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

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

The best memorizers in the world - who almost all hail from Europe - can memorize a pack of cards in less than a minute. A few have begun to approach the 30-second mark, considered the 'four-minute mile of memory.'

The fact that books today are mostly a string of words makes it easier to forget the text. With the impact of the iPad and the future of the book being up for re-imagination, I wonder whether we'll rediscover the importance of making texts richer visually.

Kissing could have begun as a way of sniffing out who's who. From a whiff to a kiss was just a short trip across the face.

The more we remember, the better we are at processing the world. And the better we are at processing the world, the more we can remember about it.

How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention to the human being across from us who is talking with us, by being so lazy that we're not willing to process deeply?