How To Remember Everything Like Patrick Jane? — Transcript

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1. 0:00Patrick Jane once memorized the names of
2. 0:012,000 people he shook hands with. Yeah,
3. 0:03you can't remember what you had for
4. 0:04breakfast last week. So, I did a ton of
5. 0:06research, watched every single episode,
6. 0:08and figured out how Jane's memory works.
7. 0:10And today, I'm going to explain to you
8. 0:11how you can do the same.
9. 0:15In Throwing Fire, the team is working
10. 0:17the murder of a baseball scout named
11. 0:18Barney Sluep, and Jane takes a fly ball
12. 0:21to the head early on, which drops him
13. 0:22into flashbacks of his teenage years
14. 0:24working the carnival with his father,
15. 0:26Alex. Alex called what Patrick did
16. 0:28"x-ray eyes," and he would push the kid
17. 0:30out into the crowd to read total
18. 0:31strangers before they ever sat down at
19. 0:33the table. But what actually was
20. 0:35happening is that Jane was being forced
21. 0:37to notice things fast and then hold them
22. 0:38in his head long enough to use them a
23. 0:40few minutes later, over and over, every
24. 0:42night for years, which is not a gift at
25. 0:44all. When researchers at University
26. 0:45College London scanned World Memory
27. 0:47Championship competitors, they found no
28. 0:49exceptional intelligence and no
29. 0:51structural brain differences, just a
30. 0:53trained spatial strategy. So, the thing
31. 0:55to steal from his childhood is the reps,
32. 0:57and you can start today with something
33. 0:58simple. You can pick a place you go to
34. 1:00often, like a coffee shop, and right
35. 1:01before you leave, look away and name
36. 1:03five specific things you saw. Instead of
37. 1:05saying, "Oh, I saw a guy in a jacket,"
38. 1:07go for the color of the jacket and what
39. 1:09he was holding. Do that once a day for 2
40. 1:11weeks and you'll start catching details
41. 1:12without trying, which is the base layer
42. 1:14for everything else in this video.
43. 1:18In the pilot, the team catches a case
44. 1:20that looks like Red John's work. The
45. 1:22victim was left to bleed out. There's a
46. 1:23smiley face painted on the wall in her
47. 1:25blood, and everybody in that room has
48. 1:27already made up their mind. Jane walks
49. 1:29in, looks around once, and calls it a
50. 1:31fake because the face is on the wrong
51. 1:33wall. And Red John always paints it
52. 1:35where it's the first thing you see
53. 1:37coming through the door. He catches that
54. 1:38in a second because he's holding a
55. 1:39template built from every Red John scene
56. 1:42he has ever studied, so anything out of
57. 1:44place jumps at him like a typo in a
58. 1:46sentence you read a hundred times. Chase
59. 1:47and Simon found the same thing in chess
60. 1:49players in 1973, where masters rebuild
61. 1:51board positions far better than
62. 1:53beginners because they saw a few
63. 1:54meaningful patterns where a beginner
64. 1:56sees 20 loose pieces. You can build
65. 1:58templates like that on purpose in
66. 2:00anything you care about. All you have to
67. 2:01do is to learn what normal looks like
68. 2:03first, and then the odd ones file
69. 2:04themselves. Whether that's faces at
70. 2:06work, the shape of a standard contract,
71. 2:08or something else. You already do this
72. 2:09to an extent without even realizing it.
73. 2:11Exceptions are simple to store once you
74. 2:12have a baseline for them, which is why
75. 2:14experts remember more while visibly
76. 2:16doing less.
77. 2:20In Flame Red, the team drives out to a
78. 2:21small town called Maquesa where a man
79. 2:23named Rich Garcia has been burned inside
80. 2:25his own car, and the arson work is far
81. 2:27too clean to pass as an accident. When
82. 2:29Jane pokes around the back of a trailer
83. 2:31belonging to Tommy Olds, the local
84. 2:32handyman everybody treats as mentally
85. 2:34challenged, he spots a copy of Moby Dick
86. 2:36sitting next to a pile of children's
87. 2:38books and toys. Later, he baits Tommy
88. 2:40into correcting him on the name of
89. 2:41Captain Ahab's ship, and the entire act
90. 2:44falls apart on camera. What made that
91. 2:46book stick in Jane's head was the
92. 2:47question it raised because a heavy novel
93. 2:49in that trailer made no sense. And your
94. 2:51brain keeps the things it has to think
95. 2:52about. Craik and Tulving ran 10
96. 2:54experiments in 1975 showing that words
97. 2:57processed for meaning are recalled far
98. 2:59better than words [music] you simply
99. 3:00look at or repeat back. So, when you
100. 3:02find something you want to hold on to,
101. 3:04ask one question about it instead of
102. 3:06repeating it to yourself. Why is this
103. 3:08here? Who would want this? What does
104. 3:09this remind me of? If someone tells you
105. 3:11they work in logistics, ask yourself
106. 3:13what that person is moving around all
107. 3:14day and picture it. The question forces
108. 3:16your brain to do a little work on the
109. 3:17information, and that work is the thing
110. 3:20that turns it into a memory. Two seconds
111. 3:22of thinking beats 20 seconds of
112. 3:23repeating every single time. Which takes
113. 3:25us to the one episode where Jane sits
114. 3:27down and teaches the whole method out
115. 3:29loud.
116. 3:32In one of the episodes, an army nurse
117. 3:34named Lucy Green is found dead near a
118. 3:35military base, and the anonymous caller
119. 3:37who reported it turns out to be Pete
120. 3:39Cohen, a soldier whose PTSD has damaged
121. 3:42his short-term memory so badly that any
122. 3:44distraction wipes out whatever he was
123. 3:46doing. At the end of the case, Pete
124. 3:48comes to the office and asks for help,
125. 3:49and Jane starts teaching him to build a
126. 3:51memory palace. The idea underneath it is
127. 3:53simple. Your brain struggles with
128. 3:55abstract lists and is unbelievably good
129. 3:57with places because you could walk
130. 3:58through your childhood home in your head
131. 4:00right now without any effort. So, you
132. 4:02smuggle the list into a place. That's
133. 4:04the method of loci. And here's how you
134. 4:06actually build one. Pick a route you
135. 4:07know insanely [music] well, like your
136. 4:09home, classroom, or your walk to work,
137. 4:11and fix 10 stops along it in a set
138. 4:14order, like front door, shoe rack,
139. 4:15kitchen sink, [music] and so on. Then,
140. 4:17take whatever you need to remember and
141. 4:19park an absurd image at each stop
142. 4:21because bland images fade and ridiculous
143. 4:23ones stay in your brain. Like, if you
144. 4:25have to remember a book, say a blue cat
145. 4:27holding that book while laying in the
146. 4:28kitchen sink. To remember it later, just
147. 4:31walk the route. You reuse the same route
148. 4:32forever, and after a few runs, it
149. 4:34becomes automatic. Start with a shopping
150. 4:36list rather than something important
151. 4:37because the first palace is about
152. 4:39proving the route works. And after that,
153. 4:41you can put literally anything in there.
154. 4:43Once you have a palace, though, you
155. 4:45still need a way to unlock what's
156. 4:46sitting inside it.
157. 4:50A bomb goes off in the CBI parking lot
158. 4:52with Jane standing right next to it, and
159. 4:54he wakes up blind with the doctor
160. 4:55telling him his sight should come back
161. 4:57in two or three days, but he checks
162. 4:59himself out anyway. Sitting with the
163. 5:00widow, he asked her to hand him her
164. 5:02husband's belongings one at a time and
165. 5:04works through them purely by touch,
166. 5:06where he touches a watch with a bull
167. 5:07engraved on the back. His fingers keep
168. 5:09tracing that engraving, and it drops him
169. 5:11straight into a memory of a psychic
170. 5:12reading he did 8 years earlier holding
171. 5:15an identical watch. He was handling
172. 5:17objects until one of them opened a door,
173. 5:19which is a completely different move
174. 5:20from sitting there straining to
175. 5:22remember. Tulving and Thompson named
176. 5:23this encoding specificity in 1973,
177. 5:26meaning whatever surrounded you when you
178. 5:28stored a memory becomes the key that
179. 5:30reopens it later. So, attach a cue on
180. 5:32purpose at the moment you're learning
181. 5:34something. Drink the same tea while you
182. 5:36study. Sit in the same chair. Play one
183. 5:38album on repeat. Then, bring that cue
184. 5:40back when you need the material again.
185. 5:42Godden and Baddeley showed how strong
186. 5:44this is by having divers learn word
187. 5:46lists underwater and then struggle to
188. 5:48recall them on land. If you can't
189. 5:50control where you'll be when you need
190. 5:52it, study the same material in three or
191. 5:53four places so the memory gets several
192. 5:55keys. It's the same thing Jane uses to
193. 5:57get someone's memory back like in the
194. 5:58next episode.
195. 6:02When Teresa's fingerprint turns up on
196. 6:04the magazine of the gun that killed the
197. 6:05guy she personally put away, she can't
198. 6:07remember what she did that Tuesday night
199. 6:08and she fails the polygraph. Jane
200. 6:10hypnotizes her at her own request and
201. 6:12walks her back to Tuesday evening
202. 6:13finishing paperwork on a different case
203. 6:15and she still hits a wall. Later Dr.
204. 6:17Carmen tries the same move at her house
205. 6:18piece by piece, the dumpsters, the cross
206. 6:20nearby. That walk-through is the real
207. 6:22technique and investigators use a
208. 6:23version of it called mental
209. 6:25reinstatement of context which a 2010
210. 6:27review of 65 experiments found produces
211. 6:29a large increase in correct details
212. 6:31recalled. The logic is that your brain
213. 6:32files a memory together with everything
214. 6:34that was around it so you get to the
215. 6:35memory by rebuilding the surroundings
216. 6:37first. Next time you lose your keys or
217. 6:39blank on a name, drop the thing itself
218. 6:41and rebuild the moment instead. Where
219. 6:43were you standing? What were you
220. 6:44holding? What had you just been talking
221. 6:46about? What was playing in the
222. 6:47background? The thing you want usually
223. 6:49falls out on its own within about 30
224. 6:51seconds. The warning from this episode
225. 6:52is that a confident person feeding you
226. 6:54details can plant something that never
227. 6:56happened so let yourself fill the gaps
228. 6:57rather than letting somebody else do it.
229. 6:59It's a really powerful technique.
230. 7:03In Black Cherry, Jane is working on his
231. 7:05list of everyone he has shaken hands
232. 7:07with and it closes with him alone in his
233. 7:08room at the office going through the
234. 7:10very same names again. That simple thing
235. 7:12is the whole method. He keeps dragging
236. 7:14those names back out of his own head
237. 7:16instead of just rereading the page and
238. 7:18dragging something out is what makes it
239. 7:20stay in. Roediger and Karpicke tested
240. 7:22this in 2006 where students who reread
241. 7:25material beat students who tested
242. 7:26themselves after 5 minutes then lost
243. 7:28badly to them after a week. So flip how
244. 7:30you review anything, close the book,
245. 7:32write down everything you can remember
246. 7:33then open it and check what you missed.
247. 7:36It feels worse than rereading and that
248. 7:37feeling of difficulty is the exact part
249. 7:40that's doing the work. Rereading is
250. 7:41comfortable because you recognize the
251. 7:43words, and recognizing something gives
252. 7:45you a false signal that you could
253. 7:47produce it from scratch. In practice,
254. 7:49for something you need next month,
255. 7:50review it in about a week, and keep
256. 7:52testing yourself instead of just
257. 7:53remembering. Three spaced sessions beat
258. 7:5510 crammed ones and take less of your
259. 7:57time overall.
260. 8:01Here, Jane and Teresa fly to Beirut to
261. 8:03get close to a smuggler named John, who
262. 8:05moves messages through couriers who
263. 8:06memorize them because paper gets found
264. 8:08and phones get traced. John's men test
265. 8:10Jane by forcing him to his knees in
266. 8:12front of a bathtub, reading him six
267. 8:13words, [music] putting him under, six
268. 8:15more, under again, then five more and a
269. 8:17longer hold. He asked for a towel, dries
270. 8:18himself off, and gives all of them back
271. 8:21in order. The real job turns out to be
272. 8:2281 unrelated numbers he has to carry
273. 8:25across the Atlantic. So, how the hell
274. 8:26does he memorize random numbers? The
275. 8:27whole thing runs on conversion rather
276. 8:29than raw capacity because Jane turns
277. 8:31every item into a picture [music] and
278. 8:33hangs those pictures along a route he
279. 8:35already knows. Ericsson and his
280. 8:36colleagues published a case in Science
281. 8:38in 1980 where one ordinary student
282. 8:40trained his digit span from seven up to
283. 8:4279 by recoding digit strings as running
284. 8:45times since he was a runner and those
285. 8:47numbers already meant something to him.
286. 8:48[music] Do the same with the numbers in
287. 8:49your life. Give zero through nine a
288. 8:51fixed image each, read long numbers in
289. 8:53pairs, [music] and chain the images into
290. 8:55one short scene. Card details, dates,
291. 8:57and phone numbers stop being random and
292. 8:58start being a story you can walk
293. 9:00through.
294. 9:03Now, here's the one that defines him.
295. 9:05Jane held the names of hands with since
296. 9:06the night his family was murdered. All
297. 9:08of it's stored in the memory palace,
298. 9:12and he ground that list down to 408,
299. 9:14then to a final seven, and it finishes
300. 9:17with Thomas McAllister. Names are the
301. 9:18hardest thing you can ask a brain to
302. 9:20hold, and McWeeney and his colleagues
303. 9:22showed why in 1987 when people learning
304. 9:25new faces remembered a man's job and
305. 9:27forgot his surname even when it was the
306. 9:29identical word. A job connects to 100
307. 9:31things you already know, while a bare
308. 9:33name connects to nothing at all. So,
309. 9:35give the name something to grab onto.
310. 9:37Repeat it out loud once when you hear
311. 9:38it, turn it into a picture like a baker
312. 9:40covered in flour, and hook that picture
313. 9:42to something on their face you'll see
314. 9:43again. Two more things were quietly
315. 9:45working for Jane underneath all of it.
316. 9:47Emotion tags a memory as important,
317. 9:49which is why grief made his list stick.
318. 9:51The uncomfortable takeaway is that
319. 9:52almost nothing Jane does with his memory
320. 9:54is talent or a gift or psychic at all.
321. 9:56And the research keeps coming back to
322. 9:58the same things like tying things to a
323. 9:59cue or a picture, a memory palace, and
324. 10:01repeating things more times than you can
325. 10:03imagine. So, that's going to be it for
326. 10:05this video. Hope you enjoyed it and
327. 10:06learned something new. I'll catch you
328. 10:07guys in the next one.