Podcast appearances and mentions of Nelson Dellis

What if you could actually train your brain to perform better… no matter your age, background, or current memory struggles? This week, Mitch Matthews sits down with 6-time USA Memory Champion, world-record holder, speaker, and bestselling author for a fascinating (and wildly practical) conversation on how to train your brain for peak performance. And here's the surprising part: Nelson says he wasn't born with a "super brain." In fact, he considered himself completely average growing up. Everything changed when Nelson watched his grandmother battle Alzheimer's disease. That painful experience sparked a deep curiosity about memory, brain health, and cognitive performance - and ultimately launched him into the world of elite memory competitions. Today, he helps people all over the world improve their focus, sharpen their memory, remember names, and unlock more of their mental potential. In this powerful conversation, Nelson breaks down the simple (but surprisingly effective) strategies anyone can use to train your brain, improve memory, and strengthen mental performance in the age of AI and endless distraction. This episode is packed with practical tools, fascinating stories, and hope-filled reminders that your brain is far more adaptable and trainable than you might think. And honestly? The timing for this conversation couldn't be better. Read the full show notes: https://mitchmatthews.com/454

Spend your holiday with a star-studded "Best Of" special edition of The Brian Kilmeade Show. First Lady Melania Trump joins Brian in studio to break down her historic cinematic project, reveal the secret letters she sent to Vladimir Putin to save children, and share her mission for protecting youth online. Plus, Tyrus grills Brian on a brutal Rocky trivia challenge, UFC veteran Alberto Crane reveals how martial arts gave him the strength to fight multiple sclerosis, Mike Rowe warns of the massive upcoming "Manhattan Project" for blue-collar trade skills, tech expert Tristan Harris delivers a terrifying update on AI escaping its guardrails, and Harvard professor Arthur Brooks lays out the definitive guide to finding true purpose in an age of digital noise. [00:00:00] Melania Trump   [00:12:11] Tyrus quizzes Brian on Rocky   [00:17:59] Alberto Crane   [00:35:56] Mike Rowe   [00:53:58] Nelson Dellis   [01:11:53] Tristan Harris   [01:29:48] Arthur Brooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if genius isn't something you're born with―it's something you build?Everyday Genius, by six-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis, upgrades your everyday life through practical skills, whether it's memorizing names at a new job, doing lightning-fast mental math when it counts, honing decisive intuition, and beyond.Written by Remember It! author Nelson Dellis, Everyday Genius teaches you the skills that make genius-level thinking accessible to anyone. Better memory. Sharper focus. Faster learning. Creative problem-solving. No natural talent required, just the right methods.In 2009, after watching his grandmother struggle with Alzheimer's, Nelson Dellis set out to strengthen his own mind. That mission led to six USA Memory Championships, two Guinness World Records, and a career dedicated to proving that anyone can develop genius-level cognitive abilities.Everyday Genius teaches you to memorize names and faces instantly, speed-read with deep comprehension, calculate mentally with surprising accuracy, and focus intensely when it matters most. You'll learn strategies for chess and strategic games, techniques for acing exams and public speaking, and methods for creative problem-solving that help you see connections others miss.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

My guest today is Nelson Dellis. He is a memory athlete and consultant. Nelson is a six-time USA Memory Champion, holding the record for most wins of the national memory champion title. Nelson also runs Climb 4 Memory, a nonprofit which aims to raise funds and awareness for Alzheimer's disease research through mountain climbs around the world. The topic is his book Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: Memory techniques as systems and frameworks Pygmalion effect and belief shaping performance Memory as foundation for faster learning and creativity Training the brain like a muscle and preventing cognitive decline Name memorization using visualization and association Jump in! --- I'm MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I'm proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I'd like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can't get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

What if your memory, focus, and problem-solving skills weren't fixed traits… but abilities you could train like a muscle? In this episode, I'm joined by six-time U.S. Memory Champion and two-time Guinness World Record holder Nelson Dellis, author of Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More. Nelson has dedicated his life to mastering memory — not just as a competitive skill, but as a tool for everyday life. In this conversation, we break down practical techniques to improve recall, sharpen focus, think more clearly, and unlock what he calls your "everyday genius." If you've ever forgotten names, struggled to concentrate, or wanted to think more effectively — this episode is packed with tools you can start using immediately.

Memory champion Nelson Dellis shares simple techniques to upgrade your thinking to genius level.— YOU'LL LEARN — 1) The core skills behind genius-level thinking 2) How to learn faster and better using one powerful tool 3) Why you shouldn't write off your intuitionSubscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep1146 for clickable versions of the links below. — ABOUT NELSON — Nelson Dellis is a six-time USA Memory Champion, two-time Guinness World Record holder, Grandmaster of Memory, keynote speaker, and world-renowned memory coach. He teaches at the university level, holding degrees in computer science and physics, and is also an accomplished mountaineer with four Mt. Everest expeditions. Beyond the classroom and the mountains, Nelson has medaled in international competitions, contributed to remote viewing research on stock prediction, and even played on a professional card-counting Blackjack team that won over $100,000. He shares his passion for unlocking the mind's potential with over 300,000 YouTube subscribers, where he makes complex skills practical, fun, and accessible to anyone willing to train their brain.• Book: Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More• Website: NelsonDellis.com— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW — • Book: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter• Past episode: 341: Decoding Body Language with ex-FBI Special Agent Joe Navarro— THANK YOU SPONSORS! — • Narwhal. Treat your home to spotless, fresh floors with us.narwhal.com/pete.• Monarch.com. Get 50% off your first year on with the code AWESOME.• Gusto. Get three months free when you run your first payroll with gusto.com/AWESOME• Shopify. Sign up for your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/better• Vanguard. Give your clients consistent results year in and year out with vanguard.com/AUDIOSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if genius isn't something you're born with―it's something you build? Everyday Genius, by six-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis, is a book to upgrade your brain using practical skills: Whether it's memorizing names and faces, doing lightning-fast mental math, honing decisive intuition, and beyond. Nelson Dellis is a competitive memorizer, with a number of U.S. memory records. He is also the Founder & CEO of Climb For Memory, a non-profit charity that aims to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer's disease research through mountain climbs all around the world.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We tend to think of genius as something you're born with — a rare trait possessed by the Einsteins and Teslas of the world. But what if many of the abilities we associate with genius — a great memory, quick problem-solving, mental math, creative insight — are actually trainable skills?My guest today says that's exactly the case. His name is Nelson Dellis, and he's a six-time USA Memory Champion and the author of the book Everyday Genius.In our conversation, Nelson explains why memory is the foundation of thinking well and why having information stored in your head still matters in the age of ChatGPT. He shares a practical technique for improving your memory, how to read with greater focus and retention, and how to study to actually make information stick. We then talk about the importance of developing “number sense” and how to convert imperial measurements to metric in your head, strategies for solving problems more effectively, and even how to gain an edge in the games of Monopoly and Connect Four. At the end of the conversation, we get into more esoteric territory, including intuition, dreams, and the idea of remote viewing.Resources Related to the PodcastNelson's previous appearance on the AoM podcast: Episode #546 — How to Get a Memory Like a Steel TrapAoM Article: 10 Ways to Improve Your MemoryAoM Article: How to Speed Read Like Theodore RooseveltAoM Podcast #385: Learning How to LearnAoM Article: Study Tactics of the Successful Gentleman ScholarThe CIA's remote viewing programConnect With Nelson DellisNelson's websiteNelson on YouTubeThanks to This Week's Podcast SponsorIncogni. Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code MANLINESS at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/manlinessSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dr. Adam Dorsay introduces SuperPsyched and interviews six-time US Memory Champion Nelson Dellis about why memory is central to identity and why cognitive decline and Alzheimer's are so devastating. Dellis describes memory championships as timed, full-day events involving feats such as memorizing a deck of cards, hundreds of digits in five minutes, and large sets of names and faces, emphasizing that success comes from a trained—not “naturally good”—memory. In the age of AI, he argues that continuing to use memory supports cognitive health, may help prevent atrophy, and preserves a core human element tied to lived experience. They discuss how Alzheimer's may impair retrieval rather than erase memories, and highlight Dellis's activity-based book, "Everyday Genius," which trains memory and other skills like calculation, creativity, and faster reading, alongside lessons learned from painful competitive losses.00:00 Welcome to SuperPsyched00:28 Why Memory Matters00:48 Meet Nelson Dellis03:04 Trained Not Gifted05:12 Inside Memory Championships06:38 Memory in the AI Age09:03 Alzheimers and Identity11:19 Everyday Genius Challenge14:28 Curiosity as Cross Training19:18 Learning Through Failure20:21 Closing and SubscribeHelpful Links:Nelson DellisEveryday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More BookNelson Dellis InstagramNelson Dellis YouTubeNelson Dellis LinkedIn

Nelson Dellis, a six-time US Memory Champion, two-time Guinness World Record holder, Grandmaster of Memory, keynote speaker, and world-renowned memory coach, discusses what it takes to have a genius mindset, how we can talk to our kids to encourage them to stay curious their entire lives, and what it was like climbing Mount Everest. Nelson's new book is Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More. Info at NelsonDellis.com

Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More by Nelson Dellis Nelsondellis.com https://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Genius-Hacks-Memory-Problem-Solving/dp/1419784811 What if genius isn’t something you’re born with―it’s something you build? Everyday Genius, by six-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis, upgrades your everyday life through practical skills, whether it’s memorizing names at a new job, doing lightning-fast mental math when it counts, honing decisive intuition, and beyond. Written by Remember It! author Nelson Dellis and with a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Barbara Oakley, Everyday Genius teaches you the skills that make genius-level thinking accessible to anyone. Better memory. Sharper focus. Faster learning. Creative problem-solving. No natural talent required, just the right methods. In 2009, after watching his grandmother struggle with Alzheimer’s, Nelson Dellis set out to strengthen his own mind. That mission led to six USA Memory Championships, two Guinness World Records, and a career dedicated to proving that anyone can develop genius-level cognitive abilities. Everyday Genius teaches you to memorize names and faces instantly, speed-read with deep comprehension, calculate mentally with surprising accuracy, and focus intensely when it matters most. You’ll learn strategies for chess and strategic games, techniques for acing exams and public speaking, and methods for creative problem-solving that help you see connections others miss. From mastering a Rubik’s Cube to holding complex ideas in your head, from reading a room to thinking on your feet―this book gives you the mental toolkit for a sharper, more engaged life. At a time when outsourcing our thinking has never been easier, Everyday Genius shows you how to reclaim and strengthen your most valuable asset: your brain. You have far more potential than you realize―an inner genius waiting to be awakened. This book unlocks it. Dellis breaks down complex mnemonic systems into digestible, actionable strategies. By following his lead, you will learn: Memory Mastery Speed Reading Focus and Concentration Learning Mastery Mental Calculation Problem-Solving and Creativity Strategic Thinking Social Skills Mastery Beyond Genius About the author Nelson Dellis is a 4x USA Memory Champion and one of the leading memory experts in the world, traveling around the world as a competitive Memory Athlete, Memory Consultant, Published Author and highly sought-after Keynote Speaker. As a Memory Champion, Mountaineer, and Alzheimer’s Disease Activist, he preaches a lifestyle that combines fitness, both mental and physical, with proper diet and social involvement. Born with an average memory, Nelson was inspired by the passing of his grandmother from Alzheimer’s disease in 2009 to start training his memory so that he could keep his mind strong and healthy throughout his lifespan. In a short period of time, he transformed into one of the leading competitive memorizers in the world, claiming four U.S. titles along the way, the elite Grandmaster of Memory title, as well as a number of U.S. memory records for: – Memorizing the most names in 15 minutes – 217 names – Memorizing the most words in 15 minutes – 256 words – Memorizing the most digits in 30 minutes – 907 digits – Memorizing the most decks of playing cards in 30 minutes – 9.02 decks – (former record) Memorizing the most digits in 5 minutes – 339 digits – (former record) Memorizing a deck of cards in the fastest time – 40.65 seconds Nelson is the Founder & CEO of Climb For Memory, a non-profit charity that aims to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer’s disease research through mountain climbs all around the world. Nelson has climbed numerous peaks around the world for this cause, including three times on Mt. Everest. Nelson has been featured on FOX’s Superhumans, The TODAY Show, Fox and Friends, The Katie Couric Show, CNN.com, ABC Nightline, The Dr. Oz Show, The Science Channel, Nat Geo, SuperBrain China, among many other media outlets.

“We read so as not to feel alone.” — C.S. Lewis (possibly)Dan Turello is a cultural historian of medieval Italy, a much published photographer, and the author of the new Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans. I'm sceptical. Especially the promise (or illusion) of better humans. But Turello's definition of technology goes back further than most — all the way to the original fig leaf. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the first thing they did, he reminds us, was cover their bodies. Technology, then, in Turello's framing, is everything that extends beyond the human body. Clothing is technology. Double-entry bookkeeping is technology. The iPhone is just the latest chapter of our technology story that began at the beginning.His most surprising argument is that our current tech anxiety has medieval roots. St. Francis of Assisi was what he calls a trust-fund kid “avant la lettre” — his father being a wealthy 13th century silk merchant at a time when northern Italy was Silicon Valley. Francis sold some of his dad's silk, gave the money away, stripped naked before a bishop, and founded a counterculture movement. The first tech backlash, Turello suggests, wasn't against AI. It was against double-entry bookkeeping. Dante, writing a generation later, idealised an earlier, simpler Florence — what scholars call “paleolithic chic.” No makeup, no ornate clothing, no fleeing to immoral cities. Sound familiar?On AI, Turello goes a bit Saint Francis on us. Large language models, he fears, generate material without lineage — you can't trace where the ideas came from, can't triangulate the sources, can't validate against reality. Technology is about power, Turello argues — about who controls the storyline. Making us better humans, then, requires recovering a sense of agency. Thus he argues that we should stop outsourcing our thinking, our writing, our photography to machines. Dante wrote the entire Divine Comedy without Claude. These days, we can barely write an email without a little help from our friends at ChatGPT. Machiavelli donned the robes of the past to think and write. We might try putting ours on too. But then isn't that a tech solution too? Five Takeaways•       St. Francis Was a Trust-Fund Kid Who Invented Counterculture: His father was a wealthy silk merchant in 13th-century Italy, at the dawn of Europe's commercial revolution. Francis sold his father's silk, gave the money away, stripped naked before a bishop, and founded an order that rejected the mechanisms of early capitalism. The first tech backlash wasn't against AI. It was against double-entry bookkeeping.•       Technology Is Everything Beyond the Naked Human Body: Turello's definition goes back to Genesis. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the first thing they did was cover their bodies. Fig leaves are technology. Clothing is technology. The iPhone is just the latest iteration of a metaphysical problem that's been destabilising us since the Fall.•       Dante Wrote the Divine Comedy Without Being Able to Edit: He penned an entire macrocosm of the medieval world from memory, without the ability to rewrite in any meaningful way. Turello thinks Dante would be concerned that we're losing our memories, our ability to tell a coherent narrative for our lives, and that our existence has become too fragmented. We can barely write an email without ChatGPT.•       LLMs Generate Material Without Lineage: Technology is about power — about who controls the storyline. Large language models produce text without traceable sources, without verifiable origins, without lineage. You can't triangulate where the ideas came from. That's not intelligence. That's a crisis of provenance.•       Agency Still Matters: Turello's hope for humanity is that we recover a sense of agency — the belief that our choices, friendships, relationships, and communities are ours to shape. The alternative is technological determinism: the machine decides. Machiavelli donned the robes of the past to think and write. We might try putting ours on too. About the GuestDan Turello is a writer, cultural historian, and photographer. A Technology and Humanity Fellow at Florida Atlantic University's Center for Future of Mind, AI & Society, his work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans is published by Columbia University Press.References:•       Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans by Dan Turello (Columbia University Press, 2026) — the book under discussion.•       Episode 2840: What Came First: Stories or Language? — Kevin Ashton on storytelling preceding language, a natural companion.•       Episode 2839: Have Our iPhones Eaten Our Brains? — Nelson Dellis on memory, cognitive atrophy, and outsourcing our minds.•       Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction — referenced in the conversation on technology and power.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: has technology made you a better human? (03:22) - The iPhone vs. the decisive moment: Bresson and photography (05:39) - The orange cushion: an ode to imperfection (06:27) - St. Francis of Assisi: the first tech critic (07:22) - 800 years of tech anxiety: from double-entry bookkeeping to AI (11:27) - Žižek, capitalism, and the love-hate relationship with technology (13:50) - Fig leaves to iPhones: technology as everything beyond the naked body (15:00) - Marinetti, Svevo, and the mammoth: technology as relationship (17:54) - Walter Benjamin, The Matrix, and who controls the storyline (20:51) - Bresson's decisive moment vs. Nietzsche's blow it up (22:25) - Agency under attack: reclaiming embodied experience (25:47) - Machiavelli donning the robes of the past (28:44) - Nost...

In this episode, Tim talks with 6x USA Memory Champion about his new book, Everyday Genius - Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem Solving, and Much More. This is a fun conversation about a really fun book. Check out Everyday Genius at your favorite book purchasing place!

“Nobody's reality is more or less real.” — Kevin AshtonIt's the chicken and egg question. What came first: stories or language? For Kevin Ashton, the answer is stories. In his new book, The Story of Stories, Ashton argues that rather than inventing stories with language, we invented language to tell stories. Stories, for Ashton, predate language. They are what makes us human.300,000 years ago, Ashton argues, humans sat around night fires needing to talk about things they couldn't point to — the past, the future, the Gods. So they created language. Grunts got grammatical. And the grammar had a structure that hasn't changed since: character, chronology, consequence. Every sentence in every one of the world's 7,000 languages is built upon the need to tell stories. Every conversation you've ever had contains a narrative. Even this one.I asked Ashton whether this makes reality itself just another narrative and him just another postmodernist. Our brains construct reality, he explained, in the same way a graphic user interface constructs a desktop. Our dog sees a different rainbow to the one we see. But, in contrast with our dog, we tell stories about that rainbow.Ashton is a technologist who first coined the term “Internet of Things”. But on AI, he is surprisingly critical. A large language model is a more complicated toaster, he says. It can produce language that fits the format of a story — character, chronology, consequence — because it's digested millions of words. But it can't produce meaning. We humans, in contrast, are made meaningful by our stories. That's why you are reading this now. Five Takeaways•       We Invented Language to Tell Stories, Not the Other Way Around: Ashton's central claim is that storytelling preceded and caused the evolution of language. A million years ago, humans around night fires needed to talk about things they couldn't point to — the past, the future, the gods. Grunts became grammar. The structure hasn't changed since: character, chronology, consequence. Every sentence in every one of the world's 7,000 languages is built on this need to narrate.•       Nobody's Reality Is Real: Our brains construct reality the way a graphic user interface constructs a desktop — useful, not true. Your dog sees a different rainbow than you do. Whose is real? Both. Neither. Ashton isn't a postmodernist — he's arguing that our story-shaped brains are the lens through which all experience is filtered, and there is no stepping outside it.•       The Bible Hitched a Ride on Writing: The world's great religions spread because they were among the first stories to exploit writing as a distribution technology. The Bible is just a word for book. Scripture is a word for writing. Where those texts travelled, those religions still dominate today. Homer is an oral tradition frozen by the alphabet. The oldest surviving story in the world is Noah's flood, and it comes from Southern Iraq, not Greece.•       A Large Language Model Is a More Complicated Toaster: Ashton is brutally dismissive of AI. A machine can produce something that fits the format of a story because it's digested millions of them. But it can't produce meaning. Machines are inherently meaningless. We anthropomorphise them because that's what our story-shaped brains do — we named our cars, now we're naming our chatbots.•       We Humans Are Made Meaningful by Our Stories: Ashton's own life is the proof: a Birmingham DJ who learned Norwegian in nightclubs, fell for Ibsen, marketed lipstick for Procter & Gamble, and accidentally invented the Internet of Things because mascara kept going out of stock. No algorithm would have written that life. No machine could have lived it. That's why you're reading this now. About the GuestKevin Ashton is a technologist and author who coined the term “the Internet of Things” and co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT. His previous book, How to Fly a Horse, was named Porchlight's Business Book of the Year. The Story of Stories: The Million-Year History of a Uniquely Human Art is published by Harper. He lives in Austin, Texas.References:•       The Story of Stories by Kevin Ashton (Harper, 2026) — the book under discussion.•       How to Fly a Horse by Kevin Ashton — his previous book on the secret history of invention.•       Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — the Musk episode, in which we discussed AI, the scientific method as secular religion, and whether machines can think.•       Episode 2839: Have Our iPhones Eaten Our Brains? — Nelson Dellis on memory, AI slop, and cognitive atrophy — a natural companion to today's conversation.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: technology tells good stories about itself (01:46) - Language was invented to tell stories, not the other way around (04:47) - If stories are our water, how do you get outside them? (06:40) - Character, chronology, consequence: the Lego brick of narrative (07:07) - Hyper-realism and the graphic user interface of reality (09:05) - Nobody's reality is real — your dog sees a different rainbow (12:35) - Darwin, Einstein, and science as storytelling (14:32) - True stories, true crime, and the O.J. Simpson test (17:15) - The Bible as storytelling technology (21:49) - Socrates vs. Plato: speech, writing, and the Reformation (23:49) - The Internet of Stories: from campfire to smartphone (25:05) - Were the Greeks really better storytellers? No. (28:49) - Favourite storytellers: Pynchon, McCarthy, Dead Space (30...

What happens when AI takes over medicine—and what can we do to strengthen our own minds? In this episode of _Writer's Voice,_ Justin C. Key explores the human cost of AI-driven healthcare, while memory champion Nelson Dellis shares techniques to boost memory, focus, and creativity.

Nelson Dellis delivers yet another epic memory improvement book with Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving and Much More. In my view, this book is also a corrective to the increasing mountains of bad memory training advice online. I mean, spend ten minutes browsing memory improvement forums and you’ll start to see the rot. Same recycled advice. Same flat explanations lacking nuance. Same people “teaching” techniques they've: Never stress-tested in public Never pushed to the limits Never offered anything more than mostly copied explanations of standard mnemonic methods The toxicity for the serious student of the memory arts and mental skills is only getting worse as people ramp up their use of AI to produce even more untested “teaching” of these techniques. So the fact that Nelson actually demonstrates and performs a kind of “immersion journalism” when it comes to the techniques he teaches provides just one of many reasons why Nelson Dellis's Everyday Genius matters so much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJoc5gLIx2c How Everyday Genius Takes Memory Training Into New Terrain It’s not that Nelson has invented any new memory techniques in this book, which you can learn more about on Abrams Books. He hasn’t. And it’s unlikely that anyone ever will. Nelson told me as much at the opening of our interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcTJuCiDVqE Anyhow, “new” doesn’t come into the picture for people serious about memory and accelerated learning. As someone who has received and read Amazon reviews on memory improvement books for decades, I always find it odd when someone writes, “nothing new here.” Since even Giordano Bruno essentially announced that nothing new would be coming to the field of mnemonics back in the 1600s, the real task is to: Stop Confusing Activity with Accomplishment Nelson’s book matters first and foremost because it comes from a mnemonist of actual accomplishment. A real practitioner, not just a reader of memory improvement books who then comments on them. He’s someone who has put his mind on the line under pressure, in competition, with nowhere to hide. In other words, Nelson’s history of accomplishment adds weight to every page. And you can feel it almost immediately. Everyday Genius is written by someone who has actually lived inside the machinery of memory and various mental tactics and then extended these into real life situations: Giving a speech Making new business contacts Solving real-world problems Exploring the nature of the mind At the risk of repetition, this distinction matters more than ever, because the internet is drowning the memory arts with all kinds of secondhand certainty written by people lurking behind anonymous user accounts. What Kinds of Real-World Problems Will This Book Help You Solve? As most memory improvement books worth their salt do, Nelson covers the Memory Palace technique, a.k.a. the method of loci. But he doesn’t just recite the classic approach to this technique. He describes it from lived experience. And his approach to mnemonic images and pegword systems likewise comes from accomplishment. Then, when you go through his explanations of how to apply these mnemonic systems to remembering names or speeches, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how to implement them. Likewise when it comes to critical thinking. Nelson takes you through actual real-world scenarios and shows you how various critical thinking examples can make life a lot smoother and more successful. Making Memory & Learning Both Relevant & Fun Another major thing Nelson gets right in Everyday Genius is that he doesn’t shy away from blending the use of memory and thinking tactics for fun with more serious learning outcomes. I know that I’m guilty of not finding that balance in my own writing, even if personally I perform card magic with a memdeck and play music, etc. The cost, however, is that using memory techniques for activities like card counting can be learned a lot more readily when you have at least some of the foundational mnemonic strategies working for you. In reality, learning them doesn’t have to be a grind. And the stories and profiles of polymathic geniuses Nelson shares throughout the book will help you see the multiple layers of fun in store for you. The key is to find ways to make these techniques integrate into your everyday life. Figuring out how to do that can be a challenge, but that’s all the more reason to pay attention to the examples distributed throughout Everyday Genius. The Potentially Controversial Aspect of Everyday Genius Now, you might be wondering… Is Everyday Genius perfect and free from critique? No. And unlike his previous books like Remember It! and Memory Superpowers, Nelson takes risks that I partly admire and partly question. And one of my criticisms goes back to at least two years prior to its publication when Nelson first told us about his “remote viewing” experiments on this episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j240eFZNq04 Now, I worry about being hypocritical if I lean too heavily against Nelson when he enters such contested territory. I’ve run similar experiments myself at various times, and perhaps entered just as questionable territory with The Victorious Mind. I’m talking about: Intuition. Remote viewing. Out-of-body experiences. Lucid dreaming. To take just one example, learning to remember your dreams is easy enough to do. But Nelson talks about practicing memorizing a deck of cards while lucid dreaming, and it’s just not clear how you could test the accuracy or measure the contribution of such untestable practice to your skills. At least in the case of remote viewing, Nelson has practiced a kind of immersion journalism. He’s gone to various labs and institutions where people conduct tests in remote viewing and out-of-body experiences. Whether those tests are “scientific” or not is itself a critical thinking exercise, but I admire that Nelson: Goes into the field to report back from lived experience Is willing to face tough questions about the claims people make about such phenomena And unlike the lucid dream claim, various aspects of the claims about remote viewing and out-of-body experiences can be tested In any case, Dellis doesn't build the book on the foundation of these more experimental activities. And it is of great importance that you are invited to experiment using the protocol Nelson provides. I tried the provided remote viewing protocol myself. And frankly, I would rather explore strange terrain from Nelson Dellis who has proven all kinds of astonishing accomplishments than from yet another forum philosopher who has yet to demonstrate… anything they make claims about. The Future of Memory Training And the whole realm of claims that people make is the larger issue here for me. In our growing culture of cognitive indifference, people forget names, forget what they read, forget what they meant to say halfway through saying it, then shrug and call it normal “because internet”. But digital amnesia is not normal. And you don’t have to outsource your memory or your attention. Your standards can go up. And your self-respect along with it when you join the ranks of those who have actually done the work. That is why I think you should read Everyday Genius. Not because it is safe. Not because it is perfect. But because it is something that few books ever are: It is alive. Alive with real accomplishment. Alive with a pulse that pushes ancient tactics into modern use and combines them with other disciplines. Alive with the real signs of genius that anyone can achieve. And it treats memory as something you train, not something you talk about. But don't stop with reading and implementing this book. Do your part to help fix the culture. Stop letting the swamp of bad information on the internet define what memory training is. Memorize the most challenging information you can find and demonstrate that you can do it. Take on hard skills and prove that you’ve got them. That is your duty now if you want to distinguish yourself from the swamp and the robots. Raise the standard. That would be truly genius.

“I don't like the idea of losing out to a machine because I feel like I'm losing a part of myself in the process.” — Nelson Dellis, six-time USA Memory ChampionMost of us can't remember our spouse's phone number. We barely know our own. We haven't read a physical map in years. Some of us don't even know what a map is. Such is the impoverishment of mental life in our digital age.Nelson Dellis, unlike most of us, is a rich man — at least mentally. He can memorise a shuffled deck of 52 cards in under a minute. He stores every stranger's phone number in his head for 24 hours before putting it in his phone — on principle. He's a six-time USA Memory Champion, a computer science professor at Skidmore, and the author of a new book, Everyday Genius, which suggests we can all be a lot smarter than our smart phones.Dellis got into memory after watching his grandmother get lost in the fog of Alzheimer's. And as a computer science professor, he's equally terrified by what he now sees in the classroom. His students can't craft an email without ChatGPT. They can't focus. They can't solve a problem without asking a machine. He warns that we're outsourcing our cognitive agency to devices and mislabelling it as human productivity.For Dellis, it's the same mental atrophy that destroyed his grandmother. AI-generated mnemonics, he warns, feel “dead inside.” Our brains, like our language, are degenerating into slop. Thus the value of his hacks to restore our focus and boost our memories. Five Takeaways•       I Can't Remember My Wife's Phone Number: Neither can you. Neither can anyone under 50. We've outsourced our memories to devices and the consequences are only beginning to show. Nelson Dellis memorises every new phone number for 24 hours before putting it in his phone. Not because he needs to — because his brain needs him to.•       His Grandmother Disappeared into Alzheimer's and It Changed His Life: Dellis watched the woman who raised him become a shell of herself — unable to recognise her own grandson. He went down a rabbit hole into memory science, discovered a former champion's audiobook, tried the techniques, and was hooked. He won his first US Memory Championship within two years. He's won six.•       If Everyone's a Genius, Nobody Is: I pushed back on the book's premise. Dellis conceded the point but held his ground: the techniques are learnable, the results are real, and the distinction between “genius” and “trained” matters less than the distinction between a brain that's exercised and one that's atrophying. The London cab driver study is his best evidence — hippocampi that grow with use and shrink without it.•       AI Slop Is by Definition Forgettable: Dellis teaches computer science, so he's no Luddite. But AI-generated mnemonics, he says, feel “dead inside.” The vivid, absurd, grotesque images that make memory techniques work are products of individual human imagination. A machine can't generate weirdness. Not yet. Maybe not ever. His students can't write an email without ChatGPT. That should terrify us more than it does.•       Eat Your Blueberries: Four pillars of brain health: mental exercise, physical fitness, diet, and — the one that surprises people — social interaction. Dellis trains a 90-year-old and a five-year-old using the same techniques. Both can do things their peers cannot. The brain doesn't expire at 70. But it does atrophy if you let your iPhone do the thinking. About the GuestNelson Dellis is a six-time USA Memory Champion (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2021, 2024), certified mountaineer and Everest summiteer, and Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Skidmore College. His new book is Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More. He has taught memory techniques to audiences ranging from five-year-olds to nonagenarians.References:•       Everyday Genius by Nelson Dellis — the book under discussion, currently the number one new release in memory improvement on Amazon.•       Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer — the bestselling account of competitive memory that Dellis discusses and Foer, a friend of his, promoted at the same event where Dellis won his first title.•       Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century's First Real Leader — this week's TWTW, where Keith Teare covered AI disruption from the tech side.•       USA Memory Championship — the annual competition Dellis has won six times.About Keen On AmericaNobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: we've never had a memory champion (01:23) - Is everyone a genius? The soccer medal problem (03:25) - Controlling the thing inside our skull (05:07) - The brain as the most complicated object in the universe (06:40) - Grandmother's Alzheimer's: the origin story (08:26) - Can brain training delay Alzheimer's? (11:53) - Mental longevity vs. the iPhone warranty (13:46) - Inside the USA Memory Championship (15:52) - Numbers, cards, names, poems: the events (18:13) - Joshua Foer and Moonwalking with Einstein (21:28) - Social genius: loneliness as cognitive decline (24:43) - Blueberries, omega-3s, and pre-competition doping (27:24) - Freaks or trained humans? (31:01) - Your iPhone is atrophying your brain (37:51) - AI slop: why machines can't make memories (39:23) - Hack: how to remember any name you hear

CarneyShow 03.18.26 Dr Vedica Sharma, Nelson Dellis, Jim Cantalin, Johnny Londoff by

A Note from James:I talked to Nelson Dellis, who's a six-time USA Memory Champion and has broken multiple Guinness World Records. His book, Everyday Genius, makes a pretty bold claim—that with some practice and the right techniques, you can dramatically improve how your brain works.We didn't just talk about memory. We got into everything: mental math, focus, cold reading, even some techniques that feel almost like magic. And I've done a lot of episodes on memory over the years—but Nelson showed me things I hadn't seen before.What stood out to me is this idea that “genius” isn't some fixed trait. It's a collection of skills you can build. Some of them are surprisingly simple once you understand how your brain actually works.I'm definitely going to spend more time practicing some of these techniques. There's a lot here that's immediately useful—and a lot that could take years to master.Episode Description:James sits down with world memory champion Nelson Dellis to break down what memory really is—and how far it can be pushed.Nelson explains how his grandmother's battle with Alzheimer's led him into the world of memory training, eventually becoming one of the best in the world. From memorizing thousands of digits to competing in global competitions, he shows that memory is not a fixed trait—it's a skill.The conversation goes beyond memory into focus, reading, learning, and even social intelligence. Nelson shares practical techniques for improving recall, reading faster without losing comprehension, and using visualization to retain more information.They also explore the edge cases—cold reading, intuition, and even experiments with “remote viewing”—where perception and cognition blur into something that feels almost supernatural.At its core, this episode is about expanding what you believe your brain is capable of.What You'll Learn:Why memory is a trainable skill—not something you're born withHow visualization and emotional context dramatically improve recallThe difference between “speed reading” and “focus reading”Simple techniques to retain more from books and conversationsHow cold reading works (and why it feels like magic)Why reviewing information—not cramming—is key to long-term memoryThe mental habits that create the appearance of “genius”How attention and focus are becoming rare—and valuable—skillsTimestamped Chapters:00:02:00 – Nelson's origin story: Alzheimer's and the motivation to master memory 00:02:16 – Why reading is like living thousands of lives 00:03:13 – Introducing Everyday Genius and the promise of trainable intelligence 00:04:33 – Memory palace techniques and applying them to real-world skills 00:05:13 – Can memory training help prevent Alzheimer's? 00:06:13 – Daily memory training routines and measurable progress 00:08:16 – From beginner to USA Memory Champion 00:10:00 – Memorizing 10,000 digits of pi: how it actually works 00:11:31 – Turning numbers into stories: the core of memory systems 00:14:28 – Why emotion and visualization drive memory 00:16:00 – Memory competition benchmarks and world-class performance 00:18:00 – What “genius” actually means—and how to simulate it 00:20:00 – The four pillars: memory, reading, focus, and learning 00:23:33 – Speed reading vs. focus reading (and why most people get it wrong) 00:25:12 – The finger-tracking technique to instantly read faster 00:27:16 – Why you don't need to read every word 00:30:17 – Why cramming fails (and how memory actually forms) 00:31:17 – Visualization while reading: turning text into a movie 00:34:00 – Active recall, note-taking, and long-term retention systems 00:37:16 – Cold reading and social intelligence 00:41:00 – Body language cues: attention, interest, and perception 00:43:00 – How mentalists create the illusion of mind reading 00:46:00 – Psychological “forcing” and influencing choices 00:51:00 – Remote viewing experiments and cognitive edge cases Additional ResourcesEveryday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem Solving and Much MoreSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A late winter blizzard swept across the upper Midwest, bringing 20 inches of snow and winds up to 40 mph to parts of the region. Meanwhile, the same weather system hit southern Tennessee with a possible tornado. Closing arguments are expected to begin on Monday in Kouri Richins' murder trial. She's accused of giving her husband a deadly dose of fentanyl four years ago before she later published a children's book about grief. The case included 13 days of testimony, but the defense did not call any witnesses. If convicted, Richins could face life in prison. "One Battle After Another" took home six awards at the Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, while Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for his performance in "Sinners." Meanwhile, actor Billy Crystal led the in memoriam segment with an emotional tribute to Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, who were killed last year. Clayton Davis, the senior awards editor for Variety, joins "CBS Mornings" to discuss the big moments, winners and surprises at the Oscars. Sarah Gelman, the editorial director for Amazon Books, joins "CBS Mornings" with top book recommendations that celebrate remarkable women and trailblazers for Women's History Month. Nelson Dellis, a six-time USA Memory Champion and two-time Guinness World Record holder, says he wanted to learn more about memory after seeing his grandmother struggle with Alzheimer's. He gives techniques to improve our memories and discusses his new book, "Everyday Genius." March Madness begins this week with the First Four games on Tuesday and the tournament officially tipping off on Thursday. CBS Sports college basketball insider, analyst and sideline reporter Jon Rothstein breaks down the favorites to win it all, powerhouse teams who aren't the top seeds and possible Cinderellas of the tournament. Grammy award-winner Lizzo exclusively announced on "CBS Mornings" her latest project, a children's book called "Little Lizzo Meets Sasha B. Flute." She spoke with Gayle King about her inspiration for the book and message for young readers. A Ring camera in Tennessee captured an older man slowly climbing the steps of a home for a delivery. The homeowner, seeing the video, decided to post the video online to try and track the man down. She found him and gave him a $200 tip, but it didn't stop there. Thanks to the kindness of strangers, nearly $1 million was raised for the man in five days. David Begnaud reports. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nelson Dellis, a lecturer at Skidmore College and the six-time Memory USA champion is here this morning to discuss his new book, 'Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving,' and Much More. The book is a mental toolkit for a sharper, more engaged life. At a time when outsourcing our thinking has never been easier, Everyday Genius shows you how to reclaim and strengthen your most valuable asset: your brain. Nelson will be talking about and signing his book on Wednesday Night at Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs at 6PM.

What if genius isn't something you're born with―it's something you build?Everyday Genius, by six-time USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis, upgrades your everyday life through practical skills, whether it's memorizing names at a new job, doing lightning-fast mental math when it counts, honing decisive intuition, and beyond.Written by Remember It! author Nelson Dellis, Everyday Genius teaches you the skills that make genius-level thinking accessible to anyone. Better memory. Sharper focus. Faster learning. Creative problem-solving. No natural talent required, just the right methods.In 2009, after watching his grandmother struggle with Alzheimer's, Nelson Dellis set out to strengthen his own mind. That mission led to six USA Memory Championships, two Guinness World Records, and a career dedicated to proving that anyone can develop genius-level cognitive abilities.Everyday Genius teaches you to memorize names and faces instantly, speed-read with deep comprehension, calculate mentally with surprising accuracy, and focus intensely when it matters most. You'll learn strategies for chess and strategic games, techniques for acing exams and public speaking, and methods for creative problem-solving that help you see connections others miss.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.

Nelson Dellis is a six-time USA Memory Champion, Grandmaster of Memory, and one of the world's foremost experts on training the mind. Driven by his grandmother's struggle with Alzheimer's, he turned an average memory into a world-class superpower using ancient techniques and now teaches others to do the same. As founder of Climb For Memory, he scales the planet's highest peaks, including multiple Everest expeditions, to fund Alzheimer's research and prove that mental and physical resilience go hand in hand.   In this mind-expanding episode, Nelson reveals how anyone can transform their memory from forgetful to unforgettable, including: The ancient origins of the memory palace and why these techniques powered civilizations long before writing existed Step-by-step guidance on building your first memory palace and mastering the Major System for numbers Instant hacks for remembering names, speeches, grocery lists and a live demo that will blow your mind Why memory training builds focus, presence, and creativity in an age of endless digital distraction The future of human memory as AI takes over storage and how keeping this skill sharp could define our humanity This is a thrilling, practical conversation for anyone ready to reclaim their mind, boost daily performance, and discover that superhuman memory isn't a gift. It's a skill waiting to be unlocked.  

If you want to understand the future of learning and equip yourself with the best possible tools for operating at the top of your game, I believe becoming polymathic is your best bet. And to succeed in mastering multiple skills and tying together multiple domains of knowledge, it’s helpful to have contemporary examples. Especially from people operating way out on the margins of the possible. That’s why today we’re looking at what happens when a poet decides to stop writing on easily destroyed paper. Ebooks and the computers that store information have a shelf life too. No, we’re talking about what happens when a poet starts “writing” into the potentially infinite cellular matter of a seemingly unkillable bacterium. This is the story of The Xenotext. How it came to be, how it relates to memory and the lessons you can learn from the years Christian Bök spent teaching himself the skills needed to potentially save humanity's most important art from the death of our sun. Poetry. But more importantly, this post is a blueprint for you. The story of The Xenotext is a masterclass in why the era of the specialist is over, and why the future belongs to the polymaths who dare to learn the “impossible” by bringing together multiple fields. What on earth could be impossible, you ask? And what does any of this have to do with memory? Simple: Writing in a way that is highly likely to survive the death of the sun changes the definition of what memory is right now. And it should change what we predict memory will be like in both the near and distant future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwQiW1XDAvI Encoding Literature Into Life: The Xenotext Christian Bök, often described as a conceptual poet, has run experiments with words for decades. For example, Eunoia is a univocal lipogram. That means, in each chapter, Bök used only words containing one of the vowels. This is a constraint, and it leads to lines like, “Awkward grammar appals a craftsman.” And “Writing is inhibiting.” There are other “programs” or constraints Bök used to construct the poem. As a result, you hear and feel the textures of your own mother tongue in a completely new way as you read the poem. But for The Xenotext project, Bök wondered if it would be possible to discover the rules and constraints that would enable himself, and conceivably other poets and writers, to encode poetry into a living organism. That leads to a fascinating question about memory that many mnemonists have tackled, even if they’re not fully aware of it. Can a poem outlive the civilization that produced it? If so, and humans are no longer around, how would that work? The Science of How Biology Becomes Poetry As far as I can understand, one of the first steps involved imagining the project itself, followed by learning how it could be possible for a poem to live inside of a cell. And which kind of cell would do the job of protecting the poetry? It turns out that there’s an “extremophile” called Deinococcus radiodurans. It was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most radiation resistant bacterium on planet Earth. As a life form, its DNA was sequenced and published in 1999. According to the Wikipedia page on The Xenotext, Bök started conceiving of encoding poetry into DNA and then inserting it into the bacterium circa 2002. But the project is about more than having poetry persist within a cell so it can transmit the work without errors later. It’s a kind of combinatory puzzle in which the bacterium acts as a kind of co-author. In order to pull this project off, Bök needed to enlist the help of scientists while mastering multiple skills many people would not normally consider “writing.” But as we head into the future, we definitely should. Radical Autodidacticism: Reaching New Heights Through Deep Discipline To this day, many educators talk about the importance of being a specialist. But The Xenotext project and the work Bök put into it forces us to redefine what it means to be a self-directed learner in the 21st century. When Bök decided to encode a poem into the DNA of an extremophile bacterium, he didn’t just “dabble” in science or explore various interests as a multipotentialite. Nor did he read a few pop-sci books and expect an organism to write a poem in return. No, he spent many years studying genomic and proteomic engineering. He coded his own computer program to help him “unearth” the poetry, all while writing grants and collaborating with multiple experts. The Skill Stack If you’re a lifelong learner with big dreams, it’s useful to examine how people with autodidactic and polymathic personality traits operate. One of the first skills is to allow yourself to dream big. Giving oneself permission like this might not seem like a skill. But since we can model any polymath or other person who inspires us, you probably won’t be surprised that many of the most inspiring polymaths regularly daydream. Picking a dream and pursuing it despite any obstacles is also a skill. And once you’ve got a project, the next step is to take a cue from a polymath like Elon Musk and break your goal down into the most basic principles. No matter how unusual or unlikely your dream, it’s a useful exercise. When it comes to analytical thinking and breaking a goal down so you can start pursuing it, it’s often useful to look at your existing competence. In Bök’s case, I believe he wrote Eunoia by culling words manually from dictionaries over many years. But he couldn’t brute force The Xenotext in that way due to all the biological chemistry involved, so he had to become what you might think of as a computational linguist. My point is not to diminish the originality of this project in any way. But I think it’s helpful to recognize that The Xenotext is not wildly divorced from the skills Bök already had. It’s an evolution that draws from them. There’s also the skill of what Waqas Ahmed calls synesthetic thinking in his book, The Polymath. Not to be mistaken with synesthesia, synesthetic thinking involves imagining an outcome through at least one other sense. In Bök’s case, The Xenotext involves imagining the use of living beings other than human as being part of art. And he has described the possibility that his work could reach “a sufficiently intelligent civilization that has fast computers and smart cryptographers.” This is the skill of sensing beyond our own species and taking the risk of trying to reach them. Even if we’re long gone. We Need Deathless Memory Now, I have a confession to make. One of the many reasons I’m so fascinated by The Xenotext is that my memory is incredibly weak. That’s why I use mnemonics with such passion, including for memorizing poetry. Recently, I had the chance to interview Christian Bök, who you can probably tell by now, I consider to be one of the most rigorous intellects alive. And right in the middle of the interview, I started reciting one of his books from Book I of The Xenotext. For all the mnemonics in the world, I choked. Now, sometimes, this happens just because I have mouth problems and things get a bit sticky. Other times, it’s exhaustion and yet other times, I manage to recite poems with no problem at all. I’m mentioning this human moment in my career as a mnemonist not because I have a deep need to confess. No, this fragile, ephemeral human moment while talking about encoding and retrieving information perfectly from its placement within a living cell suggests the possibility that life really can be the most durable storage device in the universe. And to see this project come to fruition after all the years Bök pushed through multiple struggles inspires me in countless ways. For one thing, Bök’s project strikes me as the ultimate memory strategy. Was Poetry the Original Hard Drive? As Bök reminded me during our discussion, poetry was a memory technology long before writing existed. Rhythm, rhyme, and meter were engineering tools used to ensure information survived the “game of telephone” across generations. In Bök’s words: “We certainly owe every great epic story of the sort like the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Iliad… stories that were intended, of course, to transmit important cultural information over long periods of time. We need poets to be able to create that work and make it memorable enough… to persist over time.” And it is in this context that Christian Bök realized something terrifying: “There’s nothing that we’ve built so far on the planet Earth that would probably last more than a few tens of billions of years at most.” Until his work on The Xenotext succeeded, we have had nothing to rely on apart from our brains assisted by techniques like the Memory Palace, or silicon prostheses. But the computers and servers we now use to store our collective memory are just as subject to rot as paper. Even our homes would be ground into “an almost undetectable layer of geological dust” in just a few million years. So Bök’s selection of a deathless bacterium isn’t just a petri dish stunt. By choosing a specific bacterium that is “widely regarded as one of the most unkillable things ever to have evolved on the planet Earth,” Bök has created a memory inside a “message in a bottle thrown into an enormous ocean” that might actually survive the death of our sun. How to Develop Your Own Polymathic Persistence  Reading this, you might be thinking, “I’m just a student,” or “I’m just a writer.” Bök could have thought that too. As he told me: “My assumption was that I’ve got training in English literature… Obviously, in order to embark upon such a project, I had to acquire a whole set of new skills, familiarize myself with a lot of very difficult discourses.” And so he made the decision to step outside of his lane, joining other innovators who have done the same. But how do you engage in a project that takes decades without burning out? Bök gave me three specific clues you can apply to your own learning journey. One: Embrace the Unknown Bök told me that if he had known how hard the project would be, he might not have started. He called this his “saving grace,” yet how many times do we turn away from our dreams because we don’t know the size of the mountain. Nelson Dellis told me something similar once about memory training. He’s a memory champion, but also a climber who has summited Everest. He said you don’t have to worry about whether the top of the mountain is there or not. Just focus on where you’re going to place your hands next. Two: Focus on Incremental Achievement Even as Bök’s project threw new obstacles at him, he told me: “I gave myself accomplishments or achievements that were incremental, that I knew I could probably fulfill, and would embark upon those doable tasks in an effort to acquire the required skill set in order to accomplish the remainder of these tasks.” In other words, he stacked small, doable wins on top of each other. And kept stacking until he had built a ladder to the impossible. Three: Tunnel Through the Noise Bök was candid about some of the loneliness on the path of the polymath. Sadly, he noted: This project, especially, has been beleaguered with all kinds of obstruction and difficulty that were added to the already difficult task at hand and the improbable kinds of risks that I had to adopt in order to be able to accomplish it. His advice having pushed through and made it to the other side? “If you’re going through hell, keep going. Don’t stop, because otherwise, you’re in hell… Just keep going, try to tunnel through.” Bök's work definitely makes a big statement when it comes to 21st century poetry. But for me, it's also a statement about memory and human potential. The Xenotext challenges us to stop thinking of computers as something that has eclipsed the human brain as the ultimate storage and retrieval device. It places our attention squarely back on the relationship between poetry and life, and the aspects of language that were in so many ways already a technology “infecting” our cells. If you want to become a polymath and enjoy a legacy that lasts, you must be willing to endure what Bök described as “36 different side quests” of complex projects, you must be willing to look at subjects and skills that seem “impossible” and learn them anyway. Ready to start your own “impossible” learning project? I have a guide that will help you develop your own curriculum: This Self-Education Blueprint will help you transform scattered curiosity into tightly interwoven levels of expertise. That way, the knowledge you accumulate gets put to use, and above all, helps others too.

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Nelson Dellis ( @NelsonDellis ) is a 6x USA Memory Champion and one of the leading memory experts in the world. SPONSORS https://butcherbox.com/danny - Get free turkey or ham in your first box, or choose ground beef for life - PLUS $20 off your first order. https://www.ridge.com/dannyjones - Use code DANNYJONES for 10% off Ridge. http://hexclad.com/danny - Find your forever cookware & get 10% off Hexclad. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS Nelson's YouTube channel: @NelsonDellis https://www.instagram.com/nelzor https://www.nelsondellis.com FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Becoming a memory expert 04:09 - Memorization techniques in Ancient Greece 07:29 - Origins of the memory palace technique 17:54 - How memory competitions work 24:05 - How to remember what you read 31:39 - Countries with the best memories 36:01 - Ancient memory techniques 45:05 - Memory isn't stored in the brain 01:01:14 - Training for remote viewing 01:14:50 - Dalia Burgoin & explanation for remote viewing 01:22:37 - Faking memory & psionic abilities 01:30:39 - Bijay Shahi & memorizing books 01:42:06 - Psychic abilities that everyone has 01:49:03 - DMT & memory 01:54:57 - Live remote viewing demonstration 02:16:09 - Itzahk Bentov & the bell curve of consciousness 02:25:25 - Sky watching with the Bledsoes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In episode 578 of Lawyerist Podcast, six-time USA Memory Champion and Grand Master of Memory Nelson Dellis shares practical strategies to strengthen recall, sharpen focus, and build a healthier brain. Far from the myth of “photographic memory,” Nelson explains how anyone can improve memory using techniques like memory palaces, visualization, and storytelling.  For lawyers, better memory means stronger courtroom performance, sharper deposition prep, and the ability to remember case law, client details, and names with confidence in moments where every word matters. Nelson also highlights how memory training reduces stress, supports long-term brain health, and helps professionals stay present in high-stakes moments.  Learn about actionable memory improvement techniques with insights on why training your brain matters more than ever in today's fast-paced legal and technological world.    Listen to our other episodes on memory and mental performance: #405: The Diverse Ways People Think, with Temple Grandin Apple | Spotify | LTN #427: Better Decisions, Less Fatigue, with Nika Kabiri Apple | Spotify | LTN #560: Stop Doing Everything Yourself! Unlock Your Law Firm's True Potential, with Leticia DeSuze Apple | Spotify | LTN   Links from the episode:Nelsondellis.com  Remember It!  Paxton.ai    If today's podcast resonates with you and you haven't read The Small Firm Roadmap Revisited yet, get the first chapter right now for free! Looking for help beyond the book? See if our coaching community is right for you.   Access more resources from Lawyerist at lawyerist.com.    Chapters:  0:00 – Introduction   7:50 – Legal Tech Spotlight: Paxton AI for Lawyers 17:56 – Meet Nelson Dellis: Memory Champion & Author 23:19 – How Anyone Can Improve Memory 27:40 – Visualization, Storytelling & Review Basics 33:42 – The Memory Palace Technique Explained 36:36 – Digital Tools vs. Training Your Brain 41:25 – Memory, Mindfulness & Staying Present 44:58 – Practical Memory Training for Lawyers 

In episode 578 of Lawyerist Podcast, six-time USA Memory Champion and Grand Master of Memory Nelson Dellis shares practical strategies to strengthen recall, sharpen focus, and build a healthier brain. Far from the myth of “photographic memory,” Nelson explains how anyone can improve memory using techniques like memory palaces, visualization, and storytelling.  For lawyers, better memory means stronger courtroom performance, sharper deposition prep, and the ability to remember case law, client details, and names with confidence in moments where every word matters. Nelson also highlights how memory training reduces stress, supports long-term brain health, and helps professionals stay present in high-stakes moments.  Learn about actionable memory improvement techniques with insights on why training your brain matters more than ever in today's fast-paced legal and technological world.    Listen to our other episodes on memory and mental performance: #405: The Diverse Ways People Think, with Temple Grandin Apple | Spotify | LTN #427: Better Decisions, Less Fatigue, with Nika Kabiri Apple | Spotify | LTN #560: Stop Doing Everything Yourself! Unlock Your Law Firm's True Potential, with Leticia DeSuze Apple | Spotify | LTN   Links from the episode:Nelsondellis.com  Remember It!  Paxton.ai    If today's podcast resonates with you and you haven't read The Small Firm Roadmap Revisited yet, get the first chapter right now for free! Looking for help beyond the book? See if our coaching community is right for you.   Access more resources from Lawyerist at lawyerist.com.    Chapters:  0:00 – Introduction   7:50 – Legal Tech Spotlight: Paxton AI for Lawyers 17:56 – Meet Nelson Dellis: Memory Champion & Author 23:19 – How Anyone Can Improve Memory 27:40 – Visualization, Storytelling & Review Basics 33:42 – The Memory Palace Technique Explained 36:36 – Digital Tools vs. Training Your Brain 41:25 – Memory, Mindfulness & Staying Present 44:58 – Practical Memory Training for Lawyers  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Episode 225 of Growing Pains with Nicholas Flores, 6x USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis shares his journey from YouTube to mastering memory techniques and tackling Mount Everest. He dives into the physical and mental challenges of high-altitude climbing, the power of memory skills in everyday life, and the risks/rewards of AI.   You can find Nelson and his work online (@nelsondellis.com), on YouTube (@NelsonDellis) and on Instagram (@nelzor).   06/30/2025

4x USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis talks about his love of climbing mountains and his attempt to climb Mount Everest. Thanks to expert teacher ShaoLan, he learns how to say it in Chinese. ✨ BIG NEWS ✨ Our brand new Talk Chineasy App, is now live on the App Store! Free to download and perfect for building your speaking confidence from Day 1. portaly.cc/chineasy Visit our website for more info about the app.

An unmissable episode in which four-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis returns to share the secret to remembering Chinese words first time around! ShaoLan puts his theory to the test. ✨ BIG NEWS ✨ Our brand new Talk Chineasy App, is now live on the App Store! Free to download and perfect for building your speaking confidence from Day 1. portaly.cc/chineasy Visit our website for more info about the app.

Four-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis talks to ShaoLan about how he first started competing in memory competitions and learns how to say "competition" in Chinese. ✨ BIG NEWS ✨ Our brand new Talk Chineasy App, is now live on the App Store! Free to download and perfect for building your speaking confidence from Day 1. portaly.cc/chineasy Visit our website for more info about the app.

What is the easiest way to remember all these new Chinese words you're learning? Cue the four-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis, who tells ShaoLan the secrets to remembering. Also, learn how to say "I forgot" as well as "I remember." ✨ BIG NEWS ✨ Our brand new Talk Chineasy App, is now live on the App Store! Free to download and perfect for building your speaking confidence from Day 1. portaly.cc/chineasy Visit our website for more info about the app.

Learn the most affectionate way of referring to your better half (the words for husband and wife) thanks to ShaoLan and four-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis. ✨ BIG NEWS ✨ Our brand new Talk Chineasy App, is now live on the App Store! Free to download and perfect for building your speaking confidence from Day 1. portaly.cc/chineasy Visit our website for more info about the app.

Want to Start or Grow a Successful Business? Schedule a FREE 13-Point Assessment with Clay Clark Today At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com   Join Tim Tebow, LIVE and in-person at Clay Clark's December 5th & 6th 2024 Thrivetime Show  Business Workshop!!! Learn Branding, Marketing, SEO, Sales, Workflow Design, Accounting & More. **Request Tickets & See Testimonials At: www.ThrivetimeShow.com  **Request Tickets Via Text At (918) 851-0102   See the Thousands of Success Stories and Millionaires That Clay Clark Has Helped to Produce HERE: https://www.thrivetimeshow.com/testimonials/ Download A Millionaire's Guide to Become Sustainably Rich: A Step-by-Step Guide to Become a Successful Money-Generating and Time-Freedom Creating Business HERE: www.ThrivetimeShow.com/Millionaire   See Thousands of Case Studies Today HERE: www.thrivetimeshow.com/does-it-work/  

Episodes 27-39: Highlights, has our best moments from the past 13 months featuring world-class experts—NYT bestsellers, FBI agents, and Emmy-winning stop-motion animators. Episode Summary: This episode of the Simple Questions Podcast brings you the best moments from the last 13 episodes. We've condensed insightful highlights on topics like the original cowboy boot, memory competitions, and Visual Snow Syndrome. Whether you're a new listener or a loyal fan, this episode offers a perfect snapshot of what our podcast is all about. In this episode we discuss: 00:00 - Introduction 00:29 - Episode 27: Zohr Founder, Komal Choong 04:31 - Episode 28: Threadwood Award-Winning Animators, Alexis Deprey & Scott DaRos 08:25 - Episode 29: Veteran Fighter Pilot, Kurt Dittmer 12:12 - Episode 30: New York Times Bestselling Author, Susan Piver 15:50 - Episode 31: Visual Snow Initiative Co-founder, Paul Domb 20:03 - Episode 32: New York Times Bestselling Author, Erin Jeanne McDowell 22:30 - Episode 33: Retired FBI Special Agent, Donald Albracht 26:20 - Episode 34: Experienced Death Doula, Kacie Gikonyo 30:00 - Episode 35: Hyer Boots CEO, Zach Lawless 32:51 - Episode 36: Retired FBI Section Chief, Tom Nunemaker 37:26 - Episode 37: 5-time USA Memory Champion, Nelson Dellis 39:40 - Episode 38: Author and Book Coach, Jennie Nash 43:53 - Episode 39: World Orienteering Championship Competitor, Tori Borish 45:38 - Conclusion & Closing Remarks This episode includes the track 'RSPN' by Blank & Kytt. The song is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. You can find more of Blank & Kytt's music ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

Episode 37 titled "How Do Memory Champions Train Their Minds?", has 5-time memory champion Nelson Dellis, give his insights on how to memorize information. Episode Summary: This episode features a discussion with Nelson Dellis, a 5-time USA Memory Champion. Nelson is the current world record holder for memorizing a little over 9 decks of cards within 30 minutes, memorizing 907 digits within 30 minutes, and memorizing 235 names in just 15 minutes. Listen as Nelson reveals the strategies that made him an accomplished memory competitor. In this episode we discuss: 00:23 - Introducing Nelson Dellis 02:13 - Discovering Memory Competitions 3:54 - Memory Competitions 6:50 - Understanding Memory 8:26 - Memory Strategies 16:21 - Competition Training 17:46 - Personal Usage 23:42 - Competitive Habits 26:51 - Applications to Aphantasia 33:52 - Flow State 36:01 - Internal Storage 39:57 - Challenges Memorizing 40:54 - Learning More 41:51 - Conclusion Resources: Nelson's Website Hire Nelson as a Memory Coach Nelson's YouTube Channel This episode includes the track 'RSPN' by Blank & Kytt. The song is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. You can find more of Blank & Kytt's music ⁠here⁠.

Can't remember the fourth item on your grocery list? Nelson Dellis, a professional "memory athlete," can remember 100 things or more (though he still may forget the butter). Hear how Dellis learned to memorize lists so long that he became a five-time USA Memory Champion, and how you can use some of his strategies to improve your own memory. Dellis explains how he uses tricks like the "memory palace" and mnemonic devices to recall lengthy lists with perfect accuracy. In an era when cell phones are making memory superfluous, you can regain some of those lost skills by using his techniques. Plus... those rare folks who can never forget a day in their lives.  For more information, transcripts, and all episodes, please visit https://thisisyourbrain.com For more about Weill Cornell Medicine Neurological Surgery, please visit https://neurosurgery.weillcornell.org 

Nelson Dellis, a "memory athlete," can remember 100 things or more (though he still may forget the butter). Hear how Dellis learned to memorize lists so long that he became a five-time USA Memory Champion, and how you can use some of his strategies to improve your own memory. For more information, transcripts, and all episodes, please visit https://thisisyourbrain.com For more about Weill Cornell Medicine Neurological Surgery, please visit https://neurosurgery.weillcornell.org 

4x USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis talks about his love of climbing mountains and his attempt to climb Mount Everest. Thanks to expert teacher ShaoLan, he learns how to say it in Chinese.

An unmissable episode in which four-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis returns to share the secret to remembering Chinese words first time around! ShaoLan puts his theory to the test.

Four-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis talks to ShaoLan about how he first started competing in memory competitions and learns how to say "competition" in Chinese.

Nelson Dellis is a 5x USA Memory Champion now interested in claims about remote viewing. He joins me to discuss and try an experiment.

What is the easiest way to remember all these new Chinese words you're learning? Cue the four-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis, who tells ShaoLan the secrets to remembering. Also, learn how to say "I forgot" as well as "I remember."

What is the easiest way to remember all these new Chinese words you're learning? Cue the four-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis, who tells ShaoLan the secrets to remembering. Also, learn how to say "I forgot" as well as "I remember."

Learn the most affectionate way of referring to your better half (the words for husband and wife) thanks to ShaoLan and four-time USA memory champion Nelson Dellis.

The latest details on the premiere of Beyonce's new film “Renaissance.” Also, Paris Hilton live with Hoda and Jenna to catch up and discuss a new season of her reality show “Paris in Love.” Plus, a sneak peak at the newest Instagram fashion trends for 2024 from Instagram's Head of Fashion Partnerships herself, Eva Chen. And, memory expert Nelson Dellis with some tips on improving and keeping your mind sharp this holiday season. 

The Everything Else Show guest, Nelson Dellis discusses remote viewing, his extreme adventure on Mt Everest and what it is like to be a 5-time US Memory Champion. He explains what Remote Viewing is, and is not. He also goes into some memory tips and when challenged at the end of the show, he memorizes a deck of cards live. This is the part that you may want to watch on video (1:07:00) Show NotesThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5922140/advertisement

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Nelson Dellis, 4x USA Memory Champion teaches you how to memorize anything. Throughout his career, he has been the speaker and presenter of choice for Pepsi, CNN, LivingSocial, etc and he has been featured on CNBC, Wired, Saturday Night Live, CNN, Fast Company & more