By Rich Fisher
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kwgs/local-kwgs-981407.mp3
Tulsa, Oklahoma – (Please note: This show first aired earlier this year.) On this installment of StudioTulsa, we speak with author and journalist Joshua Foer about his book, "Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything." This remarkable book --- at once funny, fascinating, and fully entertaining --- follows Foer's own ups and downs as a participant in the U.S. Memory Championship. Originally, Foer came to this event as a science journalist --- he intended to cover the competition as a reporter --- but then, his interest in these competitors and their secrets pretty much overcame him --- and eventually, Foer himself entered the competition. And then, he actually won! As Michiko Kakutani has written of Foer in The New York Times: "His narrative is smart and funny and, like the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks, it's informed by a humanism that enables its author to place the mysteries of the brain within a larger philosophical and cultural context." Likewise, a critic at The Washington Post has noted: "[Foer's] passionate and deeply engrossing book...is a resounding tribute to the muscularity of the mind.... In the end, 'Moonwalking with Einstein' reminds us that though brain science is a wild frontier and the mechanics of memory little understood, our minds are capable of epic achievements."