Podcasts about Ravenna

Host Matt Trump (fighting a temperamental mic cord) turns his leftover map slides into a full episode on a provocative question: did the barbarians actually destroy Rome, or preserve it? Picking up from last week's Phantom Time detour, he leans on Belgian historian Henri Pirenne and the book Medieval Cities, bought decades ago as an Austin physics grad student, to argue a mainstream but revisionist case. The thesis: the Germanic tribes (Goths, Angles, Saxons, Franks) did not want to burn Rome down. They wanted in, preserving Roman civilization under new rulers, feudalism, and above all the Church, which outlived the state. What truly severed the ancient world, Pirenne argues, was the Arab conquest cutting Christian Europe off from Mediterranean commerce, shifting Europe's center of gravity north. Expect Hagia Sophia, Ravenna mosaics, Justinian, and pointed parallels to whether America is reliving Rome's fall.

In 533, a twenty-eight-year-old general named Belisarius sailed from Constantinople with 15,000 men to reconquer North Africa from the Vandals, a kingdom that had held it for nearly a century since the sack of Rome. The last time the Eastern Empire had attempted the crossing, the entire fleet had been destroyed. Belisarius landed, defeated the Vandal king in two battles, entered Carthage without a fight, sat on the enemy's throne, and was awarded the first proper Roman triumph in five hundred years. Then Justinian sent him to retake Italy with 7,000 troops. He took Sicily, took Naples, took Rome, and held it against a Gothic army that outnumbered him roughly twenty-to-one for over a year, personally leading cavalry charges from the crumbling Aurelian Walls. When the Goths offered him the crown of the Western Roman Empire, he pretended to accept, walked into Ravenna, arrested the Gothic leadership, and shipped them to Constantinople. Italy was Roman again. And Justinian, terrified of the man who had made it possible, recalled him, stripped his command, and never gave him the resources to finish anything again. Today's guests are Matteo and Matthew Storm, the father-and-son hosts of Lost Roman Heroes, who devoted a five-part series and over five hours to the life of Belisarius. We discuss why a man who did more than anyone since Aurelian to restore the Roman Empire has been almost completely erased from popular memory, how the Plague of Justinian and a volcanic winter destroyed everything Belisarius had reconquered, why Procopius wrote two radically contradictory portraits of the same man, and whether Antonina was the most unfairly maligned woman in Byzantine history or one of its most destructive. We look at why Justinian gave the eunuch Narses everything he never gave Belisarius and what that reveals about how empires manage the men they depend on, why the legend of Belisarius blinded and begging in the streets has persisted for fifteen hundred years despite being almost certainly false, and whether a civilization truly dies when its last true believer falls.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Bennett is joined by Julien Laurens & James Horncastle to preview the Serie A season and react to the news of Ronaldinho's return for third tier Ravenna. Spanish football reporter Elizabeth Conway drops by to give the latest on Barcelona's striker search. Plus, Malaga fan Jose Luis Sabatel talks about the club's return to the Spanish top flight. And in Ligue 1, Paul Pogba has left Monaco, but where next for the former Manchester United man? Time Codes: 05:00 - Ronaldinho's return 09:40 - Serie A Preview 27:55 - Barcelona Latest 36:00 - Malaga's La Liga return 44:20 - Paul Pogba 50:50 - Season Predictions

Intervento di Dario Fabbri al Il Festival dei porti che collegano il Mondo tenutosi a Ravenna il 21 maggio 2026.Video originale su YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/ZI6wYBPS-9Q Link a Imperium Podcast - Geopolitica: https://open.spotify.com/show/0PY9nEbUWfye0XEw1cDKIC

Send us Fan MailGolden words can do more than sound beautiful. They can change how you live. We're diving into the life and sermons of St. Peter Chrysologus, the fifth-century Bishop of Ravenna whose preaching earned him the title “Doctor of Homilies” and the nickname “Golden Worded” for a reason: he makes Catholic truth feel close, clear, and doable.We trace who he is, the turbulent world he shepherds, and why his message still hits home in a distracted age. His homilies don't float above real life. They land in kitchens, workplaces, and parishes with vivid images and simple urgency. We talk about the historical pressure in Ravenna, the confusion of heresy and spiritual apathy, and how Chrysologus answers it by weaving Scripture and tradition into a steady path toward holiness.Then we spend time on the heart of his preaching: Eucharistic devotion and the Real Presence. Chrysologus points away from himself and toward the altar, insisting the Eucharist is not a symbol but an encounter with Jesus Christ. We also explore his Marian reverence, his insistence on charity and forgiveness, and his direct call to repentance, confession, and ongoing conversion. If you've been craving a more focused Catholic spiritual life, his “golden words” offer a clean reset: Christ at the center, the sacraments as strength, Our Lady as guide, and the saints as companions.Subscribe for more Catholic teaching and saint stories, share this with a friend who needs encouragement, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show. What's one practice you want to change after listening?Open by Steve Bailey Support the showJourneys of Faith brings you Super Saints PodcastsChat with US 24/7 Ask us anything https://chatting.page/mjxs9aerrtgm3lmpndlcepmbyosntrjnDownload Journeys of Faith App for Iphone or Android FREE https://journeysoffaith.com/pages/download-our-appPlease consider subscribing to this podcast or making a donation to Journeys of Faith Help us Grow!Journeys of Faith is blessed to provide Catholic media, including podcasts and inspirational content, free of charge across multiple media platforms for viewers and listeners around the world. While access to this content remains free, there are significant and continually increasing costs associated with producing, hosting, and distributing these programs. Your support helps us continue sharing the beauty of the Catholic faith with souls everywhere. We want to reach more souls and you can help us do that by becoming a Mission Angel. Make a Donation Any AmountRefer a FriendYou can help us ...

Thursday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time Optional Memorial of St. Peter Chrysologus; 5th century Church Father; he studied under Bishop Cornelius and was ordained Bishop of Ravenna by Pope Sixtus; he was given the name Chrysologus or “golden-worded” by Empress Galla Placidia, daughter of Roman Emperor Theodosius I; he died in 450 Office of Readings and Morning Prayer for 7/30/26 Gospel: Matthew 13:47-53

RDOD — Our Norwegian Viva Mediterranean Trip Report (Part 1): Venice to Athens

How do you keep your heart open in a world that keeps giving you a reason to close it?After enough disappointment, it is easy to become guarded. We've all been hurt. We've all trusted the wrong people. We've all wondered if being compassionate is worth the risk.In this sermon from Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Pastor Jason Barnett explores God's command to "open your hand" and reveals that the real issue isn't our wallets, it is our hearts. Before our hands ever close, our hearts do.Discover how God's generosity toward us through Jesus Christ transforms our hearts so we can become people with open hands, open homes, and open lives.Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

He was a disciple of St Peter, born in Antioch. St Peter took him to Rome (he was bishop of Antioch before being bishop of Rome, so Antioch is as much the 'see of Peter' as is Rome) and made him Bishop of Ravenna. In Ravenna, he healed the wife of the military governor of a grave illness, after which the governor and his household confessed Christ and were baptized. Apollinarius was able to form a house church in the governor's home, from which he labored for the Gospel for twelve years. Eventually, he was condemned to exile in Illyria for his faith, and began a life of missionary travel in the Balkans, travelling as far as the Danube. After twelve years of this work, he was driven back to Italy by the hostility of some of the pagans. He was received with joy by the people of Ravenna, which aroused the envy of the pagan elders, who denounced him to the Emperor Vespasian. When the elders asked permission to kill Apollinarius, the Emperor only gave them permission to drive him from the city, wisely saying 'It is not seemly to take revenge on behalf of the gods, for they can themselves be revenged on their enemies if they are angered.' But, in defiance of the Imperial decree, the pagan leaders attacked and killed Apollinarius with knives. His holy relics are preserved in Ravenna, in a church dedicated to him.

24 And there was also a strife amongst them, which of them should seem to be the greater.Facta est autem et contentio inter eos, quis eorum videretur esse major. 25 And he said to them: The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and they that have power over them, are called beneficent.Dixit autem eis : Reges gentium dominantur eorum : et qui potestatem habent super eos, benefici vocantur. 26 But you not so: but he that is the greater among you, let him become as the younger; and he that is the leader, as he that serveth.Vos autem non sic : sed qui major est in vobis, fiat sicut minor : et qui praecessor est, sicut ministrator. 27 For which is greater, he that sitteth at table, or he that serveth? Is it not he that sitteth at table? But I am in the midst of you, as he that serveth:Nam quis major est, qui recumbit, an qui ministrat? nonne qui recumbit? Ego autem in medio vestrum sum, sicut qui ministrat : 28 And you are they who have continued with me in my temptations:vos autem estis, qui permansistis mecum in tentationibus meis. 29 And I dispose to you, as my Father hath disposed to me, a kingdom;Et ego dispono vobis sicut disposuit mihi Pater meus regnum, 30 That you may eat and drink at my table, in my kingdom: and may sit upon thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.ut edatis et bibatis super mensam meam in regno meo, et sedeatis super thronos judicantes duodecim tribus Israel.St Apollinaris, a disciple of St Peter, came with the latter from Antioch to Rome. He was consecrated Bishop of Ravenna and preached the Gospel of Christ amidst many persecutions, including prison and exile. The Apostle of Ravenna was beaten to death A.D. 79.

Kapitelsmesse aus dem Kölner Dom am Donnerstag der 16. Woche im Jahreskreis. Nichtgebotener Gedenktag des Heiligen Apollinaris, Bischof von Ravenna, Märtyrer (außer in der Stadt Köln; in der Weltkirche am 20. Juli) / Übertragung der Reliquien der Heiligen Drei Könige (außer in Düsseldorf). Zelebrant: Domdechant Robert Kleine.  

Was our first 10-night cruise on the Norwegian Viva everything we hoped it would be?

What if the greatest threat to the church isn't false teaching but putting ourselves first?In one the shortest books of the Bible, the Apostle John introduces us to a man named Diotrephes. We don't know much about him, but one sentence says a lot about him: he loved to be first. That desire didn't just affect him, it damaged relationships, divided the church, and pushed people away from Christ.In this message from 3 John 9-11, Pastor Jason Barnett explores how pride quietly turns the Church of Christ into the Church of Me. We'll discover why the real issue isn't simply church leadership, but the throne of the human heart. When self sits on the throne, Jesus becomes a tool, the church becomes a means, and people become obstacles.Whether you've been hurt by church conflict, struggle with pride, or simply want to keep Jesus at the center of your life, this message offers both honest truth and the hope of the gospel.Jesus didn't come to build our kingdoms, He came to invite us to into His.Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

Send us Fan MailA first-century city packed with temples, power, and suspicion meets a single unshakable missionary. We follow Saint Apollinaris of Ravenna, remembered as a disciple of Saint Peter and the first bishop of Ravenna, as he steps into a world where preaching the gospel is not a metaphor, it is a risk you feel in your bones.We talk through the heart of his apostolic mission: how he leads like a real shepherd by staying close to his people, teaching house by house, and carrying a quiet confidence rooted in Christ. Along the way are traditions of miracles and healings that spark conversions, but also the darker side of early Christian history, riots, brutal beatings, and exile. What keeps Apollinaris moving is not denial of fear, but a steady choice to return, serve, and forgive.His story ends where so many early Church stories do, with martyrdom, but the episode refuses to treat it as defeat. We trace how his sacrifice strengthens the Christian community, shapes Ravenna's identity, and lives on through devotion, pilgrimage, relics, and the Basilica of Saint Apollinarius. If you want a faith story that builds real courage, deepens Catholic devotion, and shows what leadership looks like under pressure, this journey delivers. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with the line that challenged you most.Open by Steve Bailey Support the showJourneys of Faith brings you Super Saints PodcastsChat with US 24/7 Ask us anything https://chatting.page/mjxs9aerrtgm3lmpndlcepmbyosntrjnDownload Journeys of Faith App for Iphone or Android FREE https://journeysoffaith.com/pages/download-our-appPlease consider subscribing to this podcast or making a donation to Journeys of Faith Help us Grow!Journeys of Faith is blessed to provide Catholic media, including podcasts and inspirational content, free of charge across multiple media platforms for viewers and listeners around the world. While access to this content remains free, there are significant and continually increasing costs associated with producing, hosting, and distributing these programs. Your support helps us continue sharing the beauty of the Catholic faith with souls everywhere. We want to reach more souls and you can help us do that by becoming a Mission Angel. Make a Donation Any AmountRefer a FriendYou can help us ...

Today's saint, Apollinaris was important in the early church in Ravenna. St. Apollinaris shows us what it means to be holy and humble.

Monday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time Optional Memorial of St. Apollinaris; born in Antioch, and became a disciple of St. Peter; his successor as bishop of Ravenna, St. Peter Chrysologus, preached a sermon in his honor in the 5th century, recalling how in the Church’s infancy, St. Apollinaris showed deep faith and dedication in the face of punishment; two beautiful churches in the onetime important Byzantine city of Ravenna are dedicated to him; he died in 79 A.D. Office of Readings and Morning Prayer for 7/20/26 Gospel: Matthew 12:38-42

Full Text of Readings Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 395 The Saint of the day is Saint Apollinaris Saint Apollinaris' Story According to tradition, Saint Peter sent Saint Apollinaris to Ravenna, Italy, as its first bishop. His preaching of the Good News was so successful that the pagans there beat him and drove him from the city. He returned, however, and was exiled a second time. After preaching in the area surrounding Ravenna, he entered the city again. After being cruelly tortured, he was put on a ship heading to Greece. Pagans there caused him to be expelled to Italy, where he went to Ravenna for a fourth time. He died from wounds received during a savage beating at Classis, a suburb of Ravenna. A beautiful basilica honoring him was built there in the sixth century. Reflection Following Jesus involves risks—sometimes the supreme risk of life itself. Martyrs are people who would rather accept the risk of death than deny the cornerstone of their whole life: faith in Jesus Christ. Everyone will die eventually—the persecutors and those persecuted. The question is what kind of a conscience people will bring before the Lord for judgment. Remembering the witness of past and present martyrs can help us make the often small sacrifices that following Jesus today may require.Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Have you ever felt like you have to clean up your life before you could come to church? Or maybe someone made you feel like you didn't belong because of your past, your appearance, or your mistakes.Jesus tells a very different story.In this message from Matthew 22:1-14, Pastor Nicole Barnett explores the Parable of the Wedding Banquet and of its most misunderstood moments: the guest without wedding clothes. Rather than teaching Christians to stand at the door deciding who belongs, Jesus reminds His followers that our calling is to carry the invitation while trusting God to transform the people He welcomes.If you've experienced church hurt, struggled with feelings of unworthiness, or wondered whether God's invitation is really for you, this sermon offers both hope and challenges. It also calls believers to exchange gatekeeping for grace, remembering that the King never asked us to inspect His guests--only to invite them.The invitation is open.Will you trust the King enough to accept it... and extend it to someone else?Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

Hermann Ebbinghaus is remembered mostly for discovering the forgetting curve. Open any psychology textbook, any blog devoted to a flashcard app or any study-tips listicle, and you’ll find his name alongside a distinctive graph. Memory expert Tony Buzan called it the most important graph in the world. That’s because its iconic line shows memory plummeting within hours of learning something new, then flattening out over days. Countless discussions of how to reduce forgetting give you the same tidy recommendations. Usually they tell you to review your study materials at intervals, just at the point you’re starting to forget. That way, many authors promise, you’ll beat the curve. The problem, just one of many you’ll discover today, is this: Ebbinghaus didn’t discover the forgetting curve. He discovered his forgetting curve. He was one man, testing his own memory, on one kind of material, using one method. And although the forgetting curve is indeed one of the most repeatable and reproducible principles in the history of scientific studies, reproducibility in laboratory settings does not mean you’ll stop forgetting by using the conventional recommendations. Besides, here’s something almost no one else will tell you: The deepest principles the Ebbinghaus experiments revealed were already written down more than two thousand years earlier by Aristotle. You’ll find them in a short treatise that describes something remarkably close to using a Memory Palace in combination with the same kind of serial positioning Ebbinghaus described as a means for reducing forgetting. So today I’m going to cover a few aspects of the forgetting curve all serious users of memory techniques need to know. These are points I’ve been putting off writing about for a long time. However, a few emails and comments I’ve received over the past few years have convinced me that now is finally the time. Especially since I’ve spent decades memorizing poetry, scripture, mantras, complex terms, the names of people from various backgrounds and vocabulary and phrases in multiple languages. And I’ve done this all while teaching thousands of students to do the same. From where I sit as a practitioner, the forgetting curve is real, useful and badly misunderstood. But treated correctly, it’s an invitation to success. First, however, for the uninitiated, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about the definition of this term. That way, you’ll be able to discover your own curve and work on reducing its impact in your learning life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_qwUkfO65M   What Is the Forgetting Curve? In 1885, Ebbinghaus published Über das Gedächtnis (Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology). In this monumental work, he reported years of experiments he had run on a single subject: himself. He memorized lists of sinnlose Silben, the German term for nonsense syllables. These were consonant-vowel-consonant combinations like ZOF and KEB. After committing lists of such invented words, he then tested how much effort it took to relearn them after various delays. Notice two things. First, these were invented words. Nothing with any meaning. Second, pay attention to the word relearn. Ebbinghaus did not measure memory only by asking whether he could reproduce an entire list perfectly. He also measured what he called “savings” in the context of relearning. This study goes quite deep into the nuances and implications of this particular concept for memory. To get the concept in brief, suppose it initially took you 20 repetitions to learn something. If it took only 10 repetitions to relearn it later, some trace of the original learning clearly remained. Your inability to reproduce the information perfectly would not mean the memory had disappeared completely. Keep this idea of “savings” in mind. It matters more than the famous graph, and we’ll return to it when I show you what happened to a long Sanskrit mantra I intentionally abandoned for years. It also connects to some concepts in memory introduced by Richard Semon and studied more recently by Dr. Paul Garrett in relation to the role of fuzzy memory. Back to Ebbinghaus, the  result of his experiments is what we now call the forgetting curve. It shows how retention drops steeply at first, then the decline slows. He also documented what we now call the spacing effect. It describes how reviews distributed over time preserve more in long-term memory than the same number of reviews crammed together. All of what Ebbinghaus found replicates, so his science is not in question here. What’s in question is what you and I should actually do with his findings.  And that’s where things really start to get interesting. Ebbinghaus Was an Early n=1 Memorizer Notice what Ebbinghaus actually was: A practitioner running experiments on his own memory. In today’s language, he was doing n=1 self-experimentation. He had skin in the game, memorized real material with his own mind, and measured what happened. I took his actions as both a lesson and an inspiration. It’s just that rather than memorize nonsense (apart from a bit of Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate”), I’ve focused on applying memory techniques to Chinese, scripture, poetry and facts related to law school. But you will never see the results you can achieve by reading about Ebbinghaus. You’ll only see it by memorizing information yourself and paying attention to what happens next. Tony Buzan was great about splitting the difference during his ThinkBuzan seminars. He taught memory techniques, but also had participants draw their own graph of the forgetting curve. Here’s mine: In sum, reading about the forgetting curve while never memorizing anything is like reading about swimming while refusing to get wet. Is There Such a Thing As Too Much Scientific Literacy? Years ago, Harry Lorayne coached me on becoming a successful memory coach. I followed just about everything he said, except one thing. He said, “whatever you do, don’t tell ’em about the science.” The reason I ignored the advice is that: I’m very interested in memory science Studying it has helped me discover many powerful memory activities and brain exercises The only problem I’ve seen is that about a year ago, students of all ages started writing to me in the language of science at an increasing rate. And for many, the various terms and memory statistics available online have created anxiety and perfectionism I don’t think needs to exist. For example, a medical student taking the Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass recently emailed multiple times with worries about whether his review schedule was set to properly combat the “decay function.” Now, obviously, the research on memory genuinely matters. I cite it often and terms like this can be useful for forming a solid practice with using mnemonics. But Lorayne’s warning has started to take on a strange and unexpected sense because something strange happens when the vocabulary of science replaces practice. After all, science is mostly there to describe, not proscribe. We can certainly use scientific findings to improve our practice, but it’s not helpful to let techniques that have been used happily for thousands of years become the source of anxiety thanks to scientific papers. Don’t Let These Terms Interfere With Your Memory Training It’s not only beginners with memory techniques or medical students who would tend towards scientific verbiage when contacting me. I regularly hear from people fluent in the terminology, sometimes with publications to their name. A published researcher wrote me recently and had thoroughly reasoned himself into genuine paradox. Amongst other things, he wanted to know what a trained mnemonist’s memory does “without any technique.” Now, you certainly can get a swimmer to demonstrate what a particular stroke looks like without the water. And in the context of memory training, the question can sound rigorous. But in my view, this kind of question suggests that the researcher has lost contact with the very thing he’s asking about. This is because someone with a trained memory can’t isolate a ‘raw baseline’ without risking cognitive paradox. I would have to reflect on my use of mnemonic methods while not using them. And since he immediately followed-up with a pseudo-scientific claim about photographic memory, I knew he was not taking Ebbinghaus’ n=1 practice as an example by actually using the techniques himself. After all, photographic memory has been thoroughly debunked and I’ve demonstrated many times over that it not only does not exist. The term itself makes zero sense. So this is where some nuance about the forgetting curve is very important to the serious user of memory techniques. No matter who you are, you need to make contact with actual remembering. Aristotle Described the Core Principle Two Thousand Years Ago Actually studying and practicing a wide variety of memory techniques will get you insight far more interesting and impactful than any psychology textbook could hope to provide. In De Memoria et Reminiscentia, Aristotle describes recollection as movement through an ordered series. At one point in the book, he uses a sequence like the letters of the alphabet and gives strikingly practical advice that deeply inspired what I call Recall Rehearsal. This is a form of spaced repetition applied specifically to the Memory Palace technique. As Aristotle puts it, if you forget something, don’t start over from the beginning. Start from the middle of the series and move outward from there. Richard Sorabji, in his landmark study Aristotle on Memory, admits that he doesn’t understand what Aristotle is talking about in this passage. That’s a courageous confession, as many scholars would just make something up or speculate. As a practitioner of memory techniques with decades of experience, I can tell you what I believe Aristotle is describing. It’s either: An alphabetically labeled Memory Palace An early description of serial positioning and spaced repetition Or a description that provided the inspiration for creating this kind of Memory Palace practice. It’s genuinely difficult to say which. But either way, the principle and how it reduces unwanted forgetting is unmistakable to anyone who has actually run the technique. In case you have never used a Memory Palace, it involves ordered locations, deliberate starting points, and strategic entry into the middle of a sequence as part of several spaced repetition patterns that establish substantial retention. Modern Practitioners Who Know How to Beat the Forgetting Curve  You can trace this practitioner lineage forward through Peter of Ravenna, Jacobus Publicius, Robert Fludd, Giordano Bruno, and in our own time, mnemonists like myself and Lynne Kelly (especially in her book, Memory Craft). Our combination of fieldwork and daily personal practice in particular sets the standard for studying these techniques. Certainly Frances Yates deserves credit for reviving scholarly interest in mnemonics through her book, The Art of Memory, but she acknowledged never practicing the techniques herself. Frankly, it shows. Her treatment of memory wheels, for example, creates the impression they were used as Memory Palaces, which is possible but unlikely. Practice changes what you can see in the Memory Palace books you read. Why does the Aristotle passage matter for the forgetting curve? Because his advice that you should “start from the middle” of a sequence of information you keep forgetting is serial positioning in action. And serial positioning is the key to defeating the curve. My Own Forgetting Curve, Observed in the Wild The reason I’ve never tried to reproduce Ebbinghaus’s experiment formally by memorizing nonsense is precisely because you see advice on how to beat the forgetting curve thousands of years before he conducted his research. That said, I have watched my own forgetting curve operate over years, and the observations I’ve made are instructive. For example, I worked daily with one long-form mantra built from a few dozen Sanskrit phrases for many years: the Song Celestial. Then I deliberately let it lapse with no rehearsal at all for approximately two years. I was not as deliberate as I could have been in terms of tracking like Ebbinghaus would have. But since the research is so heavily reproducible and we know why Memory Palaces work, I was happy to be casual about it. When I finally came back to this mantra, I was shocked by how much I could still recall. The forgetting curve had certainly caused some “decay.” But it was nothing like what Ebbinghaus’s graph would predict for material of that length after that much neglect. In Ebbinghaus’s own terms, the “savings” were enormous. And the relearning cost me a fraction of the original effort, because the trace was never gone. It was waiting for me. The question is, why? After all, I can’t sing songs I used to know by heart when I was a kid? Part of the answer is that I never stopped reciting the other three Sanskrit mantras I have memorized. They have very similar meanings, and in many cases, some of the same words. The meaning element in particular suggests that I partly benefitted from stronger retention due to what scientists call context dependence. Because I never left the realm of reciting Sanskrit entirely, that must explain the higher rate of retention. Compare this to my previous career as a Film Studies professor. I hardly watch movies anymore, let alone read theoretical books about them or lecture for weeks on end during a traditional university semester. The lack of context has accelerated the force of the forgetting curve and deskilled my chops as a film scholar. Memory Palaces: Structured Spaced Retrieval Systems That Beat Forgetting Apart from context-dependent memory benefits, another reason I could recall so much of a mantra despite not reciting it for years has to do with how I memorized it: using the Memory Palace technique. Not as a party trick, but as a structured spaced retrieval system. To learn more about how it works, check out my Complete Guide to the Memory Palace technique. In brief, the key is to place information tethered to associations along the stations of a Memory Palace and then practice Recall Rehearsal following patterns no software like Anki can guide you through. Titus Andronicus and Recall Rehearsal in Action My favorite demonstration where I show you Recall Rehearsal in action involves Shakespeare, specifically a passage from Titus Andronicus I memorized for my case study of how Anthony Hopkins memorizes his scripts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhjIkGu32CA I’ve retained the passage ever since running it through Recall Rehearsal with minimal repetition. Or better said, I repeat these lines often, but now it’s performance, not just recitation. But the interesting thing isn’t really that I can recite this passage. Anyone can chain words together through brute force rote learning and recite lines like these forward. The proof of the power of Recall Rehearsal is that I can recite the lines out of order: Jumping between sections Running lines in reverse Reciting the odd-numbered lines and then the even numbered lines It’s now probably my favorite demonstration because it makes the power of serial positioning visible. Even better: I’m not alone in enjoying the benefits of improved retention. Magnetic Memory Method Students Who Have Bent the Curve I’ve watched this play out in my students for years, and two cases capture it especially well. Jeannie Koh spent years learning Koine Greek using rote learning during years of what she said were filled with tears and pain. But after learning to encode with Memory Palaces, she found memorizing “much less painful, and much more enduring over time,” now recalling whole passages in that ancient language with an ease she says feels almost suspicious. Same brain, same language, two encoding methods, two completely different forgetting curves. She’s a one-person controlled experiment. For more success stories, including physicians who used these methods to retrieve high-volume, complex information under exam pressure months after encoding it, check out my testimonials page. The pattern is always the same: the forgetting curve is not destiny. So long as you’re using memory techniques optimally, you can resist it, if not beat it. Should You Reproduce Ebbinghaus’s Experiment? One problem I see time and again is that many people want the exact steps needed to measure their progress. Especially when they hear me discuss how rigorously I use journaling as part of my memory activities. I’m sorry, but the demand for “exact steps” is mostly a desire installed by content marketing. The truth is that there isn’t one exact path. There are several and the real lesson in Ebbinghaus’ story is that you need to get involved in creating your own. You can journal manually by simply memorizing real words or nonsense words. Note the dates, and test yourself over time. What matters is that you work inside projects that matter to you. Whether that’s language learning, poetry, mantras, scripture, use a memory journal to help you test what holds and what fades as you use memory techniques. If you’re competitive, you can study how memory athletes use journaling to sharpen their game. My podcast conversation with Johannes Mallow, in which he explains how journaling improved his competitive standing, will be useful in that regard. Often Forgetting Is Actually a Crisis of Commitment If there’s one thing I’ve noticed over the years, it’s that people often take on learning projects connected to lives they do not actually want. They study for a qualification because they believe they should, or to please a family member. As a result, they struggle to memorize information for a job they already suspect will make them miserable. Then they interpret their resistance as a defective memory, when the deeper problem is in fact a conflict of purpose. I’ve had to face this in my own law-school experiment. I could not know in advance exactly what studying law would involve or how well the field would suit me. The saving grace is that trying it has given me greater insight into what’s involved. But now that I’ve seen some of the field from within, I have to ask a different question: Just because I am a mnemonist who can memorize legal Latin quickly and an upcoming presentation I have to give does not mean I must continue pursuing every possible outcome associated with the degree. The ability to remember something does not prove that it deserves years of my life. As I know from my studies in polymathy, memory mastery must include the development of careful selection parameters. In other words, one of the best “meta level” ways to beat the forgetting curve is to decide whether the material deserves a place in your memory at all. If you’d like help picking what to memorize on top of using the Memory Palace technique and Recall Rehearsal, my new training “The System” can help you pick a first project you actually care about. Once you have a learning goal you love, keep a journal as you memorize. Not to reproduce a nineteenth-century experiment, but to watch yourself break the forgetting curve, one piece of info at a time.

Have you ever spent years trying to earn someone's love or approval?Maybe it was a parent. Maybe it was a spouse. Maybe it was a coach, teacher, or boss. You kept thinking: "Maybe this time...", "Maybe this accomplishment", "Maybe this conversation", or "Maybe this success" would finally be enough.Leah knew that feeling.In Genesis 29:31-35, Leah spends years hoping Jacob will finally notice her, love her, and choose her. But what happens when the person whose approval you've been chasing never changes?Pastor Jason explores one of the most heartbreaking stories in Genesis and reveals the freedom that comes when we stop building our identity on someone else's acceptance and discover the love God has already given us through Jesus Christ.If you've ever struggled with rejection, people-pleasing, emotional neglect, or the exhausting pursuit of approval, this message is for you.The greatest freedom isn't found when someone finally gives you the love you've been chasing; it's found when you realize God already loves you.  Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

"But now my will and my desire were turned, as wheels that move in equilibrium, by love that moves the sun and other stars" - Dante Alighieri, Canto XXXIII"Welcome to Episode #146:Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy Divina Commedia over many years and completed the work late in his life. He died a few years later in Ravenna, Italy. Many find comfort in his words, “In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost” - Dante AlighieriI contemplate his exile from Florence and his journey as a writer while musing over my own sense of being “in the woods” in recent times and having to forge a new path. It seems his profound words were written for the generations and the centuries that would follow. Yes, there are words that transport and there are some things already written in the stars. Enjoy this episode,Michelle xShownotes A Writer in Italy InstagramSubstack - At My TableMichelle's BooksMusical Scores by Richard JohnstonA White Chalk ProductionA Writer in Italy is about travel and life. A place to share the beautiful travel journeys and the discoveries along the way. Italy has many attractions - art, design, architecture, history and the wonderful food culture. Michelle shares her love of books on Italy and the places and regions that have inspired her along the way.Michelle started 'A Writer in Italy Podcast' to share personal stories and the love of books on Italy that would lead to beautiful conversations with people and like minded souls who share a deep love affair with Italian Culture and the country as a place of beauty and spiritual renewal.Michelle Johnston lives in Australia with her family.© 2026  A Writer In Italy - travel, books, art and lifeMusic Composed by Richard Johnston © 2026Support the show

Are you exhausted from fighting? Maybe it's conflict at home, tension at work, temptation, anxiety, bitterness, or old wounds that just won't heal. The truth is, everyone is fighting something. But followers of Jesus are not called to fight the same way the world does.In this message from 2 Corinthians 10:1-6, Pastor Jason Barnett explores Paul's powerful military imagery to reveal a surprising truth: Christians do bear arms, but not the weapons the world expects. Instead of  anger, revenge, manipulation, or intimidation, God has given His people spiritual weapons empowered by the Holy Spirit to tear down strongholds, overcome lies, and bring every thought into obedience to Christ.Discover why the cross looked like weakness to the world but became God' greatest victory, and how belonging to another kingdom changes the way you fight every battle.Whether you're struggling with broken relationships, spiritual warfare, unforgiveness, fear, or discouragement, this biblical message will encourage you to lay down the world's weapons and take up the ones Christ has given you.Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

When Jesus walked along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, He didn't find men looking for a new career. He found ordinary fishermen with jobs, responsibilities, and plans. Yet with two simple words,"Follow Me", everything changed.In this message from Matthew 4:18-22, Pastor Jason Barnett explores how Jesus still interrupts ordinary lives and calls ordinary people to extraordinary purposes. Discover why following Jesus isn't about having the whole map, but trusting the One who is leading.If you've ever felt too busy, too broken, too ordinary, or even too late, this message is for you.Jesus still walks along the shores of ordinary lives and calls ordinary people to extraordinary purposes.Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

I just sat my first open book exam, the format where you’re allowed to bring your notes. You can even bring the physical textbook if you want, a testing format that was totally new to me. Should be easy, right? That’s what your tricky examiners want you to think. And I know not to fall for it. I have a PhD in Humanities, two MA degrees and taught at three universities around the world. During my years of teaching, I wrote, administered and graded more exams and assignments than I can count. Now, back in school as I near my 50s, I’m working on a second Bachelor’s degree. This time in law so I can develop an exact understanding for what law memorization is all about. For my first exam, I scored “High Distinction.” That’s the top grade here in Australia. But here’s something to consider that probably no one else will tell you about open book exams: There was one question I got wrong. And it wasn’t even the one I thought I’d missed. This “error” suggests that having the textbook wouldn’t have saved me even if I’d brought it with me. No, the problem was caused by the open book format itself. In this experience-based guide, I’ll show you what this kind of exam actually tests, and how to prepare properly. That way you can avoid the same recycled study advice just about everyone else gives online. https://youtu.be/_orag2IBwbA What an Open Book Exam Actually Tests (It Isn’t What Most Guides Tell You) First, I have to tell you that I was initially surprised that open book testing exists in law school at all. Especially since to pay for my earlier university studies I took some high-stakes exams for jobs I worked to help pay my tuition at York University. For example, I worked as a store detective and having open book testing for the required security guard license would have been absurd. No employer wants a guard who needs to flip through a textbook to determine whether or not they’ve witnessed a crime, after all. But now that I’ve taken my first exam of this type, I’m fascinated and did some research on why such tests are administered in the first place. In this study, researchers Ming-Yin Chan and Kwok-Wai Mui reveal that open book examinations have existed since at least the 1930s. Using my university library access, I found one such early study in the Journal of Higher Education from March, 1934. As John and Ruth Stalnaker argue in Open-Book Examinations, such testing has many positives: Emphasis falls on the course objectives Students utilize facts to solve problems Inference skills are exercised More time tends to be spent by students on preparation rather than cramming They predict that these kinds of tests will be more widely used in the future and encourage more research into the best kinds of questions suited to this format. Are the questions suitable to the format of studying law? Now that I’ve sat for a couple, I think so. After all, law is the field where getting even just one section number wrong could change the outcome of a case. That means this kind of testing is only partially about testing recall. It’s more about determining whether you can read with precision and work with the exact information as worded on a variety of source materials while the clock is ticking. Twenty Questions, Sixty Minutes, and No Authentic Way to “Look Things Up” So there I was at my laptop, the entire device reduced to just one screen by a lockdown browser called Respondus. My first exam was for a course called “Legal Institutions and Processes.” It is heavy on history and legislation. The first few weeks involved a ton of dense reading from multiple textbooks and a legal dictionary. This is the kind of reading I really haven’t done since I changed my major from Political Science to English during the second year of my first undergraduate degree. Although I had dreamed at my naive young age of one day becoming the Prime Minister of Canada, I changed my mind that year after interviewing the premier of British Columbia for the student newspaper. He clearly lied in response to my question and I determined right then that I was never going to be anything like him. Anyhow, do the math with me. Twenty questions during an hour-long exam gives you three minutes per question. During that time, you need to Read each question carefully Check your answers Fight off all kinds of urges and fidgety feelings that arise when you’re trapped And due to how the lockdown browser software works, I was literally trapped. The rules dictated that I could not leave the computer until I ended the session or the time ran out. The Practical Reality of Flipping Through Notes If you’ve never sat for an exam like this, ask yourself: How much time can you really afford to spend flipping through fifty pages of notes looking for an answer you don’t know? There’s no cookie-cutter answer here, but without preparation, the answer may as well be “zero.” The research agrees. In a 2024 study involving 112 open book and 83 closed book cognitive psychology students, the open book group scored higher. However, they also took longer to finish their exams. One way to interpret these research findings is that having access to your textbook increases your accuracy. But at what price in a world where time is your scarcest resource? How Long Did I Spend? As a time-poor entrepreneur with lots of polymathic projects on the go, I finished my first open book test in approximately thirty minutes. But needing the time to do other things was only part of the reason. A lot of the questions I was able to answer simply by using critical thinking, a skill I taught at university as a professor myself for four years. If you’re interested, here’s a list of my favorite critical thinking books. But the real reason I finished early is because I took the exam without a textbook. And that means for me, it wasn’t an open book situation at all. At least not in the normal sense. Here’s what I mean: My Notes-Only Experiment: Testing Digital Amnesia Under Exam Conditions Years ago, I wrote about a condition the Kaspersky Lab researchers called “digital amnesia.” In brief, your mind blanks out when trying to access information because you’ve stored it on a device you trust instead of in your head. Back then, I argued that every time you reach for a search engine instead of pausing to ask your own memory first, you deskill it. This is not unlike the way your muscles droop when you stop performing pushups. Here’s my original digital amnesia article if you’re interested. Anyhow, I don’t know if I’ll take more advanced law school courses without buying the physical textbooks. But for this exam, I took it as my chance to run a more high-stakes experiment with digital amnesia than I’d ever tried before. Did I have to experiment under proctored conditions, with a grade attached? Of course. Because real test conditions matter. And all the more so in the age of Artificial Intelligence, which challenges many aspects of mind and memory as I’ve previously written about in the context of learning. Let me take you a bit deeper behind the scenes. Because if you know my work with the Magnetic Memory Method, you’ve probably seen me with books frequently. And it can be confusing to suddenly hear that I decided to study 100% online. Why I Refused to Buy the Course Textbooks on Purpose Two reasons. First, I’ve said it on the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast for years: I don’t memorize well from screens. In fact, 3x USA memory champion John Graham and I have talked about this “problem” of mine on more than one of our podcast conversations. I’m not alone with this problem. Some researchers even have a name for people who forget what they read from digital devices: the screen inferiority effect. Pablo Delgado and his research team probably gave away the best advice about how to handle the fact that we forget what we read from screens. They gave the solution away in the title of their 2018 Educational Research Review meta-analysis, “Don’t throw away your printed books.” Don’t throw print away indeed. Even some of the most pro-digital people I know follow this advice. For example, Andrew Mayne, host of the OpenAI podcast has been on my podcast to talk about how and why he still uses print journals and physical notebooks as part of training his memory. Second, I made this choice to dimensionalize my work on Peter of Ravenna, the 15th-century jurist who wrote about his legendary memory techniques. In my imagination, he wouldn’t have bought the textbooks either. All of which is to say that I knew what I was getting into when I made the deliberate choice to forgo ordering any of the physical textbooks for my first trimester of law school. But when I learned that my first test settings were going to be open book? I immediately had to reconsider my approach. And handle a frustration I faced with a contradiction in terms. The Unprintable Textbook Problem The assigned textbook, Laying Down the Law, is available through the university’s online library. But they’ve offered it in a digital format that makes printing individual chapters impossible. This means that a student who can’t afford the print edition, or doesn’t want to study from print, has exactly one permitted way to use the textbook: effective note taking. Could I have opened the library copy on a second computer during the exam? Technically, perhaps. But the rules make clear that accessing any secondary device counts as cheating. So I showed up to the test prepared with my handwritten textbook notes instead. I also prepared my own version of the lecture slides to make sure I could refer to them if needed. This required a couple of steps: Download them from the online course platform Upload them into Google Slides Export them as text files Edit the text into useful notes in a Google Doc Supplement the notes with my own observations Print them out Study them further from the printout These steps took time. But I wound up with much more understandable notes as a result. The notes not only fused the lecture content with the readings. I also got an additional review of the material. An Absurd Study Requirement Still, part of my mind couldn’t let go of the absurdity of the situation. I was preparing for an open book exam where the book is locked behind a screen you’re not allowed to open. Students willing to spend the money get to bring the textbook. Anyone else has to bring whatever they managed to copy out by hand. This is not a level testing field. It’s a paywall wearing an academic gown. In my case, the absurdity of this barrier served my learning experiment. But I had a choice. Plenty of students don’t. Think First, Verify Second: How I Actually Used My Notes So how did my handwritten notes and transformed notes based on the slides perform against the clock? At first, I didn’t use the notes at all. Instead, I initially answered every question by thinking first. Then I went over everything a minimum of three times, checking my answers for accuracy against the notes. In other words, I used my notes as a verification instrument, letting the answers come first from my memory. Now that you know how my exam went, let me consolidate everything into some tips for your own open book test. How to Prepare for Your First Open Book Exam: My Best Tips My study suggestions break down into practical strategies and mindset management. You really can’t have one without the other because unexpected things can and do happen no matter how prepared you come to a test. Build a Reading “Moat” Well In Advance Even before I knew about the assignment structure and course exams, I started reading the instant I had access to the course area. But not just the textbook. I made ample use of the included dictionary and memorized new terms using this tried and true vocabulary memorization process. To supplement the reading, I also found as many YouTube channels and podcasts about Australian law as I could. I listened intensely and watched as many hours of video tutorials as possible. Sometimes these audio and video supplements went quite ahead of the reading. So I took care to balance going too far afield of the requirements against making sure I was going through additional material related to legal institutions. Placing guardrails on myself required vigilant self-monitoring and discipline, but I wound up with a “moat” around the core reading. In other words, my core reading was surrounded by related multi-media study. How to Pass an Open Book Exam? Complete All the Readings & Every Exercise Often students ask me about how to find the most important details in their study materials. As I discussed in my tutorial on finding the main points in books and articles, many books include summaries and conclusions. And some include dedicated exercises. That was the case with Laying Down the Law. The instructor also included some additional exercises, and so I completed both. And this is exactly what you need to do too. Be a completist. I know it is tempting to search for hacks of every kind under the sun. But in reality, the point of studying something is to become an expert in that topic. Some experts certainly do skim and scan, but that doesn’t mean you should. Frankly, I found both the readings and the exercises for my first exam a bit boring. But I went through them anyway to help develop my understanding of the material. And to go beyond the call of duty so that later on, I will know I at least tried my best. How to Pass an Open Book Test with Help from AI As I discussed in my video tutorial on studying complex topics, I wrote an AI prompt to spar with and test my answers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfL5ygsYpyg The prompt is called A.I.M. and you’re welcome to grab it below if you want to give this GPT I trained for myself a try with your study material. Here’s an important point: Getting your reading down early and supplementing it with additional material enriches how you complete your exercises. Memorize Anyway, Even If You Have Textbook Access & Keep Flawless Notes One thing I kept hearing early on were sentiments like, “No one cares if you can remember legal Latin.” I took this point into consideration, but memorized the phrases I came across anyway. It turns out one Latin phrase did show up on the quiz. If I hadn’t memorized it, I would have been underprepared (especially since I did not have the textbook with me). Memorization of terms, dates, important names, sections and other minutiae related to your studies might not prove valuable in the end. But more practice with a variety of memory training techniques will provide many benefits. The core techniques I used for this part of the study process were: Memory Palaces Pegword method PAO System Spaced repetition Although it can take a while to learn and practice these mnemonic devices, it is well worth having them on your side. Organize & Supplement Your Notes Effectively I actually got the idea to print out the slides and then rearrange them from my friend Nick. At first, I thought it might be a waste of time. I already faced the problem of forgetting more from digital exposure. But as I edited the slides in a Google document, I realized that the additional exposure involved looking at the information from a unique perspective. While changing the format and organizing them into a structure I better understood, I was processing the information again. I wouldn’t call this form of learning either deep or shallow. It was simply an integrative step that enabled further questioning after I printed out the notes. And I found some initial study exercises in the notes that I later answered with a red pen after doing further research. For example, I extended my understanding of the “Cab-Rank rule” as you see here:   Additionally, I took a moment to set up the footer area. As you can see in the example, this simple trick indicates: To which lecture slide the notes belong The page number The total number of pages for this set of notes Although I felt a bit silly, and perhaps more like a secretary than a student doing this, the rewards were obvious as I was doing it. Knowing that each set of notes was full and completed reduced my test anxiety. And because the pages were numbered and using the footer showed me at a glance that I wasn’t missing anything, I spared myself any and all mystery about the status of my notes during the testing hour. This is not a small point because anxiety-induced memory loss is a real problem. Seriously. I can imagine nothing worse than my mind seizing up with worry that a page of notes had gone missing. Especially when the rules of the test required that I remain in front of the computer throughout. Finally, I bound each set of notes together with a simple clip from the stationery store. Again, it felt a bit secretarial, but it was really useful in making sure all of my notes were organized. I did the same with my handwritten notes. In this case, my handwritten notes were based entirely on key terms I thought would be important for the exam. What I found interesting is that most of what I had written out from the online textbook was the same as on the lecture slides. For more tips on dealing with your reading, check out how to take notes from a textbook. Follow up with my how to memorize a textbook training for what to do with your notes once you’ve got them. Take Deliberately Timed Breaks While Studying Provided you’ve started reading early and expanded your reading to include a variety of sources, it’s important to rest. Frankly, taking breaks is a weakness of mine. I love to plow forward. But I made myself take entire days off leading up to the exam where I didn’t read anything related to the exam. However, I did engage in reflective thinking about my studies. This simple activity while taking time off helps with memory formation and comprehension. Verify Your Sources Before Exam Day As a final step, I went through everything again the day before the exam. This included checking the file names of all my notes and various citations. Plus, there were various names and dates that I had memorized that were not on my notes. So I checked those, such as for the Mabo decision, an important legal case in Australia. Although I knew it was unlikely that a multiple choice question was going to confirm that I knew Mabo’s first name was Eddie, I checked my memory of the fact anyway. This simple verification step not only made sure that other details of the case were clear to me. It’s also just fun to check for accuracy. For Online Open Book Exams, Test All Software In Advance Since I’m a remote student, I not only made sure I completed installing the Respondus software days in advance of the exam. I also made sure all my software was up to date, from the browser to the operating system. Not only is regularly updating software a best practice. Knowing that everything is operational helps reduce exam anxiety. Control Your Mind While the Clock is Ticking Although I finished the exam quickly, it’s not that time wasn’t on my mind. In fact, it was raining hard and I hadn’t slept well. Both of these factors injected no small amount of misery into my mind. In my case, I kept thinking about Peter of Ravenna and how disappointed he would be. There wasn’t much room for memory techniques to shine during the exam experience. Then I started doubting that law school was such a great idea after all. As soon as I caught myself doing that, I started running some of the mantras I memorized prior to writing The Victorious Mind. Having this simple ritual focused my mind back on the task at hand by blowing the distracting thoughts away. If mind wandering causes you issues while sitting for exams, it could be worth looking into various mental routines you can practice. This complete guide contains multiple concentration meditations you might find useful as a learner. Why Do Teachers Give Open Book Exams? Although I passed with High Distinction, my first exam of this type felt alienating. I can’t quite put my finger on what bothers me about it. But to use a critical thinking tactic, I’ll try to steelman the format by way of understanding the reason behind the testing scheme. It’s clear that this kind of test is less about knowledge and more about how detail-oriented the student is. I also suspect that the reason the teacher gave an open book exam is twofold: One: Anti-Guessing Design The open book format means that you will actually go through your learning material. There’s no incentive to guess when you can look at your study sources, leading to at least one more pass through the material. Two: Blended Testing This exam was only part of the grading for the course. I still need to give an oral presentation and submit an essay. By having an initial exam with the anti-guessing design optimized to generate an additional review of the study material, it does set the stage for stronger performance. Summing up: A Plan for Your First Open Book Exam Because time is always in short supply, I suggest that you: Start reading as soon as possible, ideally before the course even begins. Take extensive notes and give yourself time to verify them. Complete all of the available practice questions. Use ChatGPT as a sparring partner, not as a source of answers. Schedule plenty of breaks. If you’re a remote student, check that all of your software is updated. If you would like access to the sparring partner I created for myself, it is called A.I.M. As a study prompt, it’s simple and direct. But I found that it helped me identify a number of blind spots in my thinking. Click or tap the image below to claim it: I don’t know what Peter of Ravenna would have to say about exams like this. But in my experience, the format rewards the prepared mind and the precise reader. I expect my memory will be tested in future law courses and because of the amount of review this kind of testing promotes, I expect the experience has indeed helped my recall. Even if in a different way than I’m used to when studying. For more of my experience and teaching on that, check out my guide on How to Study Effectively next. Above all, enjoy the learning process. We sometimes forget what a blessing it is to be able to study at all. Yet, here we all are, with more people on the planet studying than ever before. Don’t forget to celebrate the opportunity you have and bring that awareness to the exam. Keeping a positive attitude is a major skill that promotes massive success in all of life’s many “tests.”

Full Text of Readings Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 369 The Saint of the day is Saint Romuald Saint Romuald's Story In the midst of a wasted youth, Saint Romuald watched his father kill a relative in a duel over property. In horror he fled to a monastery near Ravenna. After three years, some of the monks found him to be uncomfortably holy and eased him out. Romuald spent the next 30 years going about Italy, founding monasteries and hermitages. He longed to give his life to Christ in martyrdom, and got the pope's permission to preach the gospel in Hungary. But he was struck with illness as soon as he arrived, and the illness recurred as often as he tried to proceed. During another period of his life, Saint Romuald suffered great spiritual dryness. One day as he was praying Psalm 31 (“I will give you understanding and I will instruct you”), he was given an extraordinary light and spirit which never left him. At the next monastery where he stayed, Saint Romuald was accused of a scandalous crime by a young nobleman he had rebuked for a dissolute life. Amazingly, his fellow monks believed the accusation. He was given a severe penance, forbidden from offering Mass, and excommunicated—an unjust sentence that he endured in silence for six months. The most famous of the monasteries Saint Romuald founded was that of the Camaldoli in Tuscany. Here began the Order of the Camaldolese Benedictines, uniting the monastic and eremitical lives. In later life Romuald's own father became a monk, wavered, and was kept faithful by the encouragement of his son. Reflection Christ is a gentle leader, but he calls us to total holiness. Now and then, men and women are raised up to challenge us by the absoluteness of their dedication, the vigor of their spirit, the depth of their conversion. The fact that we cannot duplicate their lives does not change the call to us to be totally open to God in our own particular circumstances.Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

Why does following Jesus sometimes feel harder than falling back into old habits? Why do we keep struggling with the same sins, patterns, and failures? If you've ever wondered whether you're simply bad at being a Christian, this message is for you.In this episode of The Dirt Path Sermon Podcast, Pastor Jason Barnett opens 1 John 3:4-10 and explores the difference between sin management and spiritual transformation. Jesus did not come merely to forgive sinners and leave them where they are. He came to destroy the works of the devil and reclaim what sin has damaged.Together we'll discover:Why living for Jesus can feel difficult in a broken worldWhat John means when he says, "sin is rebellion"How spiritual habits shape the direction of our livesWhy Christianity is about family resemblance, not behavior modificationHow Jesus is still taking ground from the enemy todayWhy you are not doomed to run on the same hamster wheel of sin and dysfunction foreverWhether you're a new believer, a mature Christian, or someone who feels stuck and discouraged, this message offers hope. The same Jesus who saved you is still at work in you.Jesus is still taking ground from the enemy, and He can take ground in your life too.Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

Join us as we delve into the world of professional wrestling with an exclusive interview with Ravenna Vein. Tune in now to learn more about their journey, training, and experiences in the ring. Watch now to get an inside look at the world of wrestling and discover more about your favorite athlete. Twitter https://x.com/ravennavein_Facebook https://www.facebook.com/xmorganamoonxInstagram- @RavennaveinMerch-https://linktr.ee/ravennavein«««« Official Theme Song by This Wolf (Enough is Enough) »»»» YouTube: [http://bit.ly/Thiswolf](http://bit.ly/Thiswolf) # Wrestling #WrestlingCommunity #Sports #IndieWrestling #fandiscussion #WrestlingInterviews #IndieWrestling #Interview #WatchNow #RavennaVein

Tonight's guest, Mike Tornincasa, started out as a paranormal investigator, but due to a series of experiences he had while doing field investigations in places with a history of paranormal events, he's now a paranormal/sasquatch investigator. The first experience he had that might have involved seeing a sasquatch happened about 4 years ago, in an old cemetery, in Ravenna, Ohio. To this day, Mike's not sure what it was that he saw. A few weeks ago, however, he had a clear sighting of a sasquatch. You see, he was doing a livestream for his podcast that night, in Cuyahoga Valley National Forest, in Summit County, Ohio, and wound up seeing an 8-plus-foot-tall sasquatch peek out at him from behind a tree. Mike got the impression the sasquatch wanted him to see it. Needless to say, the experience made quite the impression on Mike. He's officially caught the sasquatch bug now.If you'd like to check out Mike's podcast, MT Paranormal Life, which we hope you will, please visit…https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoq5ddP3YYqUgoezNkF-digIf you'd like to visit the MT Paranormal Life Facebook Page, please visit…  If you've had at least one Sasquatch sighting and would like to be a guest on the show, please go to BigfootEyewitness.com and let me know. I'd love to hear from you.If you'd like to help support the show, by buying your own Bigfoot Eyewitness t-shirt or sweatshirt, please visit the Bigfoot Eyewitness Show Store, by going to https://Dogman-Encounters.MyShopify.comI produce 4 other shows that are available on your favorite podcast app. If you haven't checked them out, here are links to all 4 channels on the Spreaker App...My Bigfoot Sighting https://www.spreaker.com/show/my-bigfoot-sighting Dogman Tales https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/dogman-tales--6640134Dogman Encounters https://www.spreaker.com/show/dogman-encounters-radio_2 My Paranormal Experience https://www.spreaker.com/show/my-paranormal-experience Thanks, as always, for listening!

Francesca ha 53 anni, vive a Senigallia e per quasi tutta la vita ha fatto l'insegnante. Oggi non lavora più: si è licenziata e vive con 23.000 euro l'anno, frutto dei suoi investimenti. Il suo rapporto con il denaro nasce da bambina, quando suo padre, impiegato di banca a Ravenna, le regala uno dei primi bancomat per bambini. «Da quel momento ho imparato a gestire i soldi: sapevo quanto potevo spendere in una settimana, e in che cosa». Cresce così tenendo la contabilità di ogni spesa e mette da parte tutto con una direzione sola: i viaggi, l'unica voce davvero preponderante nel suo bilancio.Diventa insegnante, compra casa, e poi si trasferisce in un casolare nelle Marche con il compagno, per inseguire il sogno di una vita in collina. Ma per dieci anni a lavorare è solo lei, mentre lui si licenzia per scrivere. «L'orto lo curavo io, della casa mi occupavo io, guadagnavo io. Lo squilibrio economico ha fatto saltare il piatto». Dopo la separazione conosce quello che è oggi il suo compagno, un ingegnere che da anni vive dei propri investimenti, e che le insegna la cosa che le mancava: smettere di affidare i risparmi alla banca. «Io non faccio trading, sono più una cassettista: compro titoli e li tengo lì, per far lavorare l'interesse composto». Comincia così a investire da sola e a ricalibrare ogni voce delle sue spese. Vende la casa in collina, si trasferisce a Senigallia, prova un anno sabbatico senza stipendio per capire come si vive senza un'entrata fissa. E quando capisce che regge, nel 2024 si licenzia. Oggi dei 23.000 euro annuali di cui ha bisogno per vivere, 9mila euro sono spesi in viaggi, e una parte finisce nel risparmio già a inizio mese, prima ancora di spendere il resto. «Io voglio godermi la vita adesso. Ho 24 anni in meno dei miei genitori: quando me la godo, a ottant'anni?».

On August 24, 410 AD, the Visigoths walked into Rome. They didn't break down the gates. They didn't storm the walls. The gates were opened from the inside — by slaves, by people who had been living under the Empire for years and had quietly stopped believing in it.The conventional story of the Sack of Rome is barbarian invasion. Fire and screaming. Civilization ending in a single night. That's the Hollywood version. The reality is quieter and worse.Rome wasn't murdered. It was hollowed out over more than two centuries by three forces that had nothing to do with barbarians.The first was money. The silver denarius had been debased so consistently that by 410 the coins were essentially worthless metal stamped with the emperor's face — a promise nobody believed anymore. Soldiers stopped showing up because they were being paid with garbage. Tax collectors demanded payment in gold and silver because the state's own currency wasn't worth taking.The second was borders. On the last day of 406, the Rhine froze and tens of thousands of Vandals, Suebi, and Alans walked across into Roman Gaul. The forts along the river were empty or close to it. The garrisons had been pulled back, stripped to fight civil wars in Italy, or simply never replaced. The frontier wasn't overrun. It was abandoned.The third was power. The Emperor Honorius was hiding in Ravenna — a swamp city with marsh walls — issuing laws that nobody enforced. When they told him Rome had fallen, he thought they meant his pet chicken, a bird he had named Roma. He had become emperor at eight years old. He had never led an army, never governed a province, never made a decision that wasn't filtered through palace bureaucrats more interested in their own survival than the Empire's.When Alaric's Visigoths arrived at the gates of Rome in August 410, the city's own slaves opened them.Rome didn't fall that day. Not really. The Visigoths left after three days. Honorius stayed in Ravenna. The Empire limped on for another 66 years. But everyone who mattered understood what 410 meant. The machine had been failing for centuries. The sack was just the paperwork catching up.Empires don't fall. They hollow out. And hollowing is worse than falling — because from the outside, everything still looks intact.00:00 — Rome Wasn't Murdered, It Was Hollowed Out01:54 — Welcome to The Roman Pattern02:19 — Rome in 410: A Theater Set03:06 — Two Centuries of Debasement05:15 — December 406: When the Rhine Froze06:53 — Alaric: The Visigoth Who Wanted to Be Roman08:16 — Honorius and His Chicken Named Roma09:10 — August 24, 410: The Gates Open From Inside10:29 — Saint Jerome Wept in Bethlehem11:50 — Why Rome Didn't Fall (Yet)12:44 — The Three-Link Chain: Money, Borders, Power14:02 — Hollowing Is Worse Than Falling14:53 — The Universal Pattern15:55 — Same Playbook, Different Century

Arts Respond: Cellist Ravenna Michalsen, Music for Joy & Peace by WNHH Community Radio

Dutch authorities wrap up the cross-border response to the MV Hondius hantavirus outbreak as the ship reaches Rotterdam for decontamination, closing a months-long evacuation that spanned St. Helena, Ascension, and the Canary Islands. Health experts reassure New Orleans cruise travelers that hantavirus risk is 'very close to zero,' with no U.S. cases and broad spread deemed extremely unlikely. And Cruise Terminals International, under new leader Gregory Lanter, pushes ahead with nearly $1.3 billion in terminal projects from Barcelona and Ravenna to St. Thomas, reshaping the gateways of future sailings.

What if loneliness isn't just a social problem? What if it reveals something about how God created us?In this Trinity Sunday message from 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Pastor Jason Barnett explores the connection between loneliness, fellowship, and the nature of God. In a world filled with social media, texting, livestreams, and constant connection, many people still feel isolated, unseen, and alone.As Paul closes his letter to the Corinthians, he calls believers to restoration, encouragement, harmony, and peace before ending with one of the most beautiful blessings in Scripture: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."This message reminds us that fellowship is not merely a church activity—it is rooted in the very nature of God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in perfect love and relationship, and through Jesus Christ we are invited into that life.If you've been struggling with loneliness, grief, discouragement, church hurt, or feeling disconnected from others, this sermon offers both hope and a practical invitation toward healing and community.Because a people created in the image of the Trinity cannot thrive alone.Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

On August 22, 408 AD, the Western Roman Emperor Honorius signed an execution order. The man being executed was Flavius Stilicho — half Vandal, half Roman, the general who had defeated Alaric three times, held the Rhine frontier together for 13 years, and kept a collapsing political structure functioning through sheer competence. For more than a decade he had been the only thing standing between the Western Empire and total disintegration.The Senate hated him. The court whispered against him. They said he was conspiring with the Goths. They said he wanted to put his son on the throne. They said his barbarian blood made him untrustworthy.None of it was true. But systems like this eventually stop needing truth. They just need targets.Stilicho walked out of a church in Ravenna and accepted his fate. He could have resisted — 10,000 federate troops were personally loyal to him, and he could have seized power and likely won. He chose not to. He still believed in something larger than himself. The system that executed him no longer did.Within months, 10,000 federate soldiers marched directly to Alaric's camp. The Rhine frontier collapsed. The borders dissolved. The army Stilicho had built to defend Italy became the army that destroyed it. Two years later, on August 24, 410 AD, Alaric walked into Rome — undefended, unresisted — and sacked it for three days.The man most capable of preventing it had already been killed by his own government.This is the autopsy of how empires actually die. Not from the outside in. They destroy their own immune system first and call it patriotism.00:00 — Rome Killed the Man Who Was Saving It02:24 — Welcome to The Roman Pattern02:45 — What Rome Had Become by 395 AD03:06 — Who Was Flavius Stilicho?04:05 — The Three Fault Lines: Money, Borders, Power06:23 — Stilicho's Rise Through Competence07:38 — Theodosius Dies, Stilicho Inherits an Empire08:03 — Alaric and the Eastern Court's Sabotage09:43 — The Battle of Pollentia (402 AD)10:55 — The Deal That Sealed His Fate11:43 — The Rhine Freezes (December 406)12:31 — Honorius the Chicken Farmer13:21 — Olympius and the Whispered Accusations14:07 — August 22, 408 AD: The Execution15:07 — The Federate Defection and the Sack of Rome18:13 — When Systems Can't Tell Threat from Solution21:06 — The Last Roman

Put the bucket and spade aside and join Rose Manley and Rebecca Charlton as they tackle the first stage of the 2026 Giro d'Italia Women that runs between the seaside towns of Cesenatico and Ravenna.And don't forget to listen in all week as The Cycling Podcast Féminin bring you daily coverage from the race.Also on the agenda: having no interest in remaining upright, barmen vs sports psychologists and a REALLY MASSIVE BUT BADLY TIMED BOMBSHELLFollow us on social media:Twitter @cycling_podcastInstagram @thecyclingpodcastFriends of the PodcastSign up as a Friend of the Podcast at thecyclingpodcast.com to listen to new special episodes every month, plus a back catalogue of more than 300 exclusive episodes.The 11.01 CappuccinoOur regular email newsletter is now on Substack. Subscribe here for frothy, full-fat updates to enjoy any time (as long as it's after 11am).The Cannibal & BadgerFriends of the Podcast can join the discussion at our virtual pub, The Cannibal & Badger. A friendly forum to talk about cycling and the podcast. Log in to your Friends of the Podcast account to join in.The Cycling Podcast is on StravaThe Cycling Podcast was founded in 2013 by Richard Moore, Daniel Friebe and Lionel Birnie.

Abby, Loren, and Gracie tune in for the first stage of the Giro d'Italia, a sprint stage from Cesenatico to Ravenna. Lorena Wiebes won the stage, but it wasn't the end of the race for the Dutch champion. Drama would follow the SD Worx-Protime rider hours after she pulled on the pink jersey. A few riders commented on the technicality of the final circuit, and Gracie has some thoughts. With audio diaries from Maggie Coles-Lyster of Human Powered Health and Amanda Spratt of Lidl-Trek. 

What does the Bible really mean when it talks about "the rod"?For generations, many Christians have heard the phrase "spare the rod, spoil the child" and assumed Proverbs 13:24 was primarily about punishment. But what if the image behind the proverb is much deeper than we realize?In this message, Nicole Barnett explores the Hebrew language and imagery behind the "rod," uncovering connections to shepherds, kings, protection, guidance, and responsibility. Through personal testimony and biblical reflection, she challenges us to consider how authority is meant to be used—not as a weapon of fear, but as a tool of care.Whether you're a parent, grandparent, teacher, pastor, or simply someone trying to follow Jesus faithfully, this message asks a powerful question: What image of Christ are we showing to the people entrusted to our care?Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

On this week's Spectator Out Loud: Douglas Murray details his encounter with Labour leadership hopeful Wes Streeting; Flora Watkins explains why the Open Garden scheme is the antidote to the Chelsea Flower Show; and Nicholas Farrell says local nudists are running wild in Ravenna. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

E non tutti gli abitanti del paesino sono contenti della scelta dei pavoni. Ma non solo uccelli dai mille colori. Parliamo anche di cibo, o almeno, parliamo di dove si mangia il cibo e dove poi quindi si paga! A quanto pare in Italia ci sono non pochi problemi con "coperto" e "servizio", ma per fortuna c'e' Raffaele! Trascrizione interattiva e Vocab Helper Support Easy Italian and get interactive transcripts, live vocabulary and bonus content: easyitalian.fm/membership Note dell'episodio Do Italians Actually Cook Every Day? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uZDDVBQmgg&t=4s Iniziamo a Punta Marina! Ma dove siamo? Punta Marina e' un piccolo paese sul mare, in provincia di Ravenna. Punta Marina https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punta_Marina_Terme Ravenna e' una citta' molto bella e piena di storia e meraviglie, e si trova in Emilia Romagna. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenna Ma cosa succede a Punta Marina? A quanto pare la piccola cittadina e' stata invasa dai PAVONI! https://www.bluewin.ch/it/attualita/diversi/punta-marina-e-invasa-dai-pavoni-ma-ecco-come-si-e-arrivati-a-questa-situazione-3242248.html Andiamo poi a Roma, ma non per visitare i suoi monumenti. Andiamo al ristorante! In Italia ci sono cose che confondono un po' i turisti. Parliamo di "Coperto". Oggi Raffaele cerca di spiegare a tutti noi, compreso me (Matteo) come funziona, cosa e' e come funziona. Spoiler, non e' sempre semplice! Anzi cambia a seconda delle regioni e spesso delle citta'! Curiosi di sapere la parola "coperto" a cosa si riferisce in partricolare? https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coperto Concludiamo con l'angolo dell'italiano. Parliamo di un modo di dire molto particolare: "Piantare in asso". Raffaele ci racconta tutte le teorie e le ipotesi. Da dove viene e a cosa si riferisce "l'asso"? Forse Naxos, o forse l'asso delle carte? Ma poi perche' Naxos?? Trascrizione Matteo: [0:09] Sempre in giro. Raffaele: [0:23] Eccoci, bentornati. Matteo: [0:27] Bentornati. Sono molto confuso, perché io sto per partire di nuovo. Raffaele: [0:35] Io so che tu sei appena tornato a Milano. Matteo: [0:38] Sì. Raffaele: [0:38] E in che senso stai per ripartire di nuovo? Matteo: [0:41] Eh, dopo aver registrato questo podcast, dopo aver mangiato ovviamente, partirò, partiremo insieme tutti per Treviso di nuovo. ... Support Easy Italian and get interactive transcripts, live vocabulary and bonus content: easyitalian.fm/membership

On this week's Spectator Out Loud: Douglas Murray details his encounter with Labour leadership hopeful Wes Streeting; Flora Watkins explains why the Open Garden scheme is the antidote to the Chelsea Flower Show; and Nicholas Farrell says local nudists are running wild in Ravenna. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.Become a Spectator subscriber today to access this podcast without adverts. Go to spectator.co.uk/adfree to find out more.For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts.Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apriremo la nostra rubrica di attualità con una discussione sui tesi colloqui tra Stati Uniti, Groenlandia e Danimarca riguardo al futuro della Groenlandia. Il dialogo successivo verterà sull'accordo siglato da trentasei Paesi per istituire un tribunale speciale all'Aia con l'obiettivo di processare il Presidente russo Vladimir Putin per il crimine di aggressione contro l'Ucraina. Nella nostra sezione scientifica parleremo di una società governata dall'intelligenza artificiale, gestita da un consiglio di bot di IA modellati su leader storici come Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela e Gandhi. E infine, parleremo del più grande evento musicale d'Europa, l'Eurovision Song Contest.    La seconda parte di questa puntata è dedicata alla lingua e alla cultura italiana. L'argomento grammaticale di oggi è The indefinite pronouns: alcuni and altri. Ne troverete diversi esempi nel dialogo dedicato all'invasione dei pavoni a Punta Marina, una frazione di Ravenna: un caso locale diventato clamorosamente mediatico. Nel finale, daremo spazio all'espressione idiomatica del giorno, mettere nel dimenticatoio, attraverso il ricordo di Alex Zanardi, ex pilota automobilistico e atleta paralimpico tra i più famosi in Italia. - Nonostante le altre crisi mondiali, gli Stati Uniti continuano a spingere per un accordo sulla Groenlandia - 36 Paesi istituiscono un tribunale per processare Vladimir Putin - Una nuova micronazione asiatica è governata da bot di intelligenza artificiale modellati su leader storici - La Bulgaria vince per la prima volta l'Eurovision Song Contest - Il caso dei pavoni a Punta Marina - Alex Zanardi, il campione che ci ha insegnato a vivere

The Church talks a lot about power these days. Political power. Cultural influence. Fear. Outrage. Control. But what if the modern Church has forgotten where its power actually comes from?In this sermon from Ephesians 1:15-23, Pastor Jason Barnett explores Paul's prayer for the church in Ephesus and why it still matters today. Living in a culture obsessed with spiritual forces, empire, and fear, the Ephesian believers needed a reminder that Jesus Christ is already reigning above every ruler, authority, and power. And that the same resurrection power that raised Him from the dead is already at work within His people.This message wrestles with spiritual exhaustion, anxiety, culture wars, misplaced trust, and the temptation for Christians to search for “borrowed power” instead of depending on Christ. Along the way, Pastor Jason shares a powerful illustration from Nazarene evangelist Dr. Chic Shaver about fish jumping out of an aquarium searching for freedom, only to discover they left the very environment giving them life.If you've been weary from the noise, fear, division, and pressure surrounding modern Christianity, this sermon is a reminder that the Church does not survive because human beings are powerful. The Church lives because Jesus is alive.Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

Full Text of Readings Monday of the Seventh Week of Easter Lectionary: 297 The Saint of the day is Saint John I Saint John I's Story Saint John I inherited the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ. Italy had been ruled for 30 years by an emperor who espoused the heresy, though he treated the empire's Catholics with toleration. His policy changed at about the time the young John was elected pope. When the eastern emperor began imposing severe measures on the Arians of his area, the western emperor forced John to head a delegation to the East to soften the measures against the heretics. Little is known of the manner or outcome of the negotiations—designed to secure continued toleration of Catholics in the West. On his way home, John was imprisoned at Ravenna because the emperor had begun to suspect that John's friendship with his eastern rival might lead to a conspiracy against his throne. Shortly after his imprisonment, John died, apparently from the treatment he received in prison. Saint John I's body was transported to Rome and he was buried in the Basilica of St. Peter. Reflection We cannot choose the issues for which we have to suffer and perhaps die. John I suffered because of a power-conscious emperor. Jesus suffered because of the suspicions of those who were threatened by his freedom, openness, and powerlessness. “If you find that the world hates you, know it has hated me before you” (John 15:18).Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

What happens when someone who has spent decades teaching memory techniques enrols in law school to find out if everything he teaches actually holds up? That’s exactly what I’m doing. Mind you, I’m not the first person to try a learning feat like this. Nor am I the first to document the journey of applying mnemonic methods to the law. In 1491, Peter of Ravenna published The Phoenix, a manual designed to teach his approach to the “Art of Memory.” It’s a short, but detailed memory improvement book that explains Ravenna’s techniques and how they enabled him to possess a massive amount of civil law code in his mind. His legal knowledge isn’t the only thing that made Ravenna legendary. As I explain in my previous writing about him, he could also recite mountains of scripture and speak multiple languages. Myself, I’ve memorized more than enough scripture to demonstrate the teaching I’ve offered in my own memory improvement manuals. Likewise, I’ve absorbed enough skills with enough languages to prove the concept. I hold a PhD in Humanities from York University and two MAs. But what I haven’t done is attend law school. Now, later in life, I have finally enroled after decades of thinking about it. This isn’t a career pivot, mind you. Having co-authored a well-received book with a lawyer years ago on memorizing legal terminology, I am already more than personally interested in law. But since I never went to law school myself, I’ve always wanted to pressure-test every memory technique I teach against what has to be one of the most volume-intensive, high-stakes disciplines on the planet. This page is the hub for that experiment. Whether you are a law student drowning in “legalese” and tired of the “bad memory” excuse, or a memory enthusiast looking for a high-stakes demonstration of the ancient memory arts in action, you are in the right place. I’m going to share with you all the learning tools I’ll be using throughout the experience. And you can follow my real-time study log below to see exactly how the man Tony Buzan called a “Warrior of the Mind” intends to conquer the law, one Memory Palace at a time. Why Legal Material Presents Special Problems for Memorization In my version of Ravenna’s original book, called Phoenix Reborn, the famous jurist is far from modest. He writes: When I was young, I prepared 10,000 places because I wanted to surpass all the men of Italy with an abundance of remembered facts and holy scriptures, including both Canon law and Civil law. I also wanted to be an authority on many other things. By “places,” Ravenna is referring to the method of loci. It is the basis of the Memory Palace technique, something many law students have used across history. I’m only a week into my first trimester readings, and I have a feeling Ravenna might not be so boastful in our times. Medieval law was in no way simple. But it’s unlikely Ravenna dealt with nearly as much study material as contemporary law students. For one thing, nearly everyone knew Latin back then. This means he wouldn’t have needed to memorize the Latin needed when he studied to become a Doctor of canon and civil law. The topic of international law would have been much smaller during his time. And laws relating to media, Internet and Artificial Intelligence? All of these vast fields of legal material would not appear for hundreds of years. Nonetheless, many of his techniques still apply and will help contemporary law students avoid cramming. Here’s how I’ll be using them based on my own version of the techniques Ravenna describes. What Happens When a Memory Expert Enrols in Law School: The Magnetic Memory Method for Law A lot of study advice treats complicated topics like the law like any other memorization task. Gareth Evans says in a YouTube video called How I Memorised Everything in Law School that he essentially used a combination of spaced repetition and the Leitner box technique. There is nothing wrong with these approaches. I’ll be incorporating them too. However, not everyone is going to get the same results from just those two fundamentals from the world of accelerated learning techniques. The Memory Palace Technique for Law Since you don’t get partial credit for vaguely remembering that a case exists and need the name, the year, the principle, and how it applies, I’m pulling out the same technique Ravenna describes in depth as my core learning strategy: the Memory Palace. In case you’re new to it, the Memory Palace technique for studying uses familiar locations subdivided into various sub-locations. It’s almost like a living, breathing mental filing system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4J5ZUzCxZY By placing information on those sub-locations, or what I prefer to call “Magnetic Stations,” you provide yourself with a canvas for layering vivid mental associations. For example, I’ve already memorized the name and date of Derry v Peek (1889) and the basic three-part test it established for fraudulent misrepresentation. If you’d like more information on this technique, check out my full guide to the Memory Palace technique. The PAO System For Law When it comes to section numbers and dates like 1889 in Derry v Peek, I’ll be using a 00-99 PAO System. Now, this kind of mnemonic system is something I’ve developed over many years. And for most of us, it’s not something you can develop overnight. Indeed, most of us base our PAO System on the Major System. Or, more rarely these days, some people still use the Dominic System. The key is that when you have to memorize a section number, you can instantly place an association in a Memory Palace. PAO System Example Applied to Law For example, last week I memorized the name of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and a chapter and section I’m interested in (Chapter Two, Section 18). I used a combination of my aunt Cassie’s computer station in a former home with associations drawn from my PAO System to rapidly commit this information to memory. Later, I can add more relevant details. But for the time being, I have what I call a “Magnetic Bookmark” that helps me cite the act and find the relevant section quickly. Think about what that means if you’re in an exam or a tutorial and someone references the Competition and Consumer Act. Or even just working as a lawyer who cares about your clients. Instead of that sinking feeling where you know you’ve read it but can’t place where, the section number leaps to mind. You cite exactly what the situation requires and move on while everyone else is still flipping through their notes. Active Recall Combined with Physical Notebooks I have been teaching active recall principles since long before I knew there was a scientific name for them. In brief, the core process involves calling information to mind and then writing it down, ideally in a notebook reserved for testing. You do not use rote repetition or cheat by looking at the answers during the process. You only make corrections later and use the data produced by your mistakes to work out how to fix issues in your recall. Training yourself to write down answers from memory is mission critical for passing exams, as is analyzing your answers so you can make any corrections before handing your work in. I’ll be doubling down on this practice substantially. Optimized Flashcards and Zettelkasten Whether it’s for language learning, philosophy or general learning, I’ve used a particular process for taking notes that I’m already employing as I read as much as I can before my first class starts. These processes have been covered before in detail in my posts and podcasts on: Flashcards The Zettelkasten technique I don’t know what, if anything, will change about my approach as I enter law school at my age. But I will keep you posted if anything does. Mind Mapping Essay Assignments Although I sometimes do use mind mapping as a memory technique, I anticipate that I’ll be reserving it in law school for planning any essay assignments I have to submit. That’s because mind mapping is a far greater tool for brainstorming in my practice than it is a memory aid. But you never know. I might find ways to deepen the ways that I’ve combined mind maps with Memory Palaces for language learning that apply to the law. For my existing teaching on mind mapping, check out this playlist of videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkZ2FGJhR5R8eS3kyuOwCTb47O72iyc-j Keeping a Study Log Although creating to-do lists has its place, I’ve found throughout my BA, two MAs and PhD that using course syllabi and a simple calendar is more than enough to keep various deadlines sharp in memory. What’s more useful for me is to diligently track what I’ve read and when. I use a simple spreadsheet for this purpose, along with tabs for keeping various links. Since I’ll need to read a lot of online resources for my first trimester, this habit is especially key and will keep all the links in one central location for easy access. Other Law Memorization Tactics & Strategies Beyond these learning tactics for law memorization, I’m not yet sure what else I’ll need apart from solid places to study and a decent group of fellow students. So far, I’ve been studying at home and am already signed up for a group dedicated to discussing one of the first courses I’ve enroled in. It’s called “LA1101 – Legal Institutions and Processes.” I’ve also signed up as a student member of the Queensland Law Society to receive regular updates. The Benefits of Context & Immersion Although this membership might seem like a distraction, I’m actually tapping into what scientists call context-dependent memory. Although far from bulletproof, this principle shows that we tend to remember more when we regularly dive deep into related topic areas. In other words, if you study history regularly without interrupting yourself with biology, you’ll tend to remember more history with greater ease. As my research on polymathy and autodidacticism shows, some people think that masters of multiple fields are scattered. In fact, most polymaths go deep into just a limited set of fields at a time. And because they spend a lot of time in each lane, they benefit from more context as they learn. More on Why This Mnemonist is Studying Law At Nearly 50 Years Old I mentioned above that I co-authored How to Learn and Memorize Legal Terminology years ago. One reason that happened is simple: Following the success of my first book on memorizing German vocabulary, tons of people reached out to me. Many of them were either law students or had used memory techniques during law school. One of them asked if he could help me produce a book and so I took some of his examples and credited his contributions even though they weren’t that intense. A Very Personal Background Interest But the real reason I was interested in the law actually started many years prior. My nose had been broken and I was required to provide a victim impact statement when the case went to court. Long story short, the defendant’s lawyer told her client that he should plead guilty right away rather than have me testify on the stand. Her client took the advice and after the Crown lawyer representing the Canadian government asked me if I’d ever considered going to law school. When I asked him why, he said that my victim impact statement showed promise in how I’d written it. “Clinical,” was the word he used to describe it. And he said he thought the field could use more people with that kind of descriptive skill. But as someone who prefers to finish what I start, I kept going with my MA in English. And although law school regularly came to mind, I also finished the PhD in Humanities I had my eyes on, along with a second MA in Media & Communications. The Real Estate Detour A few years ago, I decided I was going to develop a physical Memory Palace. Part of this project relates to my ongoing research into Simonides of Ceos. Another part relates to my polymathy research. But above all, I realized that I needed to not only learn a lot about real estate to pull off the project. I also needed to learn about how real estate agents use and abuse the law to avoid traps. So, I completed a real estate license course and encountered a lot of law during that course. It has helped me proceed in many ways, and that’s part of what has kept my mind on the law leading up to starting this new study venture. Enter Peter of Ravenna I’d first heard of Peter of Ravenna when concentration and focus issues from depression drove me towards memory techniques during my PhD. After I started the Magnetic Memory Method project, I would consult his memory training book, The Phoenix from time to time, always thinking that I should do my own edition. But it was only when AI and various internet disruptions started challenging the idea that I’d be able to easily access Ravenna’s book that my “Reborn” series came to mind. I finally did produce my own edition of his book, and it’s been one of my most popular memory training offerings. Undoubtedly, that’s because we have independent confirmation of Ravenna’s memory skill. And although he was famed for his language learning prowess and ability to memorize scripture, it’s his command of the law upon which most of his legend rests. As I continue my studies of ancient memory techniques, I expect I’ll keep revisiting and expanding based on how I’m applying some of Ravenna’s law-specific mnemonics. In fact, there’s one part of his book that I think will apply to remembering sections in law that I’m excited to try very soon. I’m not sure it will change the Magnetic Memory Method approach that I’ll be using, but that’s the most exciting part of being a memory expert who applies these techniques frequently to course work. I’m in the trenches and always taking you with me to learn more about memory techniques together. Frequently Asked Questions About Memorizing the Law I’ve received dozens of questions about memorizing law over the years. I believe all my answers still stand, but also expect I’ll be coming back to this page to update a few things as I get deeper into my own “legal immersion.” For now, here are some direct answers taken directly from my inbox as I’ve helped people over the years. What is the best way to memorize law? There is no one single best way. Rather, a combination of techniques is likely to work best. The reason the Memory Palace technique is universally admired has to do with the power of spatial memory. Locations have long been considered a powerful resource going back thousands of years. Combining the Memory Palace technique with spaced repetition and other active recall-based strategies leads to deeper encoding and recall than using any single technique on its own. How many Memory Palaces do you need for law school? The core Memory Palace system I’ve used involves 26 Memory Palaces, one for each letter of the alphabet. This choice is based around ideas in Aristotle’s On Memory, Ramon Llull’s Memory Wheels and innovations offered by the Renaissance memory master, Giordano Bruno. When you have one Memory Palace per letter of the alphabet, you can run the art of combination, or ars combinatoria. This means that if you have a Latin phrase like Res ipsa loquitur in tort law to memorize, you never have to wonder what Memory Palace to use. In my case, R is my friend Rick’s home because that’s the first letter of his name. I choose it and use him as a core mnemonic association due to the sound and spelling of the Latin term. Since the term means, “the thing speaks for itself,” I imagine Rick engaged in actions that remind me of the sound and meaning of the term. For memorizing section numbers, it’s possible to build a second Memory Palace Network based on a 00-99 PAO System. I’m not yet sure if I will do that, but they are relatively easy to develop if you have developed skills with this kind of mnemonic system. If you have both systems for law, you will have 126 Memory Palaces. That is almost certainly more than enough. Can you use mnemonics for the bar exam? Yes, but make sure you know how to spot issues and actually provide the answers your examiners are expecting. The BARBRI website talks about using memory techniques for the bar in this article. The only thing missing is that they don’t say nearly enough about Memory Palaces. They also focus a lot on visualization, which is not technically necessary when using mnemonics. How long does it take to memorize a legal rule using a Memory Palace? I consider this what I call a “magic number” question. In reality, it’s not possible to know how long absorbing any piece of information is going to take. That’s because information is not equal. However, if you get good at memory techniques, you’ll find that you can get quite fast. And all the faster when you combine the techniques of memory with regularly putting yourself in contexts where you use what you’ve learned. Are flashcards or Memory Palaces better for law school? This question creates a false dichotomy because the answer is both. Also, it’s helpful to understand that a well-created flashcard is not unlike a station in a Memory Palace. If you include a quick sketch that involves three or more colors and use active recall principles to test yourself, you’ll find that you can think back to that card with greater ease. Then, you can reproduce the target information, much like you would revisit a Memory Palace station and reconstruct knowledge through decoding during the learning process. This still doesn’t mean that using one is better than the other. That’s because you can have each flashcard refer to a station in a Memory Palace for even better results. So in summary, I suggest you use both and combine them. Join the Journey Peter of Ravenna documents his memory methods exactly as he used them. I’m excited to do the same. Except this time around, I’ve got more memory science on my side, a camera and a microphone. If you’d like to join this journey and get regular updates, start now by completing my free Memory Palace course: You’ll learn how to create well-formed Memory Palaces and apply them to anything you’re studying. And that includes complex, high-volume material like the law. Before we go, let me recap how years ago, a Crown lawyer told me my writing was “clinical” and suggested I consider law school. At the time, I had an MA to finish. Then a PhD. Then another MA, followed by many other courses, books and an edition of Ravenna’s The Phoenix (Phoenix Reborn). It took me decades to finally get enroled in law school. This page will grow along with my studies, so feel free to bookmark the page and check back in as things develop. The “Warrior of the Mind” as Tony Buzan once called me is finally going to law school. I hope you’ll follow along and apply how I’m using the Magnetic Memory Method to your own learning goals.

What do people reach for when life hurts?In this sermon from Proverbs 31:4-7, Pastor Jason explores addiction, emotional numbness, mental health, grief, and the quiet ways people try to survive pain. While many know Proverbs 31 as the "virtuous woman" passage, this message focuses on a mother warning her son, a king, about the danger of losing clarity, compassion, and purpose through numbness.This is not just a sermon about alcohol or addiction. It is about all the ways people disconnect:through workscrollingangerisolationbusynessemotional shutdownFrom small towns battling addiction crises to overwhelmed families trying to hold life together, this message speaks honestly about survival mode, healing, and the hope found in Jesus Christ.If you have ever felt exhausted, emotionally stuck, spiritually numb, or burdened by the pain of someone you love, this sermon is for you."Numb is not the same as healed."Send us Fan MailLinkoln shares his story on why he started coming to Ravenna Church of the Nazarene and shares why you should consider doing the same.Ravenna Church of the Nazarene530 Main Street, Ravenna, KY 40472Support the showThe Dirt Path Sermon Podcast is a place for real sermons that speak to real life. Subscribe and walk the path with us every week.Consider visiting Ravenna Church of the Nazarene where Pastor Jason is the Senior Pastor.   Have a prayer need? Want to share something with Pastor Jason? Email dirtpathpastor@gmail.com

Have you ever felt like you're just one wrong step away from everything falling apart?In this Derby Sunday message, Pastor Jason Barnett shares from Psalm 121, a song written for people on the road, not people who have it all figured out. It's a reminder that God is not just waiting for you at the destination… He is watching every step along the way.If life feels uncertain, if you don't feel steady, and if you can't clearly see what's ahead—this message is for you.Bottom Line: You may feel unsteady, but you are being kept.

Declarative memory is used when consciously recalling information, big or small, usually in a sustained way. It’s also the type of memory you use every time you use memory techniques like the Memory Palace or basic mnemonics. That’s why these mental learning tools can sometimes feel effortful, especially when you’re new to using them. But that’s also why the effort fades with practice. So to give you a small sense of what declarative memory feels like, give this exercise a try: What’s the name of your first friend in school? Can you think about a specific event from the time you spent together? When I do this, my friend Ryan comes to mind. He was the first person to show me an American dollar, something that was unusual to see way up north where we lived in Canada. These facts about what took place, where we were and my personal familiarity with the memory: It all belongs to declarative memory. This is quite different from nondeclarative memory for reasons we’ll discuss on this page, updated for you on May 4, 2026 with more information and an audio podcast. So if you’re ready to take a deep dive into the nature of declarative memory, the role it plays in human experience and how you can enjoy greater success when using memory techniques, I consider knowing terms like this part of the “owner’s manual of the mind and memory.” Let’s get started! What Is Declarative Memory? Declarative memory is another term for explicit memory. It’s also sometimes called conscious memory. Knowing this definition matters a great deal for your memory training because this kind of memory is responsible for every act of encoding, from assigning Memory Palaces to placing vivid associations that make reviewing what you’ve studied using a Memory Palace much easier. William James first defined this type of memory back in 1890 when he wrote: The knowledge of a former state of mind after it has already once dropped from consciousness; or rather it is the knowledge of an event, or fact, of which we have not been thinking, with the additional consciousness that we have thought or experienced it before. Note the nuance here: Declarative memory isn’t necessarily true. Sometimes we confabulate certain facts, which means that memories can get distorted. Dr. Gary Small has discussed our memory as a kind of neighborhood in which parts of our memories travel from house to house, getting changed each and every time they travel. Nonetheless, declarative memory is the conscious awareness of knowledge that something in the past happened to you. And more often than not, our declarative memories are accurate enough. The Science of Declarative Memory Scientists use the term encoding to describe how memories form in the first place. A declarative memory is better when the encoding is elaborate and deep. But all too often, our encoding is limited and superficial, which is why I have shared these elaborative encoding exercises with you. In the absence of such exercises, a lot of the depth of encoding comes down to focused attention. If you’re not interested in something, you’re more likely to encode in a shallow way. But when we’re interested in topics and having fun, encoding at a deep level tends to happen very quickly. The Role of Declarative Memory Over Time Once encoding has been accomplished, declarative memories must be stored for future access in long-term memory. Once the encoding and storage stages are complete, scientists call the result an engram. This term literally refers to the sum total of all the changes in the brain from the moment of perception to the ushering of the information into storage. Engrams are distributed across the brain. Different brain regions seem to be specialized for particular kinds of storage to help with particular kinds of information retrieval. Take chess openings, for example. William Chase and Herbert Simon asked chess players of varying levels of skill to analyze a chessboard featuring between 26-32 chess pieces arranged in actual configurations you might see in a game. They found that Grandmasters vastly outperformed the analytical tasks they were given when looking at actual games. However, when the scientists repeated the experiment with the pieces distributed randomly on the board, Grandmasters did no better than anyone else at recalling details of the chessboard. This is because the trained regions of their brains could not help them in this new context. For this reason, when you wish to improve your working memory,  it’s important to note that playing games might build you skills within the game environments. But those skills might not transfer much, and possibly not at all. Declarative Memory Examples Remember how I gave a declarative memory definition above by saying that it’s the conscious recall of memories in a sustained way? This means that accessing the memory takes place over time, often substantial amounts of time. Here are some examples: One: Where You Were When Something Happened I was in a cafeteria at York University when a friend called. He said, “Find a TV!” “What’s going on?” I asked, but all he could do was repeat himself. That was the morning of September 11, 2001. And when I finally found a television, I was just in time to see the second tower struck during the September 11 attacks. In this sustained example of flashbulb memory, I’m drawing upon semantic facts and episodic memory. It’s an autobiographical memory too, and the common denominator amongst all of them is that I am consciously aware that all of the material is memory. This way of looking at declarative memory matters for your memory training because flashbulb memories show you what deep encoding looks like when you experience it naturally. That’s why mnemonist David Berglas refers to it in his excellent book, A Question of Memory, when he discusses “the Kennedy Effect.” His suggestion is that whenever you memorize something, you try to make the associations you use as striking as what happened to JFK. But you’re generating this kind of association between what you want to memorize and episodes of such historical impact not for entertainment. You’re doing it with a depth of purpose tailored towards creating recall. Using that level of emotional intensity is tremendously helpful for ensuring the precious information you want to remember sticks. Two: Trivia Who doesn’t love to play from home during an episode of Jeopardy? As the answers appear on the screen, you get a great brain workout trying to arrive at the answer in the form of question. This is all declarative memory due to your conscious engagement in the process. You’re not just passively trying to arrive at the answer. You’re actively searching your memory and trying to do so fast enough to beat the clock. Now, this is not necessarily the same thing as sharing details about your favorite author, composer or artist during a conversation. Usually, there’s no pressure in such contexts. How they do relate is that we usually don’t memorize such facts deliberately. Such facts enter your memory implicitly, a kind of memory we’ll talk about a little bit further on. If you do want to deliberately memorize information for trivia night at the pub, however, here’s a tutorial on how to do it. Three: Locations And Directions Locations are related to trivia in some contexts. But more broadly, if someone asks you for directions, you’ll be drawing on your declarative memory to explain how a person can find the desire target. This process will take place even if you have aphantasia, which is the lack of a mind’s eye. People with this condition can both give and follow directions. That said, as science journalist Christopher Kemp has shown in Dark & Magical Places, not everyone has the same navigation abilities. It’s not entirely clear if the issues he outlines come down to declarative memory, but something called place cells are involved in navigational accuracy. Assuming you don’t have navigation issues like Kemp has reported, locations you know give your declarative memory rich and reliable options to work with for memorizing information. Four: Critical Thinking Anytime you turn on your thinking engines, you’ll be drawing upon declarative memory. General reasoning draws upon facts, as does specific, objective reasoning. And whenever you’ve got your inner Sherlock running to deduce or induce conclusions, you’ll probably also be drawing upon facts you already know. This is why memory training does far more than help you pass exams or recall names. The quality of your thinking depends on the quality of what you can retrieve, how accurately and how quickly. In other words, you can only reason using accessible facts. If your encoding is shallow when trying to memorize information, those facts won’t be there when you need them. To help you better understand this, think about the last time you tried to form an opinion during a discussion about something complicated. Your brain needed to pull together things you’d read, heard and experienced, all while weighing one piece of evidence against the other. All of this activity drew upon your declarative memory and the quality of how it fed your reasoning was based on how much material your brain could access. This is why I often say, “the more you learn the more you can learn.” You’re able to use the element of thinking and reasoning while using memory techniques, as described by the great memory teachers Peter of Ravenna, Jacobus Publicius and Giordano Bruno. What's the Difference Between Declarative and Nondeclarative Memory? In brief, it comes down to your conscious intention to recall information. Whereas with implicit memory (also known as nondeclarative memory you’re not conscious of either learning or recalling, declarative memory involves awareness. Larry R. Squire highlights another key difference in the Journal of Neuroscience. Your declarative memory can dictate how you describe your behavior in response to stimuli. As he explains it: An aversive childhood event such as being knocked down by a large dog might lead to a stable declarative memory for the event itself as well as a long-lasting fear of dogs (a nondeclarative memory) that is experienced as a personality trait rather than as a memory. In other words, our self-perception of early experiences guides how we describe their influence on their lives. But the influence itself comes from an early, nondeclarative memory experience. Procedural memory can also play a role, such as constantly acting out a learned helplessness around dogs. Why This Distinction Matters for Your Memory Training Since most people read the Magnetic Memory Method blog or listen to my podcast to improve their memory, it will be helpful for you to understand how declarative memory is involved in using most of the techniques I share in my mnemonics dictionary and Magnetic Memory Method Masterclass. Think about the last time you used a Memory Palace. (Or if the technique is new to you, check out my complete guide to using the Memory Palace technique). When you select a station in a Memory Palace, you consciously choose it. Then, when placing a mnemonic association, you use mnemonic techniques to generate and elaborate it. Every step requires your complete attention. And that’s an example of declarative memory doing the heavy lifting. If it feels slow or awkward, that’s not because memory techniques don’t work. It’s just a lack of training and practice in using them. Why Practice Will Always Remain Essential When you use memory techniques frequently enough, you will eventually need to spend less conscious effort bringing Memory Palace stations to mind. And the more familiarity you have with mnemonic tools like Memory Wheels, the Major System and a PAO System, your use of the techniques will happen faster. Later, when you practice retrieval through spaced repetition, your memory will serve you the target information at a faster rate. It might never feel completely effortless. But as procedural memory grows, using memory techniques will feel like riding a bike. You do have to rotate the pedals, but you don’t have to think about all the various operations that go into operating the bike and navigating it to reach a destination. The more you use Memory Palaces while generating and placing associations, the more it will be just like riding a bike with a feeling of automaticity. Mnemonic Encoding is Always Declarative Every time I create a new association, whether for memorizing something in Latin, my new law school project, Sanskrit, Chinese or the poetry I memorize, I have to consciously draw upon parts of the mind that involve declarative memory. And if you’re a medical student memorizing the cranial nerves, you can certainly use rote repetition. But that requires a lot of effort compared to using a Memory Palace paired with vivid associations. That’s because when you revise the information you’ve placed, you’ll be drawing upon those associations, many of which will involve episodic and autobiographical memories. You’re exercising multiple levels, strengthening the memory from a number of angles. Then, when you sit for an exam and face a question about the facial nerve, retrieval will have become procedural. And that will free up your mind to think about clinical applications rather than burning up cognitive resources just trying to remember basic anatomical names and facts. So the next time your encoding feels clunky and taking too much deliberate effort, don’t worry. Part of what’s happening is just an effect of how memory works. You’re actually drawing upon your declarative memory and it is doing its job relative to your study and practice of memory techniques. Chances are, you’ve just come across information that you’ve never tried to encode before and need a bit more time to think it through. Keep studying memory techniques and you’ll get better and faster overall. And when the gears grind to a halt, you’ll know that you just have to keep moving. That’s what I’ve always done and it has helped me memorize far more than I ever thought possible. How To Avoid The Corruption Of Your Declarative Memory As you’ve discovered, this aspect of your memory is not bullet proof. You can consciously feel that a memory is 100% accurate, but wind up recalling things that are either exaggerated or simply not true. Fortunately, there are ways to fend this off from happening. For one thing, you can see a lot of improvement simply by focusing on improving your sleep. You can also use memory techniques. There are countless studies showing just how strong these methods are for improving your ability to recall information accurately. Mnemonology is one particularly good and scholarly book that makes these studies accessible to anyone. Other options involve studying music, learning languages or learning to give speeches. You can also focus on preserving your non-declarative memory as an indirect approach. If you’d like help in any of these areas, I suggest you start with my FREE Memory Improvement Kit: It will help you commit anything you wish to memory. And give your declarative memory a great workout too. So what do you say? Do you now understand this critical aspect of your memory? Get out there and “declare” that you are a master of memory and put it to good use. It’s a powerful asset!

Europe's borders in the Middle Ages were created by one man, and he wasn't even born in the Middle Ages, nor was he Christian. It was Emperor Diocletian, who ruled Rome from 284 to 305. His reforms that chained tenant farmers to land created the blueprint for feudalism. He split the empire, which established the East-West divide. Lastly, his shift from static Roman legions to mobile armies set the stage for the warrior kingdoms that would dominate the early Middle Ages. Today, new genetic analysis of skeletal and tooth remains is revolutionizing how we understand this transformation—a high-status woman buried around 550 in Britain was born in Norway according to her childhood tooth enamel, proving the "barbarian invasions" were actually century-long migrations averaging just three miles per day. Today's guest is John Haywood, author of The Making of the Middle Ages: An Atlas of Europe. We discuss how Europe from 500-700 was ruled by warrior kingdoms with mobile courts that constantly traveled—only shifting to fixed courts and proper imperial administration after Charlemagne established counties, libraries, copyists, and the emporia trading centers where workshops and markets flourished. Haywood also explains how Ravenna's independence from Byzantium portended the rise of papal power, why towns collapsed from Roman populations of thousands to mere hundreds unless a bishop resided there, and how the density of churches and monasteries north of the Alps exploded between 600 and 1200 as the Catholic Church consolidated power across formerly pagan Germanic territories.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Big Tech is coming for rural America's land, power, and water to fuel its hyperscale data centers. I'm joined by energy expert and journalist Robert Bryce, who has been chronicling the massive, bipartisan grassroots rebellion fighting back against the data center land-grab. The push for cloud-based AI and hyperscale data centers is draining America's resources at a record pace — requiring unprecedented amounts of electricity and water while offering little return on investment to local communities. It's the green energy grift all over again, but exponentially worse. From Round Rock, Texas, to Ravenna, Ohio, everyday Americans are uniting across the political spectrum to stop multinational tech giants from unnaturally rezoning agricultural land and destroying local grids. We dive into the shocking poll data, the reality of noise pollution, and why this fight is about much more than just energy — it's about protecting our homesteads from the ultimate Big Tech surveillance state.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices