Solomon Shereshevsky

Imagine being able to remember everything you’ve ever heard, seen, or learned. Sounds pretty amazing, right?

What if I told you there was a hidden cost?

This is the real-life story of Solomon Shereshevsky, a human being who dealt with this double-edged sword his entire life.

Moscow in the 1920s was an exciting place, bursting with revolutionary ideas and scientific rigor. The newly formed Soviet state had a lot of innovative thinkers, including one prominent neuroscientist named Alexander Luria. A meeting with a journalist named Shereshevsky was about to change his life forever.

Luria was an emerging figure in the field of neuropsychology. Maybe Shereshevsky was there to interview Luria for a series of articles focusing on the latest developments in psychology and neurology, or maybe they were discussing human behavior in the socio-political climate of post-revolutionary Russia.

One way or another, the two discussed some things in detail, and Luria noticed that Shereshevsky never once …