, okay, I can live with that. Well, what
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: happens with percentages is over 100 years, that 2% becomes
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: an 18% chance that it has happened within 100 years.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: If it's just a 1% chance every year that there
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: is a nuclear war, 99% chance there's not, after 100 years,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: it's a 63% chance that it will have happened. I'm
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: not gonna be alive in 100 years, but there are
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: people who are being born today that if there's a
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: 1% chance, there's a 63% chance in their lifetime. On
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: the war in Iran, I hope there's no boots on
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: the ground. I hope it's resolved. I'm not a fan
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: of anything that's going on, really. And I don't know
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: all the reasons why other than I just don't like it.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: But I hope I also see the point of view
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: of nuclear proliferation as a scary thing.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: You've memorized the names of 2,300 plus Americans killed in Afghanistan.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: You built that wall. So people will understand the scope
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: of the sacrifice before we go to war again. What
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: does it mean to you that we're now in a
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: conflict with Iran?
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: I don't like it. I don't like it. You know,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: when I said, I recited the names, and I was
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: emotional when I finished saying the names, you know? And
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: what I said at the end of that, I said
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: it is my hope that humans evolve to the point
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: one day that we can solve our differences with words
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: instead of war. I just hope, I just hope that
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: the people who are in our government, the officials, the politicians,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: that they are so cautious before they send men and
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: women wearing the cloth of our nation into harm's way.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: And also they consider the cost on the other side
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: and the overall cost of war. The cost of war
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: is the names that I said today, Master Sergeant Evander Andrews,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: that was 25 years ago that we lost him, October
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: of 2001. But today, his family, it's not 25 years
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: ago for him. I met his daughters at a NASCAR race.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: For them, it's every day. And I'm not a fan
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: of the Iran war.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. If this escalates and Americans start dying in a
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: war with Iran, which they already have, will you memorize
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: those names too?
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: Maybe, but probably not. The Afghanistan names, it took 10
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: months to memorize, rank first name, last name. Today, on
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: your show, was the first time I ever finished it.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: No kidding? This was it. This was the first time.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: So I would... When I started memorizing them in 2012,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: there was 1,853. As I was memorizing it, during that time,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: we lost 600 more. It was impossible to finish it.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: Because I couldn't. I would set the wall up, I
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: would do it, but more were dying. And I've had
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: some personal events in my life where I haven't done
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: the wall in four or five years. It's never been complete.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: So I just, in the last two weeks, got the
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: last name, HM3 Maxton, Soviet, memorized. I think what I
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: would like to do eventually is get to where I
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: know the months that everybody died. Like this was September
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: 2011 or something like that. So I think there's a
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: little bit more I want to do with the Afghanistan wall,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: but it takes so much time. I would love to
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: do Iraq, but there's 4,500 there. The Vietnam wall is 59,000.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: I think Afghanistan is my tribute. I think that's where
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: I focus my time.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: Roger that. Congratulations, man. What a fucking time to do it, huh?
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: Memorial Day 2026. And I finished it on your show.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: And I also thought the timing was so great, because
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: we are in this conflict with Iran. And when I
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: say those names... When I write out the wall, I've
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: done it over 30 times. NASCAR races, Major League Baseball games,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: and Fox News, whatever. Every time I've done it, people
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: will walk by the wall, they'll look at it, and
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: they'll say, what is this? Because they can tell it's
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: something military. It looks like the Vietnam Wall. We'll tell them.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: Every single time, somebody will say, is this name on
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: the wall? Is that name on the wall? And I'll
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: show them. But the reason I share that story is
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: you mentioned, I finished it today, the People would say,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: when I was memorizing, I had a friend of mine,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: she said, why don't you just say the names, which
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: I did today. And it was very fitting, right? I
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: loved it. I got very emotional. I've never had tears.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: I've never had tears. I've done this 35 times. I
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: had tears today because it was emotional, because it was complete.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: The greatest, I shouldn't say greatest, I don't want to
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: use the word greatest. The most significant memory project of
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: my life is complete today. And when I got to
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: that final 13 names, the tears were just going down
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: my eyes. I couldn't believe it. But when I was
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: training for this, somebody said, Ron, why don't you just
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: read them? That way you don't have to write them.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: Because Jeffrey, you can spell it J-E-F-F-R-A-Y, J-E-F-F-E-R-Y, J-E-F-F-R-I-E, G-O-F-F-R-I-E, G-O-F-F.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: That's just Jeffrey. So spelling it is so much difficult.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: And my friend said, why don't you just say them?
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: You don't have to worry about spelling. And I said, no.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: I want, today was powerful. Today was powerful. But I
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: wanted people to look at it and walk by that
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: wall and say, wow, I didn't know it was this many.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: I want them to understand. And I think today that
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: was accomplished just by saying the names. But it's my
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: hope that maybe a politician heard it. And for two hours,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: that politician realized, wow, that guy just talked for two hours.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: And he said, everybody that we lost, that's not including
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: necessarily all the civilians. That's not including everybody in Iraq.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: And that's what I want. I want people to understand
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: the cost of war.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: Good for you, man. Good for you. That's a hell
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: of a statement. We talk a lot on this show
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: about how important it is for the military to modernize faster,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: because there's no shortage of good technology being built in
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: the private sector right now. The problem is getting that
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: technology into the hands of the people who actually need it.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: And from everything I've heard, working with the Department of
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: War can be incredibly difficult. Most companies have no idea
• 1:25:18
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• 1:25:21
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• 1:26:07
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  Speaker 1: talk a lot on this show about performance, recovery, and
• 1:26:16
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• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: modern world. And the reality is, we're constantly surrounded by
• 1:26:22
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• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: so let's move back to your service. So you were
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: going to do the memory championships while you were in, correct?
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. What happened to that? Some good research there. Maybe
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: you guys are in military intelligence. Oh, geez.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: Don't spread that rumor. Everybody already thinks that.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right. That's right.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: All right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. Anyways, I was.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: So during time to join the military, I was perfecting
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: my courses, I was really trying to get my business.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: And by the way, if it's okay, if people were
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: interested in this course, they wanted to learn a little
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: bit more, the next step to do that is brainathlete.com.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: I have a great course there that is really the
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: next step that they need to perfect their memory. But
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: during that time that I was developing the courses and
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: I was developing my business, I thought I've got to
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: prove that I'm a memory champion, or I got to
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: take this out of my bio. I don't want to
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: be one of those lame businessmen that says, we're the
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: top of the world, but you got nothing to prove it, right?
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: So I said, USA Memory Championship, that's it. That's what
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do. And then I started looking at
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: the records. Ah, this guy memorized a deck of cards
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: in a minute, 40 seconds. There's no way. a shuffle
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: deck of cards. He memorized it and then he set
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: the cards down and then he reassembled a second deck
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: to match the first deck from memory. There's no way.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: And then I looked, this other guy had memorized 140
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: digit number in five minutes. I'm like, there's no- Wow.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: Holy shit. 140 digits. He looked at it. They took
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: the paper away and then he wrote 140 digits. And
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, now I'm starting to get intimidated. This
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: is going to be a redo of the Guinness record thing,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: except it's not going to be a misunderstanding. I'm just
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: going to lose. I'm just going to flat out lose this.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: But I thought, you know what? This is it. You
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: got to do this. You got to do this. You
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: have to do this, Ron. So I started training, and
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: my goal was to compete. Well, I really didn't start training,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: but I just set my sights on it. I started
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: thinking about how would I memorize a deck of cards,
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: started developing a strategy. And this was March, February, March
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: of 2007. I'm like, I'm going to compete in the
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: 2007 USA Memory Championship. I'm at the base in Fort Worth,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: the Naval Air Station, Joint Reserve Base. I'm thinking about
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: I'm going to compete in this memory tournament. A guy
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: walks by me and he says, White, are you going
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: to volunteer to go to Iraq or Afghanistan? I said,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: I can't go, man. I've got a business. I'd have
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: to cancel contracts, refund deposits.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: I can't go.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: He said, chill out, White. You're not going. Two hours later,
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: this guy says, White, you're going to volunteer to go
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: to Iraq or Afghanistan? I said, I can't go, man.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: I got contracts that have to refund. And two hours later,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: my chief said, White, do you want to go? And
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: I looked. I said, I don't want to go, chief.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: I got a business. I said, but why are you
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: asking me this? He said, well, we've got a list
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: of people here. We're going to send these 25 people.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: But we're asking for volunteers before they get voluntold. And
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: I said, I don't want to go. He said, you're
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: not on the list. You don't have to go. Over
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: the next couple days, there was more conversations, and I
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: did end up going, which kept me from competing in
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: the 2007 USA Memory Championships. That's why I didn't compete.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: I was deployed. When I returned, the 2008 USA Memory
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: Championships was happening. I'd been back in the country six weeks.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: I said, I'm going to give this a shot. I'm
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: pretty relaxed. I have no reason. If I lose this,
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: that's pretty acceptable. I've been in Afghanistan. I haven't been training.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: If there's any time to lose, this is the time
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: that I have a built-in excuse to lose.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: You're gaming the system looking for a great way to
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: look when you lose?
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So I go in and I
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: compete and I come in fourth place out of like
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: 50 people. And I'm like, wow, I didn't even train
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: for this. And I came in fourth place. I said,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: I'm going to win this thing. I'm going to win.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: So I began training diligently for the 2009 USA Memory Championship.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: And I got a former US champion, David Thomas, to
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: give me some ideas and strategies. And he really helped
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: me out a lot. But my biggest coach, and most
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: people can't even understand this, You might understand this. My
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: biggest coach for the USA Memory Championship was not a
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: memory guy. It was a United States Navy SEAL, former SEAL.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: His name was T.C. Cummings. He served in the 90s.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: And people all the time are like, Ron, why in
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: the world would you hire a United States Navy SEAL
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: to train for a memory tournament? What in the world
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: do they know about memorizing a deck of cards? He
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: knows nothing about memorizing a deck of cards. But what
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 2: Navy SEALs do know is they do know how to
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: be calm under pressure. They know how to believe in themselves.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: They don't get ruffled. They know how to structure their
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: training so they don't just win, they dominate. So I
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: hired this guy, T.C. Cummings, and he structured my training
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: like a Navy SEAL would structure training, you know, for
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: a memory tournament, not for, but, you know, there was a,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: I believe it was a Norman Schwarzkopf quote, and T.C.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: would say it to me a lot. The more you
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: sweat in times of peace, the less you bleed in
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: times of war. So he would, he said, Ron, how
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: are your competitors training for this memory tournament? I said, oh, well,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: you know, they've got, they're telling their kids to be quiet,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: you know, in the next room and they're turning off
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: the radio and they're training in complete silence. He said,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: that's not how a Navy SEAL trains. We don't train
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: in perfect conditions. I said, TC, what do you want?
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: Are you going to shoot off a gun over my
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 2: head while I'm memorizing a deck of cards? What are
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: you going to do? He said, you need to make
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: your training And this was him talking to me, and
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you would feel this as well. I don't
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: know anything about SEAL training. But he said, Ron, we
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: make our training so tough that sometimes it's tougher than
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: the actual war. And when we get to war, we
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: don't just win, we dominate. He said, that's what you
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: need to do. He said, you don't want to train
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: in perfect conditions. He said, I want you to get,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: it was the wintertime. He said, I want you to
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: get plastic playing cards. I want you to get snorkel gear.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: get a wetsuit because it's 30 degrees outside and you're
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: going to train underwater. I'm like, what? I'm going to
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: train for a memory tournament underwater? So I'm at the
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: apartment swimming pool. I got these goggles on. I guarantee
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: I'm the only nerd training for this tournament in a
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: swimming pool. and the water's seeping into my goggles. You know,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to breathe. I'm floating around. I got these
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 2: plastic playing cards, and I'm memorizing underwater. But what it
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: really helped me do was learn how to focus when
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: all these distractions were going on, and that's what he wanted.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: And then I would get out of the pool, and
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: I would reassemble the deck of cards. I got to
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: the point where I could memorize a deck of cards
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: underwater faster than anybody in the United States could do
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: above water at a tournament. I had a trip to
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: Australia during that time, so I didn't have to wear
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: snorkel gear and there was people all out at the pool.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: And imagine this, you're at the pool and this guy's
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: walking out there with snorkel gear, plastic playing cards, he
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: jumps in the water, he's memorizing a deck of cards,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: kid's got a volleyball, it's bouncing off the top of
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: my head, people are bumping into me and I'm memorizing
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: and then I get out and I reassemble the deck
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: of cards. It was training like that. When we got
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: to the actual tournament, So by the time we got
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: to the event, the card event, it was like three
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: events in. And so we're at the card event. By
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: this time I had already set a United States record.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: So all the TV cameras were on me. So I
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: was getting ready to go. All these cameras around me,
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: they were taking pictures and the judge said, go. And
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: when the judge said go, I zoomed through it. I
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: was like, this is so easy. There's no water going
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: down my mask right now. I set it down, boom.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: And then it was a minute, 27 seconds, fastest in
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: the United States at the time. And the judge flipped
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: them over, Karen Pinson. And I remember like it was yesterday,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: Karen said, we got a new US record. And she
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: high-fived me. And there was some kids over here, my
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: fellow nerds. They said, we want to protest that score.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: We want to protest that event. And Tony Datino, the
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: founder of the USA Memory Championship said, why do you
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: want to protest that event? He said, when that event
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: was going on, people were dropping plates in the other
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: room and they were. I hadn't registered when I was memorizing,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: but when they said that, I was like, oh yeah,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: I did hear something. And they said there was plates
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: and it distracted us and a whole roll of people said, yeah,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: we couldn't focus after that. We didn't get it. And
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: Tony Datino said, well, this guy sitting right here, Ron,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: he just broke the United States record and the plates
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: were dropping when he was memorizing too, the results stand.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: And that's when it really clicked in my mind, man,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: this training that TC gave me was really focused in
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: my mind to train with distractions. He had me go
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: to country Western bars and, you know, all these cute
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: girls are dancing around or whatever. And he said, Ron,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: I want you to go up to some girls, find
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: the cutest ones you can find, and ask them if
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: they will watch you memorize a deck of cards. I'm like, TC,
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: that's the most awkward thing to do. Number one, it's
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: not going to get me anywhere. No girl's ever like, oh,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: how fast can you memorize these numbers? I want to
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: give you my phone number, right? That never worked that way.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: But if she does, at least she'll remember it.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. Well, believe me, I tried that
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: angle for the first couple years, and it does not work.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's just me that doesn't work. Maybe a different
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: guy would work, but... So I'd be at Country Bar.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: I'd be at the restaurants. I'd have people staring at me.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: But it was his training. And I really owe OTC
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: a lot. I'll say one other thing. There was one
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: day that we had to be up and training by 8.30
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: in the morning. I had to be training by 8.30.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: This day I wasn't. And we were doing our weekly call.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: And he said, Ron, he was a hospital corpsman in
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: the Navy. So he was always having to listen to
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: his guys. Like you, you were hurt in boot camp, right?
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: Is that where you were hurt? And you didn't say anything.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: That's so common, right? Especially with the guys with the
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: SEAL mentality, the warrior mentality. They're not going to tell
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: you when they're injured because they don't want to be
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: taken away from their job. So as a SEAL, as
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: the hospital corpsman guy, he had to listen for the
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: things that they weren't telling him. And he said, Ron,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: there's something, man, here that you're not telling me. I
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: don't know what it is, but something's not right. I said, TC,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: I was not training by 8.30. I I slept late today.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: He said, well, in the SEALs, when we didn't do something,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: we had to face a consequence. If we had a
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: goal and we didn't get it, we had to face
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: a consequence. It wasn't a punishment, but it was a consequence.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: I said, well, what's my consequence, TC? He said, that's
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: up to you. He said, personally, I didn't like cold.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: I hated cold. He said, she said, you decide. So
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: I hung up the phone and I thought, I don't
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: like cold either. It's lower than 30 degrees outside right now.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: I got a swimming pool here. So I'm getting my
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: girlfriend on the phone and I said, hey, I'm getting
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: ready to swim around this pool for a minute or whatever. Uh,
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: But if I come back in a minute, could you
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: send the paramedics to my place? So I jump in
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: the water. I've never felt water that cold. I thought, oh,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: when I jump in the water, I'm going to get
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: used to it, and this is going to feel good.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: That never happened. It was cold. It was like jumping
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: in a glass of iced tea. And I was, I
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: don't know, it was less than 30 degrees outside. And
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: I swam around. I got out of that water. But
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: I tell you what. When I walked into that USA
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: Memory Championship, I knew I could trust myself. I knew
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: that if I didn't do something I said I was
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: gonna do, I'd face a consequence, I'd wipe the slate clean,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: and it was no longer in the back of my mind.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: There was no doubt in the back of my mind.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: I wasn't gonna be sitting up there on stage, getting
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: ready to memorize a deck of cards, and think, oh,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: who am I to be the USA Memory Champion? I
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: can't even get up at 8.30. Yeah, I didn't get
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: up at 8.30, but I faced a consequence thanks to
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: my Navy SEAL coach, and it gave me a clear conscience.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: One other short story on him, one day I didn't
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: wanna train. I said, TC, I'm not training today, I'm sick.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: He said, oh, wonderful, this is great. I said, why
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: is this great? I'm sick. He said, well, if the
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: USA Memory Championship happens, are you not gonna compete because
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: you're sick? I'm like, no, I would compete then, but
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna train when I'm sick. He said, no, Ron,
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: this is the perfect, this is a gift from God.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: This is a gift from God. You are gonna be
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: able to train and see what it's like to compete
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: when you're not your best. Well, in 2009, I walked
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: into that tournament. My belief in myself was so strong
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: because of this training. I walked up to the trophy,
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: and I said it to myself. It wasn't to intimidate
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: anybody else. It was just for me. I walked over
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: to the trophy, and I said, you're going home with me.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: And I knew it. I just knew it. People were
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: walking up to me, and all the competitors, they're trying
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: to size each other up. They're like, hey, how was
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: your training on cards? How was your training on numbers?
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: And I would answer them, but they never once noticed.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: I didn't ask them, how's your training going? Because I
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: didn't care. I just knew I hit my numbers. I'm
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: going to win. That year, I set the record for
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: the fastest to memorize a deck of cards, a minute
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: and 27 seconds. I set the record for memorizing a
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: 167-digit number in five minutes, and I became the USA
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: Memory Champion. How do you, I mean, so hold on.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: Just walk me through that strategy with the deck and
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: the number. How do you do it?
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: So it's the same way. Really, it's the same way.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: The first thing that you want to do if you
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: want to remember anything, you want to memorize anything, there
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: are a couple different techniques. The primary technique that I
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: would recommend to anybody, whether it's a deck of cards,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: a speech, a student wants to remember, get better grades,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: create yourself a mind palace for you. This room is
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: a mind palace for me. There's a picture back here
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: behind my head. That's my number one location in this room.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: This chair is number two. The floor right here is
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: number three. I don't know what type of weapon that is.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: What is that weapon?
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: Which one?
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: You got quite a bit right there. The one next
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: to the belt.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: That is a Sig Sauer MPX nine millimeter suppressed.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: Nice. That's my number four location. This flag is five.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: That flag is six. These lights are seven. The cigars
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: are eight. That glass of alcohol up there is nine.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: That shelf with that on it is nine. 10 is
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 2: this picture with the cross. 11 is this picture of you.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: 12 is the top of your head. You want to
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: know something crazy, Sean? About the top of my head?
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: You're braver than me. That's the direction I need to
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: go right now. I'm just holding out hope like the
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: people don't notice yet, but everybody notices. But that is
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: my number 12 location. Here's something crazy. This was so powerful.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: I got goosebumps when I realized this. So to map
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: out this room, to make this room right here a
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: mind palace, which believe it or not, I'm answering your
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: question on a deck of cards. But when I made
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: this room a mind palace, I wanted to get pictures
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: of the room. Well, the only way I could do
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: that was YouTube, right? So I grabbed, it was with
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: your interview with Joe Kent. I grabbed a screenshot of
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: Joe sitting in this chair. So I got this chair
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: and I got that. I grabbed a screenshot of this
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: for those, right? And then I grabbed a screenshot of
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: you for you and what's behind you. All I was
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: looking for in that entire interview was a picture of
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: a shot of this angle with your eyes open. I
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: didn't want to get my screenshot of you going like
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: that or something like that, right? So I did not
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: plan it at all. It wasn't planned at all. I
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: saw a picture of you with your eyes open and
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: I screenshotted it and I put it in my Mind
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: Palace PowerPoint. And then when I attached the final 13
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: names to Abbey Gate, I attached them to this room.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: Staff Sergeant Ryan Nass, Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, Corporal Humbert Sanchez,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: and then Sergeant Nicole Gee, Sergeant Johnny Rosario, Corporal Davin Page,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: Staff Sergeant Darren Hoover, Corporal Hunter Lopez, Lance Corporal Jared Schmidt,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: Lance Corporal Riley McCollum, Lance Corporal David Espinoza, top of
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: your head, Lance Corporal Kareem Nakoo, The screenshot that I
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 2: caught of you that was not planned, Sean, this was
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: totally unplanned, was a shot of you going like that.
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: And I attached HM3 Maxton Soviet to you, to your fingers. Well,
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: it didn't hit me till later. This is the peace sign, man.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: This is the peace sign. And the whole reason I
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: did the Afghanistan wall is to make us cautious to
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: go to war. So that was powerful for me. This
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: is a mind palace. That's how I memorized the names. Now,
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: I'll transition a little bit to a deck of cards.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: Let me tell you the most simple way to memorize
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: a deck of cards. There's a little bit more advanced way.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: The most simple way is this. You map out a room.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: Then you have a picture for every card. So for me,
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: the king of hearts is my mom. Why not the
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: queen of hearts? Because in my memory system, this is
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: the way it worked out. King of hearts is my mom.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: Ace of Spades is Drew Carey, right? Let's switch this
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: to you, not me. Think of somebody that you love
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: a lot. A man, a woman, whoever. And tell me.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not... Who is it? Tell you? Yeah, I'm not...
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: I cannot do what that Oz guy did. You know
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: what I'm saying? My daughter. Perfect. And.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: Let's make her the queen of hearts. What does your
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: daughter like to do? What's one thing she likes to do?
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: Terrorize people. Terrorize people. Where does she like to do this?
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: Everywhere.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: Everywhere. So your daughter terrorizing people is the queen of hearts. Now,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: give me a name of somebody that you know that
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: you worked with in the military, just first name, military,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: or your job here, or however you want to do it.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: You can even make up a name. Okay. And what
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 2: is that? Eddie. Eddie. Eddie Penny? Yep. Okay. I'm not
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: the mentalist, but I know I got a story about him.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: Eddie Penny, let's make him, I always like to make
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: spades people that I've worked with. Let's make him the
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: King of Spades. So Eddie Penny, the King of Spades,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: maybe he's got his weapon, right? Your daughter, terrorizing. Eddie
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: Penny with his weapon. King of spades. One more. Let's
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: think of a singer. A man or a woman singer famous.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: Who can you think of?
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: Mick Jagger.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: Mick Jagger. So the number three, if you put it
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: like this, it looks like an M, right? So the
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: three for me is always an M. So let's make
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: Mick Jagger the three of clubs because you hear his
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: songs in dance clubs, right? We'll stop there. So now...
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: You're at the table and you're memorizing a deck of cards.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: You think back to this room. First card gets played.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: And that first card gets played is the King of Spades.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: That's Eddie. Boom. You attach it on your number one location.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: You see Eddie shooting up that picture right there. The
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: next card that gets played is the Queen of Hearts.
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 2: That's your daughter. Now your daughter's standing in this chair
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: and she's terrorizing and she's going crazy right here. And
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: then the next card that gets played is the Three
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: of Clubs, Mick Jagger. So now you imagine Mick Jagger's
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: over here and he's interacting with this right here. Then
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: you set the cards down and you have to recite
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: the cards. You just walk back around the room. Oh yeah,
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: that was... Eddie penny over here. So that's the king
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: of clubs. This was my daughter. So that's the queen
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: of hearts. And that was Mick Jagger. So that's the
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: three clubs. King of spades. King of spades. The memory guy,
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 2: the king of spades back there, but that's, that's the
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: general concept. Okay. Yeah. How about the number?
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: How many digits did you say?
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: 167 digits? Yeah, same concept. Let's do 21's a deck
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: of cards, right? The blackjack table. 25 could be a quarter,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: 25 cents. 55 could be a speed limit sign, right?
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 2: We'll just do those three. Now, the first number you
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: see is 55. So now you've got a speed limit
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: sign that you're imagining here, but you just can't see
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: a speed limit sign. You've got to imagine cars are
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: zooming by, right? Like if you just saw a speed
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: limit sign on this picture back here, that's a real
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: passive picture. Your brain doesn't remember passive pictures. You need
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: action and emotion. That's why every single person listening to
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: this right now, they can tell you where they were
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: on September 11th. They can't tell you where they were
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: on October. Where were you on September 11th? I just
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: told you I was coming out of surgery. Yes, and
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: you know it, that emotion of September 11th, synced it in, right?
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: But you can't tell me where you were October 25th
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: of that year. Yeah, we remember things that have emotion
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: tied to them. So you remember the car accident, but
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: you can't remember when you drove two weeks ago and
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: you got gas in your car, right? So you gotta
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 2: make these stories crazy. Right here, we got a speed
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: limit sign and people are zooming by, that's 55. Right here,
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: you got people at a blackjack table, right? For the
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: number 21 for a deck of cards. So you take
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: the pictures, or you take numbers, you turn them into
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: a picture, and then you attach those pictures around the
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: room in a sequence. And that's essentially it. There's a
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: process of turning numbers into pictures, but that's how you
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: could do it with some very basic pictures.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: Makes sense.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: Kind of. It makes, it's the mind.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: How long did it take you to memorize that 167
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: digit number? Five minutes?
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 2: Five minutes.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: Holy shit. What is that? That's a, so you're coming
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: up with a, what's five, what five times 60 is what?
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: 300? It is.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: So 300 divided by what?
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 2: 167.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: That's less than, so you're coming up with a story
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: less than, a story less than every two seconds.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: That's fucking crazy.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: But kinda, kinda. You're right, you're on the right track there.
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: Based on how I described it to you, yes. Based
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: on what I just said to you is how I
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: did it, yes. But I did it a little bit
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: more of an advanced way. I was memorizing seven digits
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: at a time. So I was seeing a group of
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: seven numbers and I was creating a picture for that
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: seven digit number. So in memory, the more you can
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: compress the data, the faster you can memorize. So let's
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: say you have a picture for every card, right? You know,
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: your daughter's a card, Eddie's a card. If you do
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: that that way and you want to memorize 52 cards,
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: you need 52 pieces of furniture, right? 52 pictures. Well,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: what if you can take a series of three cards
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: And those three cards get played, and that's one pitcher.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: Then you take that one pitcher and you put it
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: on the location back here. Gotcha. So I was using
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: 17 locations when I memorized the deck of cards. When
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: I would do numbers, it was seven numbers per location.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: Okay. Wow. I mean, that's still moving.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: It is, but here's the thing, and I'm an honest man.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: I would be remiss if I did not say My
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: record was one minute and 27 seconds. The current record
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: is 19 seconds. 19 seconds?
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: 19 seconds?
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: I believe it's right around there, around the 20-second mark.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, yeah. It was a world record for
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: a while. Yeah. And my record of 167-digit numbers, there's
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: guys doing 400 digits now at the USA Memory Championship.
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: while my records were impressive for the time, you know,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: they've been beat. And I'm okay with that. I love that.
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: I love that. I love that the sport's evolving. And yes,
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: I call it a sport, right? Nerds got to have
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: a sport too. But I love that the sport is evolving.
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 2: I love seeing these guys do things that I was
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: never able to achieve in memory. And I think it's fantastic.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: What do these people say out on the street? I mean,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: your Instagram is just, full of going up to what
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: appear to be random strangers, you know, and just going, hey,
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: do you want to memorize the Bill of Rights? If
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: you don't, I'll give you 50 bucks.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: You know, hey, do you want to memorize the Ten Commandments?
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: Do you want to memorize whatever it is? I mean,
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: what are these people like? They look a little apprehensive,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: but what do they say after it's over?
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 2: They're amazed. They're amazed. So the funny thing about that,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: or maybe interesting thing, I don't know. You and everybody
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: else will be the verdict if it's interesting or not.
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: But the way that evolved. So this is 11 months ago.
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: 11 months ago. I had 13,000 followers on Instagram. I'm
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: about to- 11 months ago? 13,000. I'll cross 1.8 million
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: sometime very soon. I had- A business coach. He's not
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: a social media guy. He's just a business coach, right?
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: Andy Elliott. And I sat down with him and he said,
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: I said, Ron, tell me about your business. I told him.
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: He said, I got an idea. I got an idea.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: Get yourself a camera and go out there and talk
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: to people and walk up to them. And do these
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 2: memory things. I'm like, ah, I really don't want to
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: do this. It's kind of, you know, it's kind of
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable approaching strangers, but whatever. He gave me this idea.
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: Let me test run it. So I would walk up
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: and I would say, excuse me, sir. And it really
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: is 99.9% are people I've never met before. There is
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: 1% that I do know. And for those, we make
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: it real. I say, this is whoever. I'm going to
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: teach him something today. but I'll walk up to these
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: people and I'll say, excuse me, sir, if I could
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 2: teach you how to memorize the Bill of Rights, the Presidents,
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: the Ten Commandments, whatever, really fast, I'll give you 50 bucks.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: And what I've learned is that even offering people 50 bucks,
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: 50% of the people say no, and almost everybody over
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: 40 says no. Right? But, you know, some people have commented, Ron,
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 2: you're just picking young people. Well, they're the ones who
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 2: are gonna say yes to social media. But I go
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: up to them and I will say, I can teach
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: you this. And I think the reason that it caught
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 2: on so well is maybe the $ 50 gamifies it a
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: little bit and people are curious if they're gonna get that.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: And spoiler alert, I give everybody the $ 50 regardless of
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: what happens. I appreciate their time, right? But as I'm
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 2: teaching them, I think what drew it to, what drew
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: people to it was, They're watching somebody learn something on
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: the spot, somebody who doesn't think that they're smart. The
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: viewer's learning something on the spot and everybody wins. And
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: that person walks away three minutes later like, I can't
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: believe I just memorized the 10 commandments or I just
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 2: memorized the first 10 presidents. And it's just a real
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: positive thing and I love doing it.
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: You got one for me?
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: Sure. You gonna teach me how to do one? Yes, sir.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: All right, let's do it.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be fucking embarrassed as shit if I
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: don't get this, by the way.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: No, you're not. Everybody says that. Everybody says that. And
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: everybody gets it. So you want to do the Ten Commandments?
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: I already know them.
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, nice. I'm assuming you know the Bill of Rights.
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's do that.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: All of it.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: Let's do that. Let's use our fingers. So first one.
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: Imagine this is a microphone.
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: Actually, I know the majority of it. You know the
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: majority of it. Yeah, let's do something else.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: Okay. I don't want to cheat. Okay. How about this
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: one's a little bit more involved, but how about we
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: do the Beatitudes, Matthew chapter 5?
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: Okay. So there's a picture back here behind me.
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of pictures back there behind you.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: The one, the painting? Or are you just telling me
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: to pick one?
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: You pick one. Okay. So this is the Beatitudes, comes
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: from the Sermon on the Mount. Okay, there it is.
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: kingdom of heaven. On this picture behind me, I want
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: you to imagine the frame is the kingdom of heaven.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: It's gold, right? It's the kingdom of heaven. And I
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: want you to imagine a spirit, like a ghost, is
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: just pouring down. So we're not going to memorize the
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: blessed are they, just the main thing. Poor in spirit,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: kingdom of heaven. So what's on the back there?
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: The kingdom of heaven.
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: Blessed are the poor in spirit.
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: Blessed are the poor in spirit.
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 2: Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Theirs is the kingdom
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: of heaven. The next one is blessed those who mourn
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: for that shall be comforted. We're only going to think
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: the two things. People who mourn are comforted. Imagine me
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: with tears rolling down my face. I'm mourning and I
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: got a comforter around me. Blessed are those who mourn.
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 2: They should be comforted. So which one is this? Okay.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: Blessed are those who mourn in the kingdom of heaven.
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: Blessed are those who mourn because they shall be comforted. Comforted.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: Blessed are the poor in. back here on this frame,
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: we had a spirit pouring down. Blessed are the poor
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: in spirit, the frame, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: Blessed are those who mourn, right here, for theirs, blessed
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: for they shall be comforted. I want you to look
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 2: down here at my shoes and I'm telling you a
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: story and I'm saying, these are my shoes, this is me.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 2: The word is meek. So what are my shoes gonna represent? Meek.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 2: And they inherit the earth. So we're on the ground, earth.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: So the meek will inherit what? The earth. Now let's
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: just review. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 2: is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed those who mourn, for
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 2: they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for theirs
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: they shall inherit the earth. So now we go to,
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: let's go to this right up here. Blessed are those
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 2: who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: Imagine Somebody is hungering and thirsting and they want something
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 2: to eat and drink. So over there, they're eating, they're drinking,
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: they're being filled. Hungry and thirsting, being filled. The phrase
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: is this, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: righteousness for they shall be filled. So what, blessed are
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 2: those who what?
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: Hunger and righteousness for they shall be filled.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: Perfect. We'll do one more and then we'll review and
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: leave it on. There's only two more. Blessed are the
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: merciful for they shall be shown mercy. So over here
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: on these UFC gloves, I want you to imagine whose
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: gloves are those?
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: These ones? Yeah. Andrei Ravlosky's.
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: He is showing mercy on somebody. He's got those gloves,
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 2: but he's showing mercy. Blessed are the merciful, for they
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: shall be shown mercy. So what is that one?
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: Blessed are the merciful, so they shall be shown mercy.
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: Let's review real quick. Blessed are the poor in spirit,
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 2: for theirs is the? Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: who mourn, for they shall be?
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: Comforted.
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 2: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit? The earth.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 2: they shall be.
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: Filled.
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 2: Filled. They're filling their stomachs up. Blessed are the merciful,
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 2: the gloves, for they shall be shown mercy. And then
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: this last one, or there's two more. Blessed are the
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: pure in heart, for they shall see God. I want
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: you to see this guy right here. looking out of
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: the airplane, and regardless of what people say about him,
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 2: I think he has a pure heart. Blessed are the,
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: and I'm making a joke there. Of course you do.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 2: You're looking out of that window and you're seeing God.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: The pure in heart shall what?
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: See in God.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: See God. One last one and you got this, Sean,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: I promise you. I'm going to say it with you.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: Blessed are those, this last one is the American flag.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: The frame is the kingdom of heaven, just like the
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 2: frame was the kingdom of heaven over here, right?
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 2: I want you to imagine that somebody is being persecuted
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 2: for being an American over there. Mm-hmm. Blessed are those
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 2: who are persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: So blessed are those who are persecuted. Think of the frame,
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: and what does the frame tell us?
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: They'll enter the kingdom of heaven. Perfect.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say all these with you, and you're done.
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: That's it. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: is the... Think of the frame. What's that? The frame
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: is telling us the kingdom of heaven. So back here
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 2: on this. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 2: is the.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: Kingdom of heaven.
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be... Comforted.
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: Blessed are meek, for they shall inherit the.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: Earth.
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 2: Earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst of righteousness,
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 2: for they shall be... Filled. Filled. Blessed are the... The gloves,
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 2: blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall. You're
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: looking out that window of the helicopter.
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: See God.
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 2: See God. Blessed are those who are persecuted. Theirs is
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 2: the kingdom of heaven. Booyah, baby. So, now, Sean, that
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: was a little bit more involved than my average video
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 2: on the street. It's more just one word. you know,
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: freedom of speech, the right to bear arms. But you may,
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: right now you may be saying to yourself, Ron, I
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 2: don't got it perfect. I don't got it perfect. You
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 2: got it in your brain though. So now this afternoon,
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: you review it. You review it again. You review it tonight.
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 2: You review it tomorrow. Then you got it perfect.
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: Kingdom of heaven comforted, filled.
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: Mercy.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: See God. Kingdom of heaven. Is that all of them?
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 2: Did you say inherit the earth?
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: Inherit the earth.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: That's awesome, man. That's awesome. And that's how memory works.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: You take what you want to remember and you visualize
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 2: it around a room. You see it interacting with that location.
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 2: If what's important to you is scripture and your faith,
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 2: you could have, this is called a mind palace. You
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: could map out a mind palace for your faith. If
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: it is, you want it to be, oh, look at this,
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 2: the seal tried it. How great is that on this Bible?
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 2: You want to give a business speech, you map out
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 2: your business speech and you visualize it around a room.
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: This system was developed, as the legend goes, 2,500 years
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: ago by a man named Simonides. The legend's not true,
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 2: but it's a story that goes back 2,500 years. And
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: Roman orators 2,000 years ago, this is true. Roman orators
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: would use this system to give their speeches on the
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 2: floor of the Roman Senate. They would take the first
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 2: thing they want to say and put there, the second
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: thing here, the third thing here, the fourth thing here.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: Legend has it is that the saying in the first place,
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 2: in the second place, in the third place, it originates
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 2: from this system. The speakers would say in the first place,
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: in the second place. Is that true or not? I
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: don't know, but it fits the system.
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: I do want to memorize scripture.
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 2: That's one thing.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: I'm new at this. Actually, I guess I'm not that
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: new anymore. It's been about two years. But we're in
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: the Bible Belt here in Tennessee, and everybody has scripture
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: memorized except me.
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: So how do you, I mean, where do you start?
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: I know I saw on your website you have this course,
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: the jujitsu, a bunch of stuff. How do you, where
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: do you start with this? Is it specific scriptures or
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: is it? It teaches you to memorize whatever you want
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: to memorize.
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 2: It's whatever you want to memorize. A lot of people
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 2: want to memorize scripture word for word. A lot of people,
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 2: which that's the primary desire. There is others, though. So
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 2: here's a crazy story. I lost my faith a little
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: bit in the 2010 to 2020, that time frame. And
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: my mom, I went up, she was a very religious lady.
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 2: And I want to honor her legacy. I don't think
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: she would mind me telling this story. She's passed. She
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 2: said she was a hoarder and I wanted to help
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 2: her clean. It was a huge heartache that I had
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 2: that she lived like that. And one day, and I'm
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 2: answering your question on scripture memory, believe it or not.
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 2: One day I said, okay, this is the day. I'm
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: going to go over there and I'm going to talk
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 2: to her about this house. And I showed up and
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 2: she didn't answer the door. And I hadn't been in
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 2: her house in the last 10 years or in that
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 2: time frame, 10 years. I hadn't been in her house
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 2: four or five times. The stench was overwhelming. It broke
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 2: my heart. There was nowhere to sit down, even if
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: it smells like flowers in there. There was one chair
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 2: and she slept in that chair. There was nowhere to
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 2: sit down. Stuff was stacked in the roof. I knocked
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: on the door and she didn't answer. And so I said,
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 2: I gotta go in. I opened the door and I
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 2: walked in the kitchen. I didn't see her, but I
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 2: saw a possum. A possum sitting on the counter eating
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: a bowl of soup. And he just looked at me
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 2: and he was like, come on in, dude. I got
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 2: this bowl of soup. You want any? And I was
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: like a possum. And I got so mad. The anger just...
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 2: swelled up in my heart. Not at my mom, but
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 2: that she was living like this. And I went in
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 2: the backyard and I found her. I said, mom, there's
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 2: a possum in your house. And she said, no, there's not.
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 2: I said, yes, there is. She said, show me. So
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: we went in the house and I said, here's right there.
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 2: She said, no, are you kidding me? I don't, I
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 2: don't believe that. I said, mom, I've had it. I've
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 2: had it. You're my mom. This breaks my heart. I
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: can't stand this anymore. I'm hiring a professional hoarding clue
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 2: and we're going to clean your house. Well, I was
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 2: mad though. And Sean, I said something that day that
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 2: I'll regret for the rest of my life. It I
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 2: wanted to shock my mom because she wasn't as mad
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: as I was. She wasn't as heartbroken as I was,
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: but she's a woman of faith. So I said, mom,
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 2: there's no God. There's no God. God would not let
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: you live like this. And I saw the look on
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: her face. I got the reaction, but I should not
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: have said it. And she, we had a falling out
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: because of that. Not much. My mom loved me. The
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: falling out didn't last but more than a couple hours.
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 2: But she would text me, Ronnie, I'm going to be
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 2: praying for you to get back to God. Ronnie, I'm
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: praying for you to get your faith back in God.
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: I know you had it at one point. And I said, mom,
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 2: I don't care about any of that. I just want
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: your house clean. So August the 10th, I had a
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 2: professional hoarding crew. This was just a couple of weeks
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 2: after that. They showed up, they were behind me. I
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 2: knocked on the door and she didn't answer. And I
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 2: went to the window, looked through the window and she
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 2: was on the floor. And I was through that window
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 2: as fast as I could. And I got down there,
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 2: the day that I had determined was gonna be the
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: day we were gonna change my mom's life, I found
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 2: her dad on the floor. And I said, mom, get up,
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 2: get up, get up. And during that day, I looked
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: at her refrigerator. I'd been in the house two weeks prior.
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 2: There was a picture that was on the refrigerator that
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 2: wasn't on there two weeks prior. And it was a
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 2: picture of me with Proverbs 22, six. Train up a
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 2: child in the way of the Lord, and when he
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 2: is older, he will not depart from it. I knew
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 2: the scripture because she had trained me that way. I
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 2: knew she had been praying for me to get my
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 2: faith back in God. And after that happened, there was
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: just a series of events that was undeniable that I saw, okay, Ron,
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: you're not the smartest guy in the world. You haven't
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 2: figured out. There's no God. There's some stuff out here
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 2: that you don't know about. So that's when I started
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: opening up the Bible again, and that's when I started praying.
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 2: And during that time, I developed a course called the
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 2: 1189 Bible Memory Course. There's 1189 chapters in the Bible, 1189.
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 2: And by the way, I've never done the course, but
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: I developed this course that somebody could say, what's in
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 2: Exodus chapter 20, the 10 commandments? What's in Numbers chapter nine?
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 2: The Israelites fall in the cloud of smoke and fire
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 2: through the desert. I did it as a tribute to
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 2: my mom, just to get into the Bible. I created
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 2: this course. I didn't necessarily memorize it. So I don't necessarily,
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: but I just created it for other people. I put
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 2: it up there on my website. And one day I
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 2: was getting sales on my website. I'm like, what in
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 2: the world is going on? People are buying this 1189
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: course and I don't even know what's going on. A
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: guy had done it. He had created a mind palace
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 2: with 1189 locations. And he knows what's in every single
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 2: chapter of the Bible now. And he did some podcast and, um,
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 2: And that was my entry into faith. Do you mind
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 2: if I tell you what Psalms chapter 1 says about
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 2: memorizing scripture? Psalm chapter 1 says, Blessed is the man
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 2: who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 2: stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 2: seat of the scoffers. But his delight is in the
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 2: law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 2: day and night. He will be like a tree planted
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 2: by streams of water, who in its season yields much fruit,
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 2: and whose leaf does not wither. And whatever he does,
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 2: he prospers, but not so the wicked. They are like
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 2: the chaff that the wind blows away. Neither will sinners
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 2: stand in judgment or the wicked in the assembly of
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 2: the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: In that scripture, in Psalms chapter one, right in the
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 2: middle of it, it says that the person who meditates
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 2: on scripture will prosper in whatever they do. And it
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 2: is when Jesus was tempted He quoted scripture, writing the
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 2: word of God in your heart, whatever your faith is,
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 2: writing whatever is important to your faith on the tablet
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: of your heart. It gives you comfort in times of trouble.
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 2: When you're talking to someone who is going through a
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 2: difficult time, maybe you're able to say to them, and
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 2: I know there's AI, I know there's Google, I know
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 2: there's all that, but there's something different between reading something
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: on Google or AI telling you something and having it
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 2: written on your heart, having it written on the tablet
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 2: to your mind. And so I... If you want to
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 2: memorize scripture, map out a mind palace and visualize the
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 2: scripture around your home. Roger that.
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: Man, thank you for sharing that, Ron.
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir. Wow. You want to take a break? Sure.
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: All right, sure.
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 2: Let's take a break.
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: Thank you. We've talked before about how Stanley's basically family
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: in our house. And once you start thinking about it
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: that way, you start paying a lot more attention to
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: what you're actually feeding your dog. That's one of the
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: reasons we started using Sundays for Dogs. Sundays is different
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: because it starts with over 80% all natural meat and
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: then uses ingredients like kale, ginger, and blueberries. And instead
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: of blasting it with high heat like traditional kibble, they
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: gently air dry it. So it actually looks like real food. Honestly,
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: It looks more like jerky than dog food. And Stanley,
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: he absolutely loves it. The second he hears the bag open,
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: he's right there. What do you think, Stanley? And one
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: thing I really like is there's no prep involved. No fridge,
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: no freezer, no mess. You just scoop it and serve it.
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: It was also founded by a veterinarian, Dr. Torrey Waxman,
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: and you can tell the whole brand was built around
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: giving dogs better quality nutrition without making it complicated for owners.
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to SundaysForDogs.com
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: slash SRS50 and get 50% off your first order, or
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: you can use SRS50 at checkout. That's 50% off your
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: first order at SundaysForDogs.com slash SRS50. SundaysForDogs.com slash SRS50 or
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: use code SRS50 at checkout. All right, Rob, we're back
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: from the break. I want to move into how memory
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: works and how you can train it. Well, first of all,
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 1: you've had studies on you.
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 2: Was it UT?
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 1: Did an MRI on your brain? People are trying to
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: figure out how the hell you're able to do all
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: this stuff. Yes, I have had... You say you weren't
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: born with it.
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 2: It's no special gift. I have no special gift. I
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: have no special ability that anybody doesn't have. I'm not
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 2: a dumb guy, but I have no... Growing up, they
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: weren't saying, oh, that guy's going to be a memory
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 2: champion one day. My... Amy, who's worked with me for
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 2: 10 years, you know, I'm always telling her, I'm like,
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 2: I sit near today. I said, Amy, remind me to,
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 2: to pay that bill on Monday. Amy, remind me to
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 2: call that person. And she texts me throughout the day.
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 2: You gotta, you gotta zoom call at, in, in 60 minutes.
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 2: And I tell you, I tell you what, 50% of
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 2: the time, my reply is, Oh, thank you. I had
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 2: no idea. What do you mean? You had no idea.
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 2: You're the one that scheduled it or, Oh my gosh,
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 2: I forgot about that. Um, So my memory is very
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 2: average or natural. Now, one of the, and I'll share
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 2: with you exactly how, the best advice I could on
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 2: how to train it, but the UT study. So there
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 2: was a, Stan Lee, right? He was the inventor of Spider-Man,
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 2: the Incredible Hulk, and all that. You know, he's the
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 2: comic book drawer. He had a TV show in 2010
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 2: called Stanley's Superhumans, where he wanted to get people that
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 2: he said were real life superheroes, right? And they selected
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 2: me as one of Stanley's Superhumans. So when I met
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 2: with the producers, I said, I get what you're saying,
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 2: Stanley's Superhumans, but there's really nothing unique about my memory.
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 2: I've learned a system. Anybody can do this. you're going
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 2: to see me do some crazy things here on the show,
• 2:16:48
  Speaker 2: but believe me, I know the name of the show
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 2: is Superhumans, but I'm just a normal guy. And the
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 2: producers said, well, that's not really the premise of our show.
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 2: So we're going to delete everything you just said. Now
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 2: let's go to University of Texas. So we go to
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 2: the University of Texas. They put me in an MRI
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 2: tube and that's You know, before they put you in
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 2: an MRI tube, before they put you in, they asked
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 2: you if you're claustrophobic. And I said, no. Now I
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 2: know the proper way to answer that question.
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: You found out, huh?
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 2: I found out. So I'm in there, you know, I'm like,
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 2: oh my gosh. I'm like, if it had not been
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 2: the History Channel Stanley Superhumans, I would have said, get
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 2: me out of here. Matter of fact, I've got, I
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 2: had a pain in my side over here last year,
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 2: and I'm like... Doc, can you just do some blood tests?
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 2: I'm like, is there anything bad? He's like, yeah, no,
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 2: it's nothing bad, but we still don't know. I said,
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 2: I'm going to just be, I'm going to say I'm okay.
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 2: I'm not getting in that MRI tube. That's how much
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 2: I hated it. But I get in that MRI tube
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 2: and I'm laying on my back and they have these
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 2: series of words flashing up on the screen that they
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 2: want me to memorize. And it was like, I think
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 2: it was like word pairs. It was It was like
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 2: this word with this word, this word with this word,
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 2: this word with this word. And they were scanning my
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 2: brain as I was memorizing. Then they re-give you the
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 2: information and you got to click if it's, is this right?
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 2: Is this the right order? Was that word pair with
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 2: that word? If you find any mistakes, you hit a buzzer, right? No,
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 2: that's not right. Or maybe, see the memory guy, if
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 2: I'm not memorized, maybe it was the other way. Maybe
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: it was right, I hit the buzzer. Just proves to
• 2:18:31
  Speaker 2: you I have a very average memory. But when I'm
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 2: using that system, So I get out of the MRI
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: tube and the guys running it, they said, you got
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 2: a perfect score. And the host of the show, not
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 2: Stan Lee, but he had another guy who was actually
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 2: the host, Daniel Brandon Smith. Daniel Brandon Smith asked the
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 2: MRI guy, he said, how often do you see a
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 2: perfect score? And the scientist said, I've been doing this
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 2: 20 years. This is the first perfect score. And So
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 2: on the show, it was perfect for the show, right?
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 2: Ron is a superhuman memory. And the MRI guy said
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 2: 35% more of my brain was lit up, was activated
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 2: when I was memorizing than they see in the average person.
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 2: Which also, Ron has some superhuman memory, but it wasn't.
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 2: So the reason 35% more of my brain was lit
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 2: up than the average person when they're memorizing You're claustrophobic.
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 2: That was part of it. I'm like, get me out
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 2: of here. And you're freaking the fuck out. They were
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 2: seeing the panic in my brain, right? I never thought
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 2: of that. That probably could have been part of it. Yeah.
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 2: We don't know why there's so much fear. Right. This
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 2: is- This is memorization. Yeah, they all thought it was
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 2: the memory guy. Uh, it was a very, yeah. What
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 2: about you? You, and I'm going to finish this story,
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 2: but as a SEAL, did you have, did you experience
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 2: any claustrophobia?
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: No.
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 2: No? No. Yeah.
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: I don't have it. My dad has it really bad.
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't bother me for whatever reason.
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 2: Well, uh, that's why you're able to do what you do.
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 2: And us normal guys, uh, we salute you. Um, uh, and, and, uh,
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 2: they pulled me out of that MRI tube and they said,
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 2: his 35% more of his brain is lit up than
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 2: the average person. And the reason that that is lit
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 2: up is I was using the mind palace. I was
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 2: visualizing my memories. What they were seeing on the activation
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 2: of my brain is they were seeing me walk around
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 2: my house and see this piece of furniture, see that
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 2: piece of furniture, see that word turned into a picture.
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 2: So the part of my brain in the prefrontal cortex
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 2: was lighting up because I was seeing these images. I
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 2: was seeing my memories. And it does activate more of
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 2: your brain, but it also works. They took me to
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 2: Home Depot after that, and they got a shopping cart.
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 2: And we walked around Home Depot for two hours. And
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 2: for two hours, Daniel Browning Smith pulled a hammer or
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 2: a tool off of the shelf, and I only got
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 2: to see it once. He showed me the hammer, and
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 2: I saw the price, and I memorized it. He put
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 2: it in the shopping cart. He pulled a saw off
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 2: a shelf. I saw the price. I memorized it. He
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 2: put it in the cart. For two hours, we walked around.
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 2: He took stuff off the shelf. He showed it to me.
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 2: He put it in the shopping cart. After two hours,
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 2: we go to the cash register, and I turned my
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 2: back to the cash register. And the screen lit up
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 2: with the price when they scanned it. So they would
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 2: scan it. The price would light up. They would scan
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 2: it and I would say the price out loud that
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 2: I remembered it to be. And I scan this whole
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 2: shopping cart full of stuff. And when they get all
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 2: the way done, I'm expecting the high fives. I'm expecting,
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 2: that was awesome, man. You rock. How did you do that?
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 2: You're superhuman. That's what they've been telling me all day anyways.
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 2: So I was expecting this. And instead, the manager of
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 2: the store, the producer, the TV guys, they all huddle up.
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 2: And they break the huddle like they're coming back to
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 2: the line of scrimmage and they walk up to me
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 2: and they said, Ron, you did really good, but you
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: missed three. And I said, I didn't miss any. The
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 2: computer missed three. And the manager was there. He was like, dude, no,
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 2: you missed three. I said, can we do this one
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 2: more time? And every time you say I'm wrong, can
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 2: we do a price check? And they said, okay. So
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 2: we did it again. They said I was wrong on one.
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 2: I said, I want a price check. we did a
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 2: price check and all three times the computer was wrong.
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 2: Now in fairness, the computer didn't make a mistake. It
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 2: was the person who typed it in originally, but it
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 2: worked out perfect for the show. And they only showed
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 2: two of the price checks, but they saved one of
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 2: them for the very last, right? So it appeared that
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 2: I got all of them right. And then the last one,
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 2: was the final price tag, and I got it right.
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 2: Cliff Notes version, and how did you do that, Ron?
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 2: How did you do that? If there's nothing special about
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 2: your brain, how in the world did you memorize a
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 2: shopping cart full of products? It's the same concept of
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 2: the Mind Palace, but the Mind Palace necessarily wouldn't help
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 2: me because I didn't necessarily need to memorize it in
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 2: some certain order. What I just needed to know was
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 2: this price, this hammer was, let's just say, $ 21 to
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 2: make it simple. That's all I needed to know. If
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 2: you want to remember a name, so when you want
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 2: to remember a name, you pick out a distinctive feature
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 2: on their face. You meet a guy with, his name
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 2: is Brian, and Brian has really big ears. So you're
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 2: looking at this guy, you're walking towards him, and you're thinking,
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 2: big ears, big ears, big ears. Hey, my name's Ron.
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 2: And he says, my name is Brian. Instantly, I now
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 2: imagine a brain going out of his ears, because that's
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 2: his distinctive feature, right? Brian. A hammer works the same way.
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 2: He pulls the hammer off the shelf I say, what's
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 2: the distinctive feature? The distinctive feature is that yellow band, whatever,
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 2: that's going around the handle right there. That's my distinctive feature.
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm gonna zone in on. Then he says,
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 2: it's $ 21, deck of cards. Boom, that yellow band is
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 2: the yellow lights at a casino and the casino is
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 2: lighting up and there's a deck of card playing on that. Boom,
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 2: he throws it in the shopping cart. As we walk,
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 2: I'm reviewing, I'm thinking yellow band on that hammer, that's
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 2: the neon lights, the yellow lights at a casino. And
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 2: I'm just reviewing. He gets the next one, the saw.
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 2: That saw had some handle that I zoned in on.
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 2: And let's say that saw was $ 25. I imagine quarters,
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 2: 25 cents, right? On the handle. Boom, he throws it in.
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 2: And as we're going to the next items, I'm constantly reviewing.
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 2: Names is the same way. So if you're in a
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 2: room full of people and you want to remember people's names,
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 2: just like a hammer or just like a saw, As
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 2: these people are walking towards you, zone in on them
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 2: and say, what is unique about this guy? What stands
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 2: out to me about this guy? He has, it's his
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 2: ears or it's his chin or it's his nose or
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 2: it's his eyebrows or his beard. And so as you're
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 2: walking towards him, you're zoning in on these features. Then
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 2: he says his name, his name is Steve. You imagine
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 2: a stove on his distinctive feature, right? So you're taking
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 2: the name, creating a picture, attaching it to a distinctive feature.
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 2: To button up this point here, when they pulled the
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 2: hammer out of the shopping cart and scanned it, the
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 2: whole time I'm looking, yellow band on that hammer. That's Vegas.
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 2: Deck of cards, baby. 21. $ 21. Boop. $ 21. The guy
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 2: in another scenario, you're at a business conference. The guy
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 2: you just met leaves the room and then he walks
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 2: in 30 minutes later. He's walking towards you. Big ears,
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 2: big ears. What was on his ears? What was on
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 2: his ears? A brain. Brian, good to see you again.
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 2: It's good for the short term, right? If I went
• 2:26:10
  Speaker 2: back to Home Depot today, that was 17 years ago,
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 2: what's the price of that hammer? I have no idea
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 2: because I didn't review. The conference that I was at
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 2: two years ago when I met a guy named Brian,
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 2: if I saw Brian today, I'm not going to know
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 2: his name. I didn't review. So this is the process
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 2: of memory, taking images, seeing them as pictures, and attaching
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 2: them to what you want to recall. But if you
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 2: don't review, you're not going to remember anything long-term. Review
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 2: is the beatitudes. If you want to lock these beatitudes
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 2: in long-term, you're going to have to review them today,
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 2: review them tomorrow, review them in a week, review them again,
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 2: and then get them locked in and get it to
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 2: where it's smooth and it just flows off your tongue.
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 2: But the review is the key to that. It's the
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 2: most overlooked part of memory, in my opinion. Interesting.
• 2:27:01
  Speaker 1: Wow. I was going to ask you, how do you
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 1: remember people's names? Yeah. That's probably the biggest thing that
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: comes to my mind that people would struggle with is
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: name recognition.
• 2:27:12
  Speaker 2: It is. It's important. Dale Carnegie said everybody's favorite topics themselves,
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 2: the sweetest sound of the ear is the sound of
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 2: their own name. Zig Ziglar said people don't care how
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 2: much you know until they first know how much you care.
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 2: When you can remember somebody's name, you show them that
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 2: you care. You show them that they're meaningful. There are
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 2: so many people out there that are having rough times
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 2: in life, and just the measure of respect, remember their name.
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 2: You see them, you call them by their name, and
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 2: it maybe just lights up their day that day. Wow,
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 2: Sean just remembered my name, and I just met him once,
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 2: and he just remembered my name. I feel so special.
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 2: You get so much out of remembering names. The first
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 2: thing you get, you make people feel good. And that's
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 2: enough of a reward. Sometimes it's a great connection, right?
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 2: And it leads to a great friendship or a great
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 2: business deal or whatever. But the first thing is, it
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 2: just makes people feel good. And When you want to
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 2: remember a name, focus in on something on their face
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 2: that stands out. And then here's what's gonna be, here's,
• 2:28:08
  Speaker 2: everybody listen to this right now, the thing that's gonna
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 2: hold them up, the thing that's gonna make them say,
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna do this, this is too much work,
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 2: that this is the thing. They can't, they don't have
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 2: pictures for names. they're gonna meet somebody named Brian, and
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 2: Brian's talking to them, and they're trying to turn the
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 2: name Brian into a picture. And as they're trying to
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 2: turn that name into a picture, they're not listening to
• 2:28:28
  Speaker 2: what Brian's saying. And then as they not listen to
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 2: Brian's sayings, and they're zoned out, and then Brian's like, hey, dude,
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 2: are you listening to me? They're like, no, actually, I'm not.
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to see a human brain going up your
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 2: nose right now. So this is how I would suggest
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 2: everybody practice. When you're at the grocery store, look at
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 2: the name tag. turn the name into a picture. Even
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 2: if you don't talk to her or him, your bank teller,
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 2: turn it into a picture. You see a sign on
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 2: a billboard, turn that name into a picture. Just start
• 2:28:58
  Speaker 2: developing a mental database. And once you decide the picture
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 2: for Brian is a brain, it's always a brain for you,
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 2: whatever it is. In other words, you don't say this
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 2: Brian is a brain and this Brian is my friend
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 2: Brian and it's a brain. But once you have pictures
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 2: for names created, that's what's going to take the most work.
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you this. The first time I spoke for
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 2: a group, I remember I was 19 years old. There
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 2: was five people in the room. I was speaking for free.
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 2: And I only called on three of them. I did
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 2: not think I could memorize all five names. And I
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 2: was there to teach them a memory seminar. So I
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 2: only called on three of them. I'm glad the other
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 2: two at the end didn't test me on their names,
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 2: because I didn't know their names. But I say that
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 2: as a little bit of a measure of hope, right?
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 2: This is my career. Where did I start? I started
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 2: exactly where everybody else is starting right now. I started thinking,
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 2: I can't do this. I'm not good at remembering names.
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 2: But I did one thing that most people don't do.
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 2: I spent the next couple weeks turning names into pictures.
• 2:30:02
  Speaker 2: I spoke at a conference in Canada. decade ago. And
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 2: I walked up to the guy and he said, Ron,
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited you're going to recite everybody's name in
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 2: the audience. I said, Darren, no. I typically do 150
• 2:30:17
  Speaker 2: to 200 names. I've never done more than 200 names.
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 2: And there's over 300 people at this conference. Oh, he goes, no, Ron,
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 2: you got it. You got it, man. I was like,
• 2:30:26
  Speaker 2: I stretched my own imagination. Now, here's the thing that
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 2: I will share. When you're at a meeting like that
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 2: and you need to memorize massive amounts of data and
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 2: looking at their ears and stuff like that, I will
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 2: actually use their clothing. Don't do that in real life,
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 2: because it only works for a meeting, right? But I
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 2: attach stuff to their clothing, I attach stuff to their hats.
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 2: 301 people stood up. I had my girlfriend at the
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 2: time over there, she had a notepad. Every time I
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 2: got a name right, she made a mark. And that's
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 2: my record, 301.
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: Damn, man.
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Memory, faith, and the Bible. Yeah.
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 2: So, you know, I told you I doubted my faith
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 2: a lot, right? I went through a point in my
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 2: 20s where my mom just point blank asked me, are
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 2: you going to be a preacher? Because I was in
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 2: church all the time. I was there on, I led
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 2: a Bible study on Tuesday nights. I went to church
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 2: on Wednesday nights. I was the Saturday night service and
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 2: I was there at the Sunday service. My mom, who
• 2:31:32
  Speaker 2: was a woman of faith, she was happy about that,
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 2: but she was also like, even for her, it was
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 2: a little bit much. She said, Ronnie, are you going
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 2: to be a preacher or something? I said, Mom, I
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 2: don't know. I'm a memory guy. I kind of like
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 2: memory guy, but I just love stuff about the Bible.
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 2: Then I lost my, I drifted away. And part of it,
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 2: I was just, maybe I was just, can I trust it, right? Like,
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 2: how do I know? How do I know these stories
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 2: are true? How do I know? And am I just
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 2: fooling myself or is there some, something here. And over time,
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 2: I think I just sort of went like that. But
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 2: as a memory guy, one of the things that I wondered,
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 2: how can we trust the Bible's true when Jesus died
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 2: in 33 AD and most of the gospels weren't written
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 2: until 20 or 30 years later, right? That's from memory.
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 2: There's not taking notes at the tomb. You know what
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 2: I'm saying? There's a 500-year gap between Abraham and Moses.
• 2:32:40
  Speaker 2: Moses wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the first
• 2:32:44
  Speaker 2: five books of the Bible. At least that's what most
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 2: Christians and Jews believe, that Moses wrote the first five books. Well,
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 2: if there's a 500-year gap between Abraham and Moses, that means...
• 2:32:59
  Speaker 2: what he wrote in Genesis, he didn't live any of that.
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 2: It was a oral tradition, right? So if that's all
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 2: oral tradition, all of Genesis, if there was a 20,
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 2: 30 year gap between Jesus dying and the gospels being written,
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 2: how the modern people would say, memory is not reliable.
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 2: My memory is not good. And when modern people, we
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 2: hear that this, we think memory's unreliable. The ancient people,
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 2: it was so much different. They had these group oral traditions.
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 2: So you think about it, Jesus spoke in parables, right?
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 2: What are parables? Parables are pictures. And that's what I've
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 2: been saying today. Your mind needs to remember a picture.
• 2:33:50
  Speaker 2: And by the way, the parables are easy to remember
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 2: because they're a picture. You know, 2 Timothy 3.16 says,
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 2: all scripture is God-breathed, right? So when I'm saying this,
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you why I believe we can
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 2: trust the reliability of the scripture based from a memory
• 2:34:06
  Speaker 2: guy's perspective, right? Not based from a religious perspective. But
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 2: some people would say, Ron, it's supernatural. Forget all that
• 2:34:13
  Speaker 2: stuff about memory and all that other stuff. It has
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 2: nothing to do with that. It's supernatural. 2 Timothy 3.16 says,
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 2: all scripture is God-breathed. It was written by the breath
• 2:34:22
  Speaker 2: of God through God. moving the hands of humans, right?
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 2: But I'm not discounting the supernatural way the Bible was transmitted,
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 2: but these oral cultures, it's not like we have memory today.
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 2: It was group memory. They would recite it all together
• 2:34:41
  Speaker 2: and they would drill it and they would repeat it.
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 2: They would tell the stories over and over again. If
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 2: somebody in the group would say the story wrong, the
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 2: group would correct them. So these oral traditions was almost
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 2: just as good as writing something down. The way the
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 2: Bible was engineered itself, Proverbs chapter one says, the fear
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 2: of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but the
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 2: very next verse says, fools despise wisdom and discipline. The
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 2: Bible's written like that in a lot of places where
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 2: it'll say a line and then the very next line,
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 2: it's like a contrast. The fear of the Lord is
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 2: the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 2: Those two sentences kind of go together because they're contrasting ideas.
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I explained that the right way
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 2: or not. But the way the Bible's written, the way
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 2: it's engineered, it helps your memory. The 23rd Psalms, it
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 2: makes me lie down on green pastures, laid beside still waters.
• 2:35:40
  Speaker 2: That's imagery. So when these stories were passed down, they
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 2: were passed down with imagery, green pastures, Still waters. Imagery
• 2:35:52
  Speaker 2: cements it in your memory. If you have the faith
• 2:35:54
  Speaker 2: of a mustard seed, you can move a mountain. Imagery.
• 2:35:57
  Speaker 2: The way Jesus spoke was imagery. And I don't know why.
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 2: I'm speaking from a memory perspective, not a religious perspective here.
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 2: But from a memory perspective, I've got to think if
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 2: Jesus is who he says he was, he wants these
• 2:36:11
  Speaker 2: stories to be passed down. He knows we're nothing but
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 2: we're humans, human memory. I've got to tell these stories
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 2: in a way that they can remember them. So I'm
• 2:36:19
  Speaker 2: gonna speak in parables. I'm gonna talk about, I'm not
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 2: gonna say, if you have faith, you can do anything.
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 2: That's not a picture. I'm gonna say, if you have
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 2: the faith of a mustard seed, you can move a mountain.
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 2: So I believe the parables were engineered so we could
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 2: remember them. I believe the group memory, but I will
• 2:36:34
  Speaker 2: say this, this isn't just the Christian faith. The oral
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 2: traditions of all ancient societies or a lot of ancient
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 2: societies are very reliable. Fascinating, the Aborigines in Australia, They
• 2:36:48
  Speaker 2: would pass stuff down in songs, much like I'm saying now.
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 2: They would sing songs. They would say them in groups.
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 2: They would tell these songs and stories in groups. If
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 2: somebody got it wrong, they corrected it. These songs were
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 2: the GPS for Australia tens of thousands of years ago.
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 2: So I don't know what the songs were like. But
• 2:37:10
  Speaker 2: I do know they could know there's going to be
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 2: a canyon, there's going to be a mountain, there's going
• 2:37:15
  Speaker 2: to be a rock formation, and then there's going to
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 2: be this right here. So if they were ever out
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 2: in the wilderness of Australia, they had it in songs.
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 2: And I was sort of thinking about how could they
• 2:37:26
  Speaker 2: do that other than just song lyrics? But I thought
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 2: I have an idea. I don't know if that's how
• 2:37:31
  Speaker 2: it is. This is my idea. But the alphabet song. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P.
• 2:37:42
  Speaker 2: And you notice how you said that? You said it
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 2: faster than the other words. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P.
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 2: My guess, and I don't know if it's true or not,
• 2:37:54
  Speaker 2: I know they memorized the landscape of Australia with a song. Well,
• 2:37:57
  Speaker 2: if it's a tree, and then there's a long distance,
• 2:38:00
  Speaker 2: and it's a canyon, and then there's another long distance,
• 2:38:04
  Speaker 2: and it's a mountain, and then there's three mountains real
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 2: close together, that's the L, M, N, O, P. So
• 2:38:11
  Speaker 2: this GPS, they could be out and the pauses, the
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 2: slowness would be the distances. The elemental P, like a
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 2: topographical map, it's all close together. The elemental P, tree, mountain, whatever.
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 2: Their songs were so accurate. There was a volcano called
• 2:38:28
  Speaker 2: Budge Bim in Australia. Budge Bim exploded over 30,000 years ago.
• 2:38:37
  Speaker 2: So the ancient people of Australia had these songs talking
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 2: about Budge Bim exploding. There's no way that the people
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 2: 500 years ago would have known about that if it
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 2: hadn't been passed down in a song. So these songs
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 2: of ancient cultures, whether it's the Christian faith or whether
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 2: it's the Aborigines, they're doing it as songs, they're doing
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 2: it with group memory. Group memory is reliable. Individual memory isn't,
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 2: but that's how much of the Bible and other things
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 2: were passed down.
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: It actually makes a lot of sense.
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 1: That does make a lot of sense.
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 2: It was their identity, right? It was how they survived.
• 2:39:19
  Speaker 2: Imagine there's a drought in Australia. And in this drought,
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 2: this one plant maybe is their survival because they can
• 2:39:28
  Speaker 2: drink the liquid that's inside of it. It saved their lives.
• 2:39:31
  Speaker 2: It's a plant that you would never eat because it
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 2: has a sour, bitter taste, right? I'm giving you a
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 2: hypothetical here. It's a sour, bitter taste. You would never
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 2: eat it in a million years, but it becomes part
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 2: of their song because it saved their lives during this time.
• 2:39:44
  Speaker 2: Generations later, they don't eat that plant either because it
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 2: has a sour, bitter taste, but they go through the
• 2:39:49
  Speaker 2: same drought. Everything dies. They remember the song and it
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 2: saves their life. So memory, it was a survival skill.
• 2:39:59
  Speaker 2: It was crucial to ancient humans. Modern humans, I think
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 2: we're becoming drones. We're outsourcing our memories to chat GPT
• 2:40:07
  Speaker 2: or AI and all this other stuff. Here's a crazy study, Sean.
• 2:40:12
  Speaker 2: There's a study called the PISA, the Program for International
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 2: Student Assessment. The PISA study tests 15-year-olds on math, science,
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 2: and all this stuff. They've been doing it for years.
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 2: This is the first generation, the current generation. This is
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 2: the first, the young kids today. This is the first
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 2: generation that is scoring lower on these tests, which they are,
• 2:40:35
  Speaker 2: it's not an IQ test, but they are correlated into IQ.
• 2:40:38
  Speaker 2: This first generation has scored lower on IQ test and
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 2: these tests than their previous generation. There's something called the
• 2:40:45
  Speaker 2: Flynn effect. And the Flynn effect says every generation, the
• 2:40:49
  Speaker 2: IQ has improved. Every generation, the generation that was before,
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 2: their IQ has increased until now. And there's a neuroscientist
• 2:40:58
  Speaker 2: named Jared Horvath, I believe. He is saying it's screen time.
• 2:41:03
  Speaker 2: He's saying our kids are, even in the classrooms, the classrooms,
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 2: they're learning on screens. Well, what happens in a classroom
• 2:41:10
  Speaker 2: when you're learning on a screen? You're skimming. This is
• 2:41:14
  Speaker 2: his theory, but it makes sense. You're skimming. It's not
• 2:41:18
  Speaker 2: deep studying. It's not deep studying like we had where
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 2: we're learning for a person. It's skimming studying. And maybe
• 2:41:25
  Speaker 2: there's alerts and notification that's distracting you, but his belief,
• 2:41:30
  Speaker 2: And I think it's probably true is technology is great asset,
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 2: but it's also harming this current generation and probably generations
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 2: going forward.
• 2:41:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't disagree. I don't think anybody would disagree
• 2:41:42
  Speaker 1: with that.
• 2:41:45
  Speaker 2: Wow. What's his name? Jared Horvath. Jared Horvath. He's a neuroscientist.
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 2: Somebody just sent me the article a couple weeks ago.
• 2:41:55
  Speaker 1: I got to get that from you. That would be
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: an interesting talk. He was fascinating when I read on him.
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: Right on, right on. Well, I got a hot question
• 2:42:03
  Speaker 1: for you. Ready?
• 2:42:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:42:05
  Speaker 1: All right, here we go. Ron, when you look at
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 1: historical minds like Einstein, Tesla, Da Vinci, and Newton, they
• 2:42:17
  Speaker 1: all had this ability to focus deeply, recognize patterns, and
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 1: hold complex ideas in their mind. Today, technology remembers everything
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: for us. Social media destroys attention and AI is starting
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: to think for us. Sounds like what we just talked about.
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: From your perspective as a memory expert, are we becoming
• 2:42:38
  Speaker 1: more advanced or are we quietly weakening the human trait
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: that creates genius?
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 2: It's a great question. And for years, and I mentioned
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 2: I've been doing this 35 years, I got asked that
• 2:42:51
  Speaker 2: question a lot and it was never as eloquent as that.
• 2:42:54
  Speaker 2: That's a very eloquent way to ask that question. But
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 2: the question always got down to, is technology ruining our brains?
• 2:43:02
  Speaker 2: And I always always answer that question. No, no, I
• 2:43:06
  Speaker 2: don't think so. I think we have more to remember
• 2:43:08
  Speaker 2: right now. So rely on technology. There's no problem with it.
• 2:43:11
  Speaker 2: And I still believe that's true. But I do think
• 2:43:18
  Speaker 2: that it is harming our ability to focus. And it
• 2:43:21
  Speaker 2: is harming our ability to think almost. You know, Sir
• 2:43:25
  Speaker 2: Isaac Newton said, if I've stood on the shoulders, if
• 2:43:28
  Speaker 2: I have seen further than anyone before, it's because I've
• 2:43:31
  Speaker 2: stood on the shoulders of giants. So Isaac Newton had
• 2:43:34
  Speaker 2: this knowledge base and he was able to see experiments
• 2:43:38
  Speaker 2: and see things that others people couldn't see, not because
• 2:43:42
  Speaker 2: he was a genius, but because all the people before
• 2:43:44
  Speaker 2: him had done all these experiences. And he had that
• 2:43:46
  Speaker 2: knowledge in his brain, right? Well, today, if the knowledge
• 2:43:52
  Speaker 2: isn't on our brain, If the knowledge is in the
• 2:43:55
  Speaker 2: AI and it's in the computer, how are we going
• 2:43:57
  Speaker 2: to have the ability to see farther than anybody before? Yeah,
• 2:44:00
  Speaker 2: we can ask AI. I think AI is a great tool.
• 2:44:03
  Speaker 2: I use AI all the time. But I use it,
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 2: I take what it's saying, and then I'll step away
• 2:44:09
  Speaker 2: and I'll think about it. I'll journal about it. Old
• 2:44:13
  Speaker 2: school learning, right? I'll talk to it. Technology is, we're
• 2:44:18
  Speaker 2: outsourcing our brains. We're going to become drones, I think.
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 2: You know, they've got the drones technology. flying right now,
• 2:44:24
  Speaker 2: we're gonna be the drones and AI's gonna be flying us.
• 2:44:27
  Speaker 2: Your AI's gonna control us. Focus is the most difficult
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 2: part of what I did with the Afghanistan memory wall.
• 2:44:34
  Speaker 2: 100% the most difficult part. When I was sitting in
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 2: the chair and had my eyes closed, I was, if
• 2:44:42
  Speaker 2: something would pop in my brain and I'd have to
• 2:44:45
  Speaker 2: push it out of the way, but that happened 50
• 2:44:48
  Speaker 2: to 75 times.
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 1: There's a follow-up here. We hear stories of people lifting
• 2:44:57
  Speaker 1: cars in emergencies or the brain doing things that seem
• 2:45:00
  Speaker 1: to be impossible. Are those rare miracles or proof that
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 1: humans have access to abilities we usually never tap into?
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 1: And even though the idea that we only use 10%
• 2:45:11
  Speaker 1: of our brain is a myth, do you think most
• 2:45:13
  Speaker 1: people still underestimate what the human mind and body are
• 2:45:17
  Speaker 1: actually capable of?
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 2: I love that last part of that question. The first
• 2:45:21
  Speaker 2: part was, is this a miracle or is it the human, right?
• 2:45:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Do we have abilities we usually never tap into?
• 2:45:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And first of all, is it a miracle
• 2:45:36
  Speaker 2: or is it the human ability? It's probably both in
• 2:45:38
  Speaker 2: some cases. But as far as the brain, as far
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 2: as the human brain, 100%, 100%. 100%. If there are
• 2:45:48
  Speaker 2: people watching this right now, if there are people watching
• 2:45:51
  Speaker 2: this and they've enjoyed it, if they turn off the
• 2:45:55
  Speaker 2: channel or whatever and they go about their day and
• 2:45:58
  Speaker 2: they tell their friends, hey, yeah, I heard this memory
• 2:46:01
  Speaker 2: guy talk and he memorized all this stuff and he
• 2:46:03
  Speaker 2: held some records. It was some crazy cool stuff. I
• 2:46:05
  Speaker 2: could never do it, but it was pretty interesting to
• 2:46:08
  Speaker 2: listen to him talk. Boom, I failed. That's not the message.
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 2: People underestimate what they're capable of. Sit down and give
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 2: yourself a project. You will be astounded at what your
• 2:46:21
  Speaker 2: brain can remember. Build out this map that I'm talking about, right?
• 2:46:24
  Speaker 2: This mind palace. Number five pieces of furniture in your
• 2:46:27
  Speaker 2: living room, five in your kitchen, five in your living room,
• 2:46:29
  Speaker 2: five in your bathroom. And then tonight before you fall asleep,
• 2:46:31
  Speaker 2: say those 20 pieces of furniture forwards and backwards, forwards
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 2: and backwards. When you're brushing your teeth tomorrow, when you're
• 2:46:37
  Speaker 2: getting ready for work, say these 20 pieces of furniture.
• 2:46:39
  Speaker 2: Just get them in your brain. Then find something that's
• 2:46:43
  Speaker 2: important to you. What interests you? Do you like sports?
• 2:46:46
  Speaker 2: You want to memorize the roster of your favorite baseball team?
• 2:46:49
  Speaker 2: Are you a fan of history? You want to memorize
• 2:46:52
  Speaker 2: the presidency of the United States? Find something that interests you.
• 2:46:55
  Speaker 2: And just, guys, I'm imploring you, everybody who's listening to this,
• 2:46:58
  Speaker 2: do this, because everybody is underestimating themselves. Everybody. Every single
• 2:47:03
  Speaker 2: person I walk to up on the street and I say,
• 2:47:05
  Speaker 2: I can teach you this, they always say, oh, my
• 2:47:07
  Speaker 2: memory's terrible. I'm not good at that. When you approach
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 2: it with this system, it is everybody. Take what you
• 2:47:16
  Speaker 2: think your memory is capable of, how many numbers you
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 2: think you could memorize in five minutes. Take that number,
• 2:47:24
  Speaker 2: whatever it is. It's different for everybody. And then multiply
• 2:47:28
  Speaker 2: it by 10, 20, 30, 50, or 100. And then
• 2:47:31
  Speaker 2: that's the real number.
• 2:47:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Let's move back into the Afghanistan wall.
• 2:47:40
  Speaker 1: We're closing out the interview. It's Memorial Day. You've accomplished
• 2:47:46
  Speaker 1: something amazing right here in this studio this morning.
• 2:47:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So this was the first time that I've completed it, right?
• 2:47:59
  Speaker 2: And it was so emotional. And a lot of our
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 2: talk today has been on how I did it and,
• 2:48:06
  Speaker 2: you know, on my memory, right? And that's all valid.
• 2:48:13
  Speaker 2: I'm the one, I am sitting in this chair, but
• 2:48:17
  Speaker 2: I do want to say thank you to some people
• 2:48:19
  Speaker 2: who helped me train because without them, I couldn't have
• 2:48:22
  Speaker 2: done it. Amy Haynes has been with me for 10
• 2:48:27
  Speaker 2: years and she's been with me through a lot of things.
• 2:48:30
  Speaker 2: And without her sitting in a chair for the last
• 2:48:33
  Speaker 2: month and listening to me say names, and as I
• 2:48:37
  Speaker 2: say the names, she checks the work and she says, nope, nope, nope, yep.
• 2:48:45
  Speaker 2: Without that, this would have been almost impossible today. So,
• 2:48:50
  Speaker 2: and her support and encouragement was tremendous. So she is
• 2:48:54
  Speaker 2: the main one that I wanna say thank you to
• 2:48:57
  Speaker 2: for that. When I heard that I was gonna be here,
• 2:49:01
  Speaker 2: I told her not because I was gonna bring her along,
• 2:49:04
  Speaker 2: but just to tell her, right? And she was so excited.
• 2:49:08
  Speaker 2: She was more excited for me than anything at all.
• 2:49:12
  Speaker 2: And when I saw her excitement, I thought, she's never
• 2:49:15
  Speaker 2: traveled with me in 10 years of working with me,
• 2:49:18
  Speaker 2: but I want to say thank you to her for
• 2:49:20
  Speaker 2: all she's done for me. So I'm gonna bring her
• 2:49:22
  Speaker 2: on this trip. But it worked out so magically because
• 2:49:25
  Speaker 2: when I was saying the names, I had the confidence
• 2:49:29
  Speaker 2: of the training with her. And so thank you to her.
• 2:49:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you to Esther Vermillion, who also gave me encouragement
• 2:49:36
  Speaker 2: and she helped me train. and Lori Griffo, who gave
• 2:49:39
  Speaker 2: me tremendous support and encouragement and also helped me train.
• 2:49:45
  Speaker 2: The stories of the wall though, that's why I do
• 2:49:48
  Speaker 2: the wall. I don't do the wall to show people
• 2:49:51
  Speaker 2: that I have a great memory, right? It's not about,
• 2:49:55
  Speaker 2: it's not the USA Memory Championships, the deck of cards,
• 2:49:59
  Speaker 2: memorizing the numbers. That was to say, hey, I'm legit, dude.
• 2:50:03
  Speaker 2: Look at me. The Afghanistan memory wall is to say,
• 2:50:08
  Speaker 2: These are the men and women we lost. We say
• 2:50:11
  Speaker 2: you are not forgotten. And we always say you are
• 2:50:13
  Speaker 2: not forgotten. But I want to say to every single
• 2:50:17
  Speaker 2: individual person, you are not forgotten. You know, Ernest Hemingway
• 2:50:22
  Speaker 2: said that everybody dies two deaths. They die the day
• 2:50:25
  Speaker 2: they die. And then they die the last time their
• 2:50:27
  Speaker 2: name is spoken. And in a way, I just wanted
• 2:50:30
  Speaker 2: to keep their memories alive. So that's the main reason
• 2:50:34
  Speaker 2: I do the wall. It has made me a better person.
• 2:50:37
  Speaker 2: by hearing the stories of the wall, but that's the
• 2:50:41
  Speaker 2: meaning behind the wall. It's an individual basis. What I
• 2:50:49
  Speaker 2: was going to say is, when we say you're not forgotten,
• 2:50:52
  Speaker 2: it's sometimes a corporate or a group whole. On Memorial Day,
• 2:50:56
  Speaker 2: you're not forgotten. I wanted to say, private first class,
• 2:51:00
  Speaker 2: Austin Staggs, you are not forgotten. Private Buddy McClain, you
• 2:51:04
  Speaker 2: are not forgotten. Chief Petty Officer Adam Brown, you are
• 2:51:08
  Speaker 2: not forgotten. Corporal Chad Wade, you are not forgotten. Sergeant
• 2:51:14
  Speaker 2: First Class Matthew Abadi, you are not forgotten. Sergeant James Ayube,
• 2:51:20
  Speaker 2: you are not forgotten. Individually, you're not forgotten. I will
• 2:51:25
  Speaker 2: set up that wall at a NASCAR race. I'll set
• 2:51:28
  Speaker 2: it up in front of the Alamo, and I'll be
• 2:51:31
  Speaker 2: riding on the wall, and people will walk by. In
• 2:51:35
  Speaker 2: New York City, I'm writing the wall and this lady,
• 2:51:39
  Speaker 2: she was jogging and she stopped. She said, what is this?
• 2:51:44
  Speaker 2: And my brother, he was my biggest helper back then.
• 2:51:51
  Speaker 2: She went up to him and she said, what is this?
• 2:51:54
  Speaker 2: And he said, told him what it was. And she
• 2:51:59
  Speaker 2: asked him if a specific name was on the wall.
• 2:52:01
  Speaker 2: So he brings her over to me and And she said,
• 2:52:07
  Speaker 2: is this name on the wall? I had a deadline.
• 2:52:09
  Speaker 2: I had to be finishing live on Fox and Friends
• 2:52:12
  Speaker 2: morning show in the last five. It was, I had
• 2:52:15
  Speaker 2: to time it to finish live on the air in
• 2:52:16
  Speaker 2: the last five minutes of the show. I was very distracted.
• 2:52:19
  Speaker 2: I always try to give people the attention because they're
• 2:52:21
  Speaker 2: the reason I'm doing it. But I was distracted that day.
• 2:52:24
  Speaker 2: To this day, I don't know the name she said,
• 2:52:27
  Speaker 2: but I always, I took time with her and I said, ma'am, why,
• 2:52:30
  Speaker 2: how do you know that name? And she said, my
• 2:52:33
  Speaker 2: brother was a little guy. And this guy was a
• 2:52:37
  Speaker 2: big guy. And so he would always carry my brother's
• 2:52:40
  Speaker 2: backpack and his backpack. And when they went out on
• 2:52:44
  Speaker 2: a patrol, he always just walked in front of my
• 2:52:46
  Speaker 2: brother naturally. And because he did that, he is dead
• 2:52:50
  Speaker 2: today and my brother is alive. And I said, I'm
• 2:52:55
  Speaker 2: so sorry, ma'am. And I showed her the name on
• 2:52:57
  Speaker 2: the wall. She stood there with tears in her eye.
• 2:52:59
  Speaker 2: I went back to my hotel room that night and
• 2:53:01
  Speaker 2: I was laying there and I was thinking about the day.
• 2:53:03
  Speaker 2: And I think, oh, what was that guy's name? think
• 2:53:06
  Speaker 2: it was Katzenberger. But even if it was Katzenberger, there's two.
• 2:53:10
  Speaker 2: There was a Specialist Christopher Katzenberger, and there's a Staff
• 2:53:13
  Speaker 2: Sergeant Jeremy Katzenberger. I don't know who it is, even
• 2:53:15
  Speaker 2: if it was Katzenberger. And I thought, I wish I
• 2:53:18
  Speaker 2: knew that guy's name. That's such a powerful story. And
• 2:53:20
  Speaker 2: then I realized, it doesn't matter that I don't know
• 2:53:23
  Speaker 2: the name. That's the story of all of them. All
• 2:53:26
  Speaker 2: of them carried our backpacks. All of them walked before us.
• 2:53:30
  Speaker 2: And all of them made that sacrifice for us and
• 2:53:33
  Speaker 2: our nation. I don't know his name, But I know
• 2:53:36
  Speaker 2: that's the story of all of them. And I know
• 2:53:38
  Speaker 2: you know some of the names.
• 2:53:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, I do. I know Adam Brown.
• 2:53:47
  Speaker 2: I heard you talk about him, that he was a
• 2:53:49
  Speaker 2: good man. He was.
• 2:53:52
  Speaker 1: He was. Well, Ron, you want to end this with
• 2:53:56
  Speaker 1: a prayer?
• 2:53:57
  Speaker 2: I do. Can I read you a story real quick?
• 2:53:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, please do.
• 2:54:02
  Speaker 2: But I do. So I want to give you a gift, Sean.
• 2:54:06
  Speaker 2: This is, um, uh, the stories of over 30 people
• 2:54:11
  Speaker 2: that we've lost, who we've lost in Afghanistan. This was
• 2:54:14
  Speaker 2: written by, um, by the way, this isn't a book
• 2:54:17
  Speaker 2: where anybody can go get her anywhere. This is just
• 2:54:19
  Speaker 2: for you. Okay. So this is not, uh, anything like that.
• 2:54:23
  Speaker 2: This was written by Darren Sapp. Darren Sapp, uh, was
• 2:54:26
  Speaker 2: in the Navy. He was a yellow shirt on an
• 2:54:27
  Speaker 2: aircraft carrier. He directed the planes and that kind of thing.
• 2:54:32
  Speaker 2: He has a little bit of a connection with you. Uh, you, uh,
• 2:54:35
  Speaker 2: A guy named Bill Brown was the Navy SEAL Swim
• 2:54:39
  Speaker 2: Foundation founder. He co-wrote a book with him. And Benito Olson,
• 2:54:44
  Speaker 2: who was the dog handler for a dog named Digo
• 2:54:48
  Speaker 2: and Eddie Penny's SEAL team, he co-wrote a book with him,
• 2:54:53
  Speaker 2: and Eddie Penny wrote the foreword. Wow. This book was
• 2:54:56
  Speaker 2: written by that guy, so it has a connection to
• 2:54:58
  Speaker 2: Eddie Penny. I want to read you one story. This
• 2:55:00
  Speaker 2: is not one story, one letter. First Lieutenant Todd Weaver,
• 2:55:06
  Speaker 2: when he was in Afghanistan, he wrote a letter to
• 2:55:11
  Speaker 2: his wife in case something would happen to him. And
• 2:55:15
  Speaker 2: he left it on his desktop. When his computer was
• 2:55:20
  Speaker 2: mailed back to Emma, and I have Emma's permission to
• 2:55:23
  Speaker 2: print this, and I also have Emma's permission to read this.
• 2:55:26
  Speaker 2: When this letter was When she got his laptop back,
• 2:55:30
  Speaker 2: there was one icon on the desktop. The entire computer
• 2:55:33
  Speaker 2: was wiped clean. And it was this letter right here
• 2:55:37
  Speaker 2: that he wrote to Emma. And here's the letter. Dear Emma,
• 2:55:42
  Speaker 2: if you're reading this, I guess I did not make
• 2:55:44
  Speaker 2: it home. And therefore, I was not able to remind
• 2:55:46
  Speaker 2: you again of how much I love you. I love
• 2:55:49
  Speaker 2: you so much, baby, and I will always love you.
• 2:55:53
  Speaker 2: Although I may not be here right now, take comfort
• 2:55:56
  Speaker 2: in the fact that I am watching over you right now.
• 2:55:59
  Speaker 2: I am not gone and I will always be with
• 2:56:01
  Speaker 2: you in spirit. I know this time must be hard
• 2:56:04
  Speaker 2: for you, but I also know how strong you are.
• 2:56:07
  Speaker 2: Never forget that God knew what was best for us
• 2:56:10
  Speaker 2: before we were even born. Take comfort in that. This
• 2:56:13
  Speaker 2: happened for a reason. Although you may not believe it now,
• 2:56:16
  Speaker 2: you will one day. I want you to know just
• 2:56:19
  Speaker 2: how important you are to me. I could not ask
• 2:56:22
  Speaker 2: for a more caring, beautiful, and loving wife. The memories
• 2:56:26
  Speaker 2: that we have shared over the last few years have
• 2:56:28
  Speaker 2: been the best of my life. Although it may seem
• 2:56:32
  Speaker 2: like my life was cut short, I lived a life
• 2:56:35
  Speaker 2: that most can only dream of. I married the perfect woman.
• 2:56:39
  Speaker 2: I have a beautiful daughter that amazed me every day.
• 2:56:41
  Speaker 2: I even had two great dogs, at least most of
• 2:56:44
  Speaker 2: the time. I couldn't ask for anything more. If you
• 2:56:47
  Speaker 2: feel sad, just think back to the memories that we shared.
• 2:56:51
  Speaker 2: Look at our daughter and how beautiful she is. Be
• 2:56:54
  Speaker 2: strong for her. Remind her about her daddy and tell
• 2:56:57
  Speaker 2: her that I loved her more than anything else in
• 2:56:59
  Speaker 2: the world. Her birth was the best day of my
• 2:57:01
  Speaker 2: life and she was the best thing that ever happened
• 2:57:03
  Speaker 2: to me. Her smile and laughter represent all that is
• 2:57:07
  Speaker 2: good and beautiful in this world. Tell her that daddy
• 2:57:10
  Speaker 2: is in heaven now and will watch over her and
• 2:57:12
  Speaker 2: protect her every minute of every day. I love you, Emma,
• 2:57:16
  Speaker 2: but never be afraid to do what you need to
• 2:57:17
  Speaker 2: do to be happy. It is also important that you
• 2:57:20
  Speaker 2: continue to find happiness in your life. Although you may
• 2:57:23
  Speaker 2: not think that it's possible right now, have faith. Much
• 2:57:26
  Speaker 2: better times are coming. You and Kylie have a wonderful
• 2:57:29
  Speaker 2: life ahead of you And I'm so happy to have
• 2:57:31
  Speaker 2: shared some of it with you. I love you. Your
• 2:57:34
  Speaker 2: loving husband, Todd. Emma and her daughter, Kylie, are thriving now.
• 2:57:40
  Speaker 2: They're doing very well. It's stories like this that have
• 2:57:43
  Speaker 2: made me a better person. And thank you for giving
• 2:57:45
  Speaker 2: me the platform today to tell some of these stories.
• 2:57:49
  Speaker 2: That was heavy.
• 2:57:51
  Speaker 1: That's what this is all about. You want to pray?
• 2:57:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
• 2:57:56
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. Jesus, we just want to say thank
• 2:58:02
  Speaker 1: you for today and thank you for connecting me with Ron.
• 2:58:06
  Speaker 1: But more importantly, we just want to say we want
• 2:58:09
  Speaker 1: to wish everybody a happy Memorial Day and especially the
• 2:58:13
  Speaker 1: Gold Star families who lost somebody, just like the letter
• 2:58:17
  Speaker 1: that Ron just wrote. Pray for them. Please let them
• 2:58:21
  Speaker 1: be having a damn good time up there.
• 2:58:25
  Speaker 2: Pray for our country. Amen.
• 2:58:27
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 2:58:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you, sir.
• 2:58:31
  Speaker 1: Saved the heavy stuff for last.
• 2:58:33
  Speaker 2: Holy shit.
• 2:58:34
  Speaker 1: I wanted to read this.
• 2:58:35
  Speaker 2: What page is that? That is the first story. So
• 2:58:39
  Speaker 2: it's the first story you would read. First Lieutenant Fogweaver.
• 2:58:45
  Speaker 1: There it is.
• 2:58:48
  Speaker 2: Wow. Ron. Yes, sir.
• 2:58:52
  Speaker 1: Thank you, brother. No matter where you're watching The Sean
• 2:59:08
  Speaker 1: Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this
• 2:59:11
  Speaker 1: at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly,
• 2:59:19
  Speaker 1: share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling
• 2:59:24
  Speaker 1: extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave
• 2:59:28
  Speaker 1: us a review.