Anthony Metivier

Anthony Metivier is an author, memory expert, and the founder of the Magnetic Memory Method, a training system focused on memorizing complex information through mnemonic techniques and memory palaces. He is the author of several books on learning and cognition, including The Victorious Mind, and is known for combining memory training with mindfulness, reflective thinking, mind mapping, and critical thought. Through his how-to books and courses, including Rules Reborn and the Magnetic Memory Method podcast, he has built a large following around practical methods for improving memory and lifelong learning. ⁠Anthony Metivier on YouTube Anthony Metivier's books: The Magnetic Memory Method Rules Reborn Books mentioned in this episode: A Question of Memory — David Berglas The Medieval Craft of Memory — Mary Carruthers The Memory Code — Lynne Kelly Memory Craft — Lynne Kelly Memory Superpowers — Nelson Dellis Remember It! — Nelson Dellis Everyday Genius — Nelson Dellis Aristotle on Memory — Richard Sorabji Didascalicon — Hugh of Saint Victor ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Anthropic https://Claude.com/tetra ------ AGZ https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  I often think of the David Lynch Last Highway movie where Bill Pullman says, "I like to remember things the way I remember them, not necessarily the way they happened." And then that's naturally what happens when we tell these stories. But as I remember it, anyway, I was dealing with a very bad clinical depression while I was doing my PhD. And rather than do anything destructive, I wound up at the campus one day. David Blaine was all the rage. And in this deep, dark winter, there's a place at York University campus called York Lanes, where inside they kind of protect you from the Canadian winter with what looks like a street, a city street, inside. And it's nice and warm. And these guys came and did street magic to me. And this revived an old interest that I had when I was a kid in magic. And so I went home and I was watching videos.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  And I stumbled across what's called the Holy Grail of Magic, which is any card at any number, where the spectator could name a card and name a number, and it'll be there. But the deck has to be memorized. And I thought, "There's no way I can do this. I can't even read a sentence of this dense philosophy that I'm responsible for." But I tried it anyway. And lo and behold, I memorized a deck of cards. And I thought instantly, "If I can memorize a deck of cards, I can get back into this." It just gave me this weird light in my head, too. And later, I found out there's research that actually people have done that confirms this. And it's throughout the tradition, the sense of light that comes from practicing with memory for quite a lot of people. Yeah, I just had the confidence to keep going, and I didn't drop up, and I didn't do anything destructive to myself. And I passed.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  And then I just used memory techniques privately for a certain portion of my career. And after I, a research grant I had and a teaching grant ended, I wound up back home in Canada. And I was working, doing curriculum for a sort of after-school school where parents send their kids when they're concerned that the public school system isn't doing enough for them. And I wasn't even teaching, but a teacher didn't show up one day. And the, the person who owned the school asked me if I could stand in. And I taught the stuff to the kids and I said, you know, that's it. What do you guys want to do now? And they said, we don't know. You're the teacher. And I said, let's learn how to say the alphabet backwards. And then after that, we got into some card memorization. And I showed them how to memorize words and stuff.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  And they said, could you write that down? And I did. And the Kindle Gold Mine was going on at that time. And I put it up on Amazon, not thinking a thing about it. But a friend of mine said, hey, have you seen your book? And I was like, no, there's like ranking in the, the bestsellers in like one and one and

• 2:52Rick Rubin?

  Really?

• 2:53Speaker 00

  Category three.

• 2:54Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It was just luck of the draw, I guess. I mean, I, I was looking at different ideas of how I was gonna become a business person, but I was way off in completely different ideas. And this memory thing just really hit and I, I saw that. And then, oh, there's a lot of adventure there with stubbornness of not really wanting to be an entrepreneur or anything like that, and not wanting to run an email list properly. And I was just emailing at some point 700 people a day, copying and pasting in like doses of 12 or whatever that wouldn't get flagged by these email systems at the time. And then finally I paid to get one of these systems to email people. Anyway, just went over there and I delayed getting a website probably way too long because it wasn't anything I planned for.

• 3:33Rick Rubin?

  When did YouTube start for you?

• 3:36Speaker 00

  It had started when I learned memory techniques and that was part of what had enabled it. This would have been 2003, I guess, when I discovered the technique. So YouTube was a thing.

• 3:46Rick Rubin?

  When did you start posting videos?

• 3:49Speaker 00

  Well, that was one of my other business ideas that I was originally working on. And that would have been around 2011-ish. Cause I had been a film studies professor. And another sort of lucky weird thing that was happening to me is that there was a student who was a cinematographer. And he was like, man, you gotta get your stuff on YouTube. And I was not in a healthy space or I was just, I was not really enabled by. Anything to understand that that would have been the best thing I could have ever done is have him use a professional camera to put my stuff on YouTube. But I heard it later. And then when I was back in Canada, I had written some books about screenwriting because he had gotten me a gig as a story consultant. And I actually worked

• 4:32Speaker 00

  on a couple of projects, one of which I even have my name in credits, which I never dreamed in my life was ever going to happen. And I was able to visit the set. It was just a weird thing. I was getting like a couple of gigs to to consult on stories. And then I was documenting going to the set as the guy who was like script doctor on this thing. And that was on my YouTube channel. That still is. And then I was giving these lectures about like really noodly Deleuze sort of analysis of film and Bertrand analysis of film. And it's still there. It still sits there. And I look really awkward. And I mean, it almost looks like a Twin Peaks episode because it was in outside of Vancouver and there's this pine wall behind me. And some of them, I've got a Videodrome poster behind

• 5:14Speaker 00

  me. And I did a whole Department of Cronenberg Studies, you know, playlist or whatever. It was wild. And it was sort of working because people were buying these books about screenwriting that I wrote.

• 5:26Rick Rubin?

  How long did it take to learn the deck of cards?

• 5:29Speaker 00

  I think it was about 15 minutes.

• 5:31Rick Rubin?

  15 minutes to memorize the deck of cards?

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not that difficult. I'm not confident of anything in my memory per se, but my perception is that it was about 15 minutes. But I wasn't totally new to the exact ideas. I mean, it was just in this adventure, I had started to develop these. And then I saw on YouTube this idea of the holy gr- if it hadn't been magic, I probably would have looked at it and said, there's no way I'm going to memorize a deck of cards. But because I was blessed as a kid to have had a magic kid and did show and tell with magic and so forth, the soil was set. For the great adventure that emerged. And so, you know, sometimes people ask me like, if I have any special advantage that they don't have. And I said, I don't really think so,

• 6:14Speaker 00

  except for luck. And that's true, you know, and maybe that I learned with reading phonics. There's a guy named Richard Rubin, who emailed me at one point, and he's a nemenist and a mentalist and a magician. And we were on the podcast and we were talking about the problem of phonics, because sometimes people really struggle to understand these techniques. And he said, well, there, there was a whole period of, of whole reading where people weren't taught to sound out words. And that's why a lot of people are starting to struggle with understanding these, these memory techniques.

• 6:45Rick Rubin?

  What would be a good memory technique to start with?

• 6:48Speaker 00

  One of the most powerful and useful, and probably the easiest memory techniques to learn is association. So you can absorb people's names and recall them. And basically, there's different ways to think about this. But if you were to hear a name like William, then you could associate the new person William that you've just met with William Shakespeare. But one of the key strategies is to try to link the new person that you've named with a celebrity or a friend who is as familiar to you as possible. And the reason why is because, you know, if I meet a person named Eric and I think about Eric Bana, well, I've seen Eric

• 7:32Speaker 00

  Bana as the Incredible Hulk. And this has massive amounts of associative power because he has turned green and gotten really big and snarly and growly. And then he's also shrunk down to normal size and looked rather dramatic in a pool of sweat after turning back to David Banner, I think is the character in the Hulk movies. So Eric Bana, when I associate it with someone I, I meet named Eric, now it's just loaded with all this familiarity. And so that's just basic association for names. And you can take it a step further by using those images

• 8:11Speaker 00

  as a kind of association that you place on a person's shoulder. So if it's someone named Graham, you could have a big giant Graham cracker on their shoulder. And then you have a place to look for the association. The problem with Graham crackers is that they're not like Eric Bana, the actor who can be associated with the Hulk. So you'd want to try to be careful about that because it can often lead you into errors. And that's one of the problems with memory techniques is that they're not surefire. And sometimes there are pronunciation errors. And often when I make mistakes, it's a pronunciation error. But you just want to go and do the best that you can.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  And then the cool thing is, is if you make a mistake because the image is too generic that you place, like a Graham crackers isn't strong enough, you just elaborate it a little bit further. And then you might remember in that time. I think if my memory serves in, in some of the Hannibal Lecter movies, there's a character named Will Graham, maybe. And so now you have that character, whoever it is that you remember more closely to Graham, eating this Graham cracker. So you don't get rid of the weak association. You elaborate it. That's really the easiest way to start is when you meet people, find some way to associate their name to something you already know. And then as you practice, you'll be able to do it with greater and greater associations of higher and higher familiarity.

• 9:38Rick Rubin?

  Is there a technique for memorizing something word for word?

• 9:43Speaker 00

  Yes, there's a beautiful technique. And word for word can be lyrics from a song or lines from Shakespeare or a story that you want to tell and really nail or give a speech. And the technique, as I use it, is all the same. So if it's a beautiful line from Shakespeare, for example, you would use a memory palace. And the way that I do it for memorizing verbatim is I look at the first letter of the passage. And then I try and think of a location that also has that first letter. So in Australia, they have Woolworth's grocery stores. And there's a line in Shakespeare from Titus Andronicus that says, uh, why I have not another tear to shed.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  And so because that starts with W, I choose the Woolworth's grocery store. And then before I start to memorize the lines, and I recommend people do this, I just make a quick sketch of the location, like a top down drawing, and I mean chicken. Scratch sketch. This isn't art, nothing to frustrate yourself. Literally a square that sort of you can draw an arrow or a line that shows how you're going to progress through the grocery store in this case. And then you look back at the source material and you look at the first sentence and you imagine the way that you're going to have the character move through the memory palace in a way that's going to help you remember the exact words.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  It's been a while since I recited this, but what I did is I used Anthony Hopkins because he played Titus Andronicus in the movie. So I had him standing in the Woolworth's grocery store and then he's walking towards the fruit section and then he goes to the vegetable section and then he goes down an aisle and then he goes up another aisle. And as he's walking, things are happening in my imagination that helped me remember why I have not another tear to shed. Besides, this sorrow would be an enemy and would usurp upon my watery eyes and make them blind with tributary tears. Then which way shall I find revenge's cave for these two heads do seem to speak to me and threaten me? I shall never come to bliss until this mischief be returned again, even in the throats that committed them.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  I may have dropped a word or two, but basically on a line by line basis, the why I have not another tear to shed is at the first part that I've indicated in the memory palace, just ahead of the fruit section. And I have a big giant question mark floating above the fruit section and I have not another tear to shed. Titus Andronicus is using that question mark to cut a shed in half. In the real grocery store, there is no shed there, but to remember that it is a shed and a tear is coming out of his eye while he's doing this. And the key to all of this is to not try to be creative, not try to rebuild any wheels, not try to

• 12:30Speaker 00

  do anything other than what is the word and what is the most likely association that I can place in the grocery store? In a line or maybe coming down from the ceiling to the floor, that's going to remind me of those exact words. And so if it's why I have not another tear to shed, besides this sorrow is an enemy, then besides. There's a B and that B to make it as specifically as possible is from the B movie. And I think it was Jerry Seinfeld who did the voice of the B in that movie. And so he's stinging Titus Andronicus or Anthony Hopkins, who played Titus Andronicus in the side. So besides, the sorrow is an enemy. And so there's sometimes hard words like usurp and would usurp upon my watery eyes and make them blind with tributary tears.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  When I first remembered that, I didn't even know what the word them meant, but I don't worry about that. Like, I don't know what them was referring to because it's this, you know, now archaic, European language. So as you memorize, the key is just how are you going to memorize that it's the word them in this position? And so what I do for this kind of tricky word that's abstract, don't even know what it's referring to. I look at TH and I have Thor mending a hem, them, right? And if it was this, then I have Thor taking, you know, an activity I won't mention that rhymes with this. And then if it's that, I have Thor pulling down a hat. So that's the verbatim trick where you have associations for each and every word. Is is the goddess Isis, I think Isis is a goddess. If is Ifejanaya, you know, your mileage may vary.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  You may not know who Ifejanaya is, but your journey is to come up with what you could use for if. And what's cool about the memory palace is it lets you recite the material forward and backward. And so that's a little harder to demonstrate, but really it's just a function of thinking back and going, you know, and then which way shall I find revenge's cave? I know where that was in the grocery store and I know what the associations are there, which then allows me to do the piece out of order. And it would be the same thing with song lyrics, the same thing with a speech. And if you want to get a little bit more advanced into it, spend some time thinking about different ways that you can take the alphabet and turn it into associations.

• 14:40Rick Rubin?

  Are there any techniques for memorizing music?

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely. And we always have to start with what we mean by music, because we might mean a matter of theory, like just the names of the modes, whether it's Phrygian or Mixolydian or Dorian. Like knowing that information is really just a kind of verbatim memorization because you want to know what those words are. But then there's the features of knowing what a certain mode does, like Lydian having a sharp fourth. So you would use memory techniques in a particular way. And then knowing where a note is located on an instrument would involve another kind of technique. So if you're on a guitar and you notice that, I think it's an E on the A string is the seventh fret,

• 15:28Speaker 00

  then you could make an image that helps you remember that. If it's a B on the second fret on the A string, you can make an image that will help you remember that. If you don't even know the strings, you could have E for Ernie, A for Al Pacino, D for Dracula, G for Grover, B for the next B if it's a guitar, and then you have E again, and you might want to have baby Ernie to distinguish one from the other. And then from there, you can work your way down the low E string. And on the first fret, you have Ernie doing something with a candle because that's like number one. And then you want to remember that that's F, I believe. You can incorporate an F-shaped candle, for example.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  And he's putting it out with his fingers and he swears with an F-sounding word, right? So now that helps you remember that F on the E string is on the first fret because the candle is like a one shape that you've turned into an F shape. And then if it's any note, any position, the 13th fret, I think, is an F as well on the E string. Now you have an image for 13. These matters get a little bit complicated, and there's even easier ways to do that with a number-based system called a 00 to 99 PAO. But you can translate it to the piano in certain ways. I don't play piano, but I think middle C is near the two black keys. And then you can think of the three black keys and what the notes are between them. Like I think a G is trapped between one of the three black keys.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  And you could imagine a ghost being trapped in a cathedral, that sort of thing. And that could help you just get into navigating a keyboard by having like C and then a black key and then a D and a dog is trapped. Away from a cat with these two black keys. If that's how it works, a CDE, then the two black keys. And then an elephant is on the other side. And then you make a little story. So the cat is being protected from the dog and the elephant is trying to convince the dog not to attack the cat. And there's only these two black keys that are somehow holding the dog back despite the elephant's efforts and the cat's fear. So now you have the CDE, if I'm remembering the keyboard correctly. But that's the memory palace technique, using associations on the physical surface

• 17:38Speaker 00

  of the keyboard.

• 17:42Speaker 02

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• 19:35Rick Rubin?

  How would we use these methods for dates and numbers?

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Oh, dates and numbers are a wild and wonderful realm to get into because they are often confusing because you have the day, the year, and then you might have the century. So, you know, something in the 1800s would be called the 19th century. It's just like mind melting with numbers. But one of the simplest things that I try to do with numbers related to dates is I try to pick pivot points. So, one of the great memory masters was burned at the stake on February 17, 1600. His name was Giordano Bruno. So, I make him a point that that was 1600 and February 17. And then, whenever I'm needing to memorize any other information, I'll think,

• 20:24Speaker 00

  where is it in relation to that date? And then, try to work out, well, what is the date? And then, I'll try to think of these associations that I could make. So, if it's the birthdate of a philosopher, or a historical figure, or something like that, could I use always the right hand for the birth date? And place images in the right hand of that figure that remind me of the date of the birth? And then, can you use the left hand for the date of death? Or some other body part, like the over the head, and then under the feet? Actually, under the feet would make a great deal of sense for the date of death because of, you know, the time to go underground, that sort of thing. It's up to you to how you want to do

• 21:04Speaker 00

  that. But the core principle would be to give the historical date more meat and more reasons. What is it? And then, choose your strategy based on that. And if you wanted to add facts, like the island of Corsica is involved, then, you know, you can add like an apple core to your historical figure, if that's where they were born. And if they died in longwood, then you could have long pieces of wood involved underneath their feet with that date.

• 21:35Rick Rubin?

  What is the magnetic memory method?

• 21:39Speaker 00

  I chose that name because magnets have a dual purpose, at least a dual purpose. They can do more than two things, but the two main things we know is repelling things and attracting them. And so, in my own practice, because I have a very noisy mind, The repelling part is just as important as the attracting part so that I can really focus on the task at hand. And so when I teach the magnetic memory method, it's not just about memory techniques. It's about using some breathing, using some progressive muscle relaxation and other things that you could explore, like getting light exposure properly, getting enough exercise, focusing on your diet, maybe doing rotation diet stuff or elimination diet to really work out what the heck it is that makes this hard

• 22:23Speaker 00

  for you. So that when you are properly in your body, it's like Disneyland every day when you can just be with these techniques. If I don't take care of myself and focus on that repelling part of the technique, I'll be lost and in suffering and it's and it's an ongoing maintenance kind of thing. So that's, that's the origin of that term.

• 22:45Rick Rubin?

  And what is the technique?

• 22:47Speaker 00

  It's five mnemonic systems that come to work in tandem. So it's the memory palace. It's having an alphabetical association system. It's having at least one of these number systems. If you're going to do stuff like equations, then a symbol system so that you, you know, you know what sigma is or delta or beta or whatever comes up in there. And then that you have a recall rehearsal system, which is more commonly called spaced repetition. But the reason I call it recall rehearsal is because I encourage people to think of the merry palace, not as a movie, but as a theater and you're sort of the director and you're calling those associations to rehearse for you in order to produce the effect that you want. So that's what the magnetic memory method is in a nutshell.

• 23:30Rick Rubin?

  And if somebody wants to learn it, how would they do that?

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Well, I have an abundance and the internet is such that it's probably a confusing abundance of free material all over the place. And then the consolidation of it is in a free course through my site and there's a masterclass. But as things are changing, I'm doing more and more live bootcamps on Zoom where we get together. And I've thought a lot about the different challenges that people have. And rather than lecturing so much about it and showing diagrams and stuff, we now, I've just cooked up various exercises where we can develop memory palaces together in real time and work on developing some of these associations between numbers together. And that's been, it's been amazing adventure,

• 24:14Speaker 00

  even more amazing than before, since I started doing that. And that's what it's becoming more and more. Live bootcamps, so people can get involved that way. And if I can pull it off, we're gonna have a physical memory palace here. It's kind of challenging, it's outside of my circle of competence, but actually strangely, just before I heard from you, I had read your book and there's a sentence in there that says, you know, if you have a vision, don't make any sacrifices. And that's the hardest thing, actually, but I'm so glad I read that because as I get into all these builders who have a very different speed than I do and attitude, it's been a great sentence to remember, so.

• 24:55Rick Rubin?

  Has your teaching changed since doing the bootcamps?

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Yes and no. I think that, I mean, even though the culture is changing, I still think there's value in being able to go through a video course. Maybe a month or so ago, just to push back on some of the AI hype, I released a short and just said, look, just because AI is here, doesn't mean that you know, you're, you're gonna be able to attend every bootcamp and that now the replay is, has no value. There's still value to going through courses, through books and so forth. But the way the teaching has changed is, is to give people a place to practice, to ask questions while they're practicing. And it kind of like a dojo. And so then, in the dojo setting, it just makes me more highly attuned to what people are, are telling me.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  And because I have that access, it's changed because I have more data about where they are. And I'm able to see myself in where I have been and where I haven't been. And then what is the difference? Why is it that I wind up being able to chant for X number of minutes in Sanskrit? And they're still working on the first sentence of whatever it is that they're doing. I mean, it's still early days, but I think that's been great. And I often, the, the key change is I keep thinking, how can I find other? People who who can demonstrate that they can do this, who can help me without getting into all these problems where, you know, technically, if they had the skills that I have, they'd have

• 26:22Speaker 00

  their own business. And so the collaborating with other mnemonists is part of what's changing my teaching as we think and how that that's possible. But part of it has to do with this physical bookshop, because I want to start a content, like a new kind of memory competition that would be a non-competition competition, where really, it would be something like, five weeks before it happens, whoever's going to be the the competition judges, they would say, a book. So we would have like five judges and five books, five weeks before it happens. And then, you know, you can use ChatGPT if you want to write your speech, but we we still want it in in handwriting and, you know, maybe even let that go. You give it from memory, you tell us what you learned about the experience. I think that will be the ultimate change to my

• 27:05Speaker 00

  teaching, that it enables people to self-reflect on what they memorized, why they memorized it in a way that we can record and share with the world.

• 27:14Rick Rubin?

  When you would teach before doing the bootcamps, I imagine it's from a more theoretical place. And now, when you have feedback, are there any things that you've noticed, wow, I get a lot of questions about this, and I wasn't really covering this when I was teaching it before?

• 27:29Speaker 00

  I'm not often surprised by new questions. As in martial art, or as in chess, or as in music, there seems to be a core number of questions that come up over and over and over again. But what I do get, that's, that's often quite a surprise more often, is just interesting ideas that people have for how that they're going to proceed. And then they ask me, basically, the way they frame their question is, how likely do you think this idea is going to work? And I almost always say, there are no memory palace police. Go experiment. And then, if it works, tell everybody about it, you know? And I don't judge you. I don't prejudge you.

• 28:06Rick Rubin?

  Are all of the memory techniques rooted in a visual system?

• 28:11Speaker 00

  No, that's a really hard thing. And I mean, hard in terms of it's challenged a lot of people and blocked them out of using memory techniques. Because it seems, in my view, to have emerged in the 20th century with the memory competitions and some of the vaudeville showmen who would do various stunts. And then people like Harry Lorraine and so forth kept using picture, visualize. But in the ancient books, it's not, it's not really that way at all. It's about deep sensory lived experience and thinking. And image and imagination, for some of the Renaissance memory writers, imagination meant memory. It was, it was not so clean, the vision between imagination and memory. So it's, it's not really a visual thing at all.

• 28:56Rick Rubin?

  Of all of the techniques that you are familiar with and that you use, what would you say is the oldest one?

• 29:03Speaker 00

  I guess it's probably the memory palace, but the memory palace, I believe, is just a form of association. So association is, is probably the, the oldest.

• 29:14Rick Rubin?

  Do you always have a number associated with each location? Or is it more open than that?

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can have an open system without numbering, or you can make it a bit more closed. You can letter the different locations inside of a memory palace. It depends on what your goal is, but if you have particular goals, then numbering would make sense. If it's a different goal, then lettering them might make sense. And if you have another goal, keeping them open. I, I tend to keep them open for most of what I memorize. Because I don't invent memory palaces and I don't choose locations that I have to struggle to remember. So the journey that I, I just make a quick little drawing or a sketch and I just make sure that I don't have to think about it, but I don't have to have some work involved. It's just, in that location, that room was there. It has four corners and four walls. I'm going to start right here and go around in a circle.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  And so labeling it is just an additional cognitive load that turns it into a kind of memorized palace, as opposed to a memory palace, which, not to be dogmatic about it, but if we were going to be, a memory palace is based on what's in your memory. And you don't enhance it, you don't elaborate it, you don't cause it to become a Memory task, you just ground what you're doing on what you remember and how you would move through there. So that the maximum mental effort can go on laying the associations. So that you can remember sometimes very complex things. So the more you can place your mental energy on the imagery and not worry about the memory palace. It's like a canvas. The painter doesn't want to be constantly thinking about, okay, so it's not paint by numbers. It's like, okay, so there's ninety six and you know, there's ninety seven. It's not like that.

• 30:50Speaker 00

  You want to be in command of that canvas because it's already you.

• 30:54Rick Rubin?

  We could say that the palace is a location.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, you would even say that a memory palace is a location based mnemonic.

• 31:02Rick Rubin?

  And in terms of location, do you use the same location for all of your palaces?

• 31:09Speaker 00

  No, no, far from it. I use as many as I can and I've I've been lucky and fortunate to have been around the world. But I know some people don't have that that luxury. But from a spatial memory perspective, you want to use as many different places as you possibly can.

• 31:24Rick Rubin?

  Do you have categories of, I know if I'm going to remember this kind of a list, I'll use this type of a palace?

• 31:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can do that. And so there, if I'm going to do this kind of list, it depends on what is the list? And one thing that might be helpful is that I'm not aware of anything we would ever memorize that isn't a list.

• 31:42Rick Rubin?

  Is everything a list? It seems like in some ways a sentence is a list essentially.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's that's an example I often give because people use it as an objection to say, I can't do this. And it would just be me ending up memorizing lists. And I said, no, that's that's the solution to all of this. And it may be overthinking it, but we live in the arrow of time. And so when I memorize a speech, which I've done, you know, I I'm actually just reciting a list of paragraphs. And in each of those paragraphs is a list of sentences and in each of those is a list of words. And even then, there's a list of letters that form the words. So whether it's the Dirac equation in physics or whatever it is, like it's just a list. And that's very freeing to understand that.

• 32:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, if you memorize a speech. If you were to ad lib in the middle of a speech, could you still come back and continue the speech? Or once you break, it might be hard to come back?

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can. That happened to me, actually. When I was giving a speech, people laughed at a time and I... They didn't laugh when I planted a joke and then they laughed when I wasn't expecting it. And I looked like a deer in headlights for a second.

• 32:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  And I see it on the video sometimes. And I got back to it because I knew exactly where to go in the memory palace.

• 32:55Rick Rubin?

  How do you think most people think about memory?

• 32:58Speaker 00

  I wish I knew. I wish I knew how they experienced it. And I feel maybe there's an eternal present coming where we will know how others experience memory. And in a way, we do. But I don't want to assume that I'm correct in that. But that's kind of what our books and our music and our art is, is a way of experiencing how others experience memory. But I wish I just knew better. It'd be amazing.

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• 35:27Rick Rubin?

  What are the different memory techniques that you're aware of?

• 35:30Speaker 00

  Well, there's the memory palace. There's linking, which I think memory palaces are a form of linking or association. There's rhyming, like one is a bun, two is a shoe, three is a bee. You could have in the corner of a room, a bun, and then that's going to remind you that that's the first item. And then the second item is two is a shoe. So that's rhyming. There's basically alphabetical peg words. So you're prepared in advance that for every letter A, you've instantly got Adam Sandler. For every letter Z, you've instantly got Billy Zane. You can even get more granular on that with what's called a double alphabet. So you could have like Andre Agassi is your AA. And then someone named Albrecht Orinstein or whatever, just to make something up, would be your AB.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  And then you go AC, AD, and you go all the way through the alphabet from ZA and ZZ. So ZZ Top would be an easy one for ZZ, but you go all the way back through those. And some of the memory competitors who want to be really fast, that is indeed what they do. And then there's what's called a major system, which allows you to link the alphabet to the numbers zero to nine. And then you can further develop that into what's called a 00 to 99 PAO, where you would have an image for every digit from 00 to 99.

• 36:48Rick Rubin?

  Do you have a symbol for numbers from one to 100?

• 36:52Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, and I use them pretty much every day.

• 36:54Rick Rubin?

  Wow, can you walk me through them?

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Sure, so, so zero zero is either Dr. Zeus or Thomas Szasz. And the rationale for that is that zero is is associated with a soft C, S or Z. So when we have zero zero, Dr. Zeus is S and S. Then for zero one, I have sad, which is the tragedy mask. But to make it more alive and real, I just use William Shatner, who played Oedipus Rex in a production where he's wearing a sad tragedy mask. Then you go to two is sun, I use the poster for sunshine. The Danny Boyle movie, I think, directed it. For three, I use Sam because S and M.

• 37:34Rick Rubin?

  How did you come up with these associations?

• 37:37Speaker 00

  I'm using a major system, so maybe better go back.

• 37:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  So the major, the major is very old. It's premised in something called the Khatapati, which is an ancient Indian system where you link numbers to consonants. And then you form words out of the consonants. So zero is associated with soft C, S or Z. One is associated with T or D. Two is with N, three is with M, four is with R, five is with L. Six, you get options. Chudja, shudja, and maybe some others. Seven is a K or hard G. Eight is an F or V. Nine is a B or P. So now back to zero zero being Dr. Zeus, S and S. And then sad, one is with D or T.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  So the zero is the S and then the D is in sad is T or D. Now, if we just skip to ninety nine, the singer from Ghost sometimes refers to himself as the Pope. So nine is a B or P. And so nine nine is PP. So I get Pope and that's who I think of.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  And I could hear some of the, some of Ghost's music now as I do it, which is, which is a pleasing effect of this.

• 38:47Rick Rubin?

  Isn't there also a version where there's a symbol with what the numbers look like?

• 38:51Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, that's number shape. And there's someone who made or shared a version, I think he calls it the shaper system. I think he has two Guinness World Records named Dave Pharaoh. And he has a slightly more, at least in my mind, it's a slightly more elaborate shape system. And he applies that to playing cards as well. Often it's quite mysterious what the memory competitors, how that they're interpreting it. But there's a very interesting book called A Question of Memory by David Burgliss, who was an astonishingly well-accomplished mnemonist. And he said in A Question of Memory that everybody has to interpret the ancient tradition of memory in their own way. And in a way, how else could it be? It's just a sentence I've never forgotten.

• 39:36Rick Rubin?

  Wow. I'd love to hear more about that book. Sounds great.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, have you heard of David Burgliss?

• 39:42Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  I think he was a kind of mentor, or at least a strong influence on Darren Brown and that style of mentalism. And what he would do is, he would just give very, very strong demonstrations of memory as part of what he's doing, but legitimate, real magic. And so in A Question of Memory, he's just teaching the mnemonics that he used, which we've been covering now. And he has some exercises there with faces, so you can practice memorizing the names of the faces that are pictured in the book. But what was most interesting to me about the book was the theory part at the end, where he kind of describes what you're trying to get to. And he calls it the Kennedy Effect.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  I think he says the Kennedy Effect without the violence, where you want to, when you're using memory palaces, or you're just using linking without memory palaces, you want to experience that as vividly as you can to the effect that it has that kind of feeling of having been a historical event that you will not write out of your memory. And then he goes from there into some intellectual noodling about what the nature of memory is and how different people need to learn it. I just love that book. It's fantastic.

• 40:54Rick Rubin?

  Can you explain the shapes and the numbers?

• 40:57Speaker 00

  So the one that I built for myself is zero, I have a donut, and I usually have Homer Simpson doing something with the donut. So I remember that it's a zero association. One, I have a candle. Two, I have a swan. Three, I either have open handcuff, or I have a mustache that's on its side to look like a three. Four is a sailboat. Five is a seahorse. Six is a fishing hook. Seven is a boomerang. Eight is a snowman. And nine is a golf club.

• 41:26Rick Rubin?

  And when you get past nine, do you use multiple images or no?

• 41:31Speaker 00

  That's where I go to the zero zero, because ten is the don't tase me, bro. Because one is a T and zero is an S. It's worth it to have the multiple systems and just switch between them. Because if you have a zero zero to ninety nine, you asked about, do I have it to a hundred? Technically, I do, but it's actually two different systems. Because when I get to a hundred, rather than having images for three digit numbers, if I have to deal with a three digit number, I will use the Pope. Let's say it's nine nine four. Rather than trying to have a three digit image, I'll just have the Pope on a sailboat because sailboats look like four. And it just makes it much more economical. Because some people do that. I think Florian Delaie called it the millennial system.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  And he had images all the way up to, I think, nine nine nine, or maybe it was even higher than that.

• 42:18Rick Rubin?

  That sounds great, though. Combining the two seems like a simple and smart way of doing it.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  It's a principle of chunking also. The easier you can make the chunking, probably for most learning tasks, the easier it's going to be and the more successful. But there's another thing that I teach people that I use quite a bit called a bridging figure. So when I'm memorizing something, whenever I can to reduce the cognitive load and increase the association in a line, I will have a figure carry more information. That sometimes has to do with how I craft the list. So if there's a bunch of words that start with A B, then I'll have Abraham Lincoln going across as many stations in that memory palace as possible. If I'm memorizing key points from a book, and that book's by Aristotle, then I'll try to imagine Aristotle going through as much of it as I can.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  And if I need to change the figure, I'll sometimes even imagine him passing the baton to the next person, as if it's a relay race. But it's always alphabetically guided. And often what I do, and this is, this is one question I get all the time. It's like, why do you focus so much on the alphabet? It's because it's there. I mean, if I wanted to use a house across the street and it's thirty-two, well, three is M, two is N, thirty-two makes the word man, and I always use Johnny Cash because he was the man in black. So even though it's a number on that house, I have a name for it. I have a word. And then if I wanted to memorize an ancient mantra in Sanskrit, which is the, you know, Manobu Jhankara, well, it starts with man, so I can start right there.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  So that's bringing together, the alphabet starts with M and the first word starts with M, even though it's based on a number.

• 43:59Rick Rubin?

  And the alphabet is a list of twenty-six shapes.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:03Rick Rubin?

  That we all already have memorized.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 44:06Rick Rubin?

  It's probably the longest list that most people have memorized.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, other than the productive ability to count in the thousands quite readily, but there, there you've memorized a combinatorial system.

• 44:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I was told at one point that the reason that phone numbers were seven digits was because that's the most that people could remember.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the chunking principle. So it's, it's even not that it's seven digits, it's that it's three plus four, because we have a limit of three and four. And even our visual memory apparently has, has that limit of three to five items or something like that. So we, we have a perception that we see the world the way that we see it. But apparently our brain is actually just seizing on three to five items. And then from there, anticipating what we, we expect to see, which is kind of a wild thing.

• 44:54Rick Rubin?

  That's really interesting. I feel like in some ways, knowing that would make sense of why two people can experience the same thing, yet come back with a different list of what they saw, because there are so many things to look at and we each get our three to five and they might not match.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it may, may even be part of why we so easily change our own memories and why we need external documentation so much to, to remind ourselves, because that external documentation can help us see the picture that we incorrectly saw and then re-correct it, so to speak.

• 45:27Rick Rubin?

  What do we know about memories of things that didn't actually happen?

• 45:32Speaker 00

  So there's confabulation, which is when you just make stuff up, or it's it's based on a variation of something that never happened. And so there's court case things that they've had to get into in terms of false witness testimonies where that person will feel legitimately that they they do remember that. But it's it's either confabulated out of something that happened that's become totally transformed, or just sort of invented. But another thing that just recently came out, the researcher's name is Paul Garrett, and he is doing stuff about what's called fuzzy memories. So we tend to think that our fuzzy memories can't help us in any way. But the research suggests that actually, if you leave it to chance,

• 46:14Speaker 00

  you have a better than chance way of getting accurate answers based on fuzzy memories. But in terms of memories that don't exist or past life memories, I kind of have to refer to what it is that we know or what scientists are working on to try to think about that. But it kind of comes back also to that idea. Is memory nested in consciousness or is consciousness nested in memory? And or is that the wrong question? Are they somehow intertwine and there's spooky action at a distance going on all the time? Stuff like that, so.

• 46:44Rick Rubin?

  Would you say there's a creative side to memory?

• 46:47Speaker 00

  Certainly there is. The immediate gut response, though, is that if you're memorizing something, you want to be generative or combinatorial so that you can memorize the material. And if I mean, I shouldn't say you want to. I don't mean to like say anybody should do it in any particular way. But in terms of the kinds of effects that myself and other mnemones have achieved, a lot of it has to do with constraint. So is Shakespeare being creative when he writes a sonnet? Yes, but also he's being generative because he's accepting these rules like Iambic pentameter. So it's kind of a little bit of both, actually. It's not that it's not creative, but by setting up your systems in advance, you can forego the energy of creation in the moment and just use.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  More or less pure combination.

• 47:35Rick Rubin?

  How does memory change our understanding of the world?

• 47:39Speaker 00

  Well, that's an ongoing process. There's a guy named Florian Noicart I saw in New Scientist some months ago, and I haven't been able to interview him yet. But he thinks that maybe like dark matter or whatever is memory. And if that proves true, then that would help me answer my question about whether consciousness is nested in memory or vice versa. People either don't think about their memory at all. They just are just going about their lives. And in a way, we are just deeply intimately involved in memory regardless of what we think about it. And then there's the implications of computer memory and how that maybe you could train an AI to use memory palaces to better. I don't even know what memory is still. I'm still trying to figure out just what that word even means.

• 48:22Rick Rubin?

  What are the hardest things to forget? And what are the hardest things to remember?

• 48:28Speaker 00

  Well, for me, the hardest things to forget are when I get on some kind of loop where due to the way my brain ticks either from bad LSD experiences when I was a kid or whatever. I live in a kind of Philip K. Dick world sometimes, or maybe I shouldn't attribute it to him, but kind of like a paranoia sometimes. So that if that gets switched on, it can be very difficult. But luckily, I have these mantras that I've memorized that really help a lot with that. And then in terms of what's difficult to memorize, I deliberately try to find the most difficult things. And right now, I'm working, I've only just started, but working to memorize Dao De Jing in Mandarin. And I have to coach

• 49:09Speaker 00

  myself because why am I even trying this? It's rather vast. But I've done it before with Sanskrit to quite a volume. And so, so far, so good, just going at a bit of a slower pace. But it's very difficult. And the Sanskrit that I've memorized, I also went through this thing of like, why are you doing this? Like, this is so much stuff that I just am able to use that repelling through relaxation and then just get on with it.

• 49:33Rick Rubin?

  Do you speak those languages? Or are you learning them phonetically?

• 49:37Speaker 00

  No, I don't speak them as such. I have done some study in Mandarin, so passing level three in Mandarin doesn't mean anything, really. But I speak a little bit of Mandarin every day at home with my wife. And I don't speak Sanskrit. I don't know who I would speak Sanskrit with. That doesn't mean I can't memorize the sound of it and the gist of what I'm memorizing. With Atmaboda, I get the gist of the individual pieces, but also the gist of the whole thing. And in fact, I don't think I ever would have understood what was going on in these texts if I hadn't memorized them. Because I'm just, I'm just not that sharp. And but by memorizing it, it's like a fine wine that just rolls around in your head a little bit, and then you go, oh, that's what they're talking about. So my strongest language is German, and

• 50:22Speaker 00

  I just learn these texts in these languages and make sure I get the gist of what I'm doing.

• 50:29Rick Rubin?

  I haven't tried it yet, but I'm told that you could have a conversation in any language with AI. And that would be a good way to do your conversational testing.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's interesting. There's a a technique that precedes the AI called laddering. And that was one of the first things that I did is I asked ChatGPT to teach me Latin or tutor me in Latin in German. And when I first started with Mandarin, we didn't have ChatGPT, but I was in Berlin and I deliberately went and purchased all my Chinese instructions in German, so that I was able to improve German while I was learning Mandarin. And that that's called laddering, and that's a person named Benny Lewis. I heard that from him. He wrote a book called Fluent in Three Months, and really interesting guy.

• 51:14Rick Rubin?

  Does laddering work for anything beyond language?

• 51:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, probably. Is it Victor Wooten, who's the bassist who often talks about martial arts? Applying martial arts. I don't know that he's actually a martial artist, but it seems that he has has enough chops in that world to sort of think through how you could ladder those two together. And I'm sure there's many examples of artists who put various disciplines together that are diverse enough that they're not quite necessarily art, but they become art when they're put together. And that's kind of the question of polymathy, I guess, being skilled in in multiple areas. And then if you have a unifying vision, do you bring them to the service of that? Or is it just like a chaotic polymathy where you're just racking and stacking without putting them together? But no, I think you can ladder for sure well beyond language learning.

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• 53:39Rick Rubin?

  Is it easier to learn something you're interested in? For example, if there's a poem that you love and you want to memorize that versus a list of the same number of words that you have no connection to?

• 53:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, this scientist I was just talking with two days ago, Paul Garrett, I asked him, why don't they put...

• 53:59Speaker 00

  Neminists who love language learning into brain scans so that we could answer that question. You know, they get people to use mnemonics to learn vocabulary and they have a higher rate of retention. But whether the enjoyment factor actually changes things? I don't know, but for myself, it's that kind of repelling principle. I try to not really care whether I'm having fun or not. It's, it's, do I want to do this? And then there's going to be days when I'm having fun with it. There's going to be days when I, when I'm not. And does it, in the long run, does it make it better or faster or easier or more effective if I'm having fun? I have to say, in the grand scheme of things, I've memorized a whole lot of stuff that I have no interest in. But man, do I ever have a lot of fun that, that I have the outcome. I kind of save the, whether it's easy or not for later.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  And I just enjoy the swimming pool of accomplishment.

• 54:46Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the mantras that you use when your brain makes too much noise.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  There's four key ones and a fifth that I kind of stopped using because it just started not feeling quite right. But they are the Atma Bodha, which I don't have the entirety of the Atma Bodha, but, but just enough to work. Then there's a piece called Ripugita, which is an extract that Gary Weber put together in a book called Evolving Beyond Thought. There's Upadesa Sharam and the Song Celestial. Well, the Song Celestial is the one that I, I put aside. The other one that I'm looking for is the Nirvana Shatikam. I think it's sometimes called Atma Shatikam. And that's the one I mentioned earlier was the Johnny Cash across the street. Mano Bu Jahankara. And I rotate between them depending on, you know, what exact remedy I think I need.

• 55:35Rick Rubin?

  Are you focusing on the sound or on the meaning?

• 55:38Speaker 00

  It depends because I don't always do it out loud. So it has a different effect if you do it quietly than if you do it out loud. I was just telling somebody the other day, I was, like I do it at the beach when I also do qigong moves. Or sometimes I'll have to do it before I even start any kind of qigong because I won't be quiet enough yet. So it's like an inner gong to sing out loud. And then after it's done, there's this vibration that allows you to focus on the vibration so that the mind isn't there as much. Or even sometimes it feels like it's not there at all. But there's a different effect when you do it quietly and. The meaning, yes, sometimes, like if I have to use it, I will.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  In the Ripugita, the first lines basically mean that, that you know, your mind is like a little untrained boy. And it's kind of a funny image when you think about it that way. And then further down the track, it's like a real thought is as rare as a rabbit with horns. And that can just lighten the mood immediately, but not necessarily if I do it in the Sanskrit. Like I have to remind myself that, that that's what I'm, I'm saying. And then I can see the levity and the, the humor and the, the tragic comedy and some of, some of the things in life that get the engine started.

• 56:53Rick Rubin?

  Do you use it silently as well?

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, frequently, often when I'm walking. I really don't want to be thinking all the time, except for when it's productive. I work on various books and so forth. And so then that I think is good thinking or planning thinking, et cetera, is good thinking. But I will ruminate, I would much rather be thinking through these things that I've thought through hundreds of times than these thoughts that are never going to be productive of anything because they're, I mean, Eckhart Tolle talks about this, this sort of madness of the insanity of it all. Yeah, I keep, I keep working at it because some of the other techniques that he talks about just don't quite work for me. The idea of sitting like a cat, you know, waiting for what mouse is going to come out. I love that as a concept, but I have to be more proactive about that.

• 57:38Rick Rubin?

  Do you tend to say the mantras at the same speed?

• 57:43Speaker 00

  No, actually, there's different variations that have emerged. I don't know if that's a, a regional thing or if a tactical thing, but I will use them tactically quite differently. So to give you an example, that

• 57:57Speaker 00

  it can be

• 58:01Speaker 00

  I'm just imitating the singing that I've heard on different videos. But sometimes I will get that more cadenced one. If I'm really not pushing through the noise, then I'll switch how that I do it, either out loud or even in my mind. And that's just a cool thing to know, that different people have produced videos where they chanted in different ways and you can, you can have more than one version in your toolkit to draw upon.

• 58:26Rick Rubin?

  What's memory's relationship to magic?

• 58:29Speaker 00

  Oh, it's so huge because, I mean, if we're talking about magic in terms of illusions, you have to learn a variety of processes, the actual mechanisms that make illusions work. You have to think about where you're gonna, the blocking, either blocking in terms of your body in front of an audience or on a stage, many, many dimensions to be remembered there. You have your patter, whatever you're going to say, you have audience management. And then if you're using a memorized deck as part of your routine, lots and lots of relationships to magic for sure. I probably haven't even gotten started.

• 59:07Rick Rubin?

  In performance of magic, there's the relationship between magic and memory, like someone like Harry Lorraine or Darren Brown.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  That may be a deep historical relationship that has to do with the role of images on cards in how that that whole thing emerged. So I don't know the whole history of how the tarot may have become the standard set of playing cards that we have here today. But let's just say that that relationship is there. Those people who were using those cards were using them for magical purposes in the sense of transformation personally, or some sort of inner alchemy and whatnot. And then if they really were doing cups and balls back in ancient Egypt or whatever, I mean, they would have needed to remember those moves as much as we need to remember them today.

• 59:54Rick Rubin?

  The choreography aspect of it is what you're describing.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, and multiple levels of it because it's not just your choreography. It's the choreography of the gaze of the spectator or the multiple spectators. And then it's also memory management. So most of my magic performance history is the after show parties when I was on tour with a band. And just hearing from people say, "Do that thing again where you make the watermelon come out of the tiny cup." And this has never happened.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  Now, I know why that they have that memory because it was a it was a rather large orange that came out of a a small cup. But I was later telling them, you know, if you really want to see something, you should see Gatzo when he takes a melon, right? But it was never a watermelon. It was more like a cantaloupe that I told them, but in their memory. So now I did that just inadvertently. But many magicians will do that on purpose and they will have sleight of mouth in order to manipulate future recall of what happened.

• 1:00:56Rick Rubin?

  Do you think memory has gotten more or less important in today's world?

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  I feel it's gotten significantly more important. The exact ratio that it plays out in our lives relative to its importance or to corporate storage systems and so forth, I think is one of the the key things that we constantly need to be asking, or at least it's on my mind quite a bit. And I have a feeling it's going to get even more and more important. And I'm sort of looking to when exactly schools will return to complete oral testing, just because writing will have a different relationship altogether. And in that case, then I imagine memory training may may come into a kind of guild format as part of schools or be more essential to to schools.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  If not central to schools, it'll have more memory training schools. And and there are, when I've been in Spain, there's these sort of little centers I see that teach memory. But that's also where Juan Tamaris lives, which is the king of the memorized deck, if ever there was one.

• 1:01:59Rick Rubin?

  What do we lose when we offload our memory to a device like using GPS or a Rolodex instead of memorization?

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  We have to kind of think about what did we ever have? You know, like, how many of us were so skilled with using the sun to figure out the directions and so forth? And what do we remember of those people? I often think of that because I think about my dad and so forth, and I remember using maps and whatnot. But I don't remember my dad ever like telling the time of day by the sun or so forth. I think part of the problem is is that we don't really in our time have an awareness of what we've lost. So then what is it that we lost? So I think part of what we're losing is a bigger question. We may be losing archives. We may be losing people whose stories and experiences needed to be recorded but weren't. And then we can't. So we're losing all those sorts of things.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  But in terms of GPS, yes, we may be losing spatial orientation in a way that could deeply harm us. And then that could harm our ability to use memory techniques. And that might be part of why, when I started teaching this, people didn't have the exact struggles they have now. They were much more readily able to adapt it. But you know, we're also losing our attention and our focus. You know, it's such a pleasure to go around the world and be in the car or be on the street walking and be attendant to it as opposed to in this screen world where you're not now engaged in the world. So we may lose the world, basically. That's a huge risk.

• 1:03:29Rick Rubin?

  Krishnamurti said, "Once you teach a child the word bird, they'll never truly see a bird again." It's the idea that when we label things, we make them smaller. Does memorizing undermine our ability to know things?

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  Quite possibly in some circumstances. I totally can see that. One dimension of that is studying for the exam. And this whole series of even entire countries that are just devoted to, "If you can pass this exam, then you've written your ticket in life." And it just kind of degrades itself in so many ways. Because now you have all these workers and bureaucrats and stuff that are there by virtue of having memorized something once upon a time. And they didn't care about it. You know, so it can be that information just becomes a meaningless weapon, basically. So that's even less than the meaning being degraded. Now it's supercharged in some very negative ways.

• 1:04:32Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about memorizing faces.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Well, the best that I've come up with to help myself with that was in some research I read many years ago. And it was to look very closely at faces. And they found that people who would relate the eyes to a kind of infinity symbol, like an eight on its side and a nose to an upside down seven, they would tend to have better facial recall. So I've played around with that since. I don't really have a hard time remembering faces per se, but that has been interesting to experiment with and share. For people with face blindness, that's maybe something to to think about and try. I had a professor, now that you mention it, named Don Summerhays, who passed away.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  And he was going blind. And his strategy for navigating this is he insisted each year or each semester on taking photographs of the students exactly where they were sitting. And then they would sit exactly where they were sitting. And then he would have the photograph so that he would be able to map out who is where. And that memory always stuck with me. That's another way of doing it.

• 1:05:41Rick Rubin?

  Can you tell me more about the eight and the seven?

• 1:05:44Speaker 00

  I may be just turning the science in my memory into what I wanted it to be, rather than what they were saying. The way I applied it was literally if you're looking at a person, you would maybe put like a raccoon mask on them, on their eyes, or just really focus on the distribution of their eyes relative to the idea of an eight on its side or an infinity symbol. And then the seven would be, if a seven is very, very sharp and it's upside down and it curves onto that nose, what is the relationship there? So that if you wanted to recall it later and really work out the contours of that nose, you would have something to compare it against so that your memory wasn't just your memory

• 1:06:26Speaker 00

  of what you perceived, but perceived in in association with something else.

• 1:06:30Rick Rubin?

  For example, you could see three faces next to each other and you would visually place the same infinity sign over three sets of eyes and then see, are the eyes smaller? Are they bigger? How do they fit in that picture?

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's how they did it in the study. I don't exactly understand properly, probably, but that's how I did it. And then I would go back and think, okay, so what was that relationship between the eight and the seven with the eyes? And then I've shared that with others and they've said that that that has given them a little bit of a boost for their desire to remember faces better. But it might just be that the act of doing that just gets you to pay more attention to the face in a way that you wouldn't have paid at all, right? So you could then extend it. What else could I do? Could I imagine, you know, doing a little, little thing like this to try to figure out with your fingers how how

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  much space is between the chin and the head? Or maybe you go and study some Da Vinci formulas and figure out what the box would be that Da Vinci might impose over there. And, you know, there's lots of different things that you could do.

• 1:07:39Rick Rubin?

  How would someone like Harry Lorraine or Kreskin memorize 500 names based on people's faces?

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  I never got to talk to Kreskin, but I did talk with Harry Lorraine. He insisted that he didn't use a memory palace, which I found quite bizarre, because what he would do is he would place an image on the person's face. So if it was Charles Cabbage, he would have like a big cabbage hanging on that person's face, or he would try to find, let's say it's a boxer who just has those sort of cabbage ears, he would use that and hang it on their face. And he would do that at the clip of 500 in some of these demonstrations, if not more. I think 500 was one of the big demonstrations I saw. And I said, but Harry, how is that not the memory palace technique? You know, he would, he would do his thing. He was just, he was so against the idea that that had anything to do with it. But it has to do with

• 1:08:28Speaker 00

  it in at least two regards. He's naming the people where they stand, which is where that he memorized them. And he's placing images in a very specific location on their face. I don't know if he had other techniques or strategies, but that's how he teaches what he did. And that is how a lot of people do it. And when I do demonstrations and I memorize everybody's names, the only thing I change is I don't use their face because I want to be really focused on them. And I'll place my associations above their heads or on their shoulders.

• 1:08:55Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that. That's really fascinating.

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  Well, the eight-seven experiment aside, normally when I meet people, I want to be just undivided from them. Even if I'm memorizing little things that they mention or whatnot, I'd rather use their body, but not their face. I don't want to create some sort of interstitial screen between myself and another human. It quote-unquote "never worked" for me to do it in the first place. To me, it's just a kind of connection thing. So I've always used or worked out very early on to use the space above the head or the shoulders.

• 1:09:31Rick Rubin?

  Also, I could imagine it putting the person in a setting. Like if you meet someone on the street, but you picture them in a particular coffee shop because you know the name of the coffee shop.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  It's very direct, but I used to do something similar to what you're talking about. When I was first using these techniques as a professor, I would memorize the names of the people where they were sitting. But then later I would index them into different memory palaces. So if there was a Bobby, I would put her in a bakery because B is for bakery. And if it was that sort of thing. But then as I got better with the skills, I just didn't need to go to that extra step. I could just use the place where I met them.

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• 1:11:38Rick Rubin?

  With these techniques, do you get better over time to where shorthand develops? Or is it always every step needed?

• 1:11:47Speaker 00

  It's not always every step needed, but best practices are advised because there's a weird thing I've noticed. That I can't anticipate what information is more difficult than something else. So some things will seem, oh, I'll get that. No problem. Well, that's the time you gotta really pay attention because, you know, don't be too sure, right? And so I try to encourage others and myself to always go through the ropes. Because what seems like it's a sure win is probably going to be the thing that slips. And then sometimes the really difficult thing is the thing that turns out easier or vice versa. And in terms of it getting easier, I don't know. I mean, I try to think of like, what would Bruce Lee say? And Bruce Lee would say, you know, just, just be trained.

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  I don't know if he would say that, but that's what in my imagination he would say. You know, be trained, be prepared to execute one last move, even with your head cut off, that kind of thing. I think that's from Jarmusch's Ghost Dog, that quote. The way of the samurai is just being prepared. So, yeah, I don't find that it really gets easier per se. It gets that I just have the tools and then if I fail to use them, then it's on me. It doesn't have anything to do with the tools.

• 1:13:00Rick Rubin?

  So if one is always a candle and if two is always a swan and you remember a list and you have a particularly colorful candle for the list that day. And then later that night, you're memorizing another list. Does the candle ever get confused with the candle from earlier in the day?

• 1:13:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, those things can happen. This is part of the argument for memory palaces. Because if Candle One is in Memory Palace One, and Candle Two is down the street in Memory Palace Two, well, then they're much less likely to interfere. And there's even more insidious problems you can have that some of the memory competitors, I'm not sure where the term originates from, but it's called ghosting. So if you're reusing a memory palace,

• 1:13:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  then the previous images can interfere. And that's also sometimes called the ugly sister effect. Because Prince Charming is looking for Cinderella, but everything but Cinderella is showing up at the door.

• 1:14:00Rick Rubin?

  Since you started using memory palaces, do you pay more attention to the world around you to be able to call on those places that you go to now for future memory palaces?

• 1:14:12Speaker 00

  Yes and no. I prefer to use memory palaces just based on what I remember. I mean, sometimes I'll go, this is such an amazing place. I definitely have to use this. And then I may pay extra attention. But on the main, at least as I enjoy the practice and as I think it works best, if I just use what I remember and I don't start cooking up any special additional memory tasks around it, then everything is just smooth sailing. And that is actually, to contradict myself a little bit, that is a way that things get easier. You don't get in your own way. You don't start turning the technique into something other than it is. That's just my quirk, maybe, and others may feel differently.

• 1:14:53Speaker 00

  But there are people who use Matterport and like real estate websites to mass memorize all these locations. And my only criticism of it is, is a kind of Morpheus move.

• 1:15:04Rick Rubin?

  Show me.

• 1:15:04Speaker 00

  It's like a lot of activity that doesn't have accomplishment behind it. There's exceptions, but overall, it has this feeling to it in all the forums and all the questions. It's just like, there's got to be another way to do this, which seems to me a procrastination tactic. Rather than Genji Gebutsu, go to the real place and do the real thing. There's a whole realm of activity that just won't hear what I think also the ancient and the Renaissance and the medieval teachers of this were saying. There's a real way to do this. It's pretty simple, but you have to do that actual thing if you want this result in as seamless a way as possible and with duration of the content.

• 1:15:45Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the types of places that you regularly use, because I think of the house I live in would be an easy one for me to remember the details of. But I don't know how many places I could know in detail from memory.

• 1:16:00Speaker 00

  So there's elementary schools, there's high schools, there's universities, there's various studios you may have been in, there's parties, there's even cars. The 2019 Canadian Memory Champion used my suggestion of memorizing his cards inside of cars. So there's an abundance of car memory palaces that we could have in our own personal lives, depending on how many vehicles we've had. There's airplanes you could use, there's airports, there's concert halls, there's art galleries, there's churches, there's museums, bookstores, you name it. I mean, if it's a location and you remember it, then you can use it.

• 1:16:34Rick Rubin?

  How is memorizing a list different than memorizing a poem or a Bible verse?

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  I don't distinguish the two. I see it as, as we discussed before, the idea that every, every sentence in a paragraph is a list of sentences in the paragraph. The way it might be different, though, is if you wanted to memorize the verse number, then you might want to set up your practice, if it's scripture, a little bit differently to track those verse numbers. Or, you know, if you want to memorize the numbers of the lines in the poem so that you know specifically, this is the 11th line, then you might set up your practice a little bit differently. But other than that, it's pretty much the same.

• 1:17:10Rick Rubin?

  Are there practical, accepted ways of memorizing the Bible?

• 1:17:14Speaker 00

  That's an interesting question because some people are concerned that they would bring all of these horrible images I sometimes share and associate them with what they find to be sacred. So rote is sometimes preferred so that they're not associating what they consider to be sacred with me, like Proverbs 1813, I've got J. Edgar Hoover in there and what he's doing ain't nice, you know, but they might not want to do that. So yeah, there's a lot of those issues. Also, the issue of having your associations be quite aggressive with each other. Many people won't want that regardless of what they're memorizing, even if it's French vocabulary. And that's why some of the Renaissance memory teachers are so fascinating.

• 1:17:58Speaker 00

  I don't know if they anticipated that or not, but they would go deeper and deeper into layers where you could just use logic in various ways, or you can use breaking things down into little parts. So for example, Giordano Bruno, he has this thing, he'd say, instead of using the entire bowl, just use the horns. And if you, if you had to have Satan for some reason in your memory palace, if you really were not feeling great about that, well, could you still like have that basic idea and have cloven hooves or, or, you know, something of that nature? Can you break it down so you're unbothered in the way that you need to change the techniques to work? And that's very clearly spelled out in some of those older books.

• 1:18:40Rick Rubin?

  Are there other things you can do in life that support memory outside of the memory techniques?

• 1:18:47Speaker 00

  Oh, yes. I'm a, a big advocate of journaling and journaling of different kinds. So there's the, you know, discursive journaling where you talk to yourself. I use a snapshot journal, which is a particular product by a company called Paperblanks, and it lets you see five years at a glance. So I'm in the third year now of my current snapshot journal. And as I go through, I'm just making notes of the major events of the day, just in five lines or less. And that's very, very helpful as a kind of archive. And sometimes I'll use a spreadsheet to document certain things that happened just on a day by day basis, especially if I have to reconstruct something from my snapshot journal to create a quote unquote

• 1:19:31Speaker 00

  chain of evidence of, of what I'm trying to work out that I missed or something like that. And that's a powerful memory strategy to be keeping your own archive. Another thing I do is I use a lot of index cards and I use index cards in quite a variety of ways. It depends, like if I'm writing a book, I'll use them in a particular way. If I'm memorizing, I will use them in a particular way to set the stage for using the memory palace later. So the idea is, is if I'm reading a book and I never want to look at it again, or I never can, because it's in an archive somewhere, I take a stack of index cards like, and then I will read the book. The first card will be the bibliographical information, the title, the date of publication. Author, all that sort of stuff.

• 1:20:14Speaker 00

  Then every card after that will be the page number as I proceed through the book. So let's say it's a Marshall McLuhan book. McLuhan thirty five and then whatever that key point is. And then McLuhan forty eight and that sort of thing. And then later, if I never get to see that McLuhan book again, I have two possible outcomes. I can reconstruct the book from my notes for writing purposes. Or if McLuhan says some crazy Latin phrase and I want to remember what that is. Boom, I just, that's thirty eight. Max Maven is my thirty eight. And I can just associate the card as a little mini memory palace with Max Maven with the page number. Or I can put it into another standard memory palace so I can mix it up with other information. And that's what I did a lot in university and it helped me a lot.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  Just keep pushing forward because I wasn't feeling so well. And I don't know how I would have done it otherwise if I didn't have those techniques.

• 1:21:04Rick Rubin?

  And what do you do if you forget or get something wrong?

• 1:21:08Speaker 00

  Well, I think the first thing that you need to do is some ego management because you will get it wrong. Or at least unless you're really extraordinary. I mean, I don't think any of us are free from making mistakes. And information comes in so fast and often certain words are spelled differently than you would expect they are pronounced. So you might make pronunciation errors and also pronunciation changes over time and people use it different. So sometimes it's not even an error, but you might get your ego in your way because someone called it an error when technically it isn't. And they're turning pronunciation into a shibboleth. So ego management, I think, is one of the first things you have to do is just accept that mistakes happen and that you will make them. And then the number one strategy, when you do make a mistake, is either just ask, I'm sorry, you just said your name.

• 1:21:54Speaker 00

  And I don't remember if you said Christine or Christina, or maybe I'm totally off. And then they will pretty kindly tell you what their name was again. Or if it's a name of a place or whatever it is that you might have mispronounced, just ask and get it corrected. The other strategy, I think, and it's my favorite because it kind of keeps you bulletproof, is if you really know you want to remember something, the number one thing is just to write it down. So if someone tells you a name and it's really not that important, or you want to remember it, but you know, it's not the end of the world if you don't remember what it was, then you know, by all means, don't write it down and just ask for a correction. But if they tell you like the name of a band or something and you want to look it up,

• 1:22:38Speaker 00

  I have no shame in just writing it down because writing down the name of albums or bands that you want to look up later, writing down is a technique and then it's a little bit, it's not totally error free, but at least then you could do both. You can use a memory technique and go, oh, they mentioned Bark Market or something like this. And you get a dog barking at a, at a market that you're familiar with, and then you can go look up what that band is. But if you really want to memorize it, there's no shame in having a journal with you at all times that you write with. And I do that frequently. This is strategy that I did when I learned Mandarin. I made lots of mistakes because I was trying to read the anglicization of Mandarin, which is called pinyin.

• 1:23:20Speaker 00

  And it never made sense to me why they're using a C when it has like an S or a Z sound sometimes, or why they're putting vowels together. So in order to help my own pronunciation have less mistakes, I just invented my own pinyin. And because I wrote it down, I could then practice my understanding of how better to pronounce these things. And then in terms of forgetting, well, I mean, that's a, a kind of puzzle because sometimes you, I have these experiences where it's just like, did I even ever remember this in the first place? Cause sometimes this inkling comes and you think that something happened and then you realize that it was a dream. I swear there's a quote where Nietzsche wrote somewhere that the problem with power is that it makes you want more power.

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  And I can't tell you the amount of time that I've tried to spend finding this quote to verify that it actually exists. And I have finally concluded that I fell asleep while I was reading Nietzsche and I dreamed it. Now, it may be the gist of what Nietzsche was saying, but I want to find those exact words. And so I've just forgotten it. And so the strategy for dealing with this is, well, I think that there's something in Nietzsche that equates to power. The problem with power is that it makes you want to have more power. And then I just say, but I don't know if those are the exact words. And it seems like you're prevaricating, or you're dodgy, or shifty, or whatever. But I think it's just honest. And, I mean, you can't be on radar all the time. And it makes you seem kind of weird.

• 1:24:44Speaker 00

  And maybe that is what people who get into memory techniques are, is weird. But at the end of the day, I feel that it's just better when you've forgotten something and you can't verify it and you haven't memorized it verbatim like Shakespeare. And even then, if you make a mistake with Shakespeare and the director says, and the stage play, "That's wrong," did you just fix it? You know? So, but you can fix things in advance by just being honest. And I think that's just a great strategy for peace of mind when it comes to forgetting.

• 1:25:12Rick Rubin?

  Is there any benefit to physicality as it relates to memory?

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  Yes, I'm exploring this a lot more these days. I have dabbled with it, so to speak, for some years. But the idea of using your hands as a memory technique, just for simple things, using the body a lot more, I think there's so much more to be explored. Right now, I'm thinking of learning some anatomy myself at a deeper level than I have just to give examples for people. And one thing I've done recently, I probably don't have the whole of it, but just the muscles are named in a particular way. And there's like seven groups of names. So, the first one in the list was direction. So, I just think Dracula. And I use the Count from Sesame Street rather than Bea Lugosi. That's just the way it came out. But so now I put a direction sign over his head.

• 1:26:01Speaker 00

  And then the next in the list was the location of the muscle. So, on his nose, I put the idea of location. And then the next was the size of the muscle. Anyway, there's different ways by which Muscles are named and then that that sets the stage for, let's say it's Cygomaticus, I think, major and minor, or you know, something like this. Then as I'm learning anatomy, I can then link out of his body. So Extensor Pollicus brevis, I think is more of a correct one. Uh, I can think of, you know, what is the name of that muscle? Once I've finished learning, why is it named that way? And then who can I use? Like Hugh Jackman? Cause he's an X-Men? And then use his body to then stack on more related information.

• 1:26:45Speaker 00

  So now it's like a kind of a non-memory palace, memory palace that's distributed across multiple figures, but limited to their bodies.

• 1:26:54Rick Rubin?

  Is there any downside to memorizing?

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, certainly there is. I don't know for other people, but personally, I think, and it may be a downside, other people see projected, is that I just take it all way too seriously.

• 1:27:11Rick Rubin?

  But you would probably do that about anything.

• 1:27:13Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, theoretically, and maybe that is the human condition.

• 1:27:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  But I feel like I have a, a self-awareness of my own seriousness of it that I can't quite contend with. I do know how to resolve it in my own spiritual practice and so forth, but it makes me a little bit OCD. And that may be related to the fact that there may be a little bit of willful OCD involved in paying attention to things to such a degree that you're linking it together with all these celebrities and pop culture figures and so forth to such a granular detail. But I see it as a gift at the end of the day. It's not an ego thing, I don't think. I want to be proof of concept and that requires putting a burden on myself. And I think it's maybe what other people intuit when they kind of go, ah, this is too difficult because it's

• 1:28:00Speaker 00

  the Spider-Man problem, I sometimes say, with great power comes great responsibility. And in this case, if you're going to go around saying, yeah, I memorize stuff and then you can't get through whatever you say you've memorized, like whatever it is, Declaration of Independence or something that people want to do, it harms you because failure is inevitable. Anyway, my solution has just been to play it straight and say, you know, I, I make mistakes and I stumble over my own words and I share that as openly as I share everything else.

• 1:28:27Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your spiritual practice.

• 1:28:31Speaker 00

  I don't know what it is. I don't feel that it belongs to anything. So I often tell people who ask that I wish I could find a religion. So I could just be done with knowing what it is that I'm doing. But it's this smattering of having memorized some Sanskrit and concepts from there, doing Qi Gong, doing Ne Gong, poking around with Ne Dan, which I'm not even sure I really get what that is yet. And just informing myself with all of this. And you know, basically back to Sanskrit, just neti neti, not this, not that. It's just trying to always be here. And so I guess my spiritual practice is the goal of can I just be here? And can I get it that a flavor of just being here is that I'm not here? There is no me and it's just this. And even this goes away. The whole idea of consciousness goes away.

• 1:29:16Speaker 00

  And I think that's what my spiritual practice is, is to get rid of the idea of spiritual practice and just, you know, be, nervi capo samadhi, I guess you would call it. Just like no particular thought and just bliss. And so far, so good, I have to say. I never would have thought that I would have this much peace that I have accomplished. Even when things go pear shaped, it's still miles better than it used to be for me.

• 1:29:42Rick Rubin?

  Would you describe yourself as a seeker?

• 1:29:45Speaker 00

  I'm wanting to end the search more than wanting to be a seeker, I guess. But that's the magic of it. You do end it when you switch on to what's really happening, you know?

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  There's a long tradition of reading sacred texts slowly, allowing each word to settle, echo and reveal meaning over time. Rather than rushing to conclusions, this practice invites reflection, listening and attention. For centuries, this repetition has been used to stay close to wisdom. Not by studying words as information, but by receiving them as something lived and experienced over and over again. This tradition is known as lectio divina.

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  Emerging in early monastic life, it engages scripture through four gentle movements: reading, reflection, repetition and rest. A short passage is read, a single phrase. is held. Silence becomes part of the practice, creating space for insight to surface naturally. Lectio 365 brings that ancient rhythm into the present moment. Designed for modern life, it offers brief guided scriptural reflections throughout the day, to begin with intention, pause at midday,

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  and wind down at night. The readings are less about information gathering and more for returning to wisdom again and again, letting familiar words meet new moments. A modern way to keep biblical wisdom close, quietly present, steady, and alive within everyday life. Lectio 365 is a free resource. Find inspiration there now and always. Learn more at lectio365.com.

• 1:32:14Rick Rubin?

  Can you walk me through the greatest hits of the literature of memory from the beginning until now?

• 1:32:20Speaker 00

  So Aristotle might not be everybody's cup of tea, but I think there's really good stuff in there. Hugh of Saint Victor has a book called Dita Scalicon that I think is really required reading just for study purposes alone. But the book that you want that has his writing about memory compiled is called The Medieval Craft of Memory. Mary Carruthers is the head editor of that book. And that book has many, many other texts that are the greatest hits. Then I would suggest reading Jacobus Publicius and reading Peter of Rhoena's The Phoenix. And Jordano Bruno, if you can, if you can find your way into Bruno, there are many, many wonderful mental adventures.

• 1:33:04Speaker 00

  And also Robert Flood is fantastic. And then beyond that, the greatest hits in the 20th century. I think Lyn Kelly's work, The Memory Code is kind of more of an archaeological anthropological book, but she has another book called Memory Craft. And Nelson Dellis produces really interesting books that are a cut above the rest. Memory Superpowers and Remember It. And his latest one is called Everyday Genius. He just does it different and that's cool. And other than that, I mean, it's kind of like Carpe Diem, but caveat emptor. There's just so much stuff out there and I'm a proponent of just reading, just read.

• 1:33:43Rick Rubin?

  Are all of the techniques ancient?

• 1:33:46Speaker 00

  I suppose technique itself is, is very, very ancient. And that's worth meditating on.

• 1:33:53Rick Rubin?

  When is the first time we know of there being talk of improving memory?

• 1:33:59Speaker 00

  Talk is the operative word. I think a lot of people attribute it to the Greek tradition where you have some writing there. But the, the very earliest book is, is lost or there's just a, a small fragment. And Aristotle refers to it in his De Memoria. But I don't know what talk went on in the ancient Aboriginal cultures, for example. Like, I don't know that they recorded in any sort of writing or marks because they had the songlines and they would use oral transmission. And apparently they had custodians that would pass on the memory techniques to the people that needed to learn them to become the next custodians. And then there's the Luba people who used lucasa. Lucasa, I think, means like claw.

• 1:34:42Speaker 00

  So it's, it's like a wooden representation of your hands, so to speak. And then you put various bees and shells and then that would help you remember things you wanted to remember. Lyn Kelly is really the person to read about that. Her book, The Memory Code, goes deep into the prehistorical stuff with the Aboriginal tradition and all around the world. But yeah, in terms of quote unquote, standard writing, I think Aristotle is referring to a book that we only have a fragment of, if that, and then that book may have referred to previous writings about memory techniques and how to improve it.

• 1:35:15Rick Rubin?

  I would imagine before there was writing, memory would have even more value.

• 1:35:20Speaker 00

  Well, to me, that's, that's the question of our time as people talk about the internet challenging our memory now. And then I think often of some of the stuff Lyn Kelly talks about in The Memory Code, where in a drought, the Aboriginal people had to use these songlines in order to help them not only find where food and medicine would be, but to remember to make sure that the food and medicine that they found wouldn't poison them, that it would be the food and medicine. So in our time, if we think about the internet as this giant pharmacy, then, you know, there's beautiful things everywhere that can heal us, but if you put the wrong medicine on a certain part of your body, it's going to be a toxin.

• 1:35:59Rick Rubin?

  So the earliest we know is Aristotle. Did Aristotle talk about memory beyond that?

• 1:36:05Speaker 00

  I don't, I'm not an Aristotelian scholar, but Richard Sorabji has a really good book called Aristotle and Memory that, that goes deep in the weeds on that. But yeah, in a roundabout way, like in his metaphysics, the only time I ever read in Aristotle, he seems to be making a joke, and it seems to have a kind of memory twist to it. Like, he's referring to the ways that other people think they know something about the moon or whatever. And so, I mean, and the logic, he creates these puzzles and so forth, and they seem very aware of the fact that you have to use your memory to think through the, the various processes that he's challenging you in order to come to your own metaphysical understandings.

• 1:36:44Rick Rubin?

  Do you know if there were any breakthroughs historically in the world of memory where like everything changed on this day when this was discovered?

• 1:36:53Speaker 00

  Maybe, when Herman Ebbinghaus discovered the forgetting curve.

• 1:36:58Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 1:36:59Speaker 00

  I believe it's 1895, he writes a book in German, it's called Uber des Gedächtnis, or about memory. And what he is doing is he's memorizing these nonsense syllables. They're usually like three letters, like Z, U, K, or something like that, like Zuck, Zick, Clack. It was stuff like this, right? And then he's tracking what's the rate of decay in memory? And he does these charts and diagrams and so forth. He calls it the forgetting curve. And then these other principles emerge, which are called primacy effect, recency effect, and serial positioning. And so what emerges is a feeling or a sense, and that it it it reproduces in the studies,

• 1:37:43Speaker 00

  that what you encounter first, you tend to have a greater recall of, hence the primacy effect, and what you encounter last in the list, you have greater recall of, hence the recency effect. And then serial positioning, if you can rotate so that everything has quote unquote equal doses of primacy and recency, then you start to combat the forgetting curve. And so that's a thing that changed memory science. And to this day is still referred to and is more or less rock solid as far as I know. But I believe Aristotle was describing something very similar in De memoria, just not quite as scientifically grounded or or charting out all the words he memorized and tracking their rate of decay.

• 1:38:26Rick Rubin?

  Is memorizing numbers different than memorizing objects or faces?

• 1:38:31Speaker 00

  I think it is, it's, and that's why we turn them into words in order to make the numbers not so abstract and and wild to our imagination. When you think about it, like, it's not just that you see a number, but the number refers to a number sometimes that you cannot see. Like, if you have a nine that represents nine, it may be referring to nine objects, but at a glance, you couldn't tell that it was nine. It might be, it might be six that is nine, but appears like a six. So I think that's, that's part of our history with numbers that makes numbers so much different to memorize than words. And that's why ultimately, the, a long time ago, with the Khati Piyati, they came up with a system to be able to memorize numbers with words.

• 1:39:11Rick Rubin?

  What is photographic memory?

• 1:39:13Speaker 00

  As far as I know, and sometimes I get in little debates about this, as far as I know, it doesn't exist. And with Artemis II, I don't, and the cameras that those people have, and the kinds of telescopes that we have floating around, I don't know why they even use that metaphor anymore. It seems like a weird metaphor for memory. Memory is so much more dynamic and vibrant than than a photograph, although I do know why people use it, but as far as I know, it just is not a real thing.

• 1:39:41Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the relationship between memory and space.

• 1:39:44Speaker 00

  Well, there's a lot to say about that. Giordano Bruno was quite obsessed with that in his Renaissance writings. And then there's a guy named Stephen Costlin thinks that there's a one-to-one correspondence somehow between how the brain maps space and then remembers it, the location in the brain. And that's called, might come to be the title, A Case for Memory, or something like that. And Bruno thought that we are somehow like the universe, and memory is part of the universe, and infinity operates in particular ways. If we're able to somehow become like the universe, our memory needs to be like the universe in order to encapsulate the thing that it's memorizing. The whole Bruno

• 1:40:28Speaker 00

  shtick is, it's not pantheism, as far as I understand it. It's totally resolving yourself into space as such, and being like the way space operates. I don't think he would divide the objects from space from the space itself. So it may not be a pure non-duality in his case, because he accounts for coming into being and then falling out of being. But then, the idea is, is you could have infinite memory palaces, because whenever you could imagine something in space, you could then use that space as a canvas upon which to paint. So you would never, you never need to run out of locations to use. And that's

• 1:41:11Speaker 00

  what a lot of his diagrams are in his books, are like working out how you can apply those concepts infinitely. And also, a principle of recursion, where they refer back to themselves in greater and greater forms of density. And that's what he calls a seal. And so the seal, as you lay it out in space, how you use the space, has various mnemonic outcomes that will be better or worse.

• 1:41:38Rick Rubin?

  What I'm hearing you say is has less to do with the location and more to do with the relationship in space.

• 1:41:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's a relationship thing at the end of the day. And then what you're going to do out of the relationships that are available to you? And how you're either going to make them diffuse or make them more and more dense? And then other sorts of tools. All of the memory books have some kind of talk about space. The distance between the stations that you use, the quality of the light in the space. Peter Veruena in the Phoenix, he says, don't use any location higher than you can reach and touch with your hand. Which I think is super fascinating. Bruno apparently just goes against that. It's just like, okay, that planet over there, you can't touch it, but you can use it.

• 1:42:25Rick Rubin?

  Can memory be used to change habits?

• 1:42:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I guess the question is, what is the habit? And then how is that habit linked to to memory? And I certainly changed habits in a way that was related to memory. And I used to bite nails quite badly. And it was hypnosis that was was what made the difference. So I guess I wouldn't say I used memory. But what happened was that I remembered a change in the hypnotic session. And because of the memory of the change, I think I haven't bit my nails since this happened in university. And that's 20 years ago. But I think that that part of it is that I remembered the effectiveness of that particular session.

• 1:43:11Rick Rubin?

  What is active recall?

• 1:43:14Speaker 00

  Active recall is a fairly big topic, but part of it is when you're recalling something from memory, you specifically recall it first, then you write it down. And following that process is meant to be activating the recall at some level. And then it just seems to have better outcomes in some of the studies that I've read. But another element of it is related to how you actively read and so forth. And in some of the studies of active recall that I've read, you know, you want to have variety, maybe use interleaving so that you're not reading the same book in a cramming sort of way, but you're maybe rotating between three to five books and so forth.

• 1:43:54Speaker 00

  The ways that I use it are that term is very actively working to make sure that you are following some kind of process. So you're bringing it to mind first, then writing it down. And also not judging if you get it wrong, you know, just analyzing what this sort of process is so that you're not labeling anything per se. If you get it right, also, what was it that made that a success? So you're actively recalling and actively analyzing.

• 1:44:24Rick Rubin?

  How does learning another language change you?

• 1:44:26Speaker 00

  It certainly opens up the avenue to have conversations that are inflected with flavors that you just wouldn't imagine. And then people make metaphors that are not in your own culture or anything you would even imagine. I remember reading an Einstritt and Noeblon interview, and he said, "I have my champagne for the end of the world already in the fridge." And, you know, you might hear that in English, expressed in a certain way. We are, we're prepared for the party or whatever, but this is just exactly the way it sounds in German, has this particular, particular flavor to it that just wouldn't, wouldn't translate, or you can't translate it, but, and you just feel more connected to people

• 1:45:11Speaker 00

  in that culture. I never felt so at home after I got decent skills in Germany. It was like I really belonged there because I could talk to anyone, pretty much. The warmth of having a conversation totally in German, in a taxi or at a bar, and you just appreciate somehow language so much more.

• 1:45:30Rick Rubin?

  Is learning language a memory task? Or is it something different than that?

• 1:45:35Speaker 00

  I certainly treated it as a memory task due to my fascination. Even in my own experience, it was a lot more than than memory. It's absorption. And it's also anticipatory thinking. Because when you don't know what exactly it's saying, your mind starts to think, well, what is it likely to mean? And then you get better and better and better at guessing. Now, you may remember your guesses, but it's not strictly a memory task. So anticipatory reading, anticipatory thinking, like what is it that that means or likely to mean? Builds your skills. And then you often just remember it on autopilot, but but it's not strictly a memory thing, no.

• 1:46:14Rick Rubin?

  How are long term and short term memory different?

• 1:46:17Speaker 00

  Short term memory is said to be, you know, three to 10 seconds or around that. There's some call to question that with memory competitors who do 52 cards in less than eight seconds. But let's just say, short term memory is also called working memory. And it's like the desktop of your brain. And there's only so much room for what's happening there. But long term memory is what you can draw into your short term memory onto the desktop to play around with. That's there. It may be wrong or right, but nonetheless, it's it's long term memory that is in you somehow. And short term memories become long term memories in different ways. And the best I heard it described that really struck an image in my mind.

• 1:47:02Speaker 00

  Information comes in and then it just splatters all over the brain and it goes into these different locations. And I'm quite confident what Dr. Gary Small said is that they're going to different neighborhoods in your brain. And then they'll consolidate all over the brain. But it's like little family members who have their own homes. And they can be cities away from each other or in neighborhoods away from each other. And then when you want to recall and bring it back into your working memory area so you can use it, they all have to come travel back and have Thanksgiving dinner.

• 1:47:33Rick Rubin?

  For most of the things that you've memorized, do you memorize them all long term? Or there are any things that you memorize short term?

• 1:47:42Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, unfortunately, a lot of stuff is just just short term. And I try not to to play into the fantasy too much of being able to get it all or anything like that. Uh, it's tempting and a lot of people say that that's that's their big dream. Yeah, there's a lot of things that I only remember them if I need them. And I miss certain things and so forth. I pick my projects very, very carefully for the long term retention. And the the middle ground, the gray area, is that I'm also quite aware of the effects of focus. So by reading within certain categories, you can get the best of both worlds. So you can not deliberately memorize anything that you only need to track for a short term,

• 1:48:25Speaker 00

  but remember it anyway, because it's just going to have this connective webbing to the fact that right now you're reading about math topics or the reading is about writers writing about writing. And then that's going to build this connective webbing. So for long term memorization, I pick projects and I work on them and make them long term.

• 1:48:46Rick Rubin?

  Why do we naturally remember certain events or details from the past and others just disappear?

• 1:48:52Speaker 00

  Well, there's focused attention is part of it. So it's kind of back to that that Kennedy effect that David Burgliss talked about. Some things may not be that dramatic, but they're dramatic enough that we we pay attention to them. And they just kind of come along. There may also be pattern recognition that aids us. Pattern recognition is a huge thing. And it may be that we're actually just deluded and we haven't haven't remembered them. But I think the main factor is, did we pay attention to it? Did we try to remember it? And that's what Harry Lorraine, you know, said at the beginning of a lot of his books. Memory starts with attention. So you can, even without using memory techniques, you can often remember more just by deliberately paying attention.

• 1:49:32Rick Rubin?

  Do you get good at anything else as a result of building your memory?

• 1:49:38Speaker 00

  Potentially, I think so. I don't know that you would just naturally get better at these things. But you certainly can become a better thinker, just because you'll have greater access to that working memory space and be able to work with more moving parts in real time. And then because you memorize information, you'll be able to have even more references, which makes you a better archiver of what's out there and connector and assistant to other people. Because the more you know, then the more you can give, basically. I'm always interested in what more we could do to find a way to get together

• 1:50:19Speaker 00

  and do something about the way that memory is not part of our education system. So in terms of, I don't know how to have the conversation. I'm not a person who feels like I can be an educational reformer and do all that nitty gritty work in politicians' worlds. But I am working on the project and I tackled it in a couple of ways. The long and short of it is I've written some books for kids that I have a hypothesis behind the series and also books for adults that echo or are part of this narrative world, the memory detective world. And I don't know how far that I'm going to get, but regardless of my project,

• 1:51:01Speaker 00

  what I would like to see happen is I would like to see every teacher that steps into a classroom by license have to be able to memorize 30 names in three minutes or less. And my hypothesis is that if that were to happen, they would naturally teach those kids the same techniques that they used to do that. So I'm actively trying to share this project with people. And I don't care if it's my project or not, but just that principle. Teachers, by virtue of those teaching license, that they can do this.

• 1:51:33Rick Rubin?

  Who first coined the term "memory palace"?

• 1:51:36Speaker 00

  I don't know that that's known, but it might come out of St. Augustine, because he talked about the great fields and the palaces of his memory. Because the simonities of Chios story where he was at a banquet hall, and it was destroyed, and he was able to recall the names of where everybody was sitting. It was a banquet hall, so we don't call it the banquet hall technique, but it may have been a banquet hall in a palace, I don't know. But then it was in ancient Greek, so they wouldn't use that term. But the Latin in, I'm not sure if this is the Latin or Spanish, but it'd be something like Palazzo de memoria, that sort of thing. And I don't know that that's actually in Augustine, because I haven't looked at the Latin. It'd probably be something like that, these fields and the palaces of his memory.

• 1:52:19Rick Rubin?

  What's a memory wheel?

• 1:52:22Speaker 00

  They seem to first come from Ramón Lo, who was trying to get people to share his ideas, his conclusions about the nature of his relationship to God, etc., to evangelize. And so how would they remember the nuances of his system for meditating upon the nature of God? That's part of the puzzle. And so the wheels place individual letters to help you at a glance unfold many more details. So if you have, if you have to remember that beneficence is a huge skill that you want to not only practice yourself, but also teach,

• 1:53:04Speaker 00

  then the B at the top of the memory wheel is where you would begin. And then if there's other things that you need to spend time in deliberation, the D would unpack all the things that allow you to do deliberation. That's part of it. And then there's the combinatoria, or the combinations that come out of the wheels. So if you need to come up with mnemonics, for example, and you have an outer wheel that has only people, and A is Adam Sandler, let's say, and then the next wheel is only objects, and you take another A, and that's an apple, and then the third wheel is only actions, then you have accept. So Adam Sandler accepts an apple. But you can rotate it so that it's, Adam Sandler breaks a cookie.

• 1:53:48Speaker 00

  The wheel rotates so that the As aren't aligned, but it's A and then B and then C.

• 1:53:52Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:53:53Speaker 00

  So that's the short story of the memory wheel.

• 1:53:56Rick Rubin?

  What is Rules Reborn?

• 1:53:58Speaker 00

  Rules Reborn is an adaptation I made of the writings of Jacobus Publicius. And he has memory, a kind of memory wheel in his, his training. And he gets into the combinations and just these various rules. He's very rule oriented. If you want to remember, remember in this way. Basically, it's a lot of what we talked about today. I just turned the ancient writings that are very, very hard to, to access and read into a readable ebook and audiobook. And then I made some videos to, to talk about how that he was using these memory wheels to derive various images that you could use as associations. And I use the term reborn for the whole series because I'm adapting them.

• 1:54:43Speaker 00

  It's, it's almost a theatrical project as much as it is a teaching one. In all three of the reborn books, I perform the different characters. So I sound different when I do Peter of Rhuenna than I do Publicius. And then when I do Bruno, I really turn on the Bruno juice as I understand him.

• 1:55:01Rick Rubin?

  Are there any tricks to getting better at them over time?

• 1:55:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the, the most useful thing is to realize that there are a lot of different ways that a lot of different people talk about these techniques. And it can be very confusing. And it can feel like there's a real big barrier to entry that is frustrating. And also it can seem too good to be true because of how people talk about it. So I think one of the most useful things that you could do is just find somebody who you think you can learn from and just take it step by step and progressively and pick a goal that you want to remember a certain thing. And then try to work out what are the best techniques in order to remember the information so that you can achieve that goal. So you're giving yourself some kind of win.

• 1:55:47Speaker 00

  But also when you hear these extraordinary stories and they might make you think like, oh, I could never do that. Also, remember that the stories are told in context. And sometimes they're exactly true, but they're in a particular context. So I remember speaking earlier about memorizing a deck of cards in 15 minutes at the first try. And you were a little skeptical about that. And I said, well, I didn't count, I think I said I didn't count the setup of the system. And that's, that's the interesting thing about this is that there are many, many people who have indeed won memory competitions on the strength of reading half a book. And I don't doubt them, like, that's what they say. They didn't even finish, I think it's Ben Pridmore. He said, I didn't even finish reading Dominic O'Brien's book.

• 1:56:31Speaker 00

  And then I went to the next memory competition and I won. But I mentioned this because memory competitions are not necessarily the context in which you would want to memorize the information in Latin. Or, you know, if you're studying law, there's like Latin phrases or whatever. That's not the same thing. So try to figure out who it is that could teach you to do that. Or where even a robot can teach you these days. But like, find out what it is that's going to help you get into these techniques. And don't ever convince yourself that you can't do them. Because we have impressions about what they are that often talk the people who are the best at them. And I've seen some very, very smart people talk themselves out of very simple activities.

• 1:57:14Speaker 00

  Because a variety of reasons, a variety of impressions have created the idea that it's other than it is. Right? But really, at the end of the day, what this is, is squares on a piece of paper that represent a home or a grocery store. And you don't even have to draw the squares if you don't want to. And then it's just the alphabet associated with people and things in the world that you already know. And you're just attaching it to the information that you do want to know. And then revisiting it in particular ways. So that's the biggest thing I can say. And I wish everybody that ever has felt locked out of this would, would know that. Because it's the most beautiful practice. I think it's a kind of qigong, a kind of martial art in the mind.

• 1:57:55Speaker 00

  And it's a thing that can just make you feel so great, just to play around with information in your mind and just connect it. It's like Lego, mental Lego, just snapping things into place.

• 1:58:07Rick Rubin?

  Does everyone memorize the same way?

• 1:58:10Speaker 00

  That's to me is part of the question that I want to solve. And I think that probably the answer is yes, no, and something in between. And what I mean by that is There's almost certainly something so similar about our brains that we call ourselves a species. And so the difference is probably not as big as we might imagine it is. And the only reason why we would want to be so different from each other in our ways of memorizing may be a problem of ego, because it would be much more interesting to figure out all the ways that we're the same, so that then the differences could be celebrated in a much clearer light. But there's a lot of battles over the differences. I can't quite figure out what those differences mean or how that they would work. And so I have

• 1:58:55Speaker 00

  a long-term response to problems like aphantasia, where people say they can't see images in their mind. Well, I can't see images in my mind either. I mean, I've talked about, I've used that kind of language all throughout our conversation. But the fact of the matter is, I don't know what that means. A picture is something I go to the art gallery and see on a wall. But what's happening in my imagination is just so indescribable. It's like trying to describe the entirety of the now, you know? So I don't know that we do memorize differently, or at the end of the day, it's kind of a Yoda thing to me, like you do it or don't. There's not really a try here.

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