Joshua Foer was a journalist. He wasn't a genius, or at least he didn't think he was. He had a normal, slightly leaky brain that forgot where the car keys were or why he walked into the kitchen. Then, he spent a year training with "mental athletes," and suddenly, he was the U.S. Memory Champion. That’s the premise of Moonwalking with Einstein, and honestly, it’s one of the few books that actually changes how you look at the gray matter inside your skull.
It’s been over a decade since it hit the shelves. People still talk about it. Why? Because we’re all getting dumber—or we feel like we are—thanks to the glowing rectangles in our pockets. We’ve outsourced our brains to Google. Foer’s journey into the weird, subculture-heavy world of competitive memorization isn't just a story about a guy winning a trophy. It’s a deep look at what it means to be human in an age of digital amnesia.
The Secret Sauce: It’s Not About Being "Smart"
If you pick up Moonwalking with Einstein expecting a dry textbook on neuroscience, you're going to be disappointed. It’s more of a participatory travelogue. Foer introduces us to Ed Cooke, a Grand Master of Memory who’s basically a philosopher-king of the mnemonic world. Cooke tells Foer that anyone can do this. Literally anyone. Memory isn’t a fixed vessel; it’s a muscle.
The core technique—the one that makes the title make sense—is the Method of Loci, or the Memory Palace.
The Romans used it. Cicero used it to memorize hours-long speeches without a single note. Basically, you take a place you know intimately, like your childhood home, and you "place" weird, vivid, often gross or sexual images along a path. If you need to remember to buy garlic, maybe you imagine a giant, stinky clove of garlic doing a disco dance in your foyer. The more absurd the image, the better it sticks.
Why? Because our brains didn't evolve to remember abstract lists. We evolved to remember where the berries that didn't kill us were located and how to get back to the cave. We are spatial creatures.
When Joshua Foer Met the Mental Athletes
The book peaks when Foer stops just observing and starts competing. He describes these competitions, and they are wonderfully nerdy. You’ve got people in soundproof booths wearing earmuffs and blackened-out goggles with tiny pinholes, all so they can focus on memorizing the order of a shuffled deck of cards in under a minute.
It sounds like a superpower. It’s not. It’s a trick.
One of the most fascinating characters is S, a man studied by the neuropsychologist A.R. Luria. S had a "perfect" memory, but he was miserable. He couldn't forget anything, which meant he couldn't generalize or understand metaphors. His mind was a cluttered attic. Foer uses this to show us that forgetting is actually a feature, not a bug. We need to filter the world to make sense of it. But the "mental athletes" show us how to turn that filter off when we actually need to retain something.
The PAO System Explained
For the serious geeks, Foer dives into the Person-Action-Object (PAO) system. This is how they memorize long strings of numbers or decks of cards. Every two-digit number from 00 to 99 is assigned a specific person, a specific action, and a specific object.
- 15 might be Albert Einstein (Person)
- Moonwalking (Action)
- A Diamond (Object)
If you need to remember a six-digit number, you combine them into one weird mental "snapshot." It’s incredibly efficient. It’s also exhausting. Foer describes the mental fatigue of training for hours a day, trying to build these elaborate internal worlds. It’s a grind.
The Problem with "Internalizing" Everything
There is a dark side to this, or at least a philosophical hurdle. If we spend all our time building memory palaces, are we actually living in the real world?
Foer talks to Tony Buzan, the guy who popularized "mind mapping." Buzan is a polarizing figure. Some see him as a visionary; others see him as a bit of a huckster. But the point remains: the "art of memory" has been lost because we stopped valuing it. Once the printing press arrived, we didn't need to remember things anymore. Now, with the internet, it’s even worse. We have "transactive memory," where we just remember where the information is stored (like "it's on that one Wikipedia page") rather than the info itself.
Why You Should Still Read It in 2026
You might think that in the era of AI and instant information, Moonwalking with Einstein is a relic. It’s actually the opposite. As we rely more on external brains, our internal ones get flabbier.
Reading this book is a wake-up call. It’s a reminder that your brain is capable of incredible feats of storage if you just give it the right "hooks." Foer eventually wins the championship, which is a bit of a spoiler but not really, because the win isn't the point. The point is the realization that his brain hadn't changed—his attention had.
He learned how to pay attention. In a world of 15-second TikToks and constant notifications, attention is the rarest commodity we have.
Real-World Limitations
Let's be real for a second. Memorizing 500 random digits isn't going to help you pass a complex Organic Chemistry exam by itself. You still need to understand the concepts. Memory athletics is about rote memorization. It’s a sport.
Foer is honest about this. He admits that even after winning, he still forgot where he parked his car. The techniques require active effort. You don't just "become" a memory genius; you have to build the palace every single time you want to store something new. It's manual labor for the mind.
Actionable Steps to Improve Your Memory Today
If you want to take a page out of Foer's book without spending a year training for a championship, start small.
- Build a "Grocery Palace." Use your current apartment. Put the milk on the sofa, the eggs on the TV, and the bread hanging from the ceiling fan. Make the images violent, funny, or weird. When you get to the store, "walk" through the room in your head. It works. It's weirdly effective.
- Stop Googling immediately. When you're trying to remember a movie star's name or a historical date, give your brain five minutes to struggle. That "tip of the tongue" feeling is your brain actually building connections. Don't short-circuit it with a search engine.
- The Rule of Three. If you meet someone new, use their name three times in the first minute. "Hi, Sarah. Great to meet you, Sarah. So, Sarah, how do you know the host?" It feels a bit cheesy, but it anchors the name.
- Visualize the Abstract. If you’re learning a new language or a complex concept, turn the abstract sounds into concrete pictures. If the Spanish word for "room" is habitación, imagine a giant "habit" (like a nun's outfit) sitting on a "sun" in the middle of the room.
The legacy of Moonwalking with Einstein isn't that we should all become competitive memorizers. It’s that we should stop treating our brains like passive hard drives. Memory is more than just data storage; it’s the fabric of our identity. The more we remember, the more "hooks" we have to hang new information on, and the smarter we actually become. It’s a virtuous cycle.
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Go build a palace. Start with something simple. You’ll be surprised at how much room you actually have in there.