Three Great Talks on Memory Techniques

 

I’ve shared many of my own talks on this blog. But there are many other memory athletes with interesting things to say about the magnificent and messy mental faculty of memory. Here I’ve collected some of my recent favourites.

1. How to use memory techniques to improve education:

This first talk is by Boris Konrad. Boris is a brilliant mnemonist and a talented neuroscientist. Here, he talks about how to use memory techniques to memorise complex information and shares some cool stories from the history of the science of memory. If you want to learn more about Boris or his work, check out the interview I did with him here.

 

2. Memory as a special form of perception:

Next up is a talk by Ed Cooke. Ed is a grand-master of memory, the founder of the language learning app, Memrise, and a central character in Joshua Foer’s ‘Moon-walking with Einstein’.

Ed is also a philosopher and thinks about memory in really interesting and illuminating ways. Consider this quote from his talk:

“…we should focus on the rather exotic and unpredictable ways in which memory enters into thought and language and the ways in which it’s more difficult to understand the sentence the man played his violin while whipping the dog than it is ‘the man played the violin while humming a tune because of the contours of our imagined imaginations and the contours of our memory'”
If you want to hear more form Ed you can read an interview I did with him here.

 

3. Mastering Mongolian as a modern nomad:

This talk is by Yanjaa Wintersoul, one of the best athletes currently competing. This talk is not about memory as such, although she shares many memories of her own fascinating life. One of the things I most enjoyed was how clearly she communicates her affection for languages. Check it out.

 

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