Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory.

Joshua Foer is a journalist and memory-competition champion whose writing explores how memory underwrites identity, creativity, and culture. This line is consistent with the themes of his book about training memory and investigating the “memory arts,” where he argues that remembering is not merely a practical skill but a foundation for higher cognition. In that context, Foer links everyday human capacities—humor, analogy-making, invention, and participation in shared cultural references—to the storehouse of experiences and knowledge that memory preserves and recombines. The quote reflects his broader project of reframing memory as central to what makes us distinctively human.

Foer’s claim is that memory is not a passive archive but an active prerequisite for creative and social life. Humor often works by recognizing patterns and incongruities against a background of remembered norms; “connections between previously unconnected notions” describes analogy and metaphor, which depend on recalling disparate ideas and seeing their overlap. New ideas likewise emerge from recombination of what is already known. Finally, “common culture” relies on shared references—stories, symbols, and histories—that only exist insofar as individuals and communities can retain and transmit them. The quote elevates memory from a mere tool to a core engine of meaning-making.