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If you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your healthcare provider about the Cologuard test. Cologuard is available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription today at cologuard.com slash screen. I got a special guest with me right now, Nelson Dellis. He's a six-time USA memory champion, two-time Guinness World Record Holder, Grand Master of Memory, and the author of the brand new book, Everyday Genius Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem Solving, and Much More.
Nelson, great to meet you. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right, first off, when did you realize you had a great memory?
Well, actually, I wasn't born with a great memory. It's something that I trained myself to have after I saw my grandmother go through Alzheimer's, and she passed away from it in 2009. And I started just diving into memory techniques, learning about these ancient techniques that have been around for thousands of years, and memory competitions where people put these techniques to the test. And I started training for those competitions. You watched her memory and her grasp for the memories, and you said, You didn't have an especially great memory, right?
No, I haven't. You don't have a photographic memory? Definitely not. That made you curious about how the mind works? Yeah, I was.
Fearful for my own future. I did not want the same thing to happen to my brain. And I was in my mid-20s. I thought, well, what could I be doing now to strengthen my mind and training my memory?
So, where'd you go? Where'd you go to find out more? I look, well, I first started reading general books about memory and how it works, and then kept seeing these asides in the books about curious memory competitions and the techniques they use. And that really. Piqued my interest.
So I found an audiobook by a former memory champion, Dominic O'Brien. Read his book, and he walks you through exercises. And I suddenly was realizing that, yes, I can do it too. And when I got to these memory competitions, just got obsessed with this superpower that I unlocked that anybody can unlock and What were you doing prior to this? I was in school studying.
I was had interest in being a physicist. I got my master's in computer science and was going to be a software engineer. And then you start going to these competitions. How'd you do? Yeah, well the first one I did okay, middle of the pack, uh but I was So inspired, I came back the next year and won the thing.
And won it six times over the last. Can you give me an idea of what they would assign you in this competition? Yeah, it's pretty interesting. They have different events where it's timed and you have a certain amount of information to memorize. Decks of cards as fast as you can, a deck of playing cards.
A 500-digit number, you get five minutes to study and remember as many different things. 500-digit number. Yeah. As many as you can. Names and faces, so memorizing a bunch of random headshots and their names, first and last.
Randomized poem. previously unpublished poem, and then lists of words, things like that. Fascinating.
So, can you give us an idea in your book what you've relayed? Do you give away all your secrets? Yeah, you do.
So, you're not keeping anything for yourself. Not at all.
So, give me an idea. Like, you said you didn't have an extraordinary memory.
So, what are some of the things we could all do right now? Yeah. And what are some of the techniques we could start developing? Yeah. So, the book is all about building these genius skills, and memory is up there.
If you can master your memory, a lot of people think that you might be a genius and you feel like you're a genius if you can tap into that control over your mind. And it all starts with thinking about information that you want to memorize as a picture in your mind. We remember pictures better than the abstract information that most stuff is these days: numbers, names, speeches, complicated. Concepts, you know?
So if you can turn that into a picture in our mind that we can visualize, that's. Sensory, emotional, taps into things that are meaningful to us, that's what we remember.
So for example, you get a monologue and they say to memorize this, so you got to give a speech, whether it's something technical which you majored in, or is it something like the A TED Talk. Sure. Right. And you want it verbatim. Yep.
How would you?
So if it's verbatim, then you recognize that every word on that page is some piece of information that needs to be logged in your memory.
So I would turn. Probably word for word, like looking at each single word and coming up with a picture is tricky. But what you could do is take little phrases or little chunks of words and turn it into a meaningful image. And then. Connect them all in a little story, right?
We remember stories very well.
So if you can take those pictures and weave them into a memorable story, you'll remember the order of the words you gotta say.
So give me an example of a story that you could weave. Do you need to read something, for example? If you have a story, And you want to, let's say, do a biography on John Adams or something of that nature.
So you're reading John Adams' biography and you want to remember some of the things.
So do you picture his face? Do you picture Quincy, Massachusetts? Do you but you want to do it in order and you want to remember what happened in his childhood? Do you You picture him catching a fish. You picture him going to law school.
How do you tell me an idea how you would. Yeah, so there's a few approaches. It's all based on this idea of coming up with a story. But more specifically, you can use what's called a memory palace, where you take a walk through a place that you know very well, maybe your house, let's say, from your front door. through all the rooms to your bedroom.
Okay. And that's something that we don't need to memorize. We do it every day. If you close your eyes, you could do that easily. And what that does is if you can imagine things for the things you want to remember, remember about John Adams strewn about the house along that route, that route now preserves all of those bits of information in order.
So, you know, you might start with his name so that you remember his name and. Maybe what he looks like. You would put John Adams in your house. Yeah, I'd put him on the front door.
Okay. Something to remember the name, right? I mean, John Adams is pretty memorable. But then let's say the next piece of information you're reading, his birthday or the years he served, right? Maybe you want to remember those.
So you would come up with an image for that information and then attach it to the next room in your house.
So, for example, let's say a birthday, May 11th. 1967. Sure. So, how would you remember something like that? What's the image?
Yeah, so with numbers, very abstract. A lot of memory athletes, and I mentioned we memorize 500 digits in five minutes.
Sounds crazy. I couldn't do it at one point. But we turn the numbers into pictures.
So there's a way to convert, say, the numbers to letters. A number system, they call it the major system, where we basically turn them into words. And then once we have words, we can picture words very easily.
So a birthday like May 11th, 1967, I would turn it into a numerical version of it. And again, this is maybe a bit more advanced, but when you train your memory, this stuff can become very effortless.
So May, I would picture five, the number five, the fifth month. Eleven, I have a picture for 11. And then He wasn't born in 1967, but let's just say that's the date. 19. I could probably.
Makes sense of it. I don't need to remember 19. Do you need to see what happened in 1967? Not necessarily. No.
No. So I just have an image for 5, 11, 67. And in my world, that is. Uh Abraham Lincoln playing tennis with um uh guitar. Yeah.
That doesn't make sense to anybody out there, but I do have a system to turn those into pictures that are meaningful. And that's a silly picture that will represent those numbers: 0, 5, 11, 67, every single time.
So when you do wait, how many numbers did you have to memorize to win?
Well, you have a max of 500.
Okay. So I did about 400.
So if I'm creating a picture for every number, right? Isn't it easy for to forget an element of that picture, which would be forgetting one of those numbers? You'd think so, and of course it can happen when you're doing a volume, a lot of numbers like that. But the way that you turn those pictures into memorable Sensory pieces of data in your mind, that's what makes it hard to forget.
So the stickier you make it, the less likely it is that you're going to forget those. Thanks. Join Fox in supporting our troops from daily needs to global emergencies. Help us be there for those who serve. Visit go.fox slash Red Cross to donate to service to the Armed Forces today.
This is Ainsley Earhart. Thank you for joining me for the 52-episode podcast series, The Life of Jesus. A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told. Listen and follow now at FoxnewsPodcasts.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Nelson Delles is here, six-time USA memory champion, and he's got a book out now called Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory Focus, Problem Solving, and Much More.
For example, you walk into a bar. And they tell you as a good exercise. Get everybody's name. Yeah. So in that bar is how many people is your threshold that you can memorize?
Well, one of the records I have, I still have it, is 235 names in 15 minutes. You tell everyone, don't move, have you in order? Or no? Excuse me. No, it doesn't have to do with the order necessarily because, yeah, people could mix and leave and.
I attach the name to the person. And a year from now, after you win that competition and name all those people and you see that person in the mall, will you remember their name? Yeah, in most cases, I'm pretty good at remembering the people I meet at the mall last season. That's almost like magic. Because you have a picture.
You have 230 pictures in your head? Yep, but they're all memorable. And that's, and there's a practice to it, right? If you train this, it becomes more of a. I don't want to say effortless because you still have to make an effort, but it does become more intuitive to do it.
So do you think this is a technique or have you developed something in your brain to be To be more expansive. Did you worry neurologically? Did you approach this neurologically to find out how the brain functions, where it goes in the brain? Not necessarily. I learned the techniques.
These are techniques, but I think what happens is it does become neurological. There's actually a study I was a part of in St. Louis at a memory lab at Washington University in St. Louis where they. The research has just come out this year where it shows They did a scan of my brain and they show how Rewired my brain is compared to the average person when I use my memory, it's using the whole thing in ways that.
Most people don't think memory is being used. And that's because of all the years of training.
So, memory, training your memory actually does rewire your brain.
So, a lot of these processes are neurologically changed. Inside me.
So do you think so it's not necessarily your technique got better, your brain is actually adapting to what you're asking it to do. Yep. Now people can do the techniques and instantly see how it improves their memory, but then that long term change is what happens when you train that skill. Do you ever lose your keys? Yeah, probably.
My wife's over there. She's laughing. Yes. It does happen.
So here's an example.
So they say one thing with memory. We should give people people something to take away with. They could all improve it.
So they say, oh, say, picture your keys on like when you go to put them down. Usually people do it unconsciously. That's how you lose it. Like picture your keys on top of the candle that's on your table. And like you'll just say, Where are my keys?
Oh, I remember because it exaggerated. I would have put my keys on the candle, but you exaggerated and you have them buy the candle. Is that roughly what you're doing? Yeah, and I think an even better technique for people who misplace their wallet or their keys is when they put it down or their phone, when they put it down, do a bizarre, out-of-the-norm. Movement.
Just like a snap or a a little tap on the face. I know it's ridiculous. But what happens is when you do that, you you're doing a couple of things. You're paying attention to the moment, which is often why we forget why we place these things so quickly and Lose them, but you're also kind of marking in your memory. It's like a timestamp of something that pops out as weird.
So hit yourself in the keys down gently. Hit yourself in the cheek. Yeah, just something bizarre. That's the whole point. It's out of the ordinary.
That isn't what you do typically. Just, I don't know, do a spin, tap your knee, whatever. Just something bizarre that kind of will mark that in your memory. Because when you're thinking about it, so you're upstairs, you put your phone downstairs, but you slapped your cheek when you put your phone down. Yeah.
And that'll be, that'll imprint. Yeah, that's it. It's super helpful. I mean, I think the first step is to try to find a dedicated place where you always put your keys, but that doesn't always work because sometimes you're in a rush, toss them over here. But it also tells you to be a little more present with more of your life, which again is hard to do.
But I think when you. Learn more about memory and train your memory and treat your memory right, you start to be more present. Around a lot of those things that are very mundane. And I know if you go ahead and get the book, and I hope you do, you pick up Everyday Genius, hacks to boost your memory, focus problem solving, and much more, you're going to get these. But for people, just give people an idea of what you're going to get in the book.
Can you give me two other techniques that could help people right now? Yeah, so the book. Talks a lot about memory and learning more, but there's chapters on reading faster and remembering what you read. There's um chapters on intuition and creativity and problem solving, all sorts of stuff, mental calculation. Um what can I give you?
Um yeah, for speed uh reading faster, I think a helpful thing that People often overlook when they're reading is that their eyes will be moving back and forth. You're often moving. Or wasting time rereading passages or jumping all over the page. If you just give yourself a pointer, sometimes it could just be your finger, it could be a pencil, as you read, you'll find that your eyes will follow that thing and focus on moving. Forward in the book rather than always.
Because one of the things that people do to slow them down, they try to mouth the words. Like they'll read every word. But your eyes can move quicker and your brain can pick up quicker. Quicker than you think. And that's what the book is filled with, is things that most people Would assign as skills for someone who's special or genius or gifted, but it's stuff that we all can do.
If you learn how to do it and, Understand that it is possible for our minds. And Nelson, one of the things that people are listening to now, they said what prompted you is you had your was it your mom? My grandmother. Your grandmother.
So I had. Alzheimer's, yeah. Is there anything that you've learned that might help someone when they're diagnosed to keep their brain as active as possible? Yeah, well, I think that's the key is to keep your brain as active as possible as you age. I think in this year and moving forward, it's going to probably get worse, is there are so many things threatening to take away our own cognitive agency, where we don't have to think as much as we used to.
And while that's helpful, and I'm not saying to get rid of all tools out there in AI, there's definitely a place for it. I would encourage people to use their minds more or before they use one of those tools.
So, yeah, is that how is technology affecting all that? A lot of times it's making you dumber. Yeah, yeah. And the research is still very new, but I think it's more and more apparent that it's making us dumber. I'll give you the best example.
I used to be really good at directions. When I first got my license, I wouldn't go anywhere without a map. I'd look at every trip before I looked at it. I would just look at a map and I would have a great sense of direction. Yeah, we had to.
Now I don't.
Now you look at the turn. I don't even, I just look, I look for the next turn. Yeah. And it's crazy.
So that's the one thing you worry about with AI. Yeah, is that we just get too complacent in letting our mind Our cognitive abilities get outsourced. Right. I imagine with law school, this would have been unbelievable if you decide to go. I found it.
All they do is read. No, I'm happy with where I ended up. And what do you put? The books out. Are you going to continue to go into these contests?
Yeah, you know, I I always got this itch to to go back and Maybe not compete, but always try to maybe break a record or do some really big, challenging memory demonstration. Yeah, it's part of me. I'm very competitive. Nice. No kidding.
Nelson Dallas, a six-time USA memory champion, out with a brand new book, Everyday Genius, Hacks to Boost Your Memory Focus, Problem Solving, and More. Thanks, Nelson. Thank you, Brian.
