Latest / Gladden Longevity Podcast / Mastering Memory Techniques with Ron White - Episode 358

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Mastering Memory Techniques with Ron White - Episode 358 · Gladden Longevity Podcast

0:00
So, you I'm 53 years old right now,
0:01
and a lot of people think, I've had this special gift all my entire life.
0:05
And the first thing that I would say is that it's not a gift.
0:08
Anyone can improve their memory.
0:10
And it's a system that I learned.
0:11
I learned it when I was 18 years old.
0:13
I was a telemarketer for a company that cleaned chimneys.
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And I called this person and said,
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Hey, we want to clean your chimney.
0:18
And he said, We don't want our chimney cleaned or trying to sell our house.
0:21
I said, Well, if you're trying to sell your house,
0:22
you should have a clean chimney.
0:24
Hey everyone, Dr. Gladden here.
0:25
I just had a really interesting conversation with Ron White.
0:28
He's a two-time USA national memory champion,
0:32
and where you go down the rabbit hole on memorizing things,
0:35
improving your memory, how to actually think about memory,
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things that actually will improve your brain function,
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things that will actually make it easier to remember things.
0:44
So it's a really interesting thing.
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You can find out more about him on brainathete.com or his Instagram
0:49
is Brain Athlete. And I think you're really gonna enjoy this show.
0:52
It was fun.
0:53
He went from saving hearts as a cardiologist to rewriting the entire aging playbook.
0:58
Dr. Jeffrey Gladden believes 100 is the new 30,
1:02
and he's got the science to back it up.
1:04
This is the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
1:07
Ron, it's such a pleasure to welcome you to the Glad Longevity Podcast.
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You're kind of a big time celebrity here and it's ~ pleasure to have you.
1:14
~
1:14
Thank you for having me. I've heard a lot of great things about you as well
1:18
and so it's an honor to be here.
1:19
Great. So tell us a little bit about,
1:22
you know, how you got into this in terms of memory and things like that.
1:26
Is was this something with five years old you were going around memorizing things
1:29
or how how how did that evolve for you?
1:32
Well, ~ so you know, I'm fifty-three years old right now,
1:34
and a lot of people think, I've had this,
1:36
you know, special gift all my entire life.
1:39
And the first thing that I would say is,
1:41
you know, that it's not a gift.
1:42
Anyone can improve their memory.
1:44
And it's a system that I learned.
1:45
I learned it when I was eighteen years old.
1:47
I was a telemarketer for a company that cleaned chimneys,
1:50
and I was calling people all day long,
1:51
and I called this person who said,
1:52
Hey, we want to clean your chimney.
1:54
And he said, We don't want our chimney cleaned.
1:55
We're trying to sell our house.
1:56
I said, Well, if you're trying to sell your house,
1:58
you should have a clean chimney.
1:59
And you know, he was like, Well,
2:01
you know what, you're right, but I really don't want to get my chimney cleaned.
2:05
But do you want to go to work for me?
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I like how you just tried to overcome my objection.
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And he said to me I he that he sells memory training seminars and he would
2:13
pay me more than I would make it now,
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which is a pretty safe bet. You know,
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anybody could have said that to me and they would have been right.
2:18
but that's how I got introduced to it.
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I was a salesman, I was trying to overcome some sales to to sell this chimney
2:24
cleaning service. And the guy that I was trying to sell ran a ~
2:28
Taught memory training seminars or sold memory training seminars.
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And he hired me at the age of eighteen because I was a good salesman or
2:35
his in his eyes I was a good salesman to sell memory training seminars.
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And then so
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This
2:40
is this is sounding like a Mary Poppins story here.
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You started out as a chimney sweep.
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Next thing you know you got whisked away into a different future.
2:47
That's kinda cool. Yeah.
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I
2:48
guess I guess that's what happened and I went to work for him and he taught
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me the system.
2:52
Okay. So do you want to share with us some of the nuts and bolts of
2:56
the system or kind of an overview of the system,
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if you will, just to kind of start off,
3:00
just so people have a frame of reference.
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Because I think most people listening to this,
3:03
probably myself included, would like to have their memory enhanced or improved.
3:07
And I I was looking at some stuff recently that
3:10
showed that for the brain to actually recognize something as being memorable
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or worth memorizing, you know,
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apart from something that occurs in a very strong emotional experience,
3:20
which we remember, the memory's stored in the synapses and it takes basically firing
3:25
that synapse four times before the memory is actually registered as okay,
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this is something the brain wants to hang on to.
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Because we all hear stuff throughout the day that just goes in one ear
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and out the other, so to speak.
3:35
And I don't know if if that corroborates kind of
3:37
the training that you did, you know,
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kind of repetition as being a a an element.
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I know association may be a piece of it,
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but anyway, I'm just curious kind of get a feel for,
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you know, what what are the basic constructs here.
3:48
Yeah, so you know, it repetition and review is part of memory.
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You know, imagine that your memory was like a a a path and there's a path
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in the woods, or excuse me, there's just grass.
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There's no path. And you walk down that path today.
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Well you you go back in three days,
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there's no there's no clue that you've been there.
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The the grass is growing, it's just like before.
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But you walk down it again and again and again and again and again
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and again and again and again and and you begin to see a path there.
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And it's the same way in your brain.
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You know, you something goes in their brain and and
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create that little path of that memory.
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If it just has one passover and you go on about your life,
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it probably is not going to stick.
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But if you review it, you know,
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that path in your brain, you're going to create a a trail in your brain.
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There was a guy named Ebbinghaus and in the 1800s,
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he did some research and he created something called the forgetting curve.
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And the forgetting curve says that dramatically,
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the first hour after you learn something,
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that's a huge drop-off in retention if you don't review.
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And it continues dropping off dramatically over the next couple of days.
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And then at the end of the week
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Maybe you can recall twenty percent of stuff if you tried to.
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But if you want to lessen that forgetting curve and forget less,
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more immediately you start to review.
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So review is is critical. People say,
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I'm not good at names. Well, do you ever do you ever ask yourself,
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who did I meet last week? Who did I meet the the week before?
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If you don't, that's a big reason why you're not good at names.
5:06
Yeah.
5:06
So repetition, well, that's really interesting that the first hour,
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it sounds like there's almost kind of a golden a golden hour,
5:12
so to speak, where when you start repeating something or exposing yourself
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to it again in the within the first hour,
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that's kind of, you know, a critical point to actually l start to lay down that path
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through the through the grass,
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right? So that's interesting.
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Yeah, it is. You wanna you wanna you're gonna forget the most
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~ information about anything that you're learning right away,
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especially that first hour. But you know,
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then it'll drop off, you know,
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maybe you and you remember at fifteen to eighteen to twenty percent,
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you know, after a week still, hopefully on a good on a good good day.
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But there's also some good news that let's say it took you two hours
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to learn something, then you test yourself in two weeks and you don't remember
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you don't remember it.
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The good news is that your brain still has its,
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even though the path isn't strong,
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even still though it's still that path in the woods where grass is growing,
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you still walk down that path.
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So Ebbinghaus said there is you have a ~ a memory savings bank.
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You have a bank in your mind. And if you spent two hours to learn it initially,
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then it's probably but but you can't recall it anymore.
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It's probably only going to take you one hour to relearn it.
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But you still have those fragments in there of.
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And so that's that's a very fascinating part of of memory for me.
6:27
Yeah, that rings true for me. You know,
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like if I looked at something like say I'm looking something up and I I read
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it and I understand it and it's like,
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okay, I'll take some action even based on what I'm seeing here.
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But I don't I don't think about it after that.
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I'll remember that I learned about that,
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but I may not remember the details.
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But if I go back to it, it's it pops right back in,
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right? So that is an interesting thing that there is kind of that,
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even though you've forgotten it,
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so to speak, or you can't recite it or you can't repeat it or recall it,
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you can re recognize it.
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On some level is almost the experience I have.
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Recognizing it is ~ right is is the first step and but then the review will help
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you recall it.
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So as you go through your life,
7:08
right? I mean, I think people have a sense that there's a lot of stuff they don't
7:12
need to remember, right? So a lot of things just kind of come in and out.
7:16
But if somebody knows something that they need to remember,
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what's kind of the best strategy?
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Like one of the things that I've learned to do if I'm introduced to a
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~ somebody is to actually repeat their name back to them,
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like in the initial meeting, right?
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Like somebody says, I'm Joe Smith,
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it's like Joe, it's good to meet you.
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You know, if I don't say that,
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then
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I won't remember Joe Smith necessarily,
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but if I start to use their name a few times in the first few minutes,
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it's much easier. So is that are there strategies like that that you
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use as you kinda go through life or how do you make this practical?
7:48
I guess is the point. Yeah.
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So specifically on names, you know,
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there are different techniques for different things,
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but specifically on names, I do repeat the name and I do it less for memory.
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I do it more for to make sure I heard it correctly,
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you know. If sometimes I feel like I'm losing my hearing,
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especially if it's loud, you know,
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was it was it Ronnie or was it Rodney,
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you know? so I definitely repeat the name.
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I I do think that's important.
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And I don't think it hurts in remembering the name.
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~ it's not the primary reason I do it,
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but I do. But what I really like to do is,
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you know, you
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When you meet somebody, you know,
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let's say this guy's name's Brian.
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When you meet this guy, you you meet him today,
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and then four weeks later, you see him at the baseball game,
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and you're like, ~ man, I met that guy.
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He was on the Dr. Gladden podcast.
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What was his name? I can't think of his name.
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And what's going on is we are remembering the face,
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but we're not remembering the name.
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And so many people say that they have that problem.
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And it's true. Now let's think about why.
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Okay, why?
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Do we remember the face and not the name?
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And when we can think of that answer,
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it's an answer in how our memory remembers,
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right? Mm-hmm. We remember the face because we see it.
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It's an image, it's a picture.
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Picture. It's a picture. Yeah.
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And the name is just something that flies out of a person's mouth
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and there's it's never seen.
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That's right, abstract. There's no there's no picture attached to it,
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so to speak. Even though it's even though there's a face attached to it,
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we don't attach it to the face somehow,
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is what you're saying. Yeah.
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So when you see that guy six weeks later at the baseball game,
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there's the face, but the name was not a anyway a picture,
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so you're not going to remember it.
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So that's actually and people think,
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that's simple, that's basic. Yeah,
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it is simple, it is basic, but that's really everything.
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You know what I'm saying? That if you can start seeing the name alongside the face,
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your attention's gonna dramatically go up.
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Now, his name is Brian. I just flip flop the vowels,
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and so my picture for Brian is a brain.
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But if we just say, okay, Brian a brain and Brian,
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brain, that's probably not good enough.
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You're still just saying the words.
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What you what I really like to do,
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what I encourage everybody to do,
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is look at the face, observe the face,
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and select something distinctive on the face.
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So maybe this guy, his eyes are distinctive.
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So now you're talking to him, he's got distinctive eyes,
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and you say, Hi, my name's Ron.
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He says, my name is is Brian. I'm silently thinking brain.
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And now I imagine that brain, I attached the
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That to his distinctive feature.
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So now I'm imagining his eyes,
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the brains oozing out of his eyes,
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or the butt brains exp he's so smart,
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the brains are popping out of his eyes.
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And I tell myself this story as I'm talking to him.
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But it also goes back to what you you said and you started off.
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If we don't review, you're just gonna remember it for that conversation.
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You really have to, as you're driving away from him,
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review, tell yourself the story,
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maybe even get yourself a journal that of just people you met and write down
10:45
the guy with the
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He had big eyes, he was about forty years old.
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He was on the Doctor Doctor Gladden podcast and his name was Brian.
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I had brain oozing out of his eyes.
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And then maybe write in this journal and just flip through that journal once
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a week or once a month. Because if you don't review,
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you really won't remember it.
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Got it. I think we I think that's where we miss.
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I think we we don't review because there's so much information coming at us,
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so much new information that we can either be intrigued by or curious about
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or eager to learn and understand that we probably don't do justice
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to the repetition element of this.
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It's kind of I I I would say I'm just speaking from my own experience,
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right? We sabotage our our our s our ability to remember is really kind
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of what I'm saying.
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is. It's it's a lot of people say,
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I I read a book and I can't remember what I read.
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I read it a month ago and I'm like,
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well have you thought about it?
11:40
Have you reviewed it? You know,
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I'm I I I was I'm a two time USA memory champion.
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If I if I don't think about it,
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I'm not gonna remember it either.
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So you know and sometimes on when I meet people,
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I will if you know I'll say hey I like to remember people I met.
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Would it be okay if we got a selfie?
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I'll take a picture and they you know what five days later they don't remember
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I got a selfie with but I'll put that selfie in a folder in my phone
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And I've screenshot it. So now I've got two copies of the selfie.
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The first selfie is just blank.
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It's just like the selfie was that we took.
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When I swipe right, the next self selfie has their name written above
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it with my finger on the picture.
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So I'll just go through that folder and I'll swipe right and I'll see
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a picture and I'll guess the name and then I'll swipe right again and see
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if I got it right. But but here's here's a critical thing,
12:24
Dr. Gladden. When I'm trying to remember the name,
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I'm not just trying to say think what was his name.
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I'm trying to think what was his distinctive feature.
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it was his eyes. What was in his eyes?
12:33
A brain. What's his name? Brian.
12:35
Right. No, I get it. Well you're you're in a way you're ~ creating
12:39
a mental picture and to some extent even a story that it makes the item have more
12:45
handles on it, so to speak, is what it feels like,
12:48
right? There's kinda like more more entry points.
12:50
Because you can see the face, maybe that's enough.
12:53
Maybe you start to think about the eyes,
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maybe you think about the oozing brain,
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then all of a sudden yeah, now it's Brian,
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right? Because it's it's like multiple handles almost,
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it feels like. As well as a more complex picture in the first place.
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I don't know if that's how you think about it or you think about
13:06
it a little differently. No, I
13:08
I I I think the more vivid and detailed you can make something,
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the better chance that you're gonna remember it.
13:12
Especially on the initial you know,
13:14
I was talking to somebody today and,
13:15
you know, they were like, How did you memorize a deck of cards so fast?
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And I kinda gave contradictory ~ advice to what I'm saying on the the names here.
13:24
I s I said, Well, you know, my my pitcher for the Ace of Diamonds
13:26
was Lance Armstrong, the guy who used to ride the the bicycle.
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This was, you know, ~ created the it just was that's not important why.
13:34
But
13:34
Ace of Diamonds was Lance Armstrong.
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So when I would see the Ace of Diamonds,
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instead of seeing Lance Armstrong on this bicycle,
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I would see the yellow bracelet that he would wear.
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And I would just see a flash of yellow.
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And when I saw that flash of yellow,
13:48
that told me Lance Armstrong. So I guess what I'm saying is pick something that's
13:53
gonna just pop in your mind, your your brain.
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If you can't, if you have time to make it detailed,
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like you're having a conversation with somebody,
14:01
go for it.
14:02
But if it's something's going really fast and you don't have time,
14:04
just try to make it vivid and pop and throw it on there as fast as you can.
14:07
Try to see it real vividly in your mind,
14:09
whatever it is you want to recall.
14:11
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's good. I think I think we my my sense is we need to slow down
14:15
a little bit to actually focus on remembering.
14:19
You know, there are there are people that struggle for health reasons also with
14:23
regards to their memories, right?
14:24
I mean, they can have early stage dementia or they can be hypothyroid
14:28
or they can have, you know, women and men both need estrogen in their brains
14:32
for the neurons to fire properly.
14:34
You know, the myelin sheaths have to be intact and,
14:37
you know, people tend to lose gray matter as they
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age and things like that. B D and F becomes important.
14:43
Forms of exercise that increased lactate in particular appear to
14:47
be incredibly good at boosting brain function and memory function as well.
14:51
So do you do you take kind of a global look at this in terms of,
14:55
you know, all the different all the different things that
14:58
can actually impact memory? Are you thinking about it from that perspective also?
15:01
Or more are you thinking about it from the mechanics of,
15:04
you know, how how am I going to remember things?
15:07
Well both
15:07
You know, I know, whenever I give my talks,
15:10
I will ~ start off talking about,
15:12
you know, your health and your memory,
15:14
you know, good nutrition and exercise,
15:16
staying, you know, the more cardiovascular fit you are,
15:18
the better your blood flow is,
15:20
the more your better your blood flow is,
15:22
the more oxygen, you know, goes to your brain.
15:24
And and I I talk about brain foods,
15:25
you know, drinking plenty of water,
15:27
a dehydrated brain, you know, could have trouble focusing.
15:30
It could have brain fog. And of course there are foods,
15:33
you know, like
15:33
blueberries and and spinach with the antioxidants,
15:36
the Mediterranean diet, omega-3s has been proven to be very beneficial
15:41
for your memory. Our hippocampus,
15:42
which you know is responsible for long-term memory,
15:45
that will actually shrink a little bit as we age,
15:47
or it can. And one of the things,
15:49
one of the few things that can reverse the shrinkage of the hippocampus is exercise.
15:53
So, you know, exercise and good nutrition is really important to your memory.
15:58
One thing I actually stumbled across today and it was very interesting to me was
16:03
that it said that you know as we get older,
16:06
sometimes we lose our our hearing or our hearing diminishes.
16:09
And then I was actually chatting or you know doing some research on this.
16:14
The idea was get a hearing aid.
16:16
Because if you not if you don't have a hearing aid,
16:17
you're struggling to listen. So you're using some of your mental energy,
16:20
your mental bandwidth to decipher what's going on all the time.
16:23
And that's mental energy that you know that wears down your the energy level
16:28
of your brain and energy for memory.
16:30
So I do focus on all those other things.
16:32
I do
16:33
Teach a technique known as the mind palace or the memory palace.
16:36
It's very powerful and I can go into that if you want.
16:38
But to answer your question, yeah,
16:40
I I I I I do think the good nutrition,
16:43
exercise, and health medical side of memory is very important.
16:46
Yeah, I I would agree with that.
16:48
I think, you know, one of the things that we measure here in the office
16:51
is basically all five senses. Sense of smell,
16:54
sense of taste, hearing, sense of touch.
16:56
And what's interesting is to your point,
16:59
if people have have hearing impairment,
17:01
it's one of the biggest risk factors for developing dementia.
17:04
Because to your point, you're you're forced to use more of your
17:08
brain power to just try to understand the words coming in,
17:10
let alone process and and remember stuff,
17:13
right? So getting something to help your hearing becomes really critical.
17:16
And it turns out that Somaliers or people that spend a lot of time smelling things
17:21
and tasting things also have better memories and lower risks
17:25
of dementia because they're stimulating those olfactory passages,
17:29
neural passages basically.
17:31
Pathways that that enhance memory.
17:33
So there's interesting things around that.
17:35
there's been some research done,
17:37
really interesting research on doing smell training to actually enhance
17:41
the brain and its memory function.
17:43
Also, there's several devices out there that you can get,
17:47
one called memory air that actually plays 40 different scents for
17:50
you while you're sleeping as a way to kind of stimulate the brain.
17:54
So my point being if you're listening to this and you're struggling with your sense
17:57
of taste, which a lot of people did after COVID.
18:00
Or you're struggling with your sense of smell,
18:02
which a lot of people do, or your hearing.
18:04
Those are all things that can be kind of rehabilitated,
18:07
but they're actually early warning signs that not everything is as it should be.
18:12
And it's kind of like saying that your senses are kind of getting out of shape.
18:16
So you can you can exercise them and kind of bring them back into shape.
18:19
And then as I was saying earlier with exercise,
18:22
it turns out that the kind of exercise that has the biggest impact on BD
18:25
and F brain derived neurotrophic factors,
18:27
is actually the kind of exercise that
18:29
increases lactate production. Lactate goes into the brain and apparently
18:33
is a strong stimulus for BDNF release.
18:36
So just going for a walk, better than sitting on the couch,
18:39
but you really want to do more intense,
18:41
vigorous exercise. And blood flow restriction exercise can become helpful there
18:45
because at moderate levels of exercise you can get,
18:49
you know, lactate production out of the muscles by restricting blood flow.
18:53
So some interesting, interesting things there that could be helpful.
18:57
Yeah, I
18:57
think so. I I agree. I I you know,
18:59
th your talk on the the smell,
19:01
it reminded me of a book called Keep Your Brain Alive.
19:04
~ I don't have any connection to this book,
19:06
but a book called Keep Your Brain by a guy named Lawrence Katz and Manuel Rubin,
19:11
I think was the other guy. But they said exactly what you're saying.
19:14
They coined I I think they coined the term neurobics.
19:16
If not, they used it in their book.
19:18
But it was wake up your brain by doing things to stimulate your brain.
19:22
One of the things they said was close your eyes and smell
19:25
you know, spices and try to identify Another one was they said reach
19:29
in your pocket and try to identify the coins just by touch.
19:32
You know, it goes along the lines of brushing your teeth with your left hand
19:34
or writing with your left hand,
19:36
but doing things that your brain isn't used to,
19:38
so it kind of wakes up your brain or as they say,
19:41
keep your brain alive.
19:42
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I know that's that's exactly right.
19:45
So tell us about this palace that you inhabit.
19:48
I suppose everybody has a palace or can create a palace.
19:50
What goes on with the palace? Yeah.
19:52
So the the the mind palace is a technique it was developed at least 2,000 years ago,
19:58
probably longer ago. Cicero wrote about it 2,000 years ago,
20:02
or in writings that were attributed to Cicero,
20:05
who knows who actually wrote it.
20:06
But Cicero described a technique where you imagine a house,
20:10
you imagine a room, and you know,
20:13
if if right now, you know, I took this this water bottle and I threw
20:18
it over there on my couch.
20:19
And then I and and I maybe I took the water bottle out of your hand and
20:22
I threw it on the couch. And I said,
20:24
Let's go, let's go to dinner. And dinner I would say,
20:26
What did I throw on the couch?
20:27
You were like, You were a jerk.
20:28
You took that water bottle out of my hand and you threw it over on the couch.
20:31
In a way, the couch kind of was something in a a an actual location that
20:37
we could link that water bottle to.
20:39
Just like the eyes are an actual physical location.
20:42
We can link the brain, the the brine the brain and brine to.
20:45
So here's the technique. I'm competing in the USA memory championship.
20:49
this weekend in three days. I've I've won it twice.
20:52
I haven't won it in 16 years. Last time I won it,
20:54
I was 37 years old, so we'll see how I do.
20:56
But one thing they gave us, they gave us a s a spreadsheet.
21:00
They gave this to us August the first.
21:02
So this will be 28 days later.
21:04
It's over 1300 data points. They gave us all they gave us the
21:09
the preakness winners of the last 50 years.
21:11
We have to know the year, the the jockey,
21:14
the horse, the trainer, the purse,
21:17
and the time.
21:17
Then they gave us the top ~ 100 video games of of all time in terms of sales.
21:23
We have to, and I'm telling you all this for a reason,
21:24
it's with the mind palace. We have to know the the rank,
21:27
the rank, the name of the game,
21:29
the publisher, the genre, the and the sales.
21:32
And then we have to know the declaration of independence,
21:34
all the signers, what state they represented,
21:36
their date of birth, their occupation in the city they were born.
21:40
And then on the stage on Saturday,
21:41
they're gonna quiz us. What I did is I'm using the mind palace.
21:45
Here's an overview of the mind palace.
21:47
You go to a room in your house and you select,
21:50
let's say, five locations. So if this let's do this is my house here,
21:54
my my home, and this is my office.
21:56
My number one location, here's what I'll tell everybody to do.
21:59
Stand in the doorway. So this is my doorway right here.
22:02
Stand in the doorway of your room and pick five items.
22:06
Go around the room clockwise. My five would be the would be the the alien,
22:12
would be Albert Einstein, and I have a picture right here.
22:15
That's number three.
22:17
I have a a chair over here, it's number four,
22:19
and a couch over here, it's number five.
22:21
So mine are one, two, three, four,
22:24
five. Everybody, you know, if you're listening to this,
22:27
in your in your car, you know,
22:30
just think back to your house.
22:31
Think of one room and number five pieces of furniture.
22:34
Eventually what you want to do is you want to go through your house and stand
22:37
in the doorway of every room. So if I went to the next room,
22:39
I'm not gonna lay out that room for you,
22:41
but I would go to the next room and I would start at my left and I'd go six,
22:45
seven, eight, nine, and ten.
22:46
Next room 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and the next room 16 through 20.
22:51
So now I got 20 locations mapped out of my brain.
22:54
Tonight when I'm going to sleep,
22:55
instead of counting sheep, I say one through twenty,
22:58
then twenty to one. One through twenty to twenty to one.
23:01
Now how's this going to help me remember?
23:02
Well, let's take something simple.
23:04
The presidents of the United States.
23:05
Pretty simple example, but maybe you'll get the idea here.
23:08
We take what we want to remember and we imagine each data point on
23:13
top of each location. George Washington.
23:16
Just like we made Brian a brain,
23:18
we make Washington washing machine.
23:21
So now we got a washing machine,
23:22
we gotta attach it to number one.
23:23
Number one is the A-land. We got a washing machine up here,
23:26
we're putting in the clothes, we're putting in the soap,
23:27
the washing machine's spinning around,
23:29
washing machine Washington. Number two,
23:31
Adams, John Adams. We have now our number two location is Einstein.
23:36
So we turn that into a dam in our mind.
23:38
And we imagine the dam breaks and the water shoots out of his eyes.
23:41
A dam Adams.
23:44
But Dr. Gladden, just like you started this podcast this podcast off with today,
23:47
you said you got to review. So we go back and review.
23:50
Washington Adams. Three more and we're done.
23:53
Number three piece of furniture is this pitcher.
23:55
So I use a chef for Jefferson.
23:57
Jefferson, Jefferson. So I tell a story that a chef is cooking my favorite food,
24:02
baby, steak over here and it's grueling right there.
24:05
Medicine for Madison. I see I tell myself I'm sick and I need to go over there
24:09
and take some medicine. Maybe I pour the medicine out on my chair.
24:12
And five, I imagine a man in a rowboat over here for Monroe.
24:16
Then I go back and I review it real quick.
24:18
Washing machine Washington, Adam Adams,
24:21
Jeff for Jefferson, Medicine for Madison,
24:24
Man in a rowboat, Monroe, Monroe.
24:27
And you could learn all the presidents if you just had 46 pieces
24:32
of furniture numbered, but it doesn't have to be presidents.
24:35
It could be whatever is important to you.
24:37
And this is known as the mind palace or memory palace.
24:40
That's very, very cool. I think some people with big families might have
24:43
to do that for their kids and their grandkids and their aunts and uncles,
24:46
right? Almost kind of teasing,
24:47
but or or I bet you people that have sizable companies to remember every employee's
24:53
name can sometimes be a challenge.
24:55
I mean, you can think about I don't really need to know all forty six.
25:00
I guess are we up to forty six presidents now?
25:02
Forty seven? I can't remember.
25:03
Seven.
25:04
Yeah, yeah. What exactly?
25:05
Funny statement, I can't remember.
25:07
So anyway, forty seven presidents.
25:09
But we do have a need to r to remember other things.
25:11
And it's interesting. Do you do you find then,
25:14
you know, if you're gonna memorize all those spreadsheets,
25:17
you either live in a very big house or you have more locations in a single room,
25:22
or how do you how do you manage that with,
25:24
you know, all the things that you listed about the video game to the jockeys
25:27
and the preakness winners and,
25:29
you know, all that kind of stuff?
25:30
Yeah, almost everything that I I used a PowerPoint presentation.
25:35
I created a PowerPoint. I can share my screen for you right here
25:39
and show you exactly how I'm doing it.
25:41
Okay. It's a picture of some people.
25:42
It looks like sitting at tables in a in a restaurant.
25:45
It's kind of an indoor outdoor venue almost,
25:47
it looks like.
25:48
Correct. This is an area of town in downtown Port Worth known as the Stockyards,
25:53
and this is the Drover Hotel.
25:55
Mm.
25:56
One day I just went for a walk around the Drover Hotel,
25:58
and real quick, not making a big scene,
26:01
I took pictures of different locations because I know this hotel really well.
26:04
Then I loaded the pictures into into this PowerPoint.
26:09
And below the picture I put what I wanted to remember,
26:12
right? So I won't go into all the details,
26:15
but on this piece of furniture right here,
26:17
affirmed.
26:18
I just imagine I was putting a stamp on on that thing and it was saying affirmed
26:23
and Steve Calthin. I imagined those little round circle vases were stoves,
26:29
Steve for stove, and I was coughing on them,
26:32
stove coughing and then I imagined boom,
26:35
the affirmed. I won't go into all the details on how I turn numbers into pictures,
26:38
but to get to your point, I got this PowerPoint now with all these locations.
26:44
I put now here, this
26:48
Is the video games. Here's Walker.
26:50
This is Grand Theft Auto 5, 2013.
26:53
I create a picture to remember all this data and I attach it to that.
26:56
So yeah, I only have 20 or 30 or 40,
26:59
maybe 50 locations here at my house.
27:01
But you don't have to do that.
27:02
You have your you have your school,
27:03
you have your office, you have the an area of town you know really well,
27:07
you have the previous home that you could probably map out.
27:09
So it's endless.
27:11
Yeah. And so am I correct in assuming that this is your primary tool that
27:16
you you build into, so to speak,
27:18
when you're gonna do a memory competition?
27:20
It is and
27:20
if I want to remember anything,
27:21
you know, I do I do train a lot of students,
27:24
you know, so stuff like the periodic table,
27:26
the presidents of the United States,
27:27
history facts, science facts. But I also work with a lot of business people,
27:31
you know, and they you know maybe they want to be able to give a speech
27:34
or a presentation and not use any notes.
27:36
I encourage them to write out their speech,
27:38
you know, the ten points, and then place it on ten spots around their house.
27:41
And then when they get up on the stage or in front of the group
27:45
They just mentally walk around their house and give a speech without notes.
27:48
Or coaching people how to remember what they read.
27:50
You know, take notes as you read,
27:52
get a list of fifteen or twenty things you want to remember,
27:54
and then say, okay, that room is going to be that book I just read last month.
27:59
Put the 15 things around the room and just review it,
28:01
you know, while you're driving in your car,
28:03
review it. So the memory palace is my primary method.
28:06
I don't use the memory palace for names.
28:09
I attach the name to the face.
28:11
But it is so powerful. You know,
28:13
there are other methods of memory.
28:14
There
28:15
There's telling a story or creating a song or making an acronym.
28:19
And those are all wonderful. Rarely do I use them by themselves.
28:22
Sometimes I will couple them with the memory palace,
28:25
like to remember more like if I have an acronym for HOMES,
28:29
you know, the Great Lakes hunt here on Ontario,
28:32
I might see the the word homes written out on my number one location.
28:37
So now that number one location stores five pieces of data because I've used another
28:41
memory technique and coupled it with this.
28:44
Yeah, that's good. I was just rattling off the Great Lakes from the acronym homes,
28:48
right? Here on Ontario, Michigan,
28:50
Erie, and Superior.
28:52
That's right.
28:53
So, well, I was born in Michigan,
28:55
so it's kind of my birthright to know those lakes,
28:57
I guess. But anyway, yeah. No,
28:59
that's interesting. I I like acronyms a lot,
29:01
quite honestly. I remember in medical school,
29:03
you know, learn we had to learn tons of stuff,
29:05
of course, and acronyms were good.
29:07
Also, visualization. I remember the way I did so well on the anatomy final was to
29:13
Trace the nerves in the body. I realized that if I knew the course
29:16
of the nerves throughout the body,
29:18
that I would actually really know anatomy.
29:19
So then I would trace, I would picture ~ that,
29:22
you know, this nerve crosses over this muscle and past that joint and down here
29:27
in the foot it's it's going here.
29:29
And I would I would just keep track of where the nerves went in the body,
29:32
and then by default, I would learn all the other structures that were associated
29:37
with it. So it was kind of a a way of visualization,
29:40
I guess is what I'm saying for me.
29:42
as opposed to trying to remember the relationships,
29:45
you know, as a as words on a page,
29:47
I could see the whole body by just tracing the nerves.
29:50
So it's it's po it was a powerful tool.
29:52
I think I I think I had the third highest score in the class for
29:56
for the anatomy final, just doing it that way.
29:58
Yeah.
29:59
It works, it's the repetition.
30:00
You it was you were un you were not just memorizing it,
30:03
you were understanding it, you were seeing how it flows.
30:06
And that's a big thing too. You know,
30:07
you don't people don't wan just want to memorize something,
30:09
they wanna understand it, and I get that.
30:11
And so memorization is part of the processes,
30:13
but it's not the end of the process.
30:15
Mm-hmm. Well, that's a really good point too.
30:17
I think meaning like what you're doing is kind of probably strikes
30:20
the audience as being kind of,
30:22
you know, just random stuff. Like,
30:24
you know, every preakness winner,
30:25
you know, jockey trainer, purse size,
30:28
time, all that kind of stuff is seems a little bit random.
30:31
But in your daily life, if you can attach meaning to things,
30:34
then that becomes, I think, another layer that makes it easier.
30:38
You know, I was like that with organic chemistry also.
30:41
And
30:41
in college. I never just memorized equations.
30:44
I always struggled, not struggled,
30:45
well, maybe struggled at times,
30:47
but I always wanted and and really strived,
30:50
I suppose is the right word, to to understand why these reactions were happening
30:54
the way they were, so that I could actually rebuild the reaction,
30:57
even if I didn't know the outcome,
30:59
so to speak. And I found that that made it much easier to to score very well
31:04
on those tests as well. So
31:06
Understanding I think is visual and there's a visualization in that.
31:09
In fact, I'm almost thinking that every time that you have understanding you're
31:13
actually probably having deeper understanding because you are visualizing something.
31:17
I don't know if that's true or not,
31:18
but as I'm thinking about it, my own experience with it,
31:21
I think there's some element of truth in that.
31:23
Yeah.
31:23
Yeah,
31:23
I think I think so too. I th I don't I can't I don't remember if it
31:26
was Tesla who was it was somebody Yeah,
31:30
He visual he visualized, yeah.
31:32
he would visualize what he was wanting to create or see or understand trying
31:36
to see it from different angles.
31:37
So, you know, that's c critical.
31:39
And and what you know, you give it meaning is a word,
31:42
a phrase that you used, a phrase that I've used is making something make sense,
31:47
giving sense to the nonsensical.
31:48
For example, the number
31:50
You know, twenty five million two hundred and seventy thousand.
31:52
It has meaning. Don't get me wrong,
31:53
it has meaning, but it it's just a a number.
31:56
So I will for that's that is a specific number.
32:00
That's how many video games, the video game Pokemon.
32:03
You know, nobody cares to know this,
32:04
but just the the the video game Pokemon ~ Diamond Pearl Platinum sold.
32:09
So the way I remembered that, twenty five million,
32:11
my picture for twenty five is Neil Armstrong's long story,
32:14
who cares what? And two hundred and seventy is n
32:17
the New York Yankees. So I imagine Neil Armstrong playing for the New York Yankees.
32:20
But the point I'm getting at is I'm ~ I'm giving something that really doesn't make
32:24
sense. I'm making it make sense to me or giving it meaning is the way you put it.
32:29
And when you give something meaning it it makes sense
32:32
No, I think that's exactly right.
32:33
I do like like there are many times that I'm coming up with new ideas.
32:37
And some of the ideas initially can be somewhat abstract.
32:40
Like I have an aspiration to actually articulate something
32:43
or understand understand something.
32:45
I'm doing this right now with an AI company that I'm working with,
32:48
creating a an AI mechanism for human optimization,
32:53
let's say. And so I had all of a sudden an image came to me of
32:58
what that could look like. And then from the image I started to build on the image.
33:01
And from the image and then I started to to have the image be
33:04
a container for certain things that are happening in a repetitive fashion
33:08
and things like that. And all of a sudden I it was kind of like building
33:10
the machine, the architecture,
33:12
if you will, of an AI that could optimize a human being.
33:16
but it came to me o
33:17
all visually. It didn't come to me in a in an abstract form of,
33:21
you know, like writing it down or something.
33:23
And that's, you know, as an interventional cardiologist,
33:25
I would visualize all the time,
33:27
right? Because that's you're working in you're working with images of an individual,
33:30
right? Using X-rays to see inside the body and then take a two-dimensional image
33:35
and imagine it in three dimensions in your mind and then go in and,
33:38
you know, do certain things, right?
33:40
So there's a lot of imaging going on.
33:42
I find that to be a very satisfying use of my brain is creating
33:46
images and ideas and then those things become actually very,
33:50
very easy to remember because they're attached to an image.
33:53
There there's also an idea and there's a structure and there's also mechanical sort
33:58
of quality to it, right? There's like the thing is actually doing something
34:01
is my point. When that's the case,
34:03
like when you think about how does an internal combustion motor work,
34:06
right? It's easy to remember that because you can see the whole thing working.
34:09
You can visualize it, right? So anyway,
34:11
that I'm just reflecting on some of that as we're talking here,
34:14
but Yeah
34:15
No,
34:15
I I think I I think you're a hundred percent correct.
34:17
And I was I was thinking of ~ this you know,
34:21
the the vis the visual visualizing is and understanding is a you're h right
34:25
on both of those points is a hundred percent important part of memory
34:29
and thinking about it and trying to see it from different angles
34:31
and and that's something that I teach in memory and people that wanna
34:34
r to remember more, visualize,
34:36
think about it again.
34:37
Mm-hmm. hundred percent. So you said that you're gonna enter this national
34:41
championship in a couple of days?
34:43
Yeah.
34:44
And so in in in first of all, the the Preakness winners,
34:47
the video game rankings, ~ and the declaration signers.
34:51
I have I have no interest in the video games or the preakness winners.
34:55
The declaration signers was kind of interesting to me as a guy who likes history,
34:58
you know. it was kind of interesting to see the names of the the actual people.
35:01
But you're right, it it's a it's a random list and it's not really the they gave
35:05
it to us not because, hey, this is meaningful,
35:07
you need to know this, this is gonna help you in life.
35:09
They gave it to us specifically for this is completely random.
35:12
You're never gonna use it again,
35:14
but we wanna see how good your memory is.
35:16
You got four weeks, thirteen hundred data points,
35:19
go. So it's it's a competition.
35:21
the national championships, the first event is gonna they're gonna quiz us on this.
35:26
We're gonna there's gonna be fifteen of us to start.
35:28
They're gonna quiz us on it and they will eliminate four people.
35:30
If you miss ~ I think if you miss three questions,
35:33
you're out. So they'll they'll they'll keep going until until four people have
35:36
missed three.
35:37
Then the next event is they're going to give us fifteen minutes to memorize
35:40
up to probably a hundred and fifty words.
35:43
And everybody's gonna memorize the same words.
35:44
Now we're down to eleven people.
35:46
They're gonna we're all gonna sit on stage.
35:48
The first person will get the microphone,
35:49
he'll say dog. The next person will say cat,
35:51
the next person will say book,
35:52
and those keep passing it down until we've eliminated three there.
35:56
If I'm understanding this, then you've got to reji recite those words in sequence.
36:01
And so when it gets to you, if you can't get the next word,
36:05
then you're out.
36:06
Hundred percent. And they'll eliminate three that way.
36:09
The next event is when we peep I when people hear me describe it,
36:14
it sounds daunting. But if you break it down,
36:17
it's it's so well it's very possible because I've done it practice all
36:20
the time and I'm I always get it.
36:21
But what they're gonna do is you're have five people walk up on stage.
36:24
And at this point there'll be seven of us up there.
36:27
Person one will say my name, my birthday,
36:30
my city, my state, and the year I graduated,
36:34
the city I live in now.
36:36
My zip code, my job, my employer,
36:39
my cat color type and name, my three favorite foods,
36:43
my three favorite hobbies, and the make,
36:45
model, year, and color of my car.
36:47
And that person will leave. That's person one.
36:50
Person two says the same thing,
36:51
the same data. Person three says the same data.
36:54
Person four says the same data.
36:55
Person five says the same data.
36:57
And they just say it. We're not looking at nothing.
36:59
Then they go one more time around and they all say the same data,
37:02
but this time we got papers to read as they're saying it.
37:05
So now we're all just we're putting it in our mind palaces,
37:07
by the way. We all have five mind palaces,
37:10
one for each person. And so we're all just putting it on our mind palace.
37:13
And then after they loop through twice,
37:15
then they just give us five minutes to study the paper.
37:18
And then they'll just quiz us.
37:19
The guy they'll say, okay, person number three,
37:21
walk up here. All right, you, what was his name?
37:24
You, what was his zip code? And we'll eliminate three or four that way.
37:28
Then we'll be down to the last event.
37:29
And the last event is they'll get two decks of cards,
37:32
they'll shuffle them together.
37:33
Everybody has the exact same randomized order.
37:36
We'll memorize a hundred and four cards in five minutes.
37:39
Person one will say the first card,
37:41
person two will say the next one,
37:42
person three, person four until two are eliminated and the champion is crowned.
37:47
Okay. Wow. It sounds like ~ you know,
37:49
there have been some interesting movies.
37:51
I saw a really interesting movie about the national spelling bee,
37:54
which, you know, sounds like maybe a boring thing,
37:57
but it was very compelling ~ documentary on how these kids are studying,
38:01
how they're practicing, all this kind of stuff.
38:03
And and this almost sounds like there could be a documentary shot around,
38:07
you know, who are the people that are participating in this?
38:09
How are they studying? What are their backgrounds and all that sort of stuff
38:12
and how they come forward?
38:13
I don't know if anybody shot a documentary on that,
38:15
but it sounds like it could be,
38:16
you know, potentially quite intriguing.
38:18
Yeah, there there have been documentaries actually on it,
38:21
but none of them have ever taken off and made a splash or anything like that.
38:25
You know, probably just wasn't the right producer or the right script
38:28
or or not script, it's not scripted,
38:29
but you know. Yeah. People who are just more amateurs at documentaries have done it.
38:34
Yeah, I think what made it interesting was,
38:36
you know, there was drama, there were people that were overcoming things,
38:39
there was humor, there was, you know,
38:40
all the all the different human elements,
38:42
if you will, that provide richness to our to our lives.
38:45
So yeah.
38:46
I do think this year there's somebody there making a documentary
38:49
and I figure they'll want to talk to me.
38:51
I'm twice everybody's age. You know,
38:53
I'm fifty three. This is a this is a there's one person who I believe's
38:56
in his late thirties. Everybody else is in their twenties.
38:59
Everybody else is in their twenties.
39:00
Okay.
39:01
So, you know, I'm not I've I've if this in two thousand nine and ten
39:05
I was the favorite and I won. In two thousand and twenty six I am not the favorite.
39:11
But we'll have some fun.
39:14
Yeah, for sure. Well, we'll be cheering for you.
39:16
Well, it's inspiring to hear how you go about this.
39:18
I I think if you've been listening to the podcast,
39:21
it gives you some strategies. you know,
39:23
visualization is is one strategy,
39:26
repetition is another, and then creating things that that I think
39:30
on some level things that actually make you smile,
39:32
right? Like the face that you showed us and some of the ~ things that
39:36
you were talking about, you know,
39:37
brains coming out of the eyes or,
39:39
you know, a chef cooking you some you c you can almost bring a smile to your face.
39:42
I think
39:43
I think when emotion is involved,
39:46
I think it's easier to remember too.
39:48
And we we know this certainly from trauma,
39:50
right? That traumas get imprinted in,
39:52
you know, explosion happens and you you see it and hear it one time
39:57
and you'll never forget it for the rest of your life,
39:59
right? So there are certain things that kind of catch our attention
40:03
and imprint themselves. I think I don't know if you utilize humor intentionally,
40:07
if you put things together that kind of make you smile,
40:10
but I don't know if that's a a leg up on the
40:13
On the situation or not, but
40:15
Anything
40:15
that you can make you smile, laugh,
40:17
gross you out, you know, make you go like,
40:20
my gosh, you know that's crazy picture.
40:21
Yeah, the the more emotion gets into it,
40:24
the more which you said it that the beginning.
40:26
You said at the beginning that if we don't review it we're not gonna remember,
40:30
but you said the th the things that are unusual or have action in
40:34
we will remember more.
40:36
Yeah, that seems to be true. Well great,
40:38
Ron. I wanna thank you for spending this time with us.
40:40
I think everybody's been inspired by it and ~ we'll be cheering for you
40:44
a couple of days from now. That's by the time this airs,
40:47
we'll already know if you won or not.
40:48
So maybe we'll try to
40:50
Well my philosophy on this is if I make it past round one,
40:55
which is the long term memory of event,
40:57
that that's that's my main goal,
40:58
you know? ~ anything else is icing on the cake,
41:01
but I I can't wait to share the results,
41:03
whatever they were, 'cause it'll be a learning experience.
41:05
if why did I get eliminated? Why did I why did I win?
41:08
Or why did I get eliminated? What did I do wrong?
41:10
What can I get better? Either way it's gonna be fun.
41:12
Yeah, I think and I think that's really the right attitude about any of this.
41:16
I think if you you know, what you're doing is you're approaching it as a game,
41:20
right? It's and and it's a learning opportunity.
41:22
And I think even as you're looking and implementing some of these things
41:26
for yourself, think of it as a game.
41:28
Think of it as don't think of it as I can do it or I can't do it.
41:31
Think of it as what am I learning?
41:32
What am I learning? How am I getting better?
41:34
I think that makes it fun. So have fun with it.
41:36
Yeah.
41:37
I appreciate that. I will have fun.
41:38
I'm gonna treat it as a game challenge for myself.
41:40
I'm also looking forward to this being over so I can get back to work.
41:43
~ you know I know everything about the preakness winners,
41:46
the declaration signers and video games.
41:48
You know, I mean the last video game I played was Pac Man.
41:51
This was really not what I wanted to memorize the last couple of weeks,
41:54
but
41:54
Yeah, there you go. There you go.
41:56
All right. Well thank you so much.
41:57
We wish you all the best.
41:58
Alright, thank you for having on.
42:00
I heard a lot of good things about you and everything you're doing,
42:02
so thank you so much.
42:03
My pleasure.
42:04
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42:06
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42:08
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