Once I'd reached the point where I could squirrel away more than 30 digits a minute in memory palaces, I still only sporadically used the techniques to memorize the phone numbers of people I actually wanted to call. I found it was just too simple to punch them into my cell phone.

A meaningful relationship between two people cannot sustain itself only in the present tense.

'Moonwalking with Einstein' refers to a memory device I used when I memorized a deck of playing cards at the U.S. Memory Championship. When I competed in 2006, I set a new U.S. record by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute and 40 seconds. That record has since fallen.

...who we are and what we do it is fundamentally a function of what we remember.

Over the last few millennia we've invented a series of technologies - from the alphabet to the scroll to the codex, the printing press, photography, the computer, the smartphone - that have made it progressively easier and easier for us to externalize our memories, for us to essentially outsource this fundamental human capacity.

Sequencing - the careful striptease by which you reveal information to the reader - matters in an article, but it is absolutely essential to a book.

Memory training is not just for the sake of performing party tricks; it's about nurturing something profoundly and essentially human.