Mastering Memory Techniques with Ron White - Episode 358

So, you know, I'm 53 years old right now, and a lot of people think, oh, I've had this special gift all my entire life. And the first thing that I would say is that it's not a gift. Anyone can improve their memory, and it's a system that I learned. I learned it when I was 18 years old. I was a telemarketer for a company that cleaned chimneys. I called this person and said, hey, we want to clean your chimney. And he said, we don't want our chimney cleaned, we're trying to sell our house. I said, well, if you're trying to sell your house, you should have a clean chimney.

Hey everyone, Dr. Gladden here. I just had a really interesting conversation with Ron White. He's a 2-time USA National Memory Champion, and we're going to go down the rabbit hole on memorizing things, improving your memory, how to actually think about memory, things that actually will improve your brain function, things that will actually make it easier to remember things. So it's a really interesting thing. You can find out more about him on brainathlete.com or his Instagram is Brain Athlete. And I think you're really going to enjoy this show. It was fun.

He went from saving hearts as a cardiologist To rewriting the entire aging playbook. Dr. Jeffrey Gladden believes 100 is the new 30, and he's got the science to back it up. This is the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

Ron, it's such a pleasure to welcome you to the Gladden Longevity Podcast. You're kind of a big-time celebrity here, and it's a pleasure to have you.

Oh, well, thank you for having me. I've heard a lot of great things about you as well, and so it's an honor to be here.

Great. So tell us a little bit about, you know, how you got into this in terms of, you memory and things like that. Was this something at 5 years old, you were going around memorizing things? Or how did that evolve for you?

Well, um, so, you know, I'm 53 years old right now. And a lot of people think, oh, I've had this, you know, special gift all my entire life. And the first thing that I would say is, you know, that it's not a gift. Anyone can improve their memory. And it's a system that I learned. I learned it when I was 18 years old. I was a telemarketer for a company that cleaned chimneys. And I was calling people all day long. And I called this person and said, hey, we want to clean your chimney. And he said, we don't want our chimney cleaned, we're trying to sell our house. I said, well, if you're trying to sell your house, you should have a clean chimney. And, you know, he was like, well, you know what, you're right, but I really don't want to get my chimney cleaned. But do you want to go to work for me? I like how you just tried to overcome my objection. And he said to me that he sells memory training seminars and he would pay me more than I was making now, which was a pretty safe bet. You know, anybody could have said that to me and they would have been right. But that's how I got introduced to it. I was a salesman. I was trying to overcome some sales to sell this chimney cleaning service. And the guy that I was trying to sell ran a top memory training seminars or sold memory training seminars. And he hired me at the age of 18 because I was a good salesman, or in his eyes, I was a good salesman to sell memory training seminars.

And then he sent me— This is sounding like a Mary Poppins story here. You started out as a chimney sweep. Next thing you know, you got whisked away into a different future. That's kind of cool.

Yeah, I guess that's what happened. And I went to work for him and he taught me the system.

Okay. So do you want to share with us some of the nuts and bolts of the system or kind of an overview of the system, if you will, just to kind of start off, just So people have a frame of reference, because I think most people listening to this, probably myself included, would like to have their memory enhanced or improved. And I, I was looking at some stuff recently that showed that for the brain to actually recognize something as being memorable or worth memorizing, you know, apart from something that occurs in a very strong emotional experience, which we remember, the memory is stored in the synapses. And it takes basically firing that synapse 4 times before the memory is actually registered as, okay, this is something the brain wants to hang on to. Because we all hear stuff. throughout the day that just goes in one ear and out the other, so to speak. And I don't know if that corroborates kind of the training that you did, you know, kind of repetition as being an element. I know association may be a piece of it, but anyway, I'm just curious, kind of get a feel for, you know, what are the basic constructs here?

Yeah, so, you know, repetition and review is part of memory. You know, imagine that your memory was like a path, and there's a path in the woods— or excuse me, there's just grass, there's no path— and you walk down that path today. Well, you go back in 3 days, there's no clue that you've been The grass is growing. It's just like before. But you walk down it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And you begin to see a path there. And it's the same way in your brain. You know, something goes in your brain and to create that little path of that memory, if it just has one pass over and you go on about your life, it probably is not going to stick. But if you review it, you know, that path in your brain, you're going to create a trail in your brain. There was a guy named Ebbinghaus, and in the 1800s he did some research and he created something called the forgetting curve. And the forgetting curve says that dramatically, the first hour after you learn something, that's a huge drop-off in retention if you don't review. And it continues dropping off dramatically over the next couple days. And then at the end of the week, maybe you can recall 20% of stuff if you tried to.

Mm-hmm.

But if you wanna lessen that forgetting curve and forget less more immediately, you start to review. So review is, is critical. People say, oh, I'm not good at names. Well, do you ever, do you ever ask yourself, who did I meet last week? Who did I meet the The week before. If you don't, that's a big reason why you're not good at names.

Yeah, so repetition. Well, that's really interesting that the first hour, it sounds like there's almost kind of a golden hour, so to speak, where when you start repeating something or exposing yourself to it again within the first hour, that's kind of, you know, a critical point to actually start to lay down that path through the grass, right? So that's interesting.

Yeah, it is. You wanna, you're gonna forget the most information about anything that you're learning right away, Especially that first hour. But, you know, then it'll drop off, you know, maybe you remember at 15 to 18 to 20%, you know, after a week still, hopefully on a good, on a good, good day. But there's also some good news that let's say it took you 2 hours to learn something, then you test yourself in 2 weeks and you don't remember, you don't remember it. The good news is, is that your brain still has its, even though the path isn't strong, even still though it's still that path in the woods where grass is growing, you still walk down that path.

Yeah.

So Ebbinghaus said there is, you have a memory savings bank, you have a bank in your mind. And if you spent 2 hours to learn it initially, then it's probably, but you can't recall it anymore, it's probably only gonna take you 1 hour to relearn it, 'cause you still have those fragments in there. And so that's a very fascinating part of memory for me.

Yeah, that rings true for me. You know, like if I looked at something, let's say I'm looking something up and I read it and I understand it and it's like, oh, okay, I'll take some action even based on what I'm seeing here. But I don't, I don't think about it after that. I'll remember that I learned about that, but I may not remember the details. But if I go back to it, it pops right back in, right? So that is an interesting thing, that there is kind of that, even though you've forgotten it, so to speak, or you can't recite it, or you can't repeat it or recall it, you can re-recognize it on some level. It's almost the experience I have.

Recognizing it is, uh, Right. Is, is, uh, the first step, but then the review will help you recall it.

So as you go through your life, right, I mean, I think people have a sense that there's a lot of stuff they don't need to remember, right? So a lot of things just kind of come in and out. But if somebody knows something that they need to remember, what's kind of the best strategy? Like, one of the things that I've learned to do if I'm introduced to somebody is to actually repeat their name back to them, like, in the initial meeting. Right? Like somebody says, oh, I'm Joe Smith. It's like, Joe, it's good to meet you. You know, if I don't say that, then I won't remember Joe Smith necessarily. But if I start to use their name a few times in the first few minutes, it's much easier. So is that— are there strategies like that that you use as you kind of go through life? Or how do you make this practical? I guess that's the point.

Yeah. So specifically on names, you know, there are different techniques for different things, but specifically on names, I do repeat the name and I do it less for memory. I do it more for to make sure I heard it correctly. You know, sometimes I feel like I'm losing my hearing, especially if it's loud. You know, was it Ronnie or was it Rodney? You know?

Yeah.

So I definitely repeat the name. I do think that's important. And I don't think it hurts in remembering the name. It's not the primary reason I do it, but I do. But what I really like to do is, you know, when you meet somebody, you know, let's say this guy's name's Brian. When you meet this guy, you meet him today, and then 4 weeks later, you see him at the baseball game and you're like, oh man, I met that guy.

He was on the Dr. Gladden podcast.

What was his name? I can't think of his name. And what's going on is, is we are remembering the face, but we're not remembering the name. And so many people say that they have that problem. And it's true. Now let's think about why. Okay, why do we remember the face and not the name? And when we can think of that answer, it's an answer in how our memory remembers, right?

Mm-hmm.

We remember the face because we see it. It's an image. It's a picture.

Picture. It's a picture. Yeah.

And the name is just something that flies out of a person's mouth and there's— it's never seen.

That's right. Abstract. There's no, there's no picture attached to it, so to speak. Even though it's— even though there's a face attached to it, we don't attach it to the face somehow is what you're saying.

Yeah. So when you see that guy 6 weeks later at the baseball game, there's the face, but the name was not Anyway, a picture, so you're not going to remember it. So that's actually— and people think, oh, that's simple, that's basic. Yeah, it is simple, it is basic, but that's really everything, you know what I'm saying? That if you can start seeing the name alongside the face, your attention is going to dramatically go up. Now, his name is Brian. I just flip-flopped the vowels, and so my picture for Brian is a brain. But if we just say, okay, Brian, a brain, and Brian Brain, that's probably not good enough. You're still just saying the words. What I really like to do, what I encourage everybody to do, is look at the face, observe the face, and select something distinctive on the face. So maybe this guy, his eyes are distinctive.

Mm-hmm.

So now you're talking to him, he's got distinctive eyes, and you say, hi, my name's Ron. He says, oh, my name is Brian. I'm silently thinking brain, and now I imagine that brain. I attached the that to his distinctive feature. So now I'm imagining his eyes, the brains oozing out of his eyes, or the brains— he's so smart, the brains are popping out of his eyes. And I tell myself this story as I'm talking to him. But it also goes back to what you said when you started off. If we don't review, you're just going to remember it for that conversation. You really have to, as you're driving away from him, review, tell yourself the story, maybe even get yourself a journal of just people you met and write down the guy with the— he had big eyes. He was about 40 years old. He was on the doctor glass I mean, his name was Brian. I had brain oozing out of his eyes. And then maybe write in this journal and just flip through that journal once a week or once a month, because if you don't review, you really won't remember it.

Got it. I think we— I think that's where we miss. I think we, we don't review because there's so much information coming at us, so much new information that we can either be intrigued by or curious about or eager to learn and understand. That we probably don't do justice to the repetition element of this. It's kind of, I would say I'm just speaking from my own experience, right? We sabotage our ability to remember is really kind of what I'm saying by not dedicating some time, attention, and resources to the process.

It really is. It's a lot of people say, oh, I read a book and I can't remember what I read. I read it a month ago. And I'm like, well, have you thought about it? Have you reviewed it? You know, I'm a 2-time USA Memory Champion. If I don't think about it, I'm not gonna remember it either. So, You know, and sometimes when I meet people, I will, if, you know, I'll say, hey, I like to remember people I met. Would it be okay if we got a selfie? I'll take a picture and they, you know what, 5 days later they don't even remember I got a selfie with them. But I'll put that selfie in a folder in my phone and I screenshot it. So now I've got 2 copies of the selfie. The first selfie is just blank. It's just like the selfie was that we took. When I swipe right, the next selfie has their name written above it with my finger on the picture. So I'll just go through that folder and I'll swipe right and I'll see a picture. And I'll guess the name and then I'll swipe right again and see if I got it right. But, but here's, here's a critical thing, Dr. Gladden. When I'm trying to remember the name, I'm not just trying to say, think, what was his name? I'm trying to think, what was his distinctive feature? Oh, it was his eyes. What was in his eyes? A brain. What's his name? Brian.

Right. No, I get it. Well, you're, you're in a way you're creating a mental picture and to some extent even a story that it makes the item have more handles on it, so to speak, is what it feels like, right? There's kind of like more, more entry points because you can see the face. Maybe that's enough. Maybe you start to think about the eyes. Maybe you think about the oozing brain. Then all of a sudden, yeah, now it's Brian, right? Because it's, it's like multiple handles almost, it feels like, as well as a more complex picture in the first place. I don't know if that's how you think about it or you think about it a little differently.

No, I think the more vivid and detailed you can make something, the better chance that you're going to remember it, especially on the initial, you know, I was talking to somebody today and, you know, They were like, "How did you memorize a deck of cards so fast?" And I kind of gave contradictory advice to what I'm saying on the the names here. I said, "Well, you know, my my picture for the ace of diamonds was Lance Armstrong, the guy who used to ride the bicycle." Just was, you know, created. It just was. That's not important why, but ace of diamonds was Lance Armstrong. So when I would see the ace of diamonds, instead of seeing Lance Armstrong on this bicycle, I would see the yellow bracelet that he would wear, and I would just see a flash of yellow. And when I saw that flash of yellow. that told me Lance Armstrong. So I guess what I'm saying is pick something that's going to just pop in your mind, your brain. If you can't, if you have time to make it detailed, like you're having a conversation with somebody, go for it. But if it's something's going really fast and you don't have time, just try to make it vivid and pop and throw it on there as fast as you can. Try to see it real vividly in your mind, whatever it is you want to recall.

Yeah, that's good. I think, I think we, my sense is we need to slow down a little bit. To actually focus on remembering. You know, there are, there are people that struggle for health reasons also with regards to their memories, right? I mean, they can have early-stage dementia, or they can be hypothyroid, or they can have, you know, women and men both need estrogen in their brains for the neurons to fire properly. You know, the myelin sheaths have to be intact, and, you know, people tend to lose gray matter as they age and things like that. BDNF becomes important. Forms of exercise that increase lactate in particular appear to be incredibly good at boosting brain function and memory function as well. So do you take kind of a global look at this in terms of all the different things that can actually impact memory? Are you thinking about it from that perspective also, or more are you thinking about it from the mechanics of how am I going to remember things?

Well, both. Whenever I give my talks, I will start off talking about your health and your memory, good nutrition, Nutrition and exercise. Staying, you know, the more cardiovascular fit you are, the better your blood flow is. The more your better your blood flow is, the more oxygen, you know, goes to your brain. And and I talk about brain foods. You know, drinking plenty of water. A dehydrated brain, you know, could have trouble focusing. It could have brain fog. And of course, there are foods, you know, like blueberries and and spinach with the antioxidants. The Mediterranean diet, omega threes has been proven to be very beneficial for your memory. Our hippocampus, which you know is responsible for long-term memory, that will actually shrink a little bit as we. Age, or it can. And one of the things, one of the few things that can reverse the shrinkage of the hippocampus is exercise. So exercise and good nutrition is really important to your memory. One thing I actually stumbled across today, and it was very interesting to me, was that it said that as we get older, sometimes we lose our hearing, our hearing diminishes. And then I was actually chatting or doing some research on this. The idea was get a hearing aid, because if you don't have a hearing aid, you're struggling to listen. So you're using some of your mental energy, your mental bandwidth to decipher what's going on all the time. And that's mental energy that, you know, that wears down your, the energy level of your brain and energy for memory. So I do focus on all those other things. I do teach a technique known as the Mind Palace or the Memory Palace. It's very powerful and I can go into that if you want. But to answer your question, yeah, I do think good nutrition, exercise, and health, medical side of memory is Very important.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think, you know, one of the things that we measure here in the office is basically all 5 senses: sense of smell, sense of taste, hearing, sense of touch. And what's interesting is, to your point, if people have hearing impairment, it's one of the biggest risk factors for developing dementia because, to your point, you're forced to use more of your brainpower to just try to understand the words coming in, let alone process and remember stuff, right? So getting something to help your hearing becomes really critical. And it turns out that sommeliers, or people that spend a lot of time smelling things and tasting things, also have better memories and lower risks of dementia because they're stimulating those olfactory passages, neural passages, basically pathways that enhance memory. So there's interesting things around that. There's been some research done, really interesting research on doing smell training to actually enhance the brain and its memory function. Also, there's several devices out there that you can get, one called Memory Air, That actually plays 40 different scents for you while you're sleeping as a way to kind of stimulate the brain. So my point being, if you're listening to this and you're struggling with your sense of taste, which a lot of people did after COVID, or you're struggling with your sense of smell, which a lot of people do, or your hearing, those are all things that can be kind of rehabilitated, but they're actually early warning signs that not everything is as it should be. And it's kind of like saying that your senses are kind of getting out of shape. So you can, you can exercise them. And kind of bring them back into shape. And then, as I was saying earlier with exercise, it turns out that the kind of exercise that has the biggest impact on BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factors, is actually the kind of exercise that increases lactate production. Lactate goes into the brain and apparently is a strong stimulus for BDNF release. So just going for a walk, better than sitting on the couch, but you really want to do more intense, vigorous exercise. Blood flow restriction exercise can become helpful there because At moderate levels of exercise, you can get lactate production out of the muscles by restricting blood flow. So some interesting things there that could be helpful.

Yeah, I think so. I agree. Your talk on the smell, it reminded me of a book called Keep Your Brain Alive. I don't have any connection to this book, but a book called Keep Your Brain Alive by a guy named Lawrence Katz and Manuel Rubin, I think was the other guy. But they said exactly what you're saying. They coined— I think they coined the term Neurobics.

If not, they used it in their book.

But it was wake up your brain by doing things to stimulate your brain. One of the things they said was close your eyes and smell, you know, spices and try to identify them. Another one was they said reach in your pocket and try to identify the coins just by touch. You know, it goes along the lines of brushing your teeth with your left hand or writing with your left hand, but doing things that your brain isn't used to. So it kind of wakes up your brain, or as they say, keep your brain alive.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, that's, that's exactly right. So tell us about this palace that you inhabit. I suppose everybody has a palace or can create a palace. What goes on with the palace?

Yeah, so the mind palace is a technique that was developed at least 2,000 years ago, probably longer ago. Cicero wrote about it 2,000 years ago, or in writings that were attributed to Cicero. Who knows who actually wrote it? But Cicero described a technique where you imagine a house, you imagine a room. And, you know, if right now, you know, I took this water bottle, And I threw it over there on my couch. And then I— and maybe I took the water bottle out of your hand and I threw it on the couch. And I said, let's go, let's go to dinner. At dinner, I would say, what did I throw on the couch? You were like, you were a jerk. You took that water bottle out of my hand, you threw it over on the couch. In a way, the couch kind of was something in an actual location that we could link that water bottle to, just like the eyes are an actual physical location we can The Brain and Brian too. So here's the technique. I'm competing in the USA Memory Championship, uh, this weekend in 3 days. I've won it twice. I haven't won it in 16 years. Last time I won it, I was 37 years old. So we'll see how I do. But one thing they gave us, they gave us a spreadsheet. They gave this to us August 1st. So this will be 28 days later. It's over 1,300 data points. They gave us all They gave us the Preakness winners of the last 50 years. We have to know the year, the jockey, the horse, the trainer, the purse, and the time. Then they gave us the top 100 video games of all time in terms of sales. We have to— and I'm telling you all this for a reason, it's with the Mind Palace. We have to know the rank, the name of the game, the publisher, the genre, and the sales. And then we have to know the Declaration of Independence, all the signers, what state they represented, their date of birth, their occupation, and the city they were born. And then on the stage on Saturday, they're gonna quiz us. What I did is I'm using the Mind Palace. Here's an overview of the Mind Palace. You go to a room in your house and you select, let's say, 5 locations. So if this, let's, this is my house here, my home, and this is my office. My number 1 location, here's what I'll tell everybody to do. Stand in the doorway. So this is my doorway right here. Stand in the doorway of your room and pick 5 items. Go around the room clockwise. My 5 would be the alien, would be Albert Einstein, and I have a picture right here. That's number 3. I have a chair over here. It's number 4, and a couch over here. It's number 5. So mine are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Everybody, you know, if you're listening to this and you're in your car, you know, just think back to your house. Think of one room and number 5 pieces of furniture. Eventually, what you want to do is you want to go through your house and stand in the doorway of every room. So if I went to the next room, I'm not going to lay out that room for you, but I would go to the next room and I would start at my left and I'd go 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. The next room, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. And the next room, 16 through 20. So now I got 20 locations mapped out of my brain. Tonight when I'm going to sleep, instead of counting sheep, I say 1 through 20, then 20 to 1, 1 through 20 to Now, how's this gonna help me remember? Well, let's take something simple. The presidents of the United States. Pretty simple example, but maybe you'll get the idea here. We take what we wanna remember and we imagine each data point on top of each location. George Washington, just like we made Brian a brain, we make Washington washing machine. So now we got a washing machine, we gotta attach it to number 1. Number 1 is the alien. We got a washing machine up here, we're putting in the clothes, we're putting in the soap, the washing machine's spinning around, Washing machine, Washington. Number 2, Adams, John Adams. We have now our number 2 location is Einstein. So we turn that into a dam in our mind. We imagine the dam breaks and the water shoots out of his eyes. A-damn Adams. But Dr. Gladden, just like you started this podcast, this podcast off with today, you said you got to review. So we go back and review Washington, Adams. 3 more and we're done. Number 3 piece of furniture is this picture. So I use a chef for Jefferson, Shefferson Jefferson. So I tell a story that a chef is cooking my favorite food, maybe steak over here, and it's grilling right there. Medicine for Madison. I see, I tell myself I'm sick and I need to go over there and take some medicine. Maybe I pour the medicine out on my chair. And 5, I imagine a man in a rowboat over here for Monroe. Then I go back and I review it real quick. Washing machine, Washington. A-damn, Adam. Jeff for Jefferson, Madison for Madison, man in a rowboat, Monroe, Monroe. And you could learn all the presidents if you just had 46 pieces of furniture numbered. But it doesn't have to be presidents. It could be whatever is important to you. And this is known as the mind palace or memory palace.

Well, that's very, very cool. I think some people with big families might have to do that for their kids and their grandkids and their aunts and uncles, right? Almost kind of teasing, but, or, or I bet you people that have sizable companies to remember every employee's name. Can sometimes be a challenge. I mean, you can think about I don't really need to know all 46. I guess are we up to 46 presidents now? 47? I can't remember.

Yeah, yeah.

47. Funny statement. I can't remember. So anyway, 47 presidents. But we do have a need to to remember other things, and it's interesting. Do you do you find then? You know, if you're going to memorize all those spreadsheets, you either live in a very big house or. Or you have more locations in a single room, or how do you, how do you manage that with, you know, all the things that you listed about the video games, the jockeys and the Preakness winners and, you know, all that kind of stuff?

Yeah, almost everything that I, I used a PowerPoint presentation. I created a PowerPoint. I can share my screen for you right here and show you exactly how I'm doing it.

Okay. It's a picture of some people. It looks like sitting at tables in a, in a restaurant. It's kind of an indoor-outdoor. venue almost, it looks like.

Correct. This is an area of town in downtown Fort Worth known as the Stockyards, and this is the Drover Hotel. So one day I just went for a walk around the Drover Hotel, and real quick, not making a big scene, I took pictures of different locations because I know this hotel really well. Then I loaded the pictures into, into this PowerPoint, and below the picture I put what I wanted to remember, right? So I won't go into all the details, but on this piece of furniture right here, affirmed. I just imagined I was putting a stamp on that thing and it was saying affirmed. And Steve Coughin, I imagined those little round circle faces were stoves, Steve for stove, and I was coughing on them, stove coughing. And then I imagined, boom, they affirmed. I won't go into all the details on how I turn numbers into pictures, But to get to your point, I got this PowerPoint now with all these locations.

I see.

Now here, this is the video games. Here's walking. This is Grand Theft Auto 5, 2013. I create a picture to remember all this data and I attach it to that. So yeah, I only have 20 or 30 or 40, maybe 50 locations here at my house. But you don't have to do that. You have your, you have your school, you have your office, you have the area of town you know really well. You have the previous home that you could probably map out. Yeah.

And so am I correct in assuming that this is your primary tool that you, you build into, so to speak, when you're going to do a memory competition?

It is. And if I want to remember anything, you know, I do, I do train a lot of students, you know, so stuff like the periodic table, the presidents of the United States, history facts, science facts. But I also work with a lot of business people, you know, and they, you know, maybe they want to be able to give a speech or a presentation and not use I encourage them to write out their speech, you know, the 10 points, and then place it on 10 spots around their house. And then when they get up on the stage or in front of the group, they just mentally walk around their house and give a speech without notes. Or coaching people how to remember what they read, you know, take notes as you read, get a list of 15 or 20 things you want to remember, and then say, okay, that room is going to be that book I just read last month. Put the 15 things around the room and just review it, you know, while you're driving in your car, review it So the memory palace is my primary method. I don't use the memory palace for names. I attach the name to the face. But it is so powerful. You know, there are other methods of memory. There's telling a story or creating a song or making an acronym. And those are all wonderful. Rarely do I use them by themselves. Sometimes I will couple them with the memory palace.

I see.

Like to remember, like if I have an acronym for HOLMES, you know, the Great Lakes, H-O-M-E-S, Huron, Ontario, I might see the word HOLMES written out on my number 1 location. So now that number 1 location stores 5 pieces of data because I've used another memory technique and coupled it with this.

Yeah, that's good. I was just rattling off the Great Lakes from the acronym HOMES, right? Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.

That's right.

So, well, I was born in Michigan, so it's kind of my birthright to know those lakes, I guess. But anyway, yeah, no, that's interesting. I, I like acronyms Quite honestly, I remember in medical school, you know, learn we had to learn tons of stuff, of course, and acronyms were good. Also visualization. I remember the way I did so well on the anatomy final was to trace the nerves in the body. I realized that if I knew the course of the nerves throughout the body, that I would actually really know anatomy. So then I would trace, I would picture that you know this nerve crosses over this muscle and past that joint, and down here in the foot it's it's going here, and I would I would just. Keep track of where the nerves went in the body. And then by default, I would learn all the other structures that were associated with it. So it was kind of a way of visualization, I guess, is what I'm saying, for me, as opposed to trying to remember the relationships, you know, as a, as words on a page, I could see the whole body by just tracing the nerves. So it's, it's, it was a powerful tool. I think I, I think I had the 3rd highest score in the class for For the anatomy finals, just doing it that way.

Yeah, it works. It's the repetition. You were not just memorizing it, you were understanding it, you were seeing how it flows. And that's a big thing too. People don't just wanna memorize something, they wanna understand it. And I get that. And so memorization is part of the process, but it's not the end of the process.

Well, that's a really good point too. I think meaning, like what you're doing is kind of probably strikes the audience as being kind of, just random stuff, like, you know, every Preakness winner, you know, jockey, trainer, purse size, time, all that kind of stuff. It seems a little bit random, but in your daily life, if you can attach meaning to things, then that becomes, I think, another layer that makes it easier. You know, I was like that with organic chemistry also in college. I never just memorized equations. I always struggled— not struggled, well, maybe struggled at times, but I always wanted And and really strived, I suppose is the right word, to to understand why these reactions were happening the way they were, so that I could actually rebuild the reaction even if I didn't know the outcome, so to speak. And I found that that made it much easier to to score very well on those tests as well. So understanding, I think, is visual, and there's a visualization in that. In fact, I'm almost thinking that every time that you have understanding, you're actually probably having deeper understanding because you are visualizing. I don't know if that's true or not, but as I'm thinking about it, my own experience with it, I think there's some element of truth in that.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think so too. I don't, I can't remember if it was Tesla who was— it was somebody. Yeah.

He visualized. Yeah.

Yeah. He would visualize what he was wanting to create or see or understand.

That's right.

Try to see it from different angles. So, you know, that's critical. And then what, you know, give it meaning is a word, a phrase that you used. A phrase that I've used is making something make sense, giving sense to the nonsense. For example, the number, you know, 25,270,000. It has meaning, don't get me wrong, it has meaning, but it's just a number. So I will— for that, that is a specific number. That's how many video games the video game Pokémon— nobody cares to know this, but just the video game Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, Platinum sold. So the way I remembered that, 25 million, my picture for 25 is Neil Armstrong. And long story, who cares why. And 270 is the New York Yankees. So I imagine Neil Armstrong playing for the New York Yankees. But the point I'm getting at is I'm giving something that really doesn't make sense. I'm making it make sense to me, or giving it meaning is the way you put it. And when you give something meaning, it makes sense.

No, I think that's exactly right. I do like— like, there are many times that I'm coming up with new ideas, and some of the ideas initially can be somewhat abstract. Like I have an aspiration to actually articulate something or understand something. I'm doing this right now with an AI company that I'm working with, creating an AI mechanism for human optimization, let's say. And so I had all of a sudden an image came to me of what that could look like. And then from the image, I started to build on the image and from the image, and then I started to have the image be a container for certain things that were happening in a repetitive fashion and things like that. And all of a sudden I was kind of like building the machine, the architecture if you will, of an AI that could optimize a human being. But it came to me all visually. It didn't come to me in an abstract form of, you know, like writing it down or something. And that's, you know, as an interventional cardiologist, I would visualize all the time, right? Because that's— you're working in— you're working with images of an individual, right? Using X-rays to see inside the body and then take a 2-dimensional image and imagine it in 3 dimensions in your mind and then go in and, you know, do certain things, right? So there's a lot of imaging going on. I find that to be a very satisfying use of my brain is creating images and ideas. And then those things become actually very, very easy to remember because they're attached to an image. There's also an idea and there's a structure and there's also mechanical sort of quality to it, right? There's like, the thing is actually doing something is my point. When that's the case, like when you think about how does an internal combustion motor work, right? It's easy to remember that because you can see the whole thing working. You can visualize So anyway, I'm just reflecting on some of that as we're talking here.

But yeah, no, I think you're 100% correct. And I was thinking of this, you know, the visualizing and understanding is right on both of those points, is 100% important part of memory and thinking about it and trying to see it from different angles. And that's something that I teach in memory and people that want to remember more, visualize, think about it Mm-hmm. 100%.

So you said that you're gonna enter this national championship in a couple days?

Yeah. And so, and, and, and first of all, the, the Preakness winners, the video game rankings, um, and the declaration signers— I have, I have no interest in the video games or the Preakness winners. The declaration signers was kind of interesting to me as a guy who likes history, you know. It was kind of interesting to see the names of the, the actual people. But you're right, it's a, it's a random list, and it's not really— they gave it to us not because, hey, this is meaningful, you need to know this is gonna help you in life. They gave it to us specifically for, this is completely random, you're never gonna use it again, but we wanna see how good your memory is. You got 4 weeks, 1,300 data points, go. So it's a competition, the national championships. The first event is gonna, they're gonna quiz us on this. There's gonna be 15 of us to start. They're gonna quiz us on it and they will eliminate 4 people. If you miss, I think if you miss 3 questions, you're So they'll keep going until 4 people have missed 3. Then the next event is they're going to give us 15 minutes to memorize up to probably 150 words, and everybody's going to memorize the same words. Now we're down to 11 people. They're going to— we're all going to sit on stage. The first person will get the microphone. He'll say dog. The next person will say cat. The next person will say book, and they'll just keep passing it down until we've eliminated 3 there.

If I'm understanding this, then you've got to recite those words in sequence. And so Right. When it gets to you, if you can't get the next word, then you're out.

100%. And they'll eliminate 3 that way. The next event is when people, when people hear me describe it, it sounds daunting. But if you break it down, it's, it's so— it's very possible because I did it, practice all the time, and I always get it. But what they're gonna do is they're gonna have 5 people walk up on stage. And at this point, there'll be 7 of us up there. Person 1 will say, My name, my birthday, my city, my state, and the year I graduated, the city I live in now, my zip code, my job, my employer, my cat color, type, and name, my 3 favorite foods, my 3 favorite hobbies, and the make, model, year, and color of my car. And that person will leave. That's person 1. Person 2 says the same thing, the same data. Person 3 says the same data. Patient 4 says the same data. Person 5 says the same data. data. And they just say it, we're not looking at nothing. Then they go one more time around, and they all say the same data. But this time, we got papers to read as they're saying it. So now we're all just, we're putting it in our mind palaces, by the way, we all have 5 mind palaces, one for each person. And so we're all just putting it on our mind palace. And then after they loop through twice, then they just give us 5 minutes to study the paper. And then they'll just quiz us, the guy, they'll say, okay, person number 3, walk up here. All right, you, what was his name? You, what was his zip code? And we'll eliminate 3 or 4 that way. Then we'll be down to the last event. And the last event is they'll get 2 decks of cards, they'll shuffle them together. Everybody has the exact same randomized order. We'll memorize 104 cards in 5 minutes. Person 1 will say the first card, person 2 will say the next one, person 3, person 4, until 2 are eliminated and the champion is crowned.

Okay, well, I'm Wow, that sounds like, you know, there have been some interesting movies. I saw a really interesting movie about the National Spelling Bee, which, you know, sounds like maybe a boring thing, but it was very compelling documentary on how these kids are studying, how they're practicing, and all this kind of stuff. And, and this almost sounds like there could be a documentary shot around, you know, who are the people that are participating in this? How are they studying? What are their backgrounds and all that sort of stuff and how they come forward? I don't know if anybody shot a documentary on that, but it sounds like it would be, you Potentially quite intriguing.

Yeah, there have been documentaries actually on it, but none of them have ever taken off and made a splash or anything like that. You know, probably just wasn't the right producer or the right script or not script. It's not scripted, but you know, people who are just more amateurs at documentaries have done it.

Yeah, I think what made it interesting was, you know, there was drama. There were people that were overcoming things. There was humor. There was, you know, all the different human elements to if you will, that provide richness to our lives. So yeah.

I do think this year there's somebody there making a documentary, and I figure they'll want to talk to me. I'm twice everybody's age. You know, I'm 53. This is a— there's one person I believe is in his late 30s. Everybody else is in their 20s. Everybody else is in their 20s.

Okay.

So, you know, I'm not— if this— in 2009 and '10, I was the favorite and I won. In 2026, I am not the favorite. But we'll have some fun.

Yeah, for sure. Well, we'll be cheering for you. Well, it's inspiring to hear how you go about this. I think if you've been listening to the podcast, it gives you some strategies. You know, visualization is, is one strategy, repetition is another, and then creating things that, that I think on some level, things that actually make you smile, right? Like the face that you showed us and some of the things that you were talking about, you know, brains coming out of the eyes, or, you know, a chef cooking you something, you can almost bring a smile to your face. Face. I think, I think when emotion is involved, I think it's easier to remember too. And we know this certainly from trauma, right, that traumas get imprinted in, you know, explosion happens, and you, you see it and hear it one time, and you'll never forget it for the rest of your life, right? So there are certain things that kind of catch our attention and imprint themselves. I think, I don't know if you utilize humor intentionally, if You put things together that kind of make you smile, but I don't know if that's a leg up on the on the situation or not.

But yeah, anything that you can make you smile, laugh, gross you out, you know, make you go like, oh my gosh, that's crazy picture. Yeah, the the more emotion gets into it, the more which you said at that the beginning. You said at the beginning that if we don't review it, we're not going to remember. But you said the the things that are unusual or have action in them, we will remember.

Yeah, that seems to be true. Well, great, Ron. I want to thank you for spending this time with us. I think everybody's been inspired by it, and we'll be cheering for you a couple days from now. By the time this airs, we'll already know if you won or not. So maybe we'll try.

Well, my philosophy on this is if I make it past round 1, which is the long-term memory event, that's my main goal. Anything else is icing on the cake, but I can't wait to share the results, whatever they were, because it'll be a learning experience. Oh, why did I get eliminated? Why did I win? Or why did I get eliminated? What did I do wrong? What can I get better? Either way, it's gonna be fun.

Yeah, I think, and I think that's really the right attitude about any of this. I think if you, you know, what you're doing is you're approaching it as a game, right? It's, and it's a learning opportunity. And I think even as you're looking and implementing some of these things for yourself, think of it as a game. Think of it as, don't think of it as I can do it or I can't do it. Think of it as what am I learning? What am I learning? How am I getting better? I think that makes it fun. So have fun with it.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I will have fun. I'm gonna treat it as a game challenge for myself. I'm also looking forward to this being over so I can get back to work. Uh, you know, I know everything about the Preakness winners, the Declaration signers, and video games. You know, I mean, the last video game I played was Pac-Man. This was really not what I wanted to memorize the last couple weeks.

But yeah, there you go. There you go. All right, well, thank you so much. We wish you all the best.

All right, thank you for having me on. I heard a lot of good things about you and everything you're doing, so thank Thank you so much.

My pleasure.

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