The article is about “India's Vedic Sanskrit pandits [who] train for years”. For anyone who wants a glimpse of what this training (or the result of the training

The article is about “India's Vedic Sanskrit pandits [who] train for years”. For anyone who wants a glimpse of what this training (or the result of the training) looks like, there are some great videos on YouTube: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALEHkgOx8EE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALEHkgOx8EE “Embodying the Vedas - A day in the Śrī Kṛṣṇayajurveda Pāṭhaśālā” (The article mentions the closely related Shukla Yajurveda.) (Examples of the training are from 00:00 to 00:55, from 04:59 to 05:35, from 08:00 to 09:08, from 11:15 to 13:40.) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruuPbvViOe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruuPbvViOe4 “Glimpses of the current status of Vedic tradition in Kerala” (Examples of the training are from 00:00 to 03:44, from 08:45 to 12:57, from 13:15 to 14:46) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZbpPAjukHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZbpPAjukHI “Champakaapura Veda Paathashale” (Examples are from 06:35 to 07:43, etc.) (These three from this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63uIhJxWbgjpQhSwfAmSt2p_TqqWLGha https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63uIhJxWbgjpQhSwfAmS... ; click around for more.) If you look at the age at which students start, theories like “people with strong verbal memories will choose to memorize mantras” (proposed in another comment) are easy to discard. Of course, other statistical effects are still possible, such as selection bias (people who do not have or develop the needed memory may abandon training, etc).