Forgot where you put the keys? Experts (and a trivia buff) share tips to boost memory

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You don't have to be a trivia buff to be great at remembering things.

Monica Thieu, a four-time Jeopardy! contestant and winner of the game's 2012 college championship, uses memory techniques like mnemonic devices and flash cards to retain world capitals, TV shows, Olympic cities and more.

"With practice, absolutely everyone can make their memory stronger," says Thieu, who also researches memory, human cognition and emotion as a postdoctoral scientist at Emory University.

Listen to the podcast episode: Where did I put the keys? Tips to improve memory

That's because memory is selective. What our brains choose to remember is something we can train, says Charan Ranganath, director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis, and author of Why We Remember. "It can be biased, warped and reconstructed."

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