25: The Memory Palace

Hello and welcome to classical stuff. You should know the podcast about classical stuff that you should know by classical educators who you also should know. We're good guys. And if you have to say that, doesn't it?

And that's like the worst pick up line. Hi, you should know me. You should know me. I'm a good guy.

I'm a good guy. That's just got weird. And my name is Graham Donaldson. And I am a English rhetoric teacher at Veritas Academy in Austin, Texas.

And I'm joined here by AJ Hanenberg. That's me. Also a rhetoric teacher at Veritas Academy. And Tom is maybe.

And the English. Oh, and English. Well, rhetoric English. Excuse me.

If we were truly classical, we wouldn't have these subjects. And we would all just teach everything. There's a whole other podcast. And we're also joined with Thomas Megbee, Dean of Student Life.

Lord of Fun. OK. No, never called me that far. Well, that's your job.

It's too much fun. That's what people call me Dean of Life. I thought I brought that up. You have brought that up.

That's a weird one. Isn't that God? Yeah. Ambassador fun?

Dean of Fun. Someone called me a bludzman of fun. That's it. It wasn't me a cruise director last week.

I was working with a group director. Yeah. All those. Also Dean of Student Life.

Make sure that all the puke is like in places that no one can see it. No one is puke during any of the things that I play it. I'm assuming that's what cruise directors do. They just got to make the.

Anyway, so today, you know what? I just can't remember what the topic is. I'm having a hard time remembering what it is we're going to be talking about today. If only there was some kind of method that I could learn that could help me retain information.

I would be a better man, citizen, podcaster, husband, teacher, and human being. Listen, if you can't see that a direct holding his head. So there's two things you need to know as a listener. Number one is that Graham asked to introduce this topic before we got your.

Judas. And number two is not only was I face-palming harder than I ever had, but Graham was face-palming his own head while he made this introduction. It tasted bad as I was saying. All right.

So today is a topic that's probably been a long time coming. Anyone that's been in one of my classes knows this. So if you're one of my students, you may have heard this even more than once. But they would have remembered it.

Well, they probably just haven't went to click on the link after seeing the topic in all honesty. All right. So today's topic is the memory palace and you may be semi familiar with the memory palace. It shows up on the BBC show Sherlock.

It shows up in a real bad way. It's not. I mean, that's not exactly what I'm going to say. It's not super bad.

It's just kind of inaccurate, right? He's like, I need to remember a thing, kind of close eyes and poke his brain and it will spit out information. And he'll go into his like his internal holodeck and just walk around and yeah. Well, I mean, that has some accuracy, but the whole like it'll spit out things he didn't even know he knew that is false.

That's not a thing that happens, but it is a real thing. Memory palace. They're not just making that up. That actually is a part of this real world.

And it was actually a much larger part of the world a long time ago when, you know, pre-Google and pre-dictionaries and pre-incyclopedias and writing, especially pre-writing everywhere. Yeah. So I'll get to what it is in a second, but I'll talk about first kind of how it came about and it started with a guy named Simon Ites of Cios, who was a really famous poet. He was famous for all kinds of things, not just inventing a memory palace.

And one time he was commissioned to write a poem I think for this guy's birthday. And I think the guy was a boxer. That part doesn't matter so much, but he wrote this poem and half of it was referenced as to Castor and Pollux, who were themselves boxers. They're like the first classical boxers ever.

So he stands up and gives this poem. And then the guy who commissioned it says, well, I'll only pay half. Castor and Pollux can pay the other half because they split a poem with me. You talked more about them than you did about me.

And so he's a little bit hacked because his poem and he hears that there are two messengers outside that he wants to go and talk to. So wait, the birthday guy didn't like his poem? Didn't like his poem. Oh, all right.

Said that he would only pay half the commission that he had promised. So Simon Ites is understandably a little miffed and he's heading outside. And the two guys outside in some versions are Castor and Pollux in some versions of the two guys. So he goes outside and while he's outside, the roof of the place collapses.

Oh, there you go. And roofs at this time are not light, roofs are made of rock, and it kills everyone. That guy should have liked his cousins, the family, everything. And everybody is just totally squashed and mangled.

And he realized that from the small moment of time that he was standing in front of the crowd and looking out at all of these people as he was giving his poem, so he was even concentrated on something else, he had memorized the location of every single person in the room. And so when their family members came and were trying to figure out where the bodies were so they could bury them in an appropriate grave because they're all mangled because of the roof, he led them one by one to their family members. He said, I remember your guy. He was sitting to my left and he would deposit them with their family members.

And so he realized that this is a huge aid to memory while he was focused on something else. He had memorized an entire room really easily. Presumably he had memorized the poem he was giving. Like he was delivering it from memory.

From memory. Writing utensils were expensive, writing materials were expensive, and it just wasn't very common. And I think he would have been looked down upon in ancient Greece if you use notes. You're reading off your hand?

Yeah. You can speak just from memory. And so he realized this was a really easy way to memorize things. If he could figure out a way to hook his spatial memory to memory of other things.

So what he came up with is called the method of loci, or method of place, right? Memory Palace. And the basics of what it is is is a mnemonic device to help you remember things by linking it to your visual spatial memory. It's described luckily in the retorca at Harenium, which is a book by Cicero, right?

He kind of talks about this memory thing and gives you a bunch of recommendations for how to do it and all that stuff. And some of it's really good. Some of it's really bad. And we're glad that he did it.

He didn't even know why he was doing it. He's like, everybody uses this. Everybody knows this. I don't know why I'm writing it down.

It's so ubiquitous. But I'll write it down anyway. And we're lucky because now anyone that goes to the memory Olympics uses this. The guy that has memorized, I think, the most digits of Pi uses the method of loci.

And he's memorized 60,000 digits. I read this morning that the guy who holds the most recent record for most digits memorized within 30 minutes. I think it was something like 1060. And these are random digits.

But they use the method of loci. So anyone that is anyone in the world of memory Olympics knows the book and uses some version of it. Like even when memorizing random decks of cards and what number it is and what suit, they have it down to 20 seconds using the method of loci. Okay.

So basically before I explain what- You're kicking that guy out of your casino, right? That's part of the thing. Yeah, yeah. Well, haven't they built into casinos, kind of checks against that?

Like when you're playing Blackjack? It's six decks. So you can't. And then they shuffle it when they're halfway through.

Maybe. I'm not sure. But- It just goes more because of those. Yeah.

That must be- And my college buddies used to gamble a lot. And I would go because there's free soda. And it was just fun to watch. He was really, you know, animated gambler.

I've never been in a casino. I guess I never have- Because I'm a Christian. Oh, sorry. I've never been in a casino.

We gotta go. I know. I'm not against it. I'm against it.

You know what we record right now? I am a bachelor. I'm a bachelor. That's all I want.

All right. Well, I know that's a good thing. Yeah. I like that.

I love this particular point or place. Yeah. It's a method of a particular point or place? Yeah.

But- So is he, when he came up with this- Is he kind of reversing the thing? He has his poem memorized. So was he standing up there and thinking about the face he looked at as he said the line of the poem? Or- Oh, okay.

I was just- He was not deep into the story. Okay. The story is related really briefly in the retort at any other version, but it's brief. He says- It comes from this guy who did this thing.

And it's like four lines. Cool. Yeah. Cause he figured out the method after the roof collapse.

Yeah. He just did it by accident. So before we get into what it is and how to do it and how to do it easily, let me talk about why we memorize. You have a Google phone or an iPhone.

Sorry, I'm at a phone with Google. So you can use that to look up just about anything you want. And when AJ's podcasting, Thomas and I are just furiously looking at Twitter and watching Olympics. I'm not interested.

No, I am actually usually doing what you're talking about, so I can attempt to make an intelligent comment. I mean, audience, we know all this stuff. All right, so why memorize? You have a phone with Google on it.

You can get a dictionary. You can get an encyclopedia. What's the point? And I think the big point is that we're maybe misunderstanding what memory actually is.

I can bet that when you look things up, you forget them pretty quickly afterwards. You maybe looked up something on Google six times because you just forget it afterwards. Our brain isn't like a file cabinet, right? You can't look up something and just slot it in and have it there forever.

Our brain is more like a web. The more things you know, the more you can know, right? So when I learn a new piece of information, say, a definition. And I already am familiar with maybe the Greek roots of that definition.

Well, that's one connection in my brain. And then I can think, oh, I know that I know this word shows up on this product. Well, that's another connection in my brain. Or I am now going to write this on my arm.

Well, even that visual look at the word on my arm is another connection in my brain. And the more connections you have build, like physical connections in your brain, you build to this piece of information, the easier it is to access, right? There are more avenues that you can take memory-wise to find that little piece of information. Yeah, I've heard people talk about it by saying like, you build up structures of understanding.

You don't need to, or systems of the way to understand things. Like if you can build up these mental models in your brain that they can do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of like just knowing stuff. Like you need to build up. I'm trying to think of it like scaffolding basically.

Yeah, the more things you memorize and have in your brain, the easier it is to access new information and memorize new things. That's why learning the Greek roots is important. Partially to decipher new words and also just to have that connection, right? And I think we are all three men who lament our poverty of Latin and Greek.

At least I know I am. I wish that I had those languages down and I don't. And it's hard. It hurts when our students hate on it.

So literally they're like, Latin is dead. And I'm like, yeah, but I really wish I knew it. Like the more I interact with the classical world, the more I wish that I had that language. But they always get my incarnation joke.

That incarnated, yeah, that it is being in meat. And kids are like, oh, it makes sense. Yeah. All right, so our brain is like a web.

The more you know, the more you can know. So memorizing makes it easier for us to access new information. And it's really impressive if you can remember quotes. And if you're a Christian, then it's an easy way to memorize scripture and have that scripture never leave.

Yeah, because I was gonna say 60,000 digits of pie is not like useful. It's not a party make. Right. But this, yeah, but I mean, I can't dispute that memorizing things is important.

But is this better than, is this work more than just wrote memory of random strings of data? Like, does it work on memorizing? Like for example, when we read Brave New World, they have this thing where they do hypnopedia, which is like sleep memorizing, where you play things in your brain, and then while they're asleep, and you don't really like, you memorize it, but you don't understand what it is. Is this like, this is help with understanding?

Or is this only useful for, I can know, a thousand digits in 30 minutes. So what do you mean? I'm John. Brave New World isn't that they can only teach by hypnopedia, moral truths, and they only teach moral truths.

They can't teach factual things. Yeah. So you're asking like, so can memory help us? And use a memory palace?

Yeah, does memory palace help you only help you with just like memory and facts? Or does it help with comprehension? Is it just memory or does it help with comprehension? It can be a little bit both.

So in my review, yeah, it makes memorizing random facts a lot easier. But one of the things you can memorize is matter. So say you go through a class and you want to memorize everything you learn in that class. Well, you can do it in a notebook, and I know that you guys may have kept your college notebooks.

Did you? Yeah, I did. Oh, this is a heartbreaking story. So all of my college notebooks, including all of my undergraduate philosophy textbooks.

So we had to buy the complete works of Aristotle. We had to buy all of this medieval poetry, all this medieval philosophy, all the way up to modern philosophy. I have books and books and books of it. And it is presumably still sitting in a box in the basement of my old rental house in Toronto.

I forgot when we got married and moved and came down to Texas. I forgot it. And it just breaks my heart knowing it's probably like four or five boxes of just academic books. Have you ever tried just calling them or sent a letter?

No, I haven't. I should. But the thing is like that basement was so leaky and wet, they're probably just like big pack of socks. Yeah, so you can memorize matter and concepts, right?

If I want to memorize an entire class worth of information, I haven't described the method yet, but I can use an entire city and place that information all over the city and then never forget it, never have to leave, never have to accidentally forget my notebooks in my basement. I can just walk through my memory palace and remember these things. That won't necessarily work with comprehension, like learning new stuff, but having all that matter in your mind can help make new connections when you are introducing new information. Cool.

All right, so how you do it? All right, so a quick address of, is it more effective than other mnemonic devices? I mean, really that's what this is, just a method of memory. Well, if you've read Moon Walking with Einstein, which is the book that has recently again popularized this method of memory, he talks about some experiments they did on the effectiveness of different mnemonic devices.

And the experiment is not my favorite because you have to memorize a series of like random digits and then repeat them after they ask about them randomly. Like it's not conducive to the memory palace, but what they found is that wrote, like wrote memory performed best, half an hour after memorization, right? Really fast. And then memory palace was just behind it in performance.

And I still think that was because of the way they set up the experiment. And then peg words, which is another method of memorization, which is like, one is blue, two is a shoe, three is a B, four is a door. You remember it kind of like with an associating word. That performed far worse.

And then a couple hours later, wrote had deteriorated below memory palace. And then the next day it was far below, a week later it was gone, right? The wrote memory had disappeared and memory palace had degraded only slightly. So yeah, it's really effective.

And the reason it's effective, this is actually a great segue into like talking about it is because the human visual spatial memory is far superior to any other kind of memory, right? As you sit listening to this, you know if there are dishes in your sink, are there? No, I clean them last night. How about you, Graham?

Yes, because I made something for the Olympic opening ceremony that involved dishes I didn't clean up. Can you picture it? Yeah, I can tell you exactly what they are right now. Did you have to memorize that information?

No. No, do you know if there's laundry in your hamper? I do not know that. Oh, no, I do know that.

Yes, there is. See, no. Can you tell me what's on the back of your toilet? No, sitting on the back of your toilet.

Oh, calendar. Okay, calendar, well, you didn't have to memorize that. You just know it. Can you tell me where in my house the bathrooms are?

Yeah. So you humans readily access this type of information. A lot of scientists will blame this on our evolution, right? We needed to know where food was, we needed to know where animals were, we needed to know where the best hunting grounds were and how to get back home afterwards.

So human beings just really easily understand visual spatial stuff. And you've experienced the same thing in your own life. You ever seen a face that you're like, I know the face, but I can't give the context. Well, that's visual memory, right?

And they've done experiments on this where they show somebody 20,000 images over the course of say 20 minutes. So it's so fast they can't, there's no way they can memorize it. And then later they will show them two images side by side. That's one face they've seen and one face they haven't.

And they can identify the right face, the one they've seen before with like an 80% success rate. So humans are just really, really good at this. It's one thing that we naturally gravitate to. So the trick is trying to figure out how to take the thing you want to memorize and put it into this kind of framework.

Make it visual, make it spatial. So working with the grain of our nature. Yeah, working with the grain of your nature, exactly. So depends on what you're trying to memorize.

But here's the basic method. You take your thing, you turn it into an image and then you put that in a location with which you're familiar. So we in my class memorize the friends room and countryman speech from six years of Julius Caesar. And we actually do it.

We're sitting in the room right now where we do that speech. And I help them create a memory palace through the entire room. And so we talk about each image as we walk through. So I'm gonna walk you guys through a couple of my images so you can kind of see what I mean.

Now there's Cicero talks about two different kinds of things to memorize. One is matter and one is words. We would say one is content or ideas and the other is phrasing or that sort of thing. If you want to memorize specific words.

So this is one for specific verbiage. And memorizing matter is easier. And he said that, yeah, it's a lot easier. You can get away with just memorizing matter.

But if you do the more difficult thing, memorizing specific series of words, then memorizing matter will become easier because you're just used to doing the memory palace thing. The easier thing, it's even easier. You can do it more quickly. And difficult things memorizing words.

Well, you get good at that too. I guess I only have it for the memorizing words, not for the memorizing content. But the concept is the same. Yeah, if I wanted to memorize like the plot line of say the Odyssey, I could spend time putting images of what happened in the Odyssey.

And I would actually probably know the book far better than I even know it now after several readings, right? So the way you do words is you actually have to supplement it with the natural way we do words, which is you just have to go over the phrasing again and again and again. And just like you do a song, right? You hear the song 12 times, and then you know the verses as long as you get that first word, right?

Well, memory palace is to kind of give you that first word. So the first set of lines is friends, romance, countrymen lend me your ears, right? So you'd have to spend some time. Friends, romance, countrymen, let me your ears.

Friends, romance, country, let me your ears. And then you have to make an image out of it. So what I've done is on my door, it's big and green, and Graham and B's are staring at it right now. So looking at it from the outside, what you see is an earlender.

And the trick is the longer you spend with an image, the more vivid it becomes and the easier it becomes to recall. So you wanna make the images as vivid as possible. And you also wanna make them something that we naturally remember. So disgusting, amazing, funny, colorful, right?

We don't remember pedestrian things. You're not gonna remember a loaf of bread, but you will remember a loaf of bread that talks and wants to kill you, right? That's wielding knives and gets really stabby all the time. That's something you'll remember.

All right, so you are looking at an earlender. He is large, he is hairy, and he's wearing a wife beater. And strung below the window of the door is chunks of human ears. And so he is yelling out to the people that pass.

Friends, romance, countrymen lend me your ears, right? What's the interest rate on an earlender? Yeah, well, I'm sure I can work that out for you. Oh, it's just a hair.

Oh! Gotcha. All right, so friends, romance, countrymen lend me your ears. That's the first image.

And then the next one is I come to Berry Caesar, not to praise him. So you have to spend some time with the wording. I come to Berry Caesar, not to praise him. I come to Berry Caesar, not to praise him.

So what, if you had to make an image out of that, what would you pick out to make an image out of? I come to Berry Caesar, not to praise him. Like a grave. Like a big dead body, and then the shovel there.

And there may be people standing there who are saying praises about the body, and someone's hitting them with a shovel. You actually almost built the exact amount. So I have connected to my fire extinguisher just inside the door. There is a grave digger, and he's tied to the fire extinguisher, and he has a shovel, and he's furiously trying to beat the brains out of a bunch of people that are praising on the grounds of the praise songs.

So he comes to Berry Caesar, not to praise him, and he's really grumpy that people are praising. So first image, remember what it was? Oh, your lender. Your lender, friends, romance, countrymen lend me your ears.

And the next one. I come to Berry Caesar, not to praise him. Right, so there you go. And the cool thing about memory palace is that once you have it and you have it in order, you can do it backwards.

Hey, Jay, why do you have it in your classroom? Why not just have it in like a, why not just have these images in some ambiguous black space? Like, why not just have like these images side by side each other on like a blackened stage? Why have them in your room?

That's a great question. And then this actually goes back to Cicero as well. He says you can make up palaces. I don't like to think that's true.

And when you're entering the memory Olympics, if you're going to be a pro at this, one of the first things they do before you even practice is you just go and walk public spaces. You go to museums, you go to parks, you go to playgrounds, you think about all the homes you've ever lived in and revisit them. You want to establish as many physical places in your mind as you can. Because we memorize those really easily, right?

You'll get those in half a second. And then we want to use those rather than a black space for a few reasons. Number one, because those things have, I call them like little memory jogs, right? Little things that will kind of jump out at you.

And as you pass the fire extinguisher in your mind, you can say, oh, there was something connected to the fire extinguisher, what was it? And for me, it's a guy that's tied to it, right? If you put four images in a hallway, there's nothing to make you stop and say, there's an image here, right? And inevitably, one of them will disappear.

Cicero says, and I guess they had lots of arches back then, he's like, you can use archways, don't use, say, the front of a coliseum where it's like 12 archways in a row, because they'll blend together, they all look the same, something is gonna disappear. And I found that to be true. Whenever I use a hallway and try to put three in there, one goes away, right? I miss one, just because I'm walking down a hallway and there's nothing to sort of jog my memory.

Gotcha. Can you use the same space for one of the ones? That's what I was gonna ask. So that, that's interesting, yes and no.

So if you visit memory palace repeatedly, it's gonna be really hard to get rid of those images. And that's why this is so effective, because it's staying power. The more colorful you make the images, the more you visit them, the harder it's gonna be to forget. In fact, I was teaching this method to some eighth graders once using our memory verse, and I still can't forget it.

But this I called to mind, and therefore I have hope, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, has never come to an end. They're new every morning, great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him, limitations three, twenty, twenty four, right? And I can't forget it, I have tried.

But the images are so good that I just, they stick in my brain. One of them is my boss with muffins growing out his armpit and a guy puking on a desk and there's lambs getting plastered, drinking alcohol. Like that's, it's really hard to forget once you have them. And that's an example of the more vivid and ridiculous and grotesque and hilarious, the easier it is to keep in your mind.

Whereas if you just had lambs like chomping on grass in a field, you wouldn't be able to memorize as well. No, they're getting ripped on vodka and watching the TV show 24. And that's to give me lamentations, three lambs, 21. One of them just turned 21.

So they're drinking through 24. The other one's watching 24. There you go. So I even have the reference.

Lamentations. Whenever you walk in the room, like, so you teach in this room every day or most days. Dude, does that come to the speech on the mind when you walk in here? Yeah, I can never forget it.

It's that speech is tied to this room and I can never reuse the room. I've tried in those images, just disappear. The guys who do the memory Olympics, what they recommend is either just don't visit, leave it alone. After they kind of give their thing, there's no reason for them to revisit the images, so they often just go away.

And some of their images get reused. And or you mentally go in and clean the images out of the place, kick out the earlender, shut up the door, clean it, paint it, get rid of the ears in your mind. But I actually find that that doesn't help much. I spend even more time with the image and so it doesn't disappear.

All right, let's give on. So we'll give us the next line. All right, so friends from this country, lend me your ears. I come to Barry Caesar not to praise him.

This is the next one and it's kind of tough. The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones, so let it be with Caesar. So the evil that men do lives after them. How would you guys kind of connect this?

I would have, I think like a shadow, like like the evil version of somebody, so like with a goatee. What? And but living after them, like death has killed one of them. So you have death in the big old scythe and black robe.

And and the evil one, the evil version of you like is hiding in a bush here. He gets away. All right, so that's kind of close to what I did. So over here under my antlers, that's what my next image is.

And there's a guy standing there that looks very innocent and a demon rips out of his chest sort of wearing my antlers. That's how I can connect it to the object. So the evil that men do lives after them. And he clearly dies because the demon just blew out of his chest.

The good is oft interred with their bones. So that demon grabs an angel by the shoulders. And the angel is wearing a bunch of jangly jewelry on his dress and it's all little bones. So the good, the angel, is oft interred or buried with their bones, so he shoves that angel underground.

So let it be with Caesar. So I have Caesar jump in that hole after the angel. So it's kind of a complicated image. And that's why doing it for individual wording is so much more difficult.

It's difficult to tackle than trying to remember specific words. And when you're using words. Because you remember bones. And you remember Caesar.

And good. And there's a bunch there. And that's one image for a lot of words. Whereas if you're just trying to memorize the concept, you wouldn't need the angel wearing the bones.

If you're just trying to remember the concept of, people remember the bad things and not the good things, which is the concept. You would do something a lot more. It'd be a lot simpler. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. I find that when I'm trying to take these abstract concepts, what I do is it's hard to take things like justice and make them into something concrete that you can make into an image. So this is an instance of where the more you know to make images.

And this is especially true of classical art and classical representations of things. Because justice has been represented visually already. What is justice? Have you seen the picture?

Well, the more modern one is a lady with a blindfold holding a scales. Okay. So anytime you see blindfold, a lady holding a scales, you think justice. Somebody that hasn't been seeing images or isn't educated in like classical representations wouldn't necessarily know that.

Yeah. I think all the seven liberal arts have a visual sort of thing associated with it. Not just a person, but the things they're holding and often like where they are with the background is. Exactly.

Or like wisdom, you could have Athena doing something. Or if you're going to talk medicine, it can be a rod with a snake on it. So there are representations of these complex ideas. And so knowing art history because they are representing these complex ideas manifest is a really good way to sort of get yourself started here.

But if you don't, you can use like rhymes with or sounds like that image. But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. It's really hard image to work with. So what I did for that one is I had a guy with a phone on his head that was ringing so loud because it was calling his mind.

This I call to mind. Therefore I have hope. So he just barfs really loudly and it sounds like hope all over the desk. So this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.

He does that all over the desk. So it's just a sounds like, right? It makes it audible rather than trying to make hope some sort of concrete thing. Now does this unfortunately begin to like color your understanding of the verse?

Because if you hear this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. And you think of a guy just chundering all over the place. Like if you're sitting in church and chundering. Chundering?

Yeah. Google that my friend. It's another Canadianism. No.

Maybe I don't know. From the name of a cartoon character? No, no. That's just a urban dictionary.

It originates from old seafaring days when sailors would get seasick and stick their head out of the poor hole. You're not chunder. Okay. So if you're sitting in church and this is the passage that they preach on, how are you going to be able to focus on the truth and goodness of the Bible verse and not just keep thinking about the hilarious images that you've associated with this?

It's going to be hard, if I'm honest. But the idea is that at least you can remember the verse, right? If you're in church and you're hearing about the verse then the memory isn't so much important. Those images will come up sure.

But the idea is that when I need it, when I need some encouragement, I can think I have a verse for that. I can go through my images and then leave them by the wayside and think. Yeah, the steadfast love the Lord never ceases. That's why I have hope it's new every morning.

It actually has come to mind a couple of times for me. So like your friends, Romans, countryman passage, you've been doing that for a long time. Like do you still need the memory palace for that or do you just have that memorized? I still use the memory palace because I've done it with my students and it lets me start anywhere.

So if they're memorizing it and they're in class trying to figure it out and I can start anywhere in this. And that's one of the other bonuses of this is that once you have the memory palace, and I forgot to say, after you placing your images and connecting them to objects, you want to do this on a route. Like already have a route planned through your palace that you walk. And that way at least you'll have the images in order.

And Cicero has some other recommendations. He says they shouldn't be too dark. I'm scaring the image. And that's dark in content or dark in lighting.

Dark in lighting. Yeah, right. So they shouldn't be too dark. Otherwise you can't see it.

It shouldn't be too light making it glitter. And they shouldn't be anything more than 30 feet apart or else you can't see the next one. I'm serious. And so some of these are really good recommendations.

Some of them are just funny. But hey, he's been doing this a lot more than I have. I don't want to argue with the guy. But what I find to be practical is just make it concrete, attach it to an object on your route.

And as you pass that object, the image will come to mind. But there are some interesting things he does say. So if you're doing a ton of these, say you're trying to memorize an entire book of scripture. And you're doing it by chapter, right?

Every room in say a building is a chapter of your scripture. And you want to be able to go to a reference? Well, you can do it like one image perverse. And then every fifth chapter you have some sort of symbol that tells you.

And like on the door. And so he says, so maybe every fifth you put in a golden hand. Or every tenth, I think he said, you put in your buddy Decimus. Deci for 10, right?

Or we could have some sort of version of something that has to do with 10. What would pop up for you guys to put on the door? Like a golden hand for five, what would be 10? Like someone giving you a dozen cookies, but his mouth is full.

That's a really complex thing. For me, maybe it would just be like a person diving in somebody holding up a 10 card. So an easy thing for 10. And then so that's how you think.

And someone says, hey, what's a chapter five verse six? When you go to the fifth door, the one with the golden hand, you walk into your sixth image. And there you have it. Chapter five verse six.

And even just doing it this way allows you to jump in anywhere. I can start in anywhere in this speech because all I do is walk past the first six images and start with the seven. And continue from there. What's the seventh image?

Seventh image. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. He had brought many captives home to Rome whose ransoms did the general copper's fill. Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

When did the poor have cried? So the path wept. Ambition should be made of stern or stuff yet. Brutus says he was ambitious.

Brutus is not a little man. Brutus. Yeah. And you can do it backwards just by walking backwards through the image.

Well, long time listeners of the podcast have heard Hanenburg do all the prepositions. Yes. And they are memory palace, right? They are memory palace.

They're in my childhood home. Wow. So I have that one and then I have friends from his countrymen in here. The memory verse that I memorized was done in the old office that actually doesn't exist anymore.

But I was familiar enough with the office that it did not exist in your mind. Yeah, exactly. What other locations have you used? Those are the three primary ones that I've done.

I haven't had to memorize anything super huge. I've been wanting to memorize a couple of other quotes from Julius Caesar. But those are my major ones. I walk my students through those palaces.

And this is only I just wish I had in college. Like think about how much easier tests were there. If you know the place where you're going to be taking that test, it doesn't have to be that. But if you're going to take the test and the speaker means this and the whiteboard means this.

I think it'll be really helpful. For like a final exam or whatever. Yeah. So my students have found a couple of things.

Their main complaints about this system is one that takes longer. It's not as quick. And that is honestly the honest truth. Especially if you're trying to memorize specific wording.

Like it does take longer. But the effort is one of the things that helps you to memorize. And once they have it, it'll never go away. Justine Alente, right?

Make case slowly. Exactly. The best way to do it is the right way. And so I can ask the kids who use memory palettes for some of their recitations.

And they have it. And the kids who didn't will skip whole chunks of it. The kids who did memory palettes won't miss those chunks because they're walking past an image that reminds them. They'll know that there's a big gap there.

And they'll take enough time to figure it out. Whereas some kids will just skip it because their rote memory doesn't trigger a couple of lines. And they lose 15%. The other criticism I find is like, I'm not creative enough.

I can't come up with images. And that just sounds like laziness to me. But maybe it's trouble making things concrete. Or they want to be able to just do the images and not spend time with the wording to get the wording down correctly.

It's probably what's going on. But then that's just another time concerned, isn't it? Yeah. Just another time concerned.

But what was it? Mr. Troy did this recently. He memorized an entire description of who a fairy pal is.

I don't remember what he used for his memory palettes, though. But it was memory palettes. And he memorized an hour? Yes.

I've been working on it for quite a bit longer than that. He got it in one hour. But he's gotten all geeked up about it. He read the book.

And Troy's really... I don't know. That's just raises another question. Other people for whom this is just an easier method.

What do you mean? Some people better than repellis. Yeah. I mean, I'm just thinking, what are the skills that predispose you to having this be an easier time?

For example, coming up with images. Practice is part of it, I think. And being willing to make things weird, instead of just having a baker have a guy for bread that's going to stab you. Yeah.

We're a guy beating it up into death with a loaf of bread. Even just a pedestrian image you can make ridiculous. And some people are afraid to go there or don't spend enough time with it. Yeah.

I don't know. So it's usually a specific part of memory. So someone who has a less capacity for it since memory would do less well at this. And then you gave a talk quite a while ago on metaphors.

And so I'm sure someone who has better read and has access to more metaphors would be better at this than someone who doesn't. Yeah. I think if you have a bigger reservoir of imagery just in anything, that's helpful. Yeah, exactly.

So a few recommendations as you do this as you jump into the memory palace if you want to memorize things. And I mean, at least do some quotes. Things you want to remember that you can pull out of nowhere. That's always handy.

Or if you need to memorize a menu for your job, that's one one thing you can do. But never memorize like a guy holding a sign with text on it. That's good. Honest, honest to goodness.

You will remember the guy. You'll remember the sign. But text does not stick in our brain because we see it so often. So unless the text is doing something amazing, like every one letter is eating all the other ones, you just won't remember it.

You remember everything else about it. So never use text in an image. It's just bad. Just like when you have a study guide and you can remember where something was written, but not what was written there.

That's why we don't use text. So don't use text. Make it violent, ridiculous, hilarious, colorful, disgusting. Those things will stick with you more than something boring will.

Always attach it to an object because that object will help to jog your memory and follow a root. And follow a root every time. Those are the big recommendations I have for this. And this is what we do.

We teach this to our seniors when they do their 20 minute memorized thesis. And we tell them to either think about their childhood home and place the different sections of their thesis in that home or paragraphs of that thesis in their home. Or we also have them try to do it on the stage they're going to be standing on. One thing that we just sort of learned the past couple of years of doing thesis is that the students who memorize pacing or if the students are wandering around campus and they're memorizing to themselves, they won't be able to deliver it on stage without wandering, without moving.

So not just the physical space in your minds, but also about the way that you memorize and how you're holding and carrying your body that affects the memory as well, right? And for our seniors when they're memorizing this huge 12 page monster, they're not going to be able to do everywhere. The words are already familiar because they wrote them, which makes it easier. But what we recommend is that they memorize maybe the beginning of the first sentence of every big paragraph and that can get them started and get them going.

And then memorize difficult statistics or difficult wording and concepts. The next thing I'm talking about is this and it starts with this sentence. And then they can usually run from there. Cool.

My best evidence for this is a week or two ago I was on the sophomore college trip. I was driving one of the buses. So I had to group a sophomore so they had AJ's class last year. And so because I'm hilarious, I made a joke about friends, romance, country men to start off my talk.

And so I stood up and friends, romance, country men. And then the entire bus recited the entire poem to me or the entire section that AJ was going through. So even a year later, this wasn't something they just did for a grade that has actually stuck with them. And that was because I walked them through an entire memory palace leading out onto the deck and then down the deck.

And I've even memorized a little extra down into the teacher lounge. I think there were 14 people in my bus. It was amazing. Good job, us.

Yeah. So if you're in college. But there are sophomores now to their minds. Yeah.

It's actually pretty simple. If you're looking to memorize digits, there's a trick for that. The way that the guys do it, they do the same thing for cards. They have every, they usually break it up into double digit sets.

So zero, zero, you have a person doing an action with an object. So it could be God creating the world, right, for zero, zero. And then zero, one, because it comes right after, who's number one? Tiger Woods.

It's Tiger Woods. Not anymore. Driving. Yeah.

Wayne Gretzky. Okay. I don't know. I don't know.