The Knowledge Gene is one of those excellent books that doesn’t come around nearly often enough. Except Lynne Kelly has a habit of only writing incredible books. Of course, I’m partial because I share Kelly’s love of memory. But I don’t have anything like the scientific background and depth of research she brings. Not to mention the wisdom that all…

Get Better At Anything originally made me skeptical when I first saw the title. I mean, I’m usually not one to judge a book by its cover, but… “Anything”? That right there is what you call a big promise. So, of course, I had to invite Scott Young onto the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast to asking him what counts as “anything.” And I wanted him to de…

Imagine mastering a new language using the same memory techniques the help memory champions remember thousands of random digits or multiple decks of cards. Although you’d be forgiven if you can’t see the connection, I’ve interviewed many memory athletes over the years. Not all of them also learn languages. But many do. And for the first time ever, …

If you want to know how to memorize numbers, you might be getting frustrated… After all, there is a ton of confusing information about the main remembering numbers technique known as the Major System. I found it frustrating too when I first learned it as a PhD student at York University in Toronto… but I pushed through and it ultimately helped laun…

If you want to become conversationally fluent, you might wonder how many words and phrases you need to learn. You probably also want to know how long it’s going to take to tie enough threads of the language together to speak without hesitation. You also want the certainty that the language will in fact wind up deep down inside you and become part o…

Aphantasia. Sounds like a magic word a magician would say before conjuring a rabbit from his hat, doesn’t it? But let me ask you this: Can you visualize the magician pulling out the rabbit by his ears? For most of us, it will be easy to recall images inside our head, using our mind’s eye. However, if you could NOT see any image in your mind’s eye –…

Reflective thinking provides one of the fastest paths to living a better life. I saw the power of it year after year while serving as a professor at three universities around the world. No kidding: The students who were reflective thinkers constantly came up with resources that helped them navigate life’s challenges – not just the assignments they …

Memory recall, sometimes incorrectly called retrieval, is the experience of remembering information. Here’s the catch I’ve noticed after more than a decade serving the public as a memory expert with one of the most watched TEDx Talks on memory issues: Proper recall can only happen after at least these other levels of memory have succeeded first: No…