Joshua Foer (born September 23, 1982) is a freelance journalist and author living in Brookline, Massachusetts, with a primary focus on science. He was the 2006 USA Memory Champion, which was described in his 2011 book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. He spoke at the TED conference in February 2012. Early life and education Foer was born in Washington, D.C. He is the younger brother of former New Republic editor Franklin Foer and novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. He is the son of Esther Foer, former Director of Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, and Albert Foer, founder and former president of the think-tank American Antitrust Institute. He was born in Washington, D.C., and attended Georgetown Day School. Foer graduated with a B.A. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Yale University in 2004. Career In 2006, Foer won the USA Memory Championship, and set a new U.S. record in the "speed cards" event by memorizing a deck of 52 cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds. Foer's interest in competitive memory started a year earlier (2005) when he attended the USA Memory Championships as a journalist. He then studied under the British grandmaster of memory, Ed Cooke. Foer credits his sharp memory to creating memory palaces and the use of mnemonics, a learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory. Foer participated only in the 2006 USA Memory Championships. Foer's first book, Moonwalking with Einstein, was published by Penguin in March 2011. The book describes his journey throughout the world of competitive memory and attempts to delineate the capacity of the human mind. He received a $1.2 million advance for the book. Film rights were optioned by Columbia Pictures shortly after publication. The book was a finalist for the 2012 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. Foer's works have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, The Nation, and The New Yorker. From 2007 to 2009, the quarterly art & culture journal Cabinet published Foer's column "A Minor History Of." The column "examines an overlooked cultural phenomenon using a timeline". Foer also has an interest in wildlife journalism, and has written articles for National Geographic. Foer is currently working on a book about his travels and experiences with the Mbendjele pygmies of the Congo Basin. Atlas Obscura Foer co-founded Atlas Obscura in 2009. The company's mission is to inspire