Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

by Joshua Foer

I thought it would be pretty interesting if the world’s strongest person ever got to meet the world’s smartest person. The Mighty Atom and Einstein, arms wrapped around each other: an epic juxtaposition of muscle and mind.

Muscle and mind

Cooke, a young grand master from England who had come to the USA event as spring training for that summer’s World Championship (since he was a non-American, his scores couldn’t be counted in the USA contest), when he first realized he was a savant.

Ed

“Junk food in: junk brain. Healthy food in: healthy brain,” he said.

Buzan

He calls it a “global education revolution focusing on learning how to learn.”

Buzan believes schools go about teaching all wrong. They pour vast amounts of information into students’ heads, but don’t teach them how to retain it.

Buzan 3

“What we have been doing over the last century is defining memory incorrectly, understanding it incompletely, applying it inappropriately, and condemning it because it doesn’t work and isn’t enjoyable,” Buzan argues.

Buzan 4

“The brain is like a muscle,” he said, and memory training is a form of mental workout.

Buzan 5

“memory gymnasium” called the Oxford Mind Academy.

S could memorize complex mathematical formulas without knowing any math, Italian poetry without speaking Italian, and even phrases of gobbledygook.

S

“Everything we learn is permanently stored in the mind, although sometimes particular details are not accessible. With hypnosis, or other special techniques, these inaccessible details could eventually be recovered.”

Loftus

He was a genuine bon vivant, and yet he approached the subject of his PhD research, the relationship between memory and perception, with a rigor and seriousness that suggested he intended to accomplish big things.

Phd