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Tyson Popplestone is a Comedian from Melbourne Australia. Join him for a brand new interview each week.
tyson:
because I can easily adjust it so it's just our voices if you'd prefer but
Roddy Roediger:
Oh.
tyson:
usually I usually
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
do post the audio and the video as well
Roddy Roediger:
Oh, that's fun.
tyson:
as long as you're happy with it.
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah, that's fun.
tyson:
Beautiful. Roddy I found out about your book a little while ago a friend recommended it to me because the subject of learning has been something I'm fascinated in. I've got a background in teaching. My wife's a teacher but funny the way it came up was I was I was trying to get better at just memorizing people's names. I feel like I'll get into a conversation, I'll meet someone for the first time, I'll introduce myself and I'll go away and I'll go, oh my gosh, they just told me their name, I
Roddy Roediger:
Yep.
tyson:
can't remember what it was. And I was explaining this to a friend of mine a little while ago, they said, hey, you have to read this book, Make It Stick, because a lot of what we do on a day-to-day basis are probably not helpful when it comes to this idea of learning and especially when it comes to this idea memorizing knowledge, information, people's names.
Roddy Roediger:
Mm-hmm.
tyson:
So I thought maybe a good way to kickstart the conversation would be to ask you the question, what are a couple of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to effective learning or memorizing of information?
Roddy Roediger:
Okay, let's start with the problem you just mentioned, which you're not the only one who has this problem. Almost everyone does. And so, there are some complicated techniques about remembering names and faces. I can get into that. But the simplest thing to do is as soon as you hear a name, I mean, you're all busy, you're shaking hands, smiling, trying to make a good impression, and so you're distracted. But the best thing you can do is mentally repeat it to yourself immediately. And then try, if it's not awkward to use it for conversation, well, Benny, what do you think about so and so? And that way, and then if you keep using it at intervals after that, you'll have the name. And so the main piece of advice there, which is hard to do, is pay careful attention in the first place. Be, be effortful, be conscious. Okay, I'm learning somebody new and then repeat the name to yourself and then if you can, out loud.
tyson:
Yeah, yeah.
Roddy Roediger:
So, the more, so I'm getting to a new class starting Monday. This is our beginning of our semester and I'll have a bunch of students and I'll learn their names. And the way I do it every semester is just with flashcards. Just put the face, they give us all their pictures, put the face on one side, the name on the other, and just keep practicing every day until I have them all. And then, of course, they don't look necessarily like what their picture was, so you have that problem, but that's pretty easily solved. So anyway, and then I try, even the first day of class, to call them by name. Um.
tyson:
Yeah, so it's just that process of actually recalling their name in the moment. You're right, I notice that quite a lot. I'm so concerned about making sure I get the handshake right, making sure I'm polite, making sure I introduce anyone else that I'm with that it's almost just a courtesy thing. It's like we're just scoping each other out, but the idea of actually memorizing the name is probably
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
not at the forefront of the mind. So the
Roddy Roediger:
Right,
tyson:
idea
Roddy Roediger:
let's
tyson:
of just
Roddy Roediger:
not.
tyson:
repeating it throughout that conversation, I notice, and it also seems quite personable. I notice whenever I meet someone, And I've just met them and they bring my name up in conversation. It seems like perhaps more than even just memorizing their name. It's, it's just a nice personable way to kickstart
Roddy Roediger:
Yes,
tyson:
a conversation.
Roddy Roediger:
it is. It
tyson:
Yeah.
Roddy Roediger:
is. Now, there are people, they're called memory athletes. I don't know if this is popular. In the world of mind sports, mental sports, memorizing has a class of its own. And one of the tasks they have is to see names and faces one time. They go through a list of, say, 150. or 200, name, face, one time. And then you get the face layer and a random order, all the faces, and you have to come up with the names. It's one of the hardest tasks they have to do. And they've developed special techniques. If you look at books on memorizing, they'll usually have these techniques like trying to look at the face, find a prominent feature, and then somehow hook that to the name. And once you practice it a whole lot, you can do it quickly. I'm not good at this. But some of them, you know, you give them 200, they'll get 100 or something like that. So it's pretty amazing. Because they're coming boom, right in the order, just a few seconds apiece. And so,
tyson:
Sorry to interrupt.
Roddy Roediger:
but that's a whole other world. I mean, for most of us, just repeating the name, using what we call retrieval practice, repeating it immediately. But it won't stick if you just repeat it immediately. You need to keep doing it off and on. If you're at this party and you look over at them later and think, ha ha, I met that person, it's Betty, or whoever. And so just keep doing it at greater intervals. And then you'll eventually make it stick more in long-term memory.
tyson:
Yeah, that makes so much sense. I guess just that process of forcing yourself to remember in a situation like that is perhaps the one thing that many of us forget. It's so obvious when you say it out loud that, okay, simply repeating it, remembering it, associating the name with the face is one of the most helpful tools. I've also heard, and to use the example of the memory athletes that you just brought up, that a lot of the time creating some form of a story around something that you would like to remember is a really helpful way. I often... I met two people in my local street a couple of weeks ago. They just actually moved to where I am from the US and the lady's name was Chris, the man's name was Jay. And I thought I would just try this under no illusion that I knew it was gonna be right. I just associated her name, she doesn't look anything like her with the name Chris Kardashian and he was Jay Leno. They both look nothing like the people but
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
I saw them this morning. And it seemed to stick in my mind. I was like, okay,
Roddy Roediger:
No,
tyson:
I
Roddy Roediger:
that's
tyson:
came up
Roddy Roediger:
good.
tyson:
with this fun little name game.
Roddy Roediger:
That's good.
tyson:
Is there any science to back up the fact that that's an effective method? Because it seemed
Roddy Roediger:
Oh,
tyson:
to help
Roddy Roediger:
absolutely.
tyson:
me at least this morning.
Roddy Roediger:
Absolutely. If anything you do to elaborate, and even if you make up a crazy association like Jay Leno, then that's helpful. I mean, anything you do to make it distinctive, to stand out. So if you can look at them and then think of who you thought of, then you've got the name. So it's easier to remember two people in an image. There is a name and a face in the image. So I think that's a good turkey.
tyson:
Yeah, it seemed to be helpful for me. I was happy, because I've been trialing a couple of other things, as I said, which is why I found my way to make it stick. That seems, from my perspective, to be the most helpful one. But I'm also aware of the fact that maybe with name retrieval, that's a really helpful thing. But when it comes to the actual idea of education or retaining information, I know a lot of the time, and I've heard you speak about this at length now since I found out about you. But I know a lot of the time when I'm trying to retain information, especially a lot of information, what I'll try and do is I'll go back and I'll just reread and highlight and maybe take some notes. And I'm constantly amazed at how bad I am at retaining the information, regardless of how... Well, I don't know if this is true. Sometimes when I'm more interested in a subject, it seems to stick more effectively. But if there's some basic information, for example, one thing in my household, which my wife would be quick to tell you, is she'll ask me to do a job quite regularly and it goes in one ear and out the other. So there are a couple of subjects that I've brought up there but I guess starting with the first one, when it comes to this information memorization, when it comes to text or something that you're studying for, why is it that so much of the information that we take in and so many of the techniques we've been taught to prepare for an exam or a test or whatever it may be are so unhelpful when it comes to actually retaining the information? for long enough to actually be able to put it down on the test paper.
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah, well, some of the things we do, and we're even taught to do them, a lot of people talk about repetition. And repetition is great for learning, but it shouldn't be bunched all together. It should be spread out in time. And so space repetition is good, but if you read a chapter and you read it over again, immediately that's not gonna help you much. You just read it. You're not gonna pick up much the second time. You'll probably just let your eyes slide over it. And the other thing, we confuse familiarity. You can read a textbook and think, well, I got all that. I just showed you it all. Say a history textbook or something. It's not complicated. And so you think you have it. And then if you go back what you highlighted or marked in some way, you think, oh, I'll show you what I thought was really important. And then you have read it and you've become familiar with it, but the only way you really find out if you know it is to ask yourself about it. And so like when I have a student, my teacher, I used to teach introductory psychology every year, and students would come in after the first test practically in tears because they'd say, I got a bad grade on the test by studying and studying and studying, and I'd say, how'd you study? And they would say, I re-read and highlighted, I re-read my lecture notes. And I would say, well look, there are all these key terms in the back of the book. And you look at those and try to say, can I use this in a paragraph? Can I define it and tell what it means? Nope, didn't think of that. And so what you really need to do is to test yourself. And that does two things. One, it lets you know what you know and what you don't know, which is important. That's what we call the metacognitive aspect of learning. And it's a very hard thing. You know, you read that book and you think, I know it, I got it, I just read it, I got it all. But unless you ask yourself questions, you don't really know what you've really understood and will remember and what kind of what bug you, like you say. And so what we call retrieval practice is one of the best things to do, to look at questions, to test yourself. It's even good to, while you're reading, although it slows your way down, to write questions yourself, like ones that might be on the test later. And so why do people do this technique if it doesn't work in the long term? Well, the answer is it does work in the short term. If you read a text passage right now and I give you an immediate test, especially if it's a multiple choice test, you'll do fine. most of the time. But I mean, if it's pretty straightforward material, but in a week or two weeks, you won't remember the material. It's kind of like the name. One second later, you might have it, but a week later you don't unless you work at it. And so it's the same thing with text. You need to say, read the chapter now, make questions or whatnot, test yourself, read the chapter again, you'll pick up the stuff you missed before the test. And so testing yourself in multiple different ways, short answer questions, essay questions, flashcards, if it's the kind of material that will be amenable to flashcards, not everything is. Philosophy is not, for example.
tyson:
you
Roddy Roediger:
So you've got to adapt your study strategy to what works as we talk about it and make it safe. All of those things, any kind of way you elaborate on the text. When you're reading a paragraph, pause after it and say, how does this apply to me? How do I relate this to something else I know? And those things will be very helpful. They slow you down. I mean, a lot of students, I feel like they say, well, I've got an hour, I got to finish this chapter. So boom, boom. They're just kind of zipping through the chapter without pausing to reflect. and to let it sink in. Take a little break. It's hard to read straight for an hour. Take a little break after 15 or 20 minutes. You know, it's just getting up out of your chair and walking around the room. Take a little break and then come back to it. You'll be refreshed.
tyson:
Yeah, I think in a culture of productivity and efficiency, one thing which is often overlooked, and I say this from personal experience, is how well you take on knowledge and what celebrated is how much information you can get through. If I speak to someone and they say, Hi, I read three books a week. In my mind, I go, Oh my gosh, I need to improve how much I read. Forgetting the fact that even me trying to read one book a week at the moment doesn't necessarily mean that the information has been absorbed. Have And you had much of an experience with that because I understand from a college perspective, which I've been through here in Australia, a lot of my approach at the time that I was going through it was just try and know what you needed to know for the test, get the marks that you need to get your certificate and then move on, which I'm sure says more about me than it does about the actual structure of the course. But what I found interesting was there was so many people who had that same approach. Let's just cram, take it on as quickly as we can, and then... so much of that information in six months seem to disappear, whereas with this process of retrieval, stopping, slowing down, understanding what you're reading and how it applies to your life, it seems to, and I've heard you speak about this, it seems to have a far more effective capacity to stay on board long-term when you've slowed down that process and taken these steps.
Roddy Roediger:
Absolutely. So I mean some courses make me think, well I don't really need this anymore. But for many things you don't know what you're going to need in your life, especially these days with people changing jobs all the time. And I certainly found that I still draw. You know, I went to college 50 years ago, but I still draw on things I learned in college. Now, so I think it is important. Yeah, I think you make a good point for a lot of students to study like you described, and that will fade fast.
tyson:
Yeah, I asked my wife the other night who's a really good teacher here, really passionate about it. She teaches history and she seems to have a far greater understanding on this subject than what I realised. Because I came home, I was listening to the audible version of Make It Stick the other day and I got home from my run and I asked her the question. I said, hey, what is the most effective way for a person to learn in your opinion? And she went through a couple of different things and then something that she mentioned which was really interesting to me. And I believe her based on how much I see her remember from the books and things that she does read. One thing she likes to do is take notes, but more than that, she finds she's really benefited by pictures that she draws. And as she explained this, I thought, I wonder if that is in fact, almost a way of retrieving the information, because obviously to draw a picture about what you've read, you're gonna have to go into that mind to retrieve the information that you've just developed. I don't know if there's much. science around that, but I was interested to pick your brain around like this idea of journaling in a way that you're actually drawing pictures rather than just taking notes after you've read text.
Roddy Roediger:
I can send you a paper on that very topic. But yes, basically things that are, we remember pictures better than words. If I were to give you a list of 50 pictures of common objects, say a football, a automobile, just common things, and give one group the list of words, automobile. you know, basketball or whatever else. And then you have another group, that same set of pictures telling them, well, I'm gonna ask you later if you can write down the words. So in other words, you give the work, the group you give the words to, well, they're getting it in the same mode that you can write down. You might think they'd be better, but no, you're much better if you get pictures rather than words, even if you have to recall the words. So this has been known and... since the time we don't go into this much in the book, just a little bit in one chapter, but since the time of the ancient Greeks, they've known about pneumatic devices and memory palaces. And so the basic idea of, let's say, let me tell you about the method of loci. This is something where you have a list of locations, say rooms, if you have a house, the places in your house, the front... the front sidewalk, the front doorstep, the entryway, so forth and so on, all around the house. And if you have a set of things to remember, whether it be a grocery list, or points you want to make in a speech, or whatever it is, you simply arrange them and you put them in each place along the way. So, this is what the American writer Mark Twain did for his speeches. He wouldn't use any notes. he used this method. And it works wonderfully well. I used to do demonstrations in class when I taught the class of challenging the students the first day to, I'm going to, why don't you make up 20 objects, just 20 concrete objects, and then present them one at a time for about eight seconds at a time, and try to remember them in order. and I would use a version of the method of loci, it was actually a slightly different version. But anyway, same idea. You have locations, and then you have things to put in a location. So you form an image of the first word in the list, and you put in the first location, second word, and so forth. And then you can, at the end, it's you know the locations, those are your retrieval keys. And then you just- I usually close my eyes and then run through my locations and call out items in each location.
tyson:
Thank you.
Roddy Roediger:
And try it. It really works so amazingly well. The students are amazed if I can get it. Usually I get 18, 19, 20, but most of them would just get five or six. So here's this old guy getting all these, and here they are not doing so well. And then they learn how to do it later in the course, of course.
tyson:
Yeah,
Roddy Roediger:
So.
tyson:
from
Roddy Roediger:
Uh.
tyson:
a student perspective as well, I like that style of approach as well, especially to use the Mark Twain example. It's far more engaging, I find, to listen to someone who's speaking a little more freely. And just that process of association sounds as though it leaves a little room to be in the moment. You know, when you have someone at the front of a room and you have to sit there and you can tell that they're doing their best to memorize a script and perhaps they've got a piece of paper there and
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
I don't know, a little bit of the energy seems zapped away from whatever's being presented when it's like that. And I'm from the world of standup comedy here
Roddy Roediger:
Nah.
tyson:
in Melbourne, Roddy. And what I notice on a regular basis is when you have a newer standup comedian, you can really see with a lot of them that when they're trying to recall a joke, they're recalling it the way they'd written it down. And part of the magic of
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
the joke is... just evaporated based on the fact that it's like, oh, okay, this is something that's being recalled. You're not right. You're not in the same room as us fully. I mean, Mark Twain would be a great example of that always had a reputation for being quite an entertaining figure, whether it was in his words or in his performances and
Roddy Roediger:
Yes.
tyson:
speeches, so
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
perhaps no surprise. So is that a way that you approach your lectures?
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah, I try to these days with PowerPoint, I'll have pictures or whatever up there, but I try just to point to them and not, you know, regurgitate what's on the slide because that's just deadly reading your slides. And you see people do it all the time. But yeah, you try to just use them as backdrop that what you're saying is in different words than what's on the screen. Or at least that's what I show you.
tyson:
For sure, for sure, and I guess if you needed to, at least you've got the help of the photo to spark a memory.
Roddy Roediger:
It is, it is. I mean that way you don't need any notes because the notes are on the board. I mean I've seen some of the slides so many times I just glance at it and I can know exactly what you say.
tyson:
What are some of the biggest topics, or the most popular topics that you lecture on?
Roddy Roediger:
While most of it's memory and often it's how to improve your memory. I mean this is not in your class, this is when I'm asking you to talk. And you, it sounds like you've watched some of my talks, so that was probably what you saw. I've studied other things though, like, well, studied the topic of false memories for a long time. When we have the illusion that we're remembering something. but we're either remembering it differently from the way it happened, or we're remembering it something that didn't happen at all. And that's been a main thrust of my research more in the 1990s and early 2000s. But that's one topic. Another one that I'm working on now, which I think is really interesting, is called collective memory. This is not memory like we usually think of it. It's more... how we remember in groups, what we remember, has to do with identity. So for example, national memories is something I study. Everybody who's Australian, I assume, has some things they learned from history, some they pick up from the culture, their parents watching movies, reading novels. So you've got the Australian national memory. I couldn't obviously tell you what that is. And we've got the American national memory. And it's not that every American has the same memory, I suspect. In fact, that's one thing that distinguishes if you ask, and we've done this kind of thing, say people who are conservative and vote for President Trump, ex-President Trump, and people who are more liberal, and you ask for more of the latest events in US history, and the list is somewhat different. The people who are more conservative start talking about... Columbus discovering America, and more religious things, how the pilgrims came over from England. Whereas the more liberal people talk about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Not that conservatives totally missed that. And if you look at negative things, people bring up the genocide of the Native Americans. terrible to the Native Americans, just like you have that same issue in Australia with the Aboriginals. And then, conservatives don't bring that up. Slavery, that's another one. Liberals bring up the tragedy of slavery and conservatives hardly bring that up. So things like that. So we have slightly different national memories, even within one country. And you might find the same thing in Australia.
tyson:
For sure, for sure. I wonder, does that even apply to smaller things? I had a classic example this morning. In Australia, sorry, in the town that I live in, I live in a relatively older town. I live in a town called Point Lonsdale. I don't know what the average age is, but there's a lot of retirees that come down here. So as a result, I got a lot of mates down here who are in their eighties and
Roddy Roediger:
Ha ha
tyson:
above.
Roddy Roediger:
ha.
tyson:
And I'm sure some of our national memories are slightly different, but I had an interesting conversation with a... a friend of mine down here this morning and he's 82 and he was explaining to me, my wife and I have just moved to a new house and we're renting because the town that we're in at the moment, the prices are just preposterous. They're through the roof and we told him that we'd moved house and he said, oh, did you buy or did you rent? And we explained to him that we're just renting for the time being, you know, because the price of the property is just huge. And he said, yeah, it's only gonna go up. So you should jump on board. And I thought that was interesting. And history tells us that's true. But here in Australia, there seems to be an obsession with this idea of home ownership. And rightly so in so many regards. It's something that I'm sort of trying to navigate my way through and understand at the moment. But this idea, if you speak to anyone from my mom's age, who's 65 and above, even younger, like this idea of home ownership is just a must if you're an Australian. And... As they were explaining that to me, I thought, I wonder what the emotional tie with that is. Is that a purely monetary thing? Is it a security thing? Is it a story that they've created? Do things like that fit into the category of a national memory? Because for so long, if you got in the 50s, the value that you made on that property is astronomical.
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah, I would say that's certainly part of national character and the national ethos and probably a memory of the older ones of their childhood homes. And if most people grow up in houses, you often want to duplicate what you had. My son lives in New York City and couldn't possibly afford anything in New York City, so he rents an apartment and probably will stay in New York the rest of his life. never own a home, although he occasionally talks about it. So it depends a lot on where you live. And where I live in St. Louis, Missouri, home ownership is very common. Most everybody I know, I own the faculty here owns a home in one area or another. So that might be modest homes, but they're still perfectly viable homes.
tyson:
For sure, for sure. The idea of just bringing back to childhood memories or the other reasons that might motivate them to wanna see us invest in a home is one that's interesting. And I guess comes under this idea of false memory in many regards as well. I remember on an individual level, I look back at times in my life with sort of sentimental eyes, but even at times where I know I wasn't necessarily my happiest or I was going through certain stresses or anxieties. And in the time I knew for a fact that I wasn't necessarily that excited about where I was, but for whatever reason, I'm 36 now, I might look back 25 years and go, oh, back in the good old days. And
Roddy Roediger:
Yep.
tyson:
it's interesting that certain emotions seem to be forgotten when you're reflecting on a certain time in your life. So for example, I know there's a lot of people in the current day that they'll look at their situation and they might be cynical about where they're at or disappointed with certain areas or perhaps even upset. And for whatever reason, you fast forward 20 years and they look back like these were the good old days where everything was just going beautifully. Does that come under the category of false memory? Cause I'm always fascinated about why it is that we look at the past in many of our lives with such rose colored glasses.
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah, I don't know if it'd be a false memory. There's one finding that, I mean, this is what you're describing is, I don't know if it's worldwide, but certainly it's in the US too, where a lot of research has been done, and in England and Europe. But people seem to forget negative memories when keep positive memories, certainly unless you're a depressed person, clinically depressed. And so even if you had... a pretty unhappy childhood, you can remember the high points, the good points of it. And so I think that's just because we tend to remember positive things and forget negative ones, perhaps as a defense mechanism of some sort, keeping us in check. But that's a very often repeated finding and very interesting, even in laboratory studies. where you give people positive words and negative words, they'll remember the positive ones better than the negative ones when you try to reflect the words on all kinds of other things like frequency and the language and stuff.
tyson:
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. My wife and I often, at the moment, we've got a three-year-old boy and a one-year-old boy. So as
Roddy Roediger:
Oh, well.
tyson:
a result, it sounds like you've got kids yourself. It's a chaotic household here. There's a lot of
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
emotions. And as I said, the age group of the people that were around at the moment, they look at us and laugh and say, oh, you guys have got to take this on board. Like it's a really special moment. It goes by so quickly.
Roddy Roediger:
It does.
tyson:
And I know, I'm old enough to know that would be true. But even still with the pooey nappies, the lack of sleep, the temper tantrums, you go, oh, surely there's not going to be much that you look back on
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah,
tyson:
with
Roddy Roediger:
it will
tyson:
rose-colored
Roddy Roediger:
be.
tyson:
glasses from
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
here. But yeah, I'm sure we will. Hey, one thing you mentioned before briefly, and we've touched on a couple, is just the use of mnemonic devices for retaining certain information. Are there certain mnemonic devices that are standouts when it comes to memory retention?
Roddy Roediger:
Well, the memory athletes all use something called the memory palace. And it's like the memory of Loci that we talked about using your house, except they have palaces that hold two, we usually call it a palaces, they'll have things that hold two and three hundred and four hundred items. And they won't just have one, they'll have thirty or forty palaces. I mean, they can be... hotels they've been to, all kinds of things. They deliberately memorize these places, big sets of them, and then they use those. They use imagery, they take in the information, store it in some particular location, and they practice and practice and practice. I mean, four or five hours a day doing this kind of thing. And so it's not for the faint of heart. It's a very... It's a sport for young people, they age out of it in their late 30s. So basically, the World Amendment Championships are held every year, usually in Asia these days, it used to be all over the world, but now, in the Asian, for a while the Germans and the English were the best. Now it seems like North Korea guy is just amazing. They let them out to come to these competitions. They're so good. And Chinese are very good. Indians are coming out strong. Mongolians are really good. They have a memory academy in Mongolia. And I was associated with a memory tournament in the U.S. and they showed up here and they had patches all over their uniform. They wore uniforms. They had patches all over them advertising Mongolian banks and Mongolian card dealerships and that kind of thing. So
tyson:
Ow.
Roddy Roediger:
it's a whole industry, a whole sport. If you Google World Memory Championships, you can see the records that they've set. For example, the North Korean guy, one of the tasks is what psychologists call digit span, number span. So just how many single digits can you remember in order? So 6541392, and now we can say 6541392. But... the record for that, for saying hearing digits one at a time, one per second, which is about what I was saying, and that he could remember 470-something of them in order, and how? Those memory palaces. He would do things like take every three digits, create an image. He would have an image for every three digits, put it in the first place, next three digits, in the second place, and so forth.
tyson:
I was gonna ask you about this because the idea of retaining memories over the long term makes more sense to me. Like that
Roddy Roediger:
Yep.
tyson:
time element that you spoke about makes a lot of sense. You wanna remember where things are in your palace while spend time familiarizing yourself with it. But then as you just said, 432, I think it was, different numbers that you remember with one number per second. So are these people just operating at a much faster speed? Obviously they've got the background of practice, they know what their palaces look like, I assume, they know where they're
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
gonna store certain letters. Is it the same thing just taking place on a way shorter timeframe?
Roddy Roediger:
Yes, it's the same principle, but they have, they're all really smart. They all have what I would call high working memory capacity, ability to hold things in mind and ignore irrelevant things. That's working memory. Working with the information in mind before it goes away. They're excellent at that. And... They say, oh, anybody could do what we do. I used to have a bad memory until I started doing this. You could do it too. And I used to believe that, but I don't anymore. I just heard so many people that started off trying to do this in a serious way, and they just gave up. You know, they just couldn't
tyson:
Mm.
Roddy Roediger:
do it. So I do think it takes some special talent that the ones who are really good at, like the ones who compete. But in the US and in most European countries, And perhaps in Australia too, there are competitions like in Germany, every city has their own competition practically. And then they have a German competition once a year. The US, it's not developed that well yet.
tyson:
Yeah.
Roddy Roediger:
They're trying to get better here.
tyson:
That natural talent's always a factor, isn't it? I come from a background in middle distance running, and I train really hard. In fact, I train with a number of athletes who competed at the Olympic Games, and we had the same training programs in many regards. And while I got to a certain level, which was good nationally, on an international scale, I would have been absolutely blown out of the water. And yeah, there's some athletes who just seem to be able to take that work and take it to a brand new level. I was speaking to a friend of mine yesterday who's got a background in motocross, and he said the same thing. It seems every field that you look at, including the memory champs now seems to have some just freaks of nature. How does that number retention convert to other areas? Are these guys and girls more naturally able to recall information that they read from textbooks as well?
Roddy Roediger:
Unless they use their special techniques, they are not. They tell us they forget their keys, where they put their keys. They, you know, their wives tell them one thing and it's in one ear and not the other. Unless they're using their special techniques, they're just like the rest of us. But if they use their special techniques, and they claim that they can't retain things over the long term, that, you know, they'll, if they use their memory powers. They'll get rid of it immediately. But we tested them one time. We had them memorize things on one day. And we didn't tell them we were going to test them on the next day. And they had this, oh, I'm not going, I can't do it again. And then we tested them the next day. And they forgot some, but they were still much, much better than our control people who were students, who have good
tyson:
Hmm.
Roddy Roediger:
memories. But so they really do, as long as they haven't used the memory palace again, they can get back to it and make them remember much. of what they originally had the next day. I don't know if I could do it a week later.
tyson:
Yeah, so the memory palace would be the number one standout mnemonic device that people are
Roddy Roediger:
Right.
tyson:
using.
Roddy Roediger:
Yep.
tyson:
Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. I feel as though there's a romantic, like you're almost romanticizing the idea of hard work. Like to go back to the idea of a college student, sometimes when we sit down with a textbook and we say, okay, I read this for five hours, it's almost as though we're trying to convince ourselves that we deserve to have a great result. And to use the example again of distance runners. It's not always the athletes who run the most miles in a week, who win the most races. There seems to be a balance between, obviously, natural talent, the work that they put in, the strength work, also the recovery work that takes place, the sleep, like there's so many factors. So it's always a little bit of a shock when people find out that the best marathon runners in the world don't necessarily run the most miles. And then when it comes to this idea of students in test situations, how much of that is taking place do you think how much of these guys going, okay, I've put in the work surely, you know, the universe is gonna give me some form of good result and they're not necessarily as interested in what the most effective way to approach their study is.
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah, I think that can happen. They think if I put in the work, I'll do well. But they have to put in the work the right way. And it depends on the type of test also. Students, often they're big classes in universities, say introductory biology or introductory psychology, most introductory anything. People get multiple choice tests because they're easy to score. hard to make up and easy to score. And in a mobile choice test, things, so we can recollect things and things can just look familiar. So there's kind of two different ways of remembering if you will. One is recollection. You're really sure I'm conscious of this. Yeah, I remember this. In other words, in other cases, most just look familiar on a mobile choice test. Here are four alternatives. Well, I recognize that one from somewhere. I'll pick that one. And often you're right, because familiarity can get you there. But familiarity doesn't help you much in recalling things.
tyson:
Hmm.
Roddy Roediger:
Recall depends on recollection. So if you're asking an essay question, being familiar, if you saw something, doesn't help you a bit. You need to be able to create a story, a theme, and put it all together. That's why practicing, creating, or looking at, at the end of the chapter, questions. and trying to answer them after you've read the chapter and seen how you've done. Or making up the questions as you go along and then testing from your own questions. Those are so much better ways, especially if you're gonna have an essay or short answer test.
tyson:
Yeah, yeah. How much does the idea of, so there was an example, and I'm not sure if it was the chapter that you wrote, but there was an example that was given in the book, or there's a couple of examples that were really helpful to me. But one was about a hunter who had part of a bullet stuck in a valve in one part of his brain and the story, and here we go, you're testing my ability to recall this story at the moment, which is going to be good for me. But essentially the idea was the surgeon that he was lucky enough to see, he was obviously an elite level surgeon, worked with a number of great and important people from around the world. But what stood out was this surgeon hadn't just developed the ability to retain information because a surgeon who's just retained information and that's it, isn't really good to anyone. You have to have a surgeon who's got the information, but then also has the ability to implement what they've learned
Roddy Roediger:
Right.
tyson:
and hopefully for your sake over the course of many years. I find this really interesting because often, and especially when it's practical information, when it comes to me, I can watch a YouTube video and I have the information, and then I try and put it into practice and I go, okay, there's a disconnect here. How much does that implementation factor, and I guess as I say it now, it makes me realize it's probably just another way to recall information and just being put into place practically. How much does that implementing what you've actually just started to learn add to the speed? in which you learn that skill.
Roddy Roediger:
It adds an awful lot. And one thing, doing actions, actions are remembered better than just instructions. So there are experiments being done where you hear a statement, like pick up the mouse. And so some people actually do pick up the mouse off the desk. Other people just hear the statement. And a third group hears the statement and imagines performing the action. And what you find is if, and then you do this for a whole lot of different objects. I used to do these kinds of experiments. We have this whole array of toys, essentially, little soldiers and little whatever. And so if you actually perform the action, you'll remember a couple of weeks later the best. If you imagine doing it, you remember it next best. If you just hear the statement. And. then you do the worst. And what the test is, you just read the statements and you say, did this happen two weeks ago? And if you acted it out, you remember the statement better, even though you heard it also, you heard other statements. And so performing the actions really helped. And so in learning life from YouTube videos. Well, the first, you're probably not going to watch a complicated video and get it all the first time. You just need to slowly go through stopping it, performing the action, and then speed it up and get better and better, get the sequence down, and then you'll probably be okay. But people learn actions and motor skills typically really well. And you see that kind of expertise, like in, say, automobile mechanics, that they just didn't. You can't just read about a car and a book. They expect to be a mechanic. You've got to practice over and over, diagnosing and all kinds of things to be a really good mechanic.
tyson:
Yeah, yeah, I was, I was involved for a couple of years here in Australia on the stock market on a day trading level. So
Roddy Roediger:
Oof.
tyson:
I was, that was the right noise. That's probably the noise that came out of my mouth more than ever during those
Roddy Roediger:
Well.
tyson:
two years. But that's my best example I think I can think of when it comes to actually taking on information and then trying to cross that information onto a live market and understand what the data that you're being given actually means. But then, not only, like there were so many different facets to the learning and to the practice that were taking place. Obviously you had to have some idea, especially in day trading, of what a particular bar graph pattern type meant. Like what does this mean? What does this suggest? What are the odds that it's gonna go in a particular direction? What does it say about the psychology of the people trading here? But then more than that, there was the actual technological side where you had to try and figure out how to put the trade in. at a fast enough time at the right time, how to get out at the right time, control the emotions. And that felt like a very tiring, especially for, no, probably first 18 months because my head was often clogged, it felt difficult, it felt hard. I was often, I would come out of this office and just feel confused and frustrated. And I often, I say all that to say that often, during the process where I learned an incredible amount, I often felt at the end of each day that barely anything had been learned. and it was a really frustrating experience.
Roddy Roediger:
Yep.
tyson:
How much is that a process of people learning? Like is that difficulty supposed to be there? If you're doing it right, is it supposed to eliminate that difficulty?
Roddy Roediger:
I think, so to go back to the surgeon example, the way, one of the points of that story, which I think is a great one, is that what he would do after surgery is he would reflect, what did I do? What went right? What went wrong? What can I do better next time? But when you're day trading, you don't ever have a chance to pause for reflection. It's just, as I understand it, I've never done it and don't plan to. It just goes by too fast. So you probably have difficulty learning because of that. You just slow things down, think hard about them. I mean, you could, at the end of the day, probably go back over some of the trades you made and look at them more slowly and more carefully. But probably if you say you're just exhausted at the end of the day, and that's the last thing you want to do, just go back and look at them again. But that's not the way. probably would be more effective for learning.
tyson:
Yeah, it's interesting you say that because a lot of professional traders say that's exactly what you should do. So I didn't even
Roddy Roediger:
Oh.
tyson:
mention that during the process of the trades, I was actually recording the screen and my audio and I would try and speak through each situation for exactly the reason you just mentioned, because
Roddy Roediger:
Ugh.
tyson:
you're right. And then journaling, yeah, it's really interesting just to hear how well that does correlate to what you teach because even journaling is something you have to go through. You had to write from A to F. on the entry of your trade and the exit of your trade, the volume of money that you put into it, and then you have to explain the process of thought that was taking place. So I think that was part of the reason I am, without going too far into everything that I do, I had a business that was already working. I think I saw dollar signs and I saw some professionals doing really well in it and they made it sound easy. They were also selling courses coincidentally. which could have been part of my downfall. But I think I got excited by that. And I forgot that like every area in the world, if you're not gonna put in the work that's required to get a bit of a foundation to become good at it, it's probably not worth it. And I realized I was probably kidding my time and that energy was better off used somewhere else. But the thing I was curious, and I don't know whether this is sort of going out to a field that's not solely yours. But I was curious to know whether there was any correlation between memory athletes and the use of their brains and reduction in things like dementia.
Roddy Roediger:
That's what actually a friend of mine, Nelson Dallas, his grandmother got Alzheimer's and he watched her go down. And that's when he took it up. He said, I want to get so good that if this happens to me, I'll last longer. My memory will last longer. That was his motivation. And he became US champion three or four times and placed in the, I think, top 20 in the world championships once. He's a computer scientist by. by profession at the University of Miami. He did a good person for the interview, but many
tyson:
Yeah.
Roddy Roediger:
athletes, if you want to, he's very, very personable.
tyson:
What's his name, sorry?
Roddy Roediger:
Nelson Dallas, I can send it to
tyson:
That'd be great.
Roddy Roediger:
you, his website. He also has a book, of course, so he'd be happy to be on. Yeah, no, it's an interesting world. I haven't been part of it for a while now. When I was studying at the speak while I was participating, I was just...
tyson:
Yeah, for sure, for sure. The other thing that I was curious to find out about was, okay, so we've got our mental palaces, the pneumonic devices, obviously, that come along with that. But outside of the actual practical mental skills that you can practice,
Roddy Roediger:
Mm-hmm.
tyson:
are there lifestyle factors around diet, nutrition, sleep, that so many of these athletes are doing at a high level?
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah, Nelson's climbed up Mount Everest several times, so he's very physically fit. And he, some of them take it very seriously, others, there's a guy named Ben Pridmore from England. He has hamburgers all the time and doesn't seem to take care of himself physically. And the time I knew him, he lived in his parents' basement. He was an accountant. He would just go to work. as an accountant when he needed to, and otherwise he would practice these mental exercises. Very nice guy, he was a lot of fun to talk to, very well liked by the whole community of memory athletes. He's probably retired by now, I guess. But
tyson:
Yeah.
Roddy Roediger:
anyway, they're just kind of all shapes and sizes.
tyson:
Hehehehe
Roddy Roediger:
One's a lawyer, one's a psychologist, but they do all kinds of things.
tyson:
Sounds
Roddy Roediger:
One
tyson:
like
Roddy Roediger:
was
tyson:
the world
Roddy Roediger:
a medical
tyson:
of-
Roddy Roediger:
student, and the medical student said he learned about this and decided to do it, to learn all these medical terms. And medical students have to learn every system of the body, the skeletal system, all the muscles, nervous system, all that. So it's just a huge task of memorization, but you really need to know it.
tyson:
Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned the medical field as well, because the medical field's one that I'm really curious about. I'm very interested in both how medicine works and I'm also interested in hearing how more natural approaches to health take place and the correlation is often a little bit of a stigma attached to, you know, the naturopath types that they're a bit hippie, bit woo-woo, have no appreciation for medicine. And the flip side of that, the more academic side is that there's not a real appreciation for the body's ability to heal itself. the impact of exercise and nutrition and diet. And there's more of a focus on, you know, perhaps just the power of medication, which is obviously difficult to argue with. We've seen so many amazing breakthroughs there. But one thing that sort of just came to mind, as you mentioned the medical field there is a lot of the time you'll go to a doctor and they do have an amazing ability to recall certain amounts of information without. a good awareness or a good understanding of other approaches to health that might be able to be used. I've got a brother-in-law whose Asperger's is on the spectrum and he's very good at memorizing certain things. He's got certain fascinations with certain objects, but then when it comes to actually be able to apply that day-to-day information in a really practical way, there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect there. Is that, sorry, I've thrown a lot of information at you there. I think I'm formulating my question as I speak, but is that like a little bit of a trait with some of these memory athletes that you see? There's almost that crazy ability to recall, retain information, but then when it comes to an actual conversation or just day-to-day conversations, is there a little disconnect or is that not a common trait? As you said,
Roddy Roediger:
No,
tyson:
it sounds
Roddy Roediger:
it's
tyson:
like
Roddy Roediger:
not
tyson:
there's
Roddy Roediger:
a common
tyson:
a lot
Roddy Roediger:
trait.
tyson:
of.
Roddy Roediger:
They don't seem to be on the spectrum that I can tell. Some of them are a little unusual, but
tyson:
Hehehe
Roddy Roediger:
I'm an academia, so there's lots of unusual people.
tyson:
Hehehe
Roddy Roediger:
But no, they don't seem to be on the spectrum. And some people say, oh, you must have a photographic memory. They say, no, not at all. And I've asked them, do people show up at your tournament saying... I don't use these techniques you use, I just have a photographic memory. And they said, well one guy did in England one time, he was an English guy, he showed up at the memory tournaments there, but nobody believed him, they all thought he was using the techniques and he wasn't all that good, so he didn't seem to have really a photographic memory. And I've never found anybody who I thought had a photographic memory. And I used
tyson:
Yeah.
Roddy Roediger:
to teach introductory psychology. There's always somebody's mind, oh my gosh, there's a photographic memory here, so and so I know. I said, well, give them this test. What do they remember really well? Oh, things on a page, they should remember, what was at the top, what was at the bottom. So I said, okay, they really can photograph it, yeah. So I said, go give them a page, just one page, any page you want, and tell them to photograph it. And then give them the following test. Tell them. to go ten lines up from the bottom and read the letters from right to left as fast as they can. But if you have a real page in front of you, you can do that easily. Nobody can do that. They can't read the words either on the line. So they're really, and they're rather more fancier tests, but there just isn't a photographic memory. I mean people, you know, there is a normal distribution of memory. Some people have very good memory. Some people have... very good visual memories, but it doesn't mean it's a photographic memory.
tyson:
We're being a little too generous with the term photographic
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah,
tyson:
memory.
Roddy Roediger:
very close.
tyson:
It's interesting how we do that. We sort of, well, there's two interesting things to what we just said. Often when we watch a person who's doing something at a really high level, we're really quick to attribute something like photographic memory to them, because maybe it helps us separate ourselves from it, not feel so bad for the fact that we can't do
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
it, but also the flip side of that is interesting that. When you speak to someone with an incredible talent for that kind of thing, they tell you that, no, I've got nothing special about me in particular. Yeah, it's interesting just to see that disconnect between, depending on what perspective it comes from. I wanted to ask you about, as I mentioned, I've got a couple of young boys and the conversation around how we're gonna do their schooling is starting to sneak in. We've got a couple of years to decide on the fence about whether we send them to a local school or whether with our powers combined. Perhaps we look at homeschooling in some capacity, whether it's full-time, part-time, we don't know. But I often hear parents speak about when they ask their kids, what did you learn at school today? They'll say, oh, nothing. And obviously that's not true. It's a laziness or it's a disinterest in the conversation. I'm sure there was something learned. But I asked my wife if there was any questions that she wanted me to ask you in particular. And one that she had was she was curious to hear your thoughts on When it comes to introducing a new idea or a new concept to a kid, like think of a traditional school sense, maybe you're going to sit down and teach them reading or maths or whatever, insert whatever. Before they start that subject, they might not realise that they're, they've got an interest in it or a knack for it. They might not realise that they enjoy it. So they're quite hesitant to actually get involved in learning it. Is there, is there any thing that you would recommend? to get a bit of a kickstart, to get your child engaged in actually starting to learn, like whether it was an emotional cue or one of the mnemonic devices, or I was just curious to know how do we actually invite them through the door to start to learn on whatever subject it is we're trying to introduce.
Roddy Roediger:
I think one of the most important things, which is research backs up too, is reading to your child, getting them excited about books. Here's a whole world of things and that you have to read it to them, but this book contained this wonderful story. And certainly that's what got me going. And then I went to public schools as a... growing up, I wasn't supported by the city, the state, until I went away to high school. And the, but my parents, when I would come home, my mother in particular, and there were four of us, but she really took an interest in our education. Every night we would talk about what we did. If I had a spelling test, I remember like in second grade. I was goofing off apparently and I don't remember this, my mother told the story that they went to the first parent teacher conference and my mother would ask me, are you having homework? And I'd say, oh yeah, I'm done. And she went in and the teacher said, I could never do this homework. That's why he's making bad grades. And boy, that was the end of that. She was on me. And we did. She tested me on the homework. I wanted to see it every night after I got it. And we would talk about it. And, you know, if I had a test coming up, she would quiz me, like a spelling test. She would give me the words. I would spell them until I had them right. And so we had whatever year it was, spelling test every Friday. So all week long, every night, I'd be getting those words. And so other things too, like math. She was good in math. She would help all of us if we had trouble with math homework. So, and that was really helpful. It was kind of like having homeschooling at night and day schooling during the day. And that way I got to meet a lot of friends and do a lot of stuff. But I think for parents to be really involved in their kids' schoolwork, especially the early years, and then you... as they figure it out and as they become self-reliant, at least in my case, they could back off because they knew I was for do-fine. But to me, reading to them and then just staying involved. I don't know much about homeschooling and there are all kinds of different ways it's done now in the U.S. Sometimes in kind of groups where the families get together and different... typically mothers, but sometimes fathers, they'll teach this subject and somebody else will teach that subject. You've got a rule of rotation, but you're not in a formal classroom, but you've got some socialization with other kids. But anyway, public school was fine for me. We had class sizes of about 25, and that was not a bad size.
tyson:
Yeah, that was my background as well. And I, it's a big debate in our, and not a debate, it's a big conversation, because I've got such great memories of the friends and things that I made at school.
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
And we were kind of leaning towards what you just mentioned there. If we were gonna do it, there's quite a few homeschool families in our town that they get together on almost a daily basis. And there's quite a few. So that social aspect is something that, you know, I'd have to figure out a little bit more. Yeah, it's still
Roddy Roediger:
Yep.
tyson:
a big conversation. I'm not so, because as I said, I got great memories. from where I was at. But I've also heard some great stories on the homeschooling. So I guess it's just, hey, watch this space. Just before I let you go, Roddy, is there any coaching or anything that you do with these professional athletes? Or you were doing it more from the academic sort of science
Roddy Roediger:
We
tyson:
take
Roddy Roediger:
were just
tyson:
on?
Roddy Roediger:
studying them, yeah, observing
tyson:
Yeah.
Roddy Roediger:
them out. They wouldn't come to me for coaching, believe me.
tyson:
Hahaha
Roddy Roediger:
They do it just a totally different, they're on a different plane. They've read lots of books about it. They talk to each other about their, each other's cultures. It's a very similar community, even though they're in competition.
tyson:
Yeah.
Roddy Roediger:
So yeah, it's a very interesting world. We don't talk
tyson:
Yeah.
Roddy Roediger:
about that much in the book, but I hope your listeners will by and make it sick. So we didn't talk about a lot of things that are in the book tonight, but It's done very well and we're now working on a second, not second edition, but a second book. And what it's about is a lot of stories of people like teachers who have adopted the techniques and make it stick. And especially, I just was reading today about a math teacher who was struggling and his students did okay, but the next year they didn't remember much. And that was because they were teaching this blocked manner. They do fractions here, percentages there, something else. And so people have these in silos. And they
tyson:
Hmm.
Roddy Roediger:
started teaching, as we talk about in the book, in an early manner, where you mix everything up and you keep coming back to it. So they don't just get fractions once and assume, hey, I got that, but you keep coming back to it all year. And he had great success doing that, even though it was kind of a rocky start, because the students were saying, hey, I don't get this. But you have a little practice on fractions now. You come back to them later, come back to them again and again. And by the end, you've got them because you've got spacing and you're mixing all these different things up like they are in the real world. And so, and like on the test, so you don't have things blocked and all categories on the test. You have to figure out what you're doing. So anyway, we're working on a second book about
tyson:
Oh, that's
Roddy Roediger:
all
tyson:
exciting.
Roddy Roediger:
the successes from Make It Sick. If you have another minute, the Harvard Medical School revised their curriculum, and we interviewed the deans of education of Harvard Medical School, and they said we basically all make it sick, that when we give our first slide show to the incoming medical students, The picture of make it sick is like the third slide and they suggest read this book This is what we based our fruition on and you'll see all this kind of air leaving It won't just be the nervous system then the muscular system then the skeletal system You'll be learning all this stuff together because you'll be using it all together when you're eventually a doctor So
tyson:
That's
Roddy Roediger:
that
tyson:
such
Roddy Roediger:
would
tyson:
good news.
Roddy Roediger:
that would be a chapter in the book
tyson:
That doesn't surprise me at all. I'm really excited. As I said, the reason I reached out to you was cause I'd already just the information that I'd taken on from what I'd read and watched of you was really exciting to me. And it's sort of sparked a new project in my life to make sure I improve this. So I'm excited, especially to know that educators, academics out there are starting to, not starting to, perhaps they've done it for a little while now, but. there's a fresh take on how students might learn more effectively. And I mean, from my own perspective, as I said, that the pumped up feeling that I got through reading it is I'm sure being spread through millions of people. Do you know, do you know when the second books out?
Roddy Roediger:
Oh, we're just written the first two chapters, so we got a while, maybe three or four years.
tyson:
Sure, no. Maybe I'll reach out to you again and we can
Roddy Roediger:
Sure.
tyson:
do a little update soon. But just for everybody listening, I'm gonna make sure I've got, make it stick in the show notes to the description to this episode.
Roddy Roediger:
No, sir.
tyson:
So for anyone who's interested, yeah, make sure you check that out. But man, I so appreciate you making the time
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah.
tyson:
to come on. It's been a really fun conversation.
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah, I enjoyed it.
tyson:
Thanks
Roddy Roediger:
Good dimension.
tyson:
so much.
Roddy Roediger:
Yeah,
tyson:
Yeah,
Roddy Roediger:
take
tyson:
you
Roddy Roediger:
care.
tyson:
too.
Roddy Roediger:
Bye
tyson:
See
Roddy Roediger:
bye.
tyson:
you, Roddy. See you later, everybody. Roddy, that was great.
Roddy Roediger:
Good.