William Sutton shares his rare achievement of memorizing all 154 Shakespeare's sonnets

Article excerpt

Actor William Sutton has memorized all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets, a feat he describes as both mentally demanding and deeply rewarding. In an era when smartphones have outsourced our memory to cloud storage, Sutton's achievement raises a question: could deliberately training long-term memory offer an antidote to modern distraction? NPR's Elissa Nadworny explores what motivated him to undertake this unusual project and what it reveals about how we might reclaim deeper attention in digital life.