Have We Been Wrong About Posture? & How Memory Champions Think

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Have We Been Wrong About Posture? & How Memory Champions Think

Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers | July 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of "Something You Should Know" dives into two seemingly unrelated but fascinating topics: the cultural and scientific truths (and myths) about posture, and the techniques elite memory champions use to seemingly remember everything. Host Mike Carruthers interviews Beth Linker, a historian specializing in health and the author of "Posture Panic in Modern America," as well as Nelson Dellis, six-time USA Memory Champion, to unpack what science actually says about posture and the actionable steps anyone can take to boost their memory.

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Segment 1: The Truth (and Myth) About Posture

Guest: Beth Linker, Professor, University of Pennsylvania; Author of "Posture Panic in Modern America"

Key Discussion Points

• The Origins of Posture Obsession

  • The notion that “good posture” is essential for health isn’t anchored in solid science, but rather, cultural attitudes and historical ideas—particularly those emerging from early 20th-century eugenics.
    [05:47 | Beth Linker]: “Our belief in the benefits of good posture are not scientifically grounded. They're instead grounded in our cultural attitudes and historical artifacts. It actually comes out of the eugenic era and belief in eugenics.”

• What is Eugenics?

  • Eugenics promoted human perfectibility through both breeding and behaviors, including how one holds their body. [06:15 | Beth Linker]: “Eugenics is the belief in human perfectibility... through correct reproduction, but also through engaging in... the best possible lifestyle.”

• Is Good Posture Scientifically Valid?

  • Despite widespread claims, “good posture” as prevention for back pain or other health woes is unproven. [08:15 | Beth Linker]: “We have no good science telling us that good posture will prevent back pain… Even current studies… have shown in recent years that teenagers looking at their phones with a slight slump… there's no evidence that one group has a higher chance of back pain than the other.”

• Defining Good and Bad Posture

  • The concepts of “good” and “bad” posture are culturally constructed and lack precise definitions. [10:24 | Beth Linker]: “How do we define good and bad posture? … There's a lot of diversity. The spine is very pliable. But yet we walk around with these words good and bad.”

• Historical Drivers: American Posture League & Darwin

  • The American Posture League (founded 1914) and Darwin’s theory of evolution fueled anxiety about upright posture as a marker of evolutionary fitness—and national health. [16:41 | Beth Linker]: “After Darwin, everybody gets very concerned about upright posture… researchers, physicians and anthropologists went around the world looking for fossils to prove Darwin right.”

• No Science Behind Posture Standards

  • Early studies declared 80% of the public had “poor” posture, but follow-up studies on outcomes were never done. [20:05 | Beth Linker]: “They found that 80% of the population slumped or slouched. They never did any follow up studies… It was just simply 80%… has poor posture. Therefore we need to be on guard against it.”

• Why “Good Posture” Persists

  • Academic and medical institutions still tout the benefits, mostly echoing each other without recent evidence. [23:27 | Beth Linker]: “They just all repeat—it's an echo chamber because no one has bothered to look into it… It's such a truism that no one questions it.”

• Can Pursuing Good Posture Be Harmful?

  • For most, striving for good posture is benign—but it can cross into harmful territory, especially if it fuels bias or physical overcorrection (e.g., injuries from extreme Pilates or yoga): [24:21 | Beth Linker]: “It's benign until it's not benign… It can create problems… it leads to this irrational bias against people who don't have perfect posture.”

• What Actually Matters

  • It’s not about holding one “correct” position, but about frequent movement and listening to the body. [26:14 | Beth Linker]: “That's your body's way of telling you… change your position. But I bet if you sat straight up… for a very long time, you would also start to feel pain… It's about frequent movements and frequent change of movement rather than this ideal of ramrod, perfect straight spine.”

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the moral and social loadedness of posture:
  [06:55 | Beth Linker]: “Upright posture is actually very morally loaded… straightness became synonymous with heterosexuality, became synonymous with honesty.”
• On posture in etiquette vs. health:
  [13:17 | Beth Linker]: “It is in large part a learned thing… It was more of a marker of status than anything particularly health related.”

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Segment 2: How Memory Champions Think

Guest: Nelson Dellis, Six-Time USA Memory Champion, World Record Holder, Author of "Everyday Genius"

Key Discussion Points

• Memory is Trainable

  • Superior memory is not an innate gift but a skill developed through practice and techniques. [30:06 | Nelson Dellis]: “I had an average memory… and I discovered memory techniques and I discovered memory competitions… I was able to do some pretty incredible things with my own mind that I never thought were possible.”

• Why We Used to Remember (e.g., phone numbers)

  • We remembered more before technology because we had to, and because engaging with the information physically and repeatedly made it stick. [31:37 | Nelson Dellis]: “There was a lot at play there… we're more intentful about the process… doing it over and over again lended itself to, to being burrowed in our, Our, our memories.”

• “The Big Three” Steps to Remember Anything [32:55–36:38]

  1. Visualization
     Encode information by turning it into memorable, personal images—even for abstract data.
     [34:00 | Nelson Dellis]: “Our brain… is really just designed for pictures and responding to emotional triggers… So what I'm trying to get to is we need to trick our brains…”
  2. Storage
     Organize these images, often in a sequence, so you can retrieve them later; techniques like the “memory palace” are key. [35:37 | Nelson Dellis]: “It's not that they're forgetful. It's just that they never put the information in their mind in a clear, organized way, and they're having trouble finding it.”
  3. Review
     Reinforce long-term memory by revisiting and using the information. [35:58 | Nelson Dellis]: “We remember things for the long term… by… revisit[ing] it a lot…”

• Examples:

  • Turning Words and Numbers into Images

    • Simple noun: Make it vivid and multi-sensory.
    • Abstract words: Associate with a strong image, e.g., “extraordinary” becomes a person or moment you personally find extraordinary.
    • Numbers: Many memory athletes use a pre-learned system associating three-digit numbers with people or concepts. [40:05 | Nelson Dellis]: “For me… 472… is John Kerry… instead of seeing 472, I see John Kerry… and everything that comes with it.”

  • Memory Palace Technique [42:11–44:27]

    • Imagine a familiar route (like walking through your house); “place” each item you need to recall along the way as a unique and vivid image.
    • This aids in preserving sequence and detail, and can be reused or replaced for different tasks with practice. [43:15 | Nelson Dellis]: “When you want to go and retrieve the information, you just mentally navigate back through that same exact route. And the images… will be there.”

• Everyday Applications

  • The more you use these memory techniques, the stronger and more “intentional” your memory becomes for all kinds of information. [45:52 | Nelson Dellis]: “I'm always thinking about remembering… from years of training my mind and applying memory techniques and giving memory such an importance in my life…”

  • On reconstructing the past:
    [46:52 | Nelson Dellis]: “My memory isn’t perfect… you can start to piece things together by context clues… it just takes a matter of… finding the right cues… to connect you back.”

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the capacity of ordinary people:
  [30:06 | Nelson Dellis]: “That's kind of the genesis of my whole journey… I thought I had an average memory… and it just opened the door for [impossible things].”

• On how to encode things:
  [34:15 | Nelson Dellis]: “We need to encode the information in the form that it likes… a memorable picture that has meaning to you.”

• On the “echo chamber” of posture advice:
  [23:27 | Beth Linker]: “No one has bothered to look into it. No one questions it. It is such a truism that no one questions it.”

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Memorable Moments

• The Real Reason Tennis Balls Are Yellow
  [49:18 | Mike Carruthers]: The switch to yellow tennis balls in the 1970s was for TV audiences, not for players—another example of how what we “know” often comes from unexpected sources or needs.

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Topic | |--------------|--------------------------------------------| | 05:28–14:04 | Beth Linker: Cultural and historic roots of posture standards, the rise of “posture panic”| | 16:16–21:26 | Pre-20th-century views, Darwin’s influence on posture obsession | | 21:26–26:59 | Harvard/Cleveland Clinic consensus vs. science; when posture pursuit turns harmful | | 28:37–36:38 | Nelson Dellis: Memory is a skill; fundamentals of memory techniques | | 36:38–44:27 | How to create memory images, use memory palaces for information | | 44:27–48:43 | The lived-experience of memory champions, applications for everyday life| | 49:18 | Trivia: Why tennis balls are yellow |

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Tone & Speaker Style

• Mike Carruthers keeps things friendly, direct, and curious, always grounding discussions with personal anecdotes and practical questions.
• Beth Linker is informative, nuanced, and careful, making even complex cultural history accessible and relatable.
• Nelson Dellis is enthusiastic, engaging, and inspiring—he breaks down mental feats into steps anyone can try, consistently emphasizing that memory is a trainable skill.

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Takeaway Advice

• Good posture may make you look confident, but its supposed health benefits are historically and culturally determined, not grounded in science.
• Don’t obsess over holding one ‘correct’ position—move often and don’t be afraid to slouch, as long as your body feels fine.
• Memory can be vastly improved with basic visualization, organization, and review techniques. Anyone can learn to remember more—intentionally.
• Cultural knowledge—whether about posture or tennis balls—often comes from unexpected origins, so always look a little deeper.

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For further reading, see Beth Linker's "Posture Panic in America" and Nelson Dellis's "Everyday Genius."

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Mike Carruthers]

Today on something you should know. Your car's speedometer is probably not accurate and there's a good reason for that. Then we've all been told to sit up straight and have good posture. But why? The promise is a little fuzzy if

[Beth Linker]

you can somehow maintain upright posture. And they never tell you for how long, right? Like no one ever says stand up straight for the rest of the day for an hour. How long do you want me to stand up straigh.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also, most tennis balls are green but they didn't used to be. So what changed? And memory. You probably wish you could remember things better. Well a six time memory champion tells

[Nelson Dellis]

you how a large part of the problem for people is it's not that they're forgetful, it's just that they never put the information in their mind in a clear, organized way and they're having trouble finding it. And there's techniques to do that, different strategies.

[Mike Carruthers]

All this today on something you should

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[Nelson Dellis]

Fascinating intel the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today.

[Mike Carruthers]

Something you should know with Mike Carruthers. Even though I don't know what kind of car you drive, I can pretty much assure you that the speedometer in your car is not accurate. And there's a really interesting reason why. That's why we're starting with this today on this episode of SOMETHING YOU should know. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers, and I'm glad you're here. So if you've ever compared your car speedometer to a GPS app, you will likely notice that your speedometer on your dashboard says you're going a little faster than than the GPS app says. That's not a defect. It's intentional. Automakers purposely calibrate most speedometers to read slightly higher than your actual speed. Why? Because manufacturers never want a speedometer to tell you you're driving slower than you really are. Differences in tire wear, tire pressure, temperature, and manufacturing tolerances can all affect the true speed of a vehicle. By building in a small cushion, they reduce the chance that drivers accidentally exceed the speed limit because of instrument error. So if your speedometer says 70, your actual speed may be 67 or 68. It's one of those rare situations where engineers intentionally make an instrument a little inaccurate in order to make driving more accurate. And that is something you should know. How many times have you been told to sit up straight or stand up straight? Probably hundreds, maybe thousands. Most of us grew up believing that good posture is essential for good health and that slouching is bad. It's bad for your back, your neck, and maybe it's even bad for your character. But is it? Where did all these rules about posture come from? Is there really one correct way to sit or stand? Or have we been worrying about posture far more than we should? It turns out the history of posture is filled with surprising myths, changing science, and a lot of assumptions that don't hold up very well. Today, my guest has dug deep into where our obsession with posture came from and what the evidence actually says. Beth Linker is a professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book Posture Panic in Modern America. Hi, Beth. Welcome to something you should know.

[Beth Linker]

Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.

[Mike Carruthers]

So this is the first I've heard the phrase posture panic. I've never heard that before. And I've never thought of or heard that posture was, like, a controversial topic. So how is this a thing?

[Beth Linker]

Well, the takeaway point is that our belief in the benefits of good posture are not scientifically grounded. They're instead grounded in our cultural attitudes and historical artifacts. It actually comes out of the eugenic era and belief in eugenics.

[Mike Carruthers]

And so explain what eugenics are.

[Beth Linker]

Eugenics is a very complicated history, but eugenics is the belief in human perfectibility and doing so through correct breeding, so through correct reproduction, but also through engaging in breath, the best possible lifestyle. So it is a movement from the early 20th century that was about optimization of the human body.

[Mike Carruthers]

And is there anything wrong with what your mother told you to stand up straight, Sit up straight. Is there. I mean, is there anything wrong with it, or is it just being oversold?

[Beth Linker]

Yes, I would say it's being oversold. Is there anything wrong with it? I talk about how upright posture is actually very morally loaded. In the mid 20th century, straightness became meaning like word wise, and meaning wise became synonymous with heterosexuality, became synonymous with honesty. And then on top of that is this medical radicalized history of posture, of good posture being essential for your health. Good posture was talked about in terms of if you can have good posture now, you won't suffer lots of illnesses in the future, or you won't suffer back pain in the future. So I think, is it wrong? I don't know that it's wrong for someone to tell you to sit up straight. I just think it's really loaded. And I don't think it's as simple as people want to think it is.

[Mike Carruthers]

But those claims of you won't have back pain, the other health claims of good posture, are they untrue or again, just oversold?

[Beth Linker]

They're just not rooted in scientific data. We have no good science telling us that good posture will prevent back pain. And the problem with this is that this kind of health belief, this pervasive health belief that good posture will prevent back pain has been sold to us since the early 20th century through a bunch of stakeholders who benefit from this kind of health belief. Shoe manufacturers, chair manufacturers, a whole fitness industry. Oh, and corsets. I shouldn't forget to mention corsets and back braces. That their whole market exists on creating fear. And also a promise that if you can somehow maintain upright posture. And they never tell you for how long. Right. Like, no one ever says, stand up straight for the rest of the day, for an hour. How long do you want me to stand up straight? So they just kind of leave that out there as an unknown for how long you're supposed to be straight? I mean, I guess in the fantasy it's all day long. And that this in the end will translate into no back pain. But even current studies coming out of the US and Australia's have shown in recent years that teenagers looking at their phones with a slight slump, actually there's no difference between them and teenagers who aren't, who are standing up straight. There's no evidence that one group has a higher chance of back pain than the other.

[Mike Carruthers]

So you said there's no scientific evidence that that good posture, sitting up straight, standing up straight for however long is good for you. But is there any evidence that bad posture is bad for you?

[Beth Linker]

No. And then I guess the question I would have back at you from that question is how do we define it? How do we define good and bad posture? You know, if you think about the human body, there's a lot of variability in the human body, a lot of diversity. And then if you think of the spine, spine, it's the same thing. There's a lot of diversity. The spine is very pliable. But yet we walk around with these words good and bad. And it's probably been culturally taught to us what is good and bad. So good is upright, whatever that means or looks like, and bad is slumped over or curved to one side or the other. But that's pretty imprecise. So what does that even mean to say to do a study on bad posture? What would that look like? I don't even think we've agreed on a universal standard of what good and bad posture is. Now, in the past, there was this group called the American Posture League. They were founded in 1914. They grew out of this eugenics movement of a belief in body, bodily perfectibility. And they were also, I should add, they were anti surgery. So they wanted to develop posture standards, human posture standards, so that there could be fewer. At that time, back surgery was very new, so fewer back surgeries. But at the same time, they really targeted the whole general population in the US and they tried to develop these tools to determine how to grade posture, literally grading posture with an A, B, C or D. And they worked in universities and they worked in schools, and this was the start of the big research efforts into posture. But I think by today's standards, we would see their measurements of human posture as pretty simplistic.

[Mike Carruthers]

So let me ask you this, because you said this started in the early 20th century, but today I would imagine that if you took people and put them in a room and had other people look at them and some of them had really good posture and some of them did not, people would say that the good posture people are whatever they would say, look healthier, look more confident, look have a lot of characteristics and I don't know if that's human nature to notice that in people or is that a learned thing from this movement that you're talking about?

[Beth Linker]

I would say it is in large part a learned thing. I don't know that it's innate. You know, if you look at all of Western history, from Plato to Aristotle onward, philosophers since ancient history have been discussing or pointing out at least the uniqueness of the human body of upright posture. There would be maybe etiquette manuals. So how to conduct oneself, how to hold oneself would be found in etiquette manuals for polite society. It was more of a marker of status than anything particularly health related.

[Mike Carruthers]

You mentioned that this posture panic thing, this whole big deal about posture started in the early 20th century and I'm curious what people were thinking before that. Was this just a non topic or what? And I'll ask you about that in

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[Mike Carruthers]

we're talking about good posture and how important that is or isn't. My guest is Beth Linker, author of the book Slouch Posture, Panic in America. And so Beth, if all of this started in the early 20th century, then what was the whole attitude about posture before that, before this big furor about posture started, what were people saying and thinking?

[Beth Linker]

So as I indicated earlier, there were a lot of etiquette manuals. But interestingly, if you look at the etiquette manuals from even the early republic of this country of the United States, most etiquette manuals would advise well bred people to have a slight lean in their stance when they stood, when they sat. The only people according to certain etiquette manuals who sit bolt straight up were lower class. And as you can tell, like fashion and cultural ideas, I think we can all get a sense that those change over time. It wasn't until the late 19th, early 20th century and after Darwin's discovery and the scientific community's embrace of Darwin's theory that evolution happened not because the human brain developed first or that human speech developed first. Darwin actually posited that humans came about and were able to become more supreme beings because of upright posture. So their straight spine. So without a straight spine or upright posture, our human intellect and our speech would not have developed. So after Darwin, everybody gets very concerned about upright posture. And it is a real concern, as you said, especially in the United States. This is the, you know, we have the second great migration into the country. Suddenly the huddled masses, maybe they're going to bring disease and disability with them, all of these people who are hunched over. And Darwin believed that upright posture occurred first. So a lot of researchers, physicians and anthropologists went around the world looking for fossils to prove Darwin right. They proved him right. Then these same physicians started to apply this theory in their clinic, looking at patients who were slumped over. And these physicians feared that we were going into a decline, that the nation was going into decline, that there could be de evolution. So suddenly this link between poor posture and a de evolution or degrading of a civilization became very real and a fear. And so they began this preventative health program that resulted in widespread surveillance of human posture that included things like buying the right shoes, buying sitting in the right chair, wearing the right foundation garment the right undergarment.

[Mike Carruthers]

But you've said that there is no evidence in science that good posture is good because no one's looked or people have looked and, and found out that there's no evidence.

[Beth Linker]

I would say that the early 20th century posture scientists did look, did research this. They found that 80% of the population slumped or slouched. They never did any follow up studies, however, to see whether or not that actually mattered. It was just simply 80% of the population has poor posture. Therefore we need to be on guard against. In the early 20th century, they believed it was linked to respiratory diseases, they believed it was linked to tuberculosis. So they thought that if you had a slouched posture you would develop tuberculosis. Then later in the century it became more about back pain. But they never did any concrete studies at this time. We have to remember that just as I said, cultural norms change and fashion changes, the dictates and demands of science change. If you look at today's science and the standards of today's science, there is no evidence that poor posture is going to, that is, it's going to necessarily lead to back pain or that good posture is going to prevent back pain.

[Mike Carruthers]

But back pain aside, I mean, when you Google or ask AI about posture, you know, Harvard, Brown University, all these people come up and say, you know, it's all about body alignment, it's good for balancing your weight. Chronic slouching causes muscle fatigue. There seems to be a consensus among academia that good posture is good for you.

[Beth Linker]

If you do look at those websites, I mean, I wouldn't trust AI.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, I'm looking at the Harvard, Harvard website.

[Beth Linker]

Yes, yes, I know the Harvard and I've looked at that myself. I think, because I think that message is out there because we have to distinguish between preventative health care prevention and actually interventive or therapeutic health care. There isn't a lot of cutting edge science in preventative health care. I think this is just a safe message to send out there, yet also meaningless because no person maintains the same posture all day long. I have ergonomic chairs. I'm not like a denier, I'm not a posture denier. So I'm not denying that sometimes I feel better when I'm in my ergonomic chair. But I'm not sitting in my ergonomic chair so that I can hold an upright posture for three hours. Actually, I'm sitting in it and then I move places. You know, we all move. The spine is incredibly dynamic.

[Mike Carruthers]

For whatever reason, a lot of people are on the good posture bandwagon. Because it's not just Harvard. When I look online, I see the Cleveland Clinic, Brown University. A lot of places, reputable places, have articles that talk about the benefits of good posture.

[Beth Linker]

No, it's not just Harvard, but I think they just all repeat it's an echo chamber because no one has bothered to look into it. No one questions it. It is such a truism that no one questions it. Except for, I think if you asked any physical therapist trained in the last 20 years, they would tell you that this is not valid, that this is something that people want to believe in, but it has not been scientifically proven.

[Mike Carruthers]

But it seems to me that the pursuit of good posture is fairly benign. I mean, it's not going to do anybody any harm. And as we talked about, I think people perceive a person who stands up straight, who sits up straight. They perceive them in a positive way. They project confidence. In other words, there's no real harm in, in good posture.

[Beth Linker]

It's benign until it's not benign. It's benign until as people come into a clinic. I will, I'll never Forget in the 90s when I was in the clinic there, it was the first. I don't know, I don't know if it was the first, but a real resurgence in general population doing Pilates. Pilates came out of the same eugenics. Movement was primarily initially in the early 20th century and mid 20th century for dancers, people in prime physical shape. In the 90s it kind of came out along with Jane Fonda and her aerobics, you know, as, oh, this is a great new fitness thing for people to do. And as a physical therapist, I was seeing so many people with back pain. Similarly, yoga can cause people a lot of injuries and back pain. So it's not always benign if somebody takes it to a great extreme. You know, if somebody becomes really self obsessed about their posture and they don't understand their own body and body alignment, it can create problems. The other way that I do not think it's benign is I think going back to what you asked about in a lineup of people and you see people slouched over it leads to this irrational bias against people who don't have perfect posture.

[Mike Carruthers]

I guess what I meant by benign was like, so sometimes when I'm working and I may be a little hunched over and then my back will start to hurt and if I sit up, it goes away. And so it seems like that's a good thing.

[Beth Linker]

You changed your position.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, I sat up, I changed my posture, I wasn't slumped. Over. It's happened to me several times.

[Beth Linker]

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. I mean, I'm glad. And that's your body's way of telling you like, hey, change your position. Change your position. This position isn't good anymore. Change it. But I bet if you sat straight up like you did to correct it for a very long time, you would also start to feel pain. And so then slumping over would be like, okay, I got a little relief. So I think it can be the reverse. It's more about our bodies are flexible and 3D, and it's about frequent movements and frequent change of movement rather than this ideal of ramrod, perfect straight spine.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know, what you said, which I haven't really thought about this before, when you're told to sit up straight. So for how long is sitting up straight? For 30 seconds or even five minutes? I mean, what is that supposed to do? Nobody sits up straight all the time. And it certainly makes you wonder about just how important all this talk of good posture really is. I've been speaking with Beth Linker. She's author of the book Posture Panic in America, and there's a link to her book in the show notes. Hey, Beth, thank you for coming on and talking about this.

[Beth Linker]

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[Mike Carruthers]

Have you ever met someone who seems to remember everything? Names, faces, birthdays, conversations from years ago? They can pull it out of their head as if it's nothing. And meanwhile, the rest of us walk into A room and forget why we went in there. So are some people just born with an extraordinary memory or is memory actually a skill anyone can improve? My guest says that a great memory isn't a gift, it's a set of techniques that almost anyone can learn. Nelson Dellis is a six time USA memory champion, a two time Guinness World record holder, and one of only a handful of grandmasters of memory in the world. As a demonstration of what's possible, he recently memorized every time Taylor Swift song and can identify any one of them after hearing it for just a second. Even though he's not an especially big Taylor Swift fan, he's here to explain how memory really works and the surprisingly simple ways you can make yours much better. His book is Everyday genius hacks to boost your memory focus, problem solving and much more. Hey Nelson, welcome to something you should know.

[Nelson Dellis]

Hey, nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.

[Mike Carruthers]

Sure. After reading your list of accomplishments of all the memory related things you can do, it just seems like your brain just works better than mine and better than a lot of people's.

[Nelson Dellis]

Yeah, I don't think it's so much about that mine works better than yours or anybody's out there. I think that's, that's kind of the genesis of my whole journey is I thought I had an average memory, that I was just as gifted as the next person, nothing special. And I discovered memory techniques and I discovered memory competitions. I was inspired by my grandmother's passing from Alzheimer's and vowed to myself that I would never let that happen to me. Not that I knew what to do in order for that to happen, but getting roped into this world of mnemonics kind of haphazardly flipped the script for me. I was able to do some pretty incredible things with my own mind that I never thought were possible. And it just opened the door for.

[Mike Carruthers]

That's a great story. And you know what I was thinking when you said you learned about all the things that the mind can do, How I'm old enough to remember. We're just talking about this. I'm old enough to remember when I had a lot of people's phone numbers in my head and could recall them at any moment because you needed to. You had to have them if you wanted to call people. There was no, you know, memory in your phone on the kitchen wall kind of thing. Yeah, but now you don't now, now the phone remembers everything for you. And that's kind of a shame. And, and in fact, it's hard for me to even Imagine remembering all those phone numbers. But it, it wasn't burdensome at the time. You, it was just something you had to do.

[Nelson Dellis]

And I think that's a great example because a lot of people, maybe not younger kids right now, but us millennials and older, you can all relate to that. You know, where we had this capacity and it seemed so commonplace and, and dare I say, easy to remember a large amount of numbers, phone numbers related to people. And there was a lot at play there. One was, what other choice did we have? The other thing is that we're. We were more intentful about the process, right? We were there. We're. We're tapping these numbers, and some of us even turning the rotary to get these numbers. And that physical process, doing it over and over again lended itself to, to being burrowed in our, Our, our memories. Nowadays, we don't have to think twice. We can ask an AI assistant to call somebody. We never even have to even touch our phone. It. It's wild. But hopefully that's, That's a, A good reminder to people that, you know, our brains are capable of things that nowadays might seem really difficult.

[Mike Carruthers]

Is there, like, a principle underlying all of the ability that you have to remember things? Like there's a way, one way to do it, or does it depend on what you're trying to remember? There are different ways for different kinds of things, or how does it work?

[Nelson Dellis]

Yeah, great question. When I wrote my first book, this was almost 10 years ago, I really had to distill down what it takes to memorize anything, to broaden the techniques, because, you know, when you dive into a memory competition, there's very specific things we have to memorize. So you train for that, right? We're memorizing numbers, we're memorizing playing cards, poems, lists of words, and then names and, and all sorts of other extra details about people. And that's kind of it, you know, so you train that, and you're good at that. But then when you're trying to broaden the techniques to everything, what is at play here? And I've been able to boil it down to really three simple steps that I used to remember everything, and I'll share them in a second. But, you know, each step has its, its depth to it, right? So really, depending on what you're memorizing, you can modify the techniques appropriately for different things. But the, the. The basic fundamental steps are the same. And it starts with visualizing, right? You have information that's out there in the world that you'd like to bring into your brain and remember. Um, so turning that information, which is often in an abstract form, our brain really, it's really just designed for pictures and responding to emotional triggers that we want to remember so that we can survive. That was what our brain was designed to do. But then in, in modern day, you know, in the. The most recent thousands of years, our brain has now numbers in the mix and these things called names that represent these other humans around us and philosophical ideas and, and really abstract concepts, these are all relatively new things for our brains to process. And it's not great at it because it isn't a clear, obvious thing that signifies, you know, that you'll survive or not whether you remember this. So what I'm trying to get to is we need to trick our brains in a way. We need to encode the information in the form that it likes in the media format that it likes. And so what that means is basically you need to turn what you're memorizing into a memorable picture that has meaning to you. And you can do that by association. You can do that by instilling emotional color to it. And, and all the sensory data, that's the stuff that we remember. So that's the first step. And as I said before, you know, there's a lot of details to how you do that for different things. How do you turn a number into a picture? How do you turn a playing card into a picture? How do you turn a name into a picture? There are different strategies to do that, but essentially trying to turn it into a picture is the first step. The second step is storage. Like, what do you do with these pictures? Great that you have an image now for the thing that you want to remember. But what if you have a bunch of them? Where do they all go? And how do you remember them in sequence? How do you reliably store them in your mind so that you can retrieve them at will when you need them? Right. Without failing. Because honestly, that's a large part of the problem for people is it's not that they're forgetful. It's just that they never put the information in their mind in a clear, organized way, and they're having trouble finding it. So that's the second step. And then. And there's techniques to do that, different strategies. And then the final step is review. We remember things for the long term. If we tell our brains that it's important, and by. To make it important is we revisit it a lot, right? If our brain is constantly trying to access it and recall it and use it. That tells us, our brain, that it's. It's useful and it should stay there for much longer. So those three. Three things together will make it very difficult to forget things.

[Mike Carruthers]

All right, so let's go back and revisit those. And as you were saying, there are different techniques. Like how do you turn numbers and words into pictures? I'd love to know that.

[Nelson Dellis]

Yeah, sure. So let's start with kind of something that's probably the easiest to turn into a picture, which might be, in your native tongue, a simple noun, right? Like a word that is like a very tangible thing. Like, let's say elephant. You know, maybe you're memorizing a list of words and the first word is elephant. That would be a pretty easy thing to visualize because, you know, in English language, I hear the word elephant, and I know what that means. I can picture an elephant, right? I can. I've maybe never physically been in front of a elephant, but I've probably encountered an elephant, the concept of an elephant, somewhere in my life. And so thinking about a picture for that isn't going to be too difficult, right? But it's all about making that picture really pop out. So again, using all of your senses, making it emotional, giving it some movement, some action in your mind, in your visual eye, mind's eye, That's. That's where the sweet spot is. So if it's not just an elephant, right, it's this massive beast that I'm now standing in front of on a safari in. In Tanzania, let's say, in Africa somewhere. And I'm imagining myself right in front of this elephant, face to face, it's just me and this animal. And maybe it's starting to charge at me, right? And I can feel how scared I am. I can hear the elephant start to make some noises. And even his stomping as he runs toward me, the dust coming up from his feet, maybe even my, my, my terrified scream as I run away, right? All of that, as I paint that picture in my mind, is really what's now suddenly making this much more memorable than just that word on the page, right? Now, if you go a bit more abstract, right, you can have words that are less tangible, right? And then may. Or maybe something that are not in your, you know, your vocabulary. So something like, I don't know, we can go simple, like just say extraordinary, right? Most people know that word, but, like, how do you visualize that? Well, you'd probably have to think of something associated with that. So maybe someone who Is extraordinary. And that might be different for different people, but it's not a direct image for that word. Right, but that's, that's part of the process is trying to figure out how our brains can make associations that will link us to the information. And then when you get to even more complicated things, let's go all the way to numbers where you have these symbols now that represent things. How do you do that? Well, in memory competitions, memory athletes have developed systems where we translate preset groupings of numbers into preset images. So for example, for me, and again, this isn't necessarily something for everyday people to do unless they're competing, but a lot of memory athletes will have three digits representing one concept and that's just pre learned. So no matter what number I see, I can always divvy it up by three and have a picture that comes to mind and then I memorize that sequence of pictures instead.

[Mike Carruthers]

Wait, wait, I'm sorry, you lost me the three. Can you give me an example of that?

[Nelson Dellis]

Yeah, sure. Give me a three digit number.

[Mike Carruthers]

4, 7, 2.

[Nelson Dellis]

That's crazy that you said that because that is exactly a number that somebody else in a previous podcast I did said out of all the numbers, he chose that one. Anyways, that's John Kerry for me. If you remember the former, he ran for president, right. Against Bush. There's a whole reason why he is 472. It's, it's somewhat in the weeds, not important for this right now. But just imagine that Instead of seeing 4, 7, 2, if I have a massive number that or that doesn't have the massive, maybe a credit card number or a passport number. And I have 472 in there. I don't see 472. I see John Kerry.

[Beth Linker]

Right.

[Nelson Dellis]

And that's meaningful to me because I remember, you know, I was in college when he was running. I remember the debates. I can picture him. Right. And everything that comes with it, which includes my experience at college. Right. It's this whole thing. If I really dive down, dive deep into the sensory information that comes with this idea of John Kerry. And so I imagine picturing that or some equally well known person or thing in your mind instead of this abstract set of numbers, 4, 7, 2 makes it a lot easier.

[Mike Carruthers]

So when you're remembering say a credit card number, are you seeing, you could see what various senators faces in your mind of, you know, there's John Kerry and there's John Glenn and there's, I mean, is that how you do it?

[Nelson Dellis]

Yeah, basically. I don't have many senators. He's. He's an option. I do have presidents, but there's a lot of other things. I mean, there's characters from Star wars, there's family members, there's pets that I used to have. There's teachers and cartoon characters.

[Mike Carruthers]

And it's all broken down into three numbers that are three numbers long, basically.

[Nelson Dellis]

Yep. And then I weave it all into a narrative. And this goes back to the structure step of everything. Right. Because it's fine for maybe a group of three. But what if I have my passport number, which might be, say, nine digits? So I have three groups of three. So what do I do? Well, I put each person that represents those triplets in a story together, and that helps me remember the sequence.

[Mike Carruthers]

So you're. Let's go back to your example of. Of the elephant. But. And in a competition, I get that you might need to memorize a list of words, but I wouldn't nes. I don't need to memorize words. I might need to memorize a story about an elephant or I might need to memorize a sentence or a paragraph or speech. Yeah, or a speech. Not just a word. So is. Is what you just went through with the elephant going to be enough for me to remember my speech?

[Nelson Dellis]

Right. So, you know, the elephant was a one off, just one thing to remember. And that's rarely the case. That. That, that's what the data is. It's usually going to be a sequence of things or a collection of things. And so that's where that second step comes in again, that you need to have some kind of structure to house it all and to preserve some of the structure of the information, which oftentimes comes down to ordering. So there's this phenomenal technique called the memory palace. And this is what we use to memorize hundreds and hundreds of numbers, long lists of things, even very complicated speeches, that. Or poems that have many lines to them. And all it is is breaking each kind of component down into pictures and then storing them in this memory palace concept, which is, if you give me a moment to explain it, it's where you imagine a place, I guess palaces back in the day. This is a technique from thousands of years ago. But you could use your house or your studio apartment, whatever you live in, and imagine yourself walking through the space. All right, in some order that makes sense. So I might start at the front door of my house and then navigate through the rooms till I get to the back door or upstairs bedroom or something. And along the way, you can place or Imagine the images for the things you're trying to memorize there in the space, interacting with it. And that ordering, that. That pathway, which you know pretty well because it's your house, you don't have to memorize that already encoded in your mind, will hold that ordering. And when you want to go and retrieve the information, you just mentally navigate back through that same exact route. And the images, if memorable enough, will be there for you to pick back up.

[Mike Carruthers]

Can you use your house like that a lot of times? Or once you've used it, you can't use it for another thing because you might start to confuse the things you've used it for, Right?

[Nelson Dellis]

No, that's a great question. And the strategy behind it is, yes, when you use a memory palace, it is, especially for the first time, if you've never done this before, it is so sticky and such an experience for people who have never gone through that before and seen how amazing their memories can be. So it's really hard to shake some of the first things you put in a memory palace. But as you practice, you get better, ironically, at forgetting what you put there when you want to. But what I recommend is, you know, having multiple memory palaces. And, you know, depending on whether it's information that you plan to hold for just, you know, a few hours until you can spew it back out or a couple days, maybe there's information that you just want to know forever, right? Like maybe you're learning the periodic table and you would just love to know that information for as long as you live. In that case, I might choose a specific new memory palace that will always and solely just hold that information. And so I never kind of tamper with it, with anything else.

[Mike Carruthers]

Do you have to deliberately decide, this is something I need to remember, or do you just remember things better because you're that guy that remembers things better?

[Nelson Dellis]

It's a bit of both. But it is still a very involved, active process of me saying, like, deliberately that I need to remember this. But that's, again, going back to my mind being primed for it. I'm always thinking like that. So it's really just. I don't. I know it's. To the listener, it might sound like, oh, and now he has remember to remember. But I'm always thinking about remembering. I don't know how else to put it, but. And this isn't something that I can share a technique for, but this is from years of training my mind and applying memory techniques and giving memory such an importance in my life, which I don't think a lot of people do anymore because we don't have to. And it's a shame because there's so much more to what our memories can do.

[Mike Carruthers]

And when you look back on your life, you remember more of your life. But are there, like, holes in that story? Are there bright points that have real spotlights on them and others that really don't see very well?

[Nelson Dellis]

Sure, yeah. You know, my memory isn't perfect, you know, but what I find often is, of course there's going to be memories that I can quickly jump to and that are so vivid, and I have so much more detail about them than others. And then there's ones that I have to really dig for. But once they. I dig for them, I spend time with them. A lot comes out. You know, I used to play this game where I would. Just between me and my wife, I would ask her to we do it together, but I'd ask her to tell me any year in my history, you know, like 2005. Right. And then I'd be, okay, give me a season. And she'd say, summer. Would you do summer 2005 on the spot? And I. I don't know that. Right. I'd have to think about it. And at first I'd be like, wow, I don't. I don't know. I don't really remember much of that. But then if you really give it some time, and I encourage people out there to try this, because you might be surprised with what you dig up. I can start to piece things together by kind of context clues. Right. So I'll start to think, okay, where was I in 2005? I was living in Miami. I was still in college. I graduated in 2006. Okay, so this was the summer before I graduated. Oh, I was dating this girl, Natalia. Okay, well, that was the summer. And now suddenly I remember this cruise that I was on with my family because I missed my girlfriend so much as I was going through this cruise. We went to the Baltic. It was phenomenal. And now suddenly, I have this whole door that just opened. And now I'm in on this cruise, and I'm thinking exactly of all these memories that I. I had a moment ago. I didn't even know what I did that summer. Right. And I think memory works a lot like that. Sometimes you might even hear people say that memories, our memories are all in there. It's just the noise and the connections that get lost. And it just takes a matter of kind of jolting yourself back to getting those or finding the right cues to connect you back to them.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it seems, I guess the message is you can make your memory better. You just have to be really intentional about wanting to make it better and doing the things you're talking about. I've been speaking with Nelson Dellis. He is a six time USA Memory Champion, a two time Guinness World Record Holder, he's author of the book Everyday Genius Hacks to boost your memory focus, problem solving, and much more. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Nelson, great. This was real interesting. Thanks.

[Nelson Dellis]

Awesome. Well, thank you Mike. Great questions.

[Mike Carruthers]

If I asked you what color tennis balls are, you'd probably say yellow. But until the 1970s they weren't yellow, they were white. And the reason they changed had nothing to do with tennis. It was all because of television. Researchers discovered that the fuzzy fluorescent yellow green balls were much easier for viewers to follow on color TVs than white balls, especially against the changing backgrounds on grass or clay courts. In 1972, the International Tennis Federation officially approved the new color and within a few years yellow had all but replaced white. So one of the most recognizable objects in sports isn't that color because it's better for the game. It's because it's better for the audience. And that is something you should know. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Brennan, Jeff Havison and the executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. I know you like interesting and thought provoking conversations and ideas because you listen to something you should know. So let me recommend another podcast I know you will enjoy. It's the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan has a real talent for getting his guests to share stories and offer thought provoking insights. Over the years I've sent a lot of people to listen and I get feedback from people who are so glad I introduced them to the Jordan Harbinger Show. Recently. He discussed Scientology and the children who are raised in that organization. It's a fascinating conversation and he talked with Dr. Rhonda Patrick about how to protect your mind and body from the modern world. And and it's tougher than you think. I've gotten to know Jordan pretty well. We talk frequently and I tell you he is a very smart, insightful guy who does a hell of a podcast. Check out the Jordan Harbinger show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.