Memory man

During a three-month hospital stay when he was 18 years old, Ed Cooke studied memory techniques to overcome boredom. By the age of 23 he was a Grand Master of Memory, someone who can memorise 1,000 random digits in an hour and the order of a deck of cards in two minutes. Cooke is now the founder of a fast-growing start-up called Memrise, which allows people to learn a language quickly while also having fun. He outlines the value of a good memory and tells us how Memrise gained tens of millions of users.