Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you missed in History Class from
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm trac Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. We're doing
Speaker 1: something a little different today. We have had some guests
Speaker 1: on the podcast lately, and today not only do we
Speaker 1: have a guest, we also have a whole additional podcast
Speaker 1: as a guest. It's a podcast that actually has a
Speaker 1: lot of parallels to ours. Both shows first came out
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. They're both with history hosts
Speaker 1: who aren't actually historians, and the both shows that tell
Speaker 1: stories from the past, but we do this in completely
Speaker 1: different ways. So with that, I'd like to welcome our guest,
Speaker 1: who is Nate Demayo of The Memory Palace. Hey, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. I'm so glad you're here too. I'm
Speaker 1: very excited. I'm a big listener of you guys, so
Speaker 1: I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much. If
Speaker 1: you have never heard The Memory Palace the shows, the
Speaker 1: episodes of themselves are a lot shorter than ours. The
Speaker 1: They are little JEMs of stories accompanied by music, and somehow,
Speaker 1: even though they're simultaneously really short, they're also really thoughtful,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a lot better to just listen
Speaker 1: to one of these episodes than to listen to us
Speaker 1: talk about what they're like. So we're going to start
Speaker 1: by playing one of them. It's one that's particularly short,
Speaker 1: but it's also really particularly moving, and it follows along
Speaker 1: nicely with our recent episodes on animals. So let's get
Speaker 1: right to it. From the Maximum Fund Network, this is
Speaker 1: the Memory Palace from Nath to Mayo, and this is
Speaker 1: episode fifty fifty words, written about the Arctic bowhead whale
Speaker 1: after learning that it can live up to two years.
Speaker 1: There's a whale right now who may have escaped in
Speaker 1: Nantucketer's harpoon in eighteen fifty in a Japanese whaler in
Speaker 1: n who once heard the distant songs of fifty of
Speaker 1: her kind, then several thousands than hundreds, But who can
Speaker 1: hear twenty five thousand again singing in the warming water.
Speaker 1: When we started preparing for this interview, I really listened
Speaker 1: to a bunch of your old episodes, and one of
Speaker 1: the things I really love about your show is that
Speaker 1: it tells these odd, eccentric, kind of wacky stories you
Speaker 1: had just at that point put out a remastered version
Speaker 1: of Itty Bitty Bombs, which is about the scheme to
Speaker 1: use bats to drop bombs on Japan during World War Two,
Speaker 1: And it's another in the Wacky animal line. Where did
Speaker 1: you come up with this story? You know, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it has been a while, so where I found it
Speaker 1: is sort of lost in the cracks of history. But
Speaker 1: I suspect sort of like YouTube, um, I am sort
Speaker 1: of constantly, constantly on the lookout for I guess in
Speaker 1: some ways just sort of the the the thing that
Speaker 1: reaches out from you know, whether it's your Internet browser
Speaker 1: or some like larger history book or some novel or
Speaker 1: something that fact that kind of jumps out and grabs
Speaker 1: you and you know, either you know, makes you go
Speaker 1: holy cow. And that one, that one about the bomb
Speaker 1: the bat bombs, is certainly sort of a holy cow
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But that or that just kind of
Speaker 1: like makes you just you know, feel excited or sad
Speaker 1: or somehow moved. Like I am always kind of trawling
Speaker 1: for those things, and and like that's like an instinct
Speaker 1: that um, you know, not only sort of I mean
Speaker 1: I do that now professionally on some level with the podcast,
Speaker 1: but that is something that preceded the podcast, and I
Speaker 1: think because they've always kind of had that instinct of
Speaker 1: of like looking out for those little sort of flex
Speaker 1: of wonder in the world. UM. I think that's probably
Speaker 1: what led to the podcast at all. I think the
Speaker 1: flexi wonder should be your autobiography. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that we encounter in the show really often is
Speaker 1: that we will find different versions of the same story
Speaker 1: or facts that are really in dispute in some way.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times we tackle this in our
Speaker 1: show by talking about the disputes and how they came
Speaker 1: to be. That doesn't really work with your format. So
Speaker 1: when you find that kind of thing, what do you do?
Speaker 1: You know it is? That is the thing I startled about,
Speaker 1: and it's also the thing that I might get the
Speaker 1: most notes from listeners about you like it's fascinating. I recently,
Speaker 1: UH Pieces from the Memory Palace started to air semi regularly,
Speaker 1: if occasionally, and if not as frequently as I would
Speaker 1: like UM on NPRS weekend editions, Sunday and UM. They
Speaker 1: sort of apply this editorial process, which is the same
Speaker 1: one that when I was a reporter UM four NPR
Speaker 1: and in a different UH in a different public radio shows.
Speaker 1: Was applied to me as a reporter. Um, where you know,
Speaker 1: they fact check these things. They want to make sure
Speaker 1: that everything is in there. But as you guys, well know,
Speaker 1: you might learn something, Uh, you might learn some amazing
Speaker 1: fact and then you'll go in and you know, first
Speaker 1: of all, you'll find out it's not quite like that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like this. But very quickly you discovered
Speaker 1: that there are three or four or five versions of
Speaker 1: that thing. And um that you know, I have noticed that,
Speaker 1: you know, while listening to your show, that you guys
Speaker 1: have the gift of being able to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a little bit disputed. This guy says this,
Speaker 1: this lady says this. I think we're probably landing somewhere
Speaker 1: in you know, in the middle. And you know, the
Speaker 1: truth is with my format because it is those sort
Speaker 1: of short stories, um, and it is a narrative. Um,
Speaker 1: I can't quite do that same thing. Um, but I
Speaker 1: have found um sort of small ways to do that,
Speaker 1: and some is to simply come out and say it.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh, you know, we don't know precisely, um
Speaker 1: when this thing began, but we think it's around here, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and sometimes like the truth is the fact
Speaker 1: whether it's eighteen eleven or it's eighteen seven when something
Speaker 1: might have begun, UM doesn't ultimately doesn't matter that much
Speaker 1: because what the point is is that it's starting to say,
Speaker 1: before the before the Civil War or something like that,
Speaker 1: there are you know. It's essentially like what I'm looking for,
Speaker 1: um almost, you know. And I think it's the thing
Speaker 1: that that drives so much of the stories that I'm
Speaker 1: doing is beyond just looking for fun facts and beyond
Speaker 1: just looking for a kind of a ripping yard, like
Speaker 1: I am really looking for meaning, you know, like I'm
Speaker 1: looking for ways to connect the past to the present,
Speaker 1: you know, ways to um to move the listener, you know,
Speaker 1: to kind of like reconsider um, whether it's a historical
Speaker 1: moment or um a person they may have never met before,
Speaker 1: or a person that they've heard before, heard about before,
Speaker 1: but have never thought about in a certain context. And
Speaker 1: so if that's the goal, it's sort of finding meaning,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's you know, moving people, and it's
Speaker 1: like connecting their their current reality to the live reality
Speaker 1: of of the past. It's not that the facts don't matter,
Speaker 1: because I actually think it's because it is it is
Speaker 1: the meaning is sort of been um embedded within those facts.
Speaker 1: But you know, you can be very clear about like
Speaker 1: the ambiguity in that case, because you know, life is
Speaker 1: sort of filled with ambiguity. But what we're taking from,
Speaker 1: you know, the story of, for instance, UM, the first elephant,
Speaker 1: UM to continue with your animal theme, UM, which is
Speaker 1: a story that that I did and is particularly dear
Speaker 1: to me. UM. Whether it's the first elephant or not,
Speaker 1: And that is really in dispute, and I spent a
Speaker 1: long time trying to figure out whether it is the
Speaker 1: first elephant. UM. What really matters is there are tons
Speaker 1: and tons and tons and tons of people in eighteen
Speaker 1: o five in the United States who have never seen
Speaker 1: an elephant before, and first or second, or third or fourth,
Speaker 1: UM being the first elephant for some man in Boston
Speaker 1: or some you know, some woman in Charlotte, North Carolina. UM,
Speaker 1: that's the you know, that's where the story lives. It's
Speaker 1: in that encounter, it's in that novelty. And whether it
Speaker 1: is you know, truly technically historically novel, I'm less concerned with.
Speaker 1: So that actually kind of leads nicely into my next question,
Speaker 1: which is that we talked about this a little bit
Speaker 1: before we started recording that Sometimes when we're putting together
Speaker 1: an episode, it ends up as a two parter because
Speaker 1: we just find so many juicy details that are really
Speaker 1: fun to tell, uh, and we don't want to leave
Speaker 1: those out, and we have that leverage where we can
Speaker 1: kind of spend a little more time with it. So
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how you wrangle your research down to that
Speaker 1: super lean format and really getting across the message and
Speaker 1: the meaning without dropping too many details off. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think it's mostly UM. I think the process really
Speaker 1: starts with UM, after the kind of research is done,
Speaker 1: and after I feel like I really understand um, both
Speaker 1: the story itself, UM say about the elephants, but also
Speaker 1: the context, the historical context um, you know, of what
Speaker 1: life was like then UM, so that I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm grounded and sort of able to to find a
Speaker 1: story to tell. UM. The real work comes in finding
Speaker 1: what that story is about. It's it's being that the
Speaker 1: about nous is something beyond subject right for me, It is,
Speaker 1: you know, finding the meaning. So like, there was a
Speaker 1: great uh story that I stumbled upon one time about
Speaker 1: this guy who was a serial impostor and you know,
Speaker 1: lived his life, um, you know, impersonating diplomats, impersonating businessmen, um,
Speaker 1: you know. And some of it was used for, you know,
Speaker 1: simply to get a good table to restaurant, you know.
Speaker 1: Some of it was to pull off sort of incredible scams.
Speaker 1: And he was a fantastic figure and UM lived this
Speaker 1: like very you know, broad big life. And you know,
Speaker 1: so on the one hand, I could kind of just
Speaker 1: go in and just like reel off the facts about
Speaker 1: this guy. Oh and then he pulled this scam and
Speaker 1: this is pretty amazing. And then he pulled this scam
Speaker 1: and this is pretty amazing. And then he was caught
Speaker 1: and this is what like life in jail is like
Speaker 1: for six months. Um. But instead, you know, I had
Speaker 1: to like kind of as I do with all the stories,
Speaker 1: you have to kind of like go in, dig in
Speaker 1: and and find out what I want to say. And
Speaker 1: for me with this story about the impostor, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like, well, what is driving this guy to
Speaker 1: be an impostor? Like what what might possibly be at
Speaker 1: the roots of you know, for someone who um, of
Speaker 1: the millions of lives that that one could have chosen, Um,
Speaker 1: why this route? And you know, kind of like finding
Speaker 1: this origin in a feeling of being slighted, which is
Speaker 1: very sort of explicit and something he would talk about.
Speaker 1: Um So it wasn't something that I was kind of
Speaker 1: imposing but then really trying to get into, like what
Speaker 1: must it be? You know, what do you what you're
Speaker 1: actually getting out of the impostoring? What you know? What
Speaker 1: particular thrills are you finding? And how does that connect
Speaker 1: with me? And I, like I would find and for me,
Speaker 1: the heart of that story is in this kind of
Speaker 1: sense that you know that daily life can be, you know,
Speaker 1: filled with toil and drudgery, and here was a guy
Speaker 1: who found a way for himself to gain that system.
Speaker 1: You know, he wasn't going off sort of playing fantasy baseball.
Speaker 1: He wasn't going off collecting you know, humble figurines. He
Speaker 1: was finding ways to, at least for a night, live
Speaker 1: different lives. And once I kind of hone in on that,
Speaker 1: the idea that this man is going to go live
Speaker 1: different lives, um or I hone in on the elephant
Speaker 1: story about you know this is this is not only
Speaker 1: about the novelty of seeing this sort of wonderful creature.
Speaker 1: It is also a creature who's alone and so much
Speaker 1: of the story should be about exploring what it would
Speaker 1: mean to be alone in an alien landscape, for the
Speaker 1: for the creature, for the elephant itself. Um. Then that
Speaker 1: extra stuff, like the the extra details that twists and
Speaker 1: turns um are kind of easy to cut away because
Speaker 1: they don't sort they sort of simply don't serve the story.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like taking Game of Thrones um and
Speaker 1: trying to turn it into a TV show, and then
Speaker 1: you're suddenly like, you know what, there's those that whole
Speaker 1: battle scene and there's that whole land over there that like,
Speaker 1: if we're really focusing on who's going to rest control
Speaker 1: of the Iron Throne or whatever it might be, then um,
Speaker 1: if this guy is not ever gonna get the Iron Throne,
Speaker 1: then maybe we don't need to talk about them. And
Speaker 1: so some of it is as simple as that, Like
Speaker 1: by finding the actual thread in the heart of the story,
Speaker 1: you can kind of hack off a few limbs, which
Speaker 1: I guess kind of keeps us in Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: territory as well. Do you ever start on research for
Speaker 1: an episode? And as I asked this question, and I
Speaker 1: can tell you this happens to me all the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then you'll find out that you actually want to
Speaker 1: talk about something else, perhaps that you stumble across during
Speaker 1: your research phase. Like do you ever let yourself switch
Speaker 1: horses midstream? Oh? Absolutely no, I mean that happens all
Speaker 1: the time. Um. And in fact, I actually I've kind
Speaker 1: of discovered that the best way for me to find
Speaker 1: stories um uh that can can really kind of have
Speaker 1: like a depth of meaning and like really kind of
Speaker 1: stand up is more than just kind of a factoid.
Speaker 1: Is sort of looking for an idea that seems cool, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know this about, um, like the Quakers,
Speaker 1: and then I then you read about the Quakers, um,
Speaker 1: just kind of assume that, oh, the Quakers are interesting,
Speaker 1: there must be something interesting there. But in doing that research,
Speaker 1: you then find that, you know, the Quakers are less
Speaker 1: interesting than this one manufacturer of Quaker furniture, you know,
Speaker 1: like you like, It's often like I often find like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's an area that is interesting, um, but you start
Speaker 1: to dive in and then it turns out it is
Speaker 1: not the area itself that is interesting, but it is
Speaker 1: the little detail that takes you on that detour. Um.
Speaker 1: But the real bane of my existence is when you
Speaker 1: find the incredible factoid and it's so unbelievable, what a
Speaker 1: great story, and it turns out to actually be unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I'm I am struggling with that right now, um, with
Speaker 1: with a story that I was sure it was going
Speaker 1: to be like the centerpiece of my new season and
Speaker 1: it's kind of turned out to maybe not have actually happened,
Speaker 1: And that's a bummer. I have had that exact problem, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, specifically with a historical marker I found once
Speaker 1: that had an amazing story on it, and the amazing story,
Speaker 1: it turns out, is significantly inflated on the historical marker
Speaker 1: and elsewhere. We are going to take a brief break
Speaker 1: for a word from a sponsor. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a bit about how Nate arrived
Speaker 1: at doing a history podcast, because he, like Holly and I,
Speaker 1: is not a historian strictly speaking. So let's talk a
Speaker 1: little more generally about the world of history. So weirdly,
Speaker 1: right now, we have three podcast hosts talking to one another.
Speaker 1: None of us are historians. I don't know that you
Speaker 1: would call any of the three of us stereotypical history buffs.
Speaker 1: Yet we are dedicating large parts of our lives to
Speaker 1: working on history podcasts. So Nate, how did that happen
Speaker 1: for you? Um? Yeah, No, I definitely pushed back on
Speaker 1: the notion of being a history buff um and I
Speaker 1: and it has nothing to do with identity. Actually think
Speaker 1: that like history buffs are great, So you know, I
Speaker 1: would happily sort of take that claim, you know, claim
Speaker 1: that mantle if if I could rightly do so. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I uh, I think that like I'm just
Speaker 1: sort of culturally omnivorous, you know. And the thing with
Speaker 1: history for me is that, like you when I really
Speaker 1: am sort of like scrolling through Twitter and you know,
Speaker 1: besides the things that I know that I want to
Speaker 1: learn about, you know, whether it is like my Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Clippers, you know, or certain political things, certain music
Speaker 1: things or whatever, you know, I am mostly just looking
Speaker 1: you know for something to kind of step into my
Speaker 1: life and you know, uh and thrill me on some level,
Speaker 1: like you know, give me something to think about, like
Speaker 1: something that will kind of change my day. And you
Speaker 1: know there are you know, for me, I think the
Speaker 1: thing that has brought me to history, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: isn't sort of this sense of like you know, good Lord,
Speaker 1: we need to look back, so we don't you know,
Speaker 1: kind of repeat the mistakes of the past, or you
Speaker 1: can't understand the present without understanding the past. UM. I
Speaker 1: have found that, you know, in in my life, and
Speaker 1: particularly sort of in my younger life, UM, that I
Speaker 1: was kind of empowered by having a historical understanding. You know.
Speaker 1: For me, I grew up um in Rhode Island, and
Speaker 1: Rhode Island can be a very parochial place and you
Speaker 1: know it is it is forty five minutes by fifty minutes.
Speaker 1: It's a tiny little place, um, and it is served
Speaker 1: by you know, a set of stations that are in
Speaker 1: Providence that cover the state of Rhode Island and and
Speaker 1: not very much else. And so it has this very
Speaker 1: kind of like insular feeling. And you growing up there, UM,
Speaker 1: I didn't really have the sense that, um, that sort
Speaker 1: of exciting lives were available to me. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: that like my parents weren't encouraging, And it wasn't that
Speaker 1: I didn't see people on TV or read read people
Speaker 1: who had written books, or read about people in magazines,
Speaker 1: or see bands that came through town and thought like, oh,
Speaker 1: they like, oh, look there's more that I can go
Speaker 1: out there and do. On some fundamental level, I did
Speaker 1: not understand that they were real people, you know that
Speaker 1: like that that was something that there was exciting lives
Speaker 1: that I too could have. And I kind of learned
Speaker 1: that in a way by from history, like I remember
Speaker 1: very specifically, you know, like reading you know, biographies of
Speaker 1: different people like Calvin Tompkins biography of of the artist
Speaker 1: Marcel Duchamp was really formative to me, and reading um
Speaker 1: American Visions by Robert Hughes, the big survey of American art.
Speaker 1: The thing that I sort of took away from that
Speaker 1: was over and over and over again that these people
Speaker 1: who were making history um were just as whether it
Speaker 1: was vain or or you know, could just do such
Speaker 1: dumb things, or or had very human and very sort
Speaker 1: of you know, had very human appetites that would get
Speaker 1: them into trouble all the same sorts of things that
Speaker 1: were happening to me and everyone I knew on some level, um,
Speaker 1: you know, had happened to Abraham Lincoln. And it was
Speaker 1: a very simple and very well duh kind of uh realization,
Speaker 1: but it was it was one that I needed to
Speaker 1: have and I and so I would read these books,
Speaker 1: I learned about people, but I would also learn um,
Speaker 1: getting this sort of sense of history of that like
Speaker 1: the times between things were often very short, and that
Speaker 1: you know, for instance, the time between the Civil War
Speaker 1: and the time between uh, you know, the turn of
Speaker 1: the century is at this point a span of a
Speaker 1: span of time that I have lived myself, and yet
Speaker 1: there's such radical change. And when you start to realize that, um,
Speaker 1: you realize it gives you a sense of your present
Speaker 1: day as historical and as as filled with change and
Speaker 1: as also um I think importantly for me, like filled
Speaker 1: with the potential. You know, it's like if the world
Speaker 1: changed so much between n and nineteen seventy one, then
Speaker 1: you know, as we have seen on Madmen recently, then
Speaker 1: like then you know, so too can the world of
Speaker 1: the future. And I've always found that really sort of exciting.
Speaker 1: And I've always found going back into the past and
Speaker 1: in sort of relearning that lesson UM has been really valuable.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing, like, because I think what
Speaker 1: we do, what you guys doing, what I do, is
Speaker 1: we're interested in these things that kind of fall through
Speaker 1: the cracks, and they're the stuff that you have missed
Speaker 1: in history class, um, you know. And for me, like
Speaker 1: I'm aware that in in our current day, we are
Speaker 1: constantly missing stuff as well. You know. It's that that
Speaker 1: if you are really interested in you know, Republican politics,
Speaker 1: or you are really interested in the Atlanta Falcons, you know,
Speaker 1: or collecting baseball cards or whatever it might be, then
Speaker 1: you're missing a whole lot of life. And in history
Speaker 1: there are always those people and always those corners that um,
Speaker 1: you know, not only are sort of worth unearthing, and
Speaker 1: not only are worth kind of engaging with and and
Speaker 1: can be sort of exciting and like you know, wonderful
Speaker 1: in the literal sense, like you know, can fill you
Speaker 1: with wonder it all. For me, it is always a
Speaker 1: reminder that that is happening right now, you know, in
Speaker 1: in my awaking life too, that I can sort of
Speaker 1: engage more and look around more, um you know. And
Speaker 1: and in a lot of ways, that's the kind of
Speaker 1: experience I want someone to have with the memory Palace.
Speaker 1: I want them to be like, Wow, this thing in
Speaker 1: the past has happened, um, but you know, by connecting
Speaker 1: it to our present, I kind of want them to
Speaker 1: come out and look at our you know, their present
Speaker 1: moment in their neighborhood and their family. Um and the
Speaker 1: news with with sort of wide dies. So having grown
Speaker 1: up in New England, New England is home to sort
Speaker 1: of enormous history. It's if you want to go somewhere
Speaker 1: in New England and not be surrounded by history, you
Speaker 1: kind of have to work at it. It's big, big,
Speaker 1: especially in the course of American history, huge, huge historical events.
Speaker 1: But a lot of your episodes focus on things that
Speaker 1: are really small, and this sort of ties onto your
Speaker 1: what you just said, what is it about the small
Speaker 1: that really appeals to you? Because I think that you know, no,
Speaker 1: I mean the stories are short. I mean they're almost
Speaker 1: like fetishistically short, right, you know, like like you know,
Speaker 1: there are times in which the you know, the artistic
Speaker 1: challenge becomes like, you know, how quickly can I get
Speaker 1: from point A to point point B with um point
Speaker 1: a being you know nothing about a subject, to point
Speaker 1: B being like you have been moved to tears or
Speaker 1: who have been elated by a subject and you're caring
Speaker 1: about something you didn't care about before. Um, you know.
Speaker 1: And so some of it is like a I'm looking
Speaker 1: to kind of pack that punch. Then it's a little
Speaker 1: bit harder to pack war in peace, you know, into
Speaker 1: five and a half minutes UM. But moreover, like I
Speaker 1: think that the small is is the thing that you
Speaker 1: connect with. You know. It's like it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: connect with, um, you know, with troop movements, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to connect with supply lines in the battle, But
Speaker 1: it's not hard to connect with a soldier who is
Speaker 1: you know, trying to gear themselves up to charge up
Speaker 1: a hill. You know, it's not hard to connect with
Speaker 1: you know, another soldier who can't gear themselves up and
Speaker 1: is running the opposite direction. And you know, I So
Speaker 1: I think that you know that smallness UM. I think
Speaker 1: it this occurs in literature, it occurs in film, like
Speaker 1: you know, by finding these specifics, um, these specific details
Speaker 1: and these specific stories. UM. You know that is the
Speaker 1: way that you can kind of enter the world of
Speaker 1: kind of like big ideas and capital H history UM,
Speaker 1: through like the power of the kind of like lower
Speaker 1: case H story. So is there a topic that you
Speaker 1: have always wanted to delve into but you haven't quite
Speaker 1: found the right angle on it yet that's kind of
Speaker 1: lurking and maybe your periphery as one day I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tackle that one. Yeah, I think so, I mean I
Speaker 1: think I think there are tons you know, um uh
Speaker 1: you know, and some of it, some of it comes
Speaker 1: down to the fact that, like you look into this
Speaker 1: story and then you realize there's less of a story
Speaker 1: there than you thought, or that there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: interesting facts but they don't cohere. And so right now
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in um, you know, essentially like a you know,
Speaker 1: remade garage UM where I'm talking to you guys, and
Speaker 1: where I work a lot, and there's a board over there,
Speaker 1: and it's got tons and tons of ideas. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there are lots and lots of different you know,
Speaker 1: story topics up there, um and a lot of them
Speaker 1: have been on that board for a really long time,
Speaker 1: and they're just waiting for, um, the about nous to appear,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like they're they're waiting for
Speaker 1: that thing that turns you know, a story about billboard advertising,
Speaker 1: Like that's an interesting thing. I'm kind of interested in
Speaker 1: what it was like to see the first billboards um
Speaker 1: into the point you know, it's like finding like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I could. I know, I can look up
Speaker 1: a bunch of information about billboards and say, well, when
Speaker 1: billboards first started to hear people are really excited about it,
Speaker 1: and then they got tired of it or whatever. The
Speaker 1: arc of the life of the billboard might be. Um,
Speaker 1: but until I can kind of find that thing that
Speaker 1: um first of all interests me beyond like, oh that's interesting,
Speaker 1: um and actually kind of like moves me or thrills
Speaker 1: me or makes me sad or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: Um Like, until I can really connect with it, it's
Speaker 1: going to sort of stay on the board. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there are there are things that that I've kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to do for years but have not been able
Speaker 1: to crack. All of your billboard talk suddenly makes me
Speaker 1: think of that Tom Waite's song Burma Shave, and now
Speaker 1: it's never going to leave my head. Um. Well, that's
Speaker 1: that's it. You could you could do worse than which, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a complaint. I'm just I recognize that this
Speaker 1: is my soundtrack for the day. Um. Have you ever
Speaker 1: been pretty deep into production on an episode and ended
Speaker 1: up tossing it entirely? Yes? Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen that you know. The truth is, and
Speaker 1: you know I'm about to begin on June twenty one,
Speaker 1: releasing the show in seasons UM with weekly episodes for
Speaker 1: the summer, and then I'll take some some brief break
Speaker 1: and then I'll be back with weekly episodes for another
Speaker 1: you know, uh period as yet to be determined. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, because I was doing a lot
Speaker 1: of juggling, um with other uh career things, Um, the
Speaker 1: show had just kind of come out whenever, and you know,
Speaker 1: whenever I got around to it, whenever I finished something,
Speaker 1: and so in a lot of ways, they didn't have
Speaker 1: that luxury Like if I was kind of like working
Speaker 1: on a story for a while, um, you know, it
Speaker 1: might be like a month, um, you know between episodes,
Speaker 1: and then it might be six weeks between episodes, and
Speaker 1: it would be very hard um for me to to
Speaker 1: shift gears. But sometimes I would kind of have to
Speaker 1: um hopefully that would have happened when I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, it is even better this thing. This thing.
Speaker 1: The reason why this this story is not you know,
Speaker 1: coherent and is not um yet presentable is because it's
Speaker 1: not a story, or it's because I really can't crack it.
Speaker 1: And um, so yeah, there have been times that I've
Speaker 1: had to kind of abandoned ship. UM. But I've also, um,
Speaker 1: there's also been a couple of stories that I've actually
Speaker 1: done that I've actually produced and put music to and
Speaker 1: you know kind of labored over and um, they also
Speaker 1: just kind of stunk. And UM, I think that because
Speaker 1: I was doing stories so so infrequently, then I didn't
Speaker 1: have the luxury of having one that's stunk, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's like if people had waited around, like I
Speaker 1: didn't want to kind of bridge, you know, betray their
Speaker 1: faith in me and betray the fact that they waited
Speaker 1: around for something that wasn't actually good um or um.
Speaker 1: If something was gonna sit on my website as like
Speaker 1: the most recent episode and someone was just gonna like
Speaker 1: if you're if you know, if you told your spouse like,
Speaker 1: oh you gotta check out the Memory Palace. These stories
Speaker 1: a great and like some clunker of a story I
Speaker 1: was sitting on on the front page and that was
Speaker 1: the only one they're going to listen to then, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was going to sit there for weeks and
Speaker 1: weeks and weeks. Then that would be weeks in which
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, you know, hurting my ability
Speaker 1: to hook a listener on this odd little podcast that
Speaker 1: I do. Uh, I know that feeling. I think we've
Speaker 1: all been there. Um, do you have a favorite time
Speaker 1: period or historical figure, Like I know you say you're
Speaker 1: not a history buff, but you've certainly been exposed to
Speaker 1: a lot of it as a cultural omnivore. And does
Speaker 1: that guide your decisions on what topics to cover, Like,
Speaker 1: for example, I am really into Queen Victoria, So I
Speaker 1: am always a little trepidacious about covering Queen Victoria. One
Speaker 1: because I know I'll be a fan girl, and two
Speaker 1: because I know I can't stay objective. So do you
Speaker 1: ever have any of those? Yeah, I mean I have
Speaker 1: a few, right, And I think that I think if
Speaker 1: you you know, if you listen to you know, if
Speaker 1: if as all of you should do, listen to all
Speaker 1: sixty five episodes, Um, you'll see certain sort of themes
Speaker 1: pop up, right, And some of it is that I
Speaker 1: am drawn to, you know, the period between like eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty and nine. Um, you know, when essentially modernity is
Speaker 1: being created. You know, there's like I find that period
Speaker 1: really amazing, in part because there are so many things
Speaker 1: that we are beginning to see for the first time. Um,
Speaker 1: that we have in our daily life, whether it's the telephone,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, recorded music, whether it's you know, movies,
Speaker 1: whether it's the weekend. You know, like these things are
Speaker 1: being invented during that period. And so I'm constantly, you know,
Speaker 1: interested in that moment of first encounter with new technologies,
Speaker 1: before the kind of you know, before the shine kind
Speaker 1: of goes away. Um. Yeah. So you know I think
Speaker 1: that that you know, that period, you know, is is
Speaker 1: you know, filled with like it's like it's this period
Speaker 1: in which they're kind of like inventing modernity. Um. And
Speaker 1: also like there are all these fascinating failures of like
Speaker 1: you know that really point to like different ways in
Speaker 1: which we could you know, have still lived if if only, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this fat had caught on, or if only um,
Speaker 1: you know, this person had succeeded in what they were
Speaker 1: trying to do, you know, both for good and for ill.
Speaker 1: And so I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by that period in particular,
Speaker 1: And and some of the people that operate in there,
Speaker 1: like you know P. T. Barnum, who proceeds it a
Speaker 1: bit and then kind of stretches into that period, is
Speaker 1: just everywhere. You know, there isn't a time when we're
Speaker 1: like it's hard to like come up with you know,
Speaker 1: a like an interesting like crazy musical act or or
Speaker 1: or or um, you know, person in a freak show
Speaker 1: or you know that doesn't engage with Barnum at some point. Um,
Speaker 1: And that stuff is fascinating. But because I do kind
Speaker 1: of go to that well, um, you know pretty frequently.
Speaker 1: I think I had some of your Queen Victoria problem
Speaker 1: where I'd be like, oh am, I doing this too often. UM.
Speaker 1: But I think for me, UM, I think for a
Speaker 1: long time, the Memory Palace, you know, it's only essentially
Speaker 1: now becoming kind of professionalized, and um, you know, even
Speaker 1: though I don't sort of intend to change it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know what, I for a while it was just
Speaker 1: kind of like an art project. It was just this
Speaker 1: thing that I did that that people liked. And so
Speaker 1: in treating it like an art project, I was always
Speaker 1: sort of like out trying to um, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to create like kind of an interesting, you know, creative
Speaker 1: experience for myself and sort of like you know, push
Speaker 1: push each episode like a little bit further or a
Speaker 1: little bit differently. And so I have come to realize
Speaker 1: that it's kind of okay to keep returning to certain
Speaker 1: wells because like if you know, if you were if
Speaker 1: you know, if as like if you were a novelist
Speaker 1: or you're a filmmaker, like at some point you're interested
Speaker 1: in the stuff that you're interested in, you know, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna, you know, you've got to trust that, um,
Speaker 1: your audience, you know, has connected with your work because
Speaker 1: they're interested in in your on your take, and so UM,
Speaker 1: I've kind of like, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: repeat myself and I don't want to to do things
Speaker 1: over and over again. But if I'm if I keep
Speaker 1: being sort of engaged with certain ideas or certain stories
Speaker 1: in a certain area, then on some level there's like
Speaker 1: still more work for me to do there. Um, and
Speaker 1: the well hasn't run dry, and hopefully it hasn't run
Speaker 1: dry for the listener either. We're going to take another
Speaker 1: brief moment for another word from a sponsor, and then
Speaker 1: when we come back, we have a few other questions
Speaker 1: and then we will wrap up. So, Nate, in addition
Speaker 1: to all of your other work, one of the other
Speaker 1: projects you have worked on is Pondy the Greatest Town
Speaker 1: in America from Parks and Recreation, which is a show
Speaker 1: so close to my heart. I love it so much.
Speaker 1: I do too. I just adore it was a good show.
Speaker 1: That's so great I wept like a child. How did
Speaker 1: putting together fictional history for that book compare to the
Speaker 1: process of working on real history for your show? Um? Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: uh you know, I got I got so. I got
Speaker 1: the opportunity to write that book because of the podcast.
Speaker 1: You know, Um Mike Sure, the creator of the show,
Speaker 1: Um and Greg Daniels, the other creator of the show.
Speaker 1: We're um kicking around the idea of creating one of
Speaker 1: those Arcadia Press books. Those are those books that have
Speaker 1: this sort of Sepia tone, like any town, USA, like
Speaker 1: any neighborhood in any major city has like one of
Speaker 1: these books. Um and uh, so they thought it'd be
Speaker 1: fun to make up a fake one for Pawny and uh,
Speaker 1: Mike Sure was a fan of the Memory Palace and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, I know Nate and he's a funny guy. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he'll get what we're doing. But maybe you
Speaker 1: can also come up with sort of a plausible backstory
Speaker 1: and um uh you know, historical backstory and so that
Speaker 1: it started at that, and then the more we kind
Speaker 1: of talked and the more we kind of like riffed,
Speaker 1: it kind of grew and grew and grew, um to
Speaker 1: be sort of like a larger book with larger scope.
Speaker 1: But um, I found it incredibly liberating to make stuff up.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean worked as a journalist, having worked
Speaker 1: as a journalist, and you know, and now is like
Speaker 1: a you know, a historian like you know, in a
Speaker 1: sort of journalistic mode in a way like that like I,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of use where that hat when I
Speaker 1: when I kind of like dig dig into the past,
Speaker 1: like I kind of apply the same sort of standards
Speaker 1: um in this historical work. Um, you know, to honestly
Speaker 1: to be able to like go in and in some
Speaker 1: ways like apply the lessons that I've learned from history,
Speaker 1: not only in the historical stuff, but also like I
Speaker 1: just got in this mode and doing the memory palace
Speaker 1: of like of thinking about people in certain ways of
Speaker 1: thinking about you know, um they're sort of like Craven
Speaker 1: needs and thinking about their their their failed attempts you know,
Speaker 1: to make you know, to sort of achieve you know,
Speaker 1: a level of importance and you know, I think that
Speaker 1: show in particular is engaged um with that all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, it is this sort of like very kind
Speaker 1: of like open hearted, um you know, saying, you know,
Speaker 1: despite the kind of ridiculous and us of the people
Speaker 1: of Pawnee, Indiana. Um you know, I I like, I
Speaker 1: know for a fact, having spent time in that writer's room,
Speaker 1: having having written an episode of the show, being friends
Speaker 1: with it with its creator like I you know, and
Speaker 1: and anyone who watches the show will know, uh you
Speaker 1: know within a half an hour that um, they're both
Speaker 1: aware of the ridiculousness of the people there, but ultimately
Speaker 1: aren't we all ridiculous and aren't we all kind of
Speaker 1: uh interesting and fun because of it? And you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: if there's a real crossover, I think, um between the
Speaker 1: sensibility of that show um uh you know, which obviously
Speaker 1: hasn't more canmedic take um than uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: story about the brutalities of of war, for instance, that
Speaker 1: I might you know, cover in the Memory Palace. But
Speaker 1: it is that same sort of sense that you know
Speaker 1: that people are inherently weak, people are inherently kind of ridiculous,
Speaker 1: but life, you know, throws very challenging things that at
Speaker 1: them and at us and that um you know, finding um,
Speaker 1: those things that make us sort of, um, you know,
Speaker 1: not just human, but make it sort of like worth
Speaker 1: being human and make it kind of fun being human. Um.
Speaker 1: Are are the aspects um that I'm sort of looking
Speaker 1: for in the Memory Palace. UM. You know in each
Speaker 1: of these stories, no matter how sort of distant in
Speaker 1: time um or uh, you know, sort of difficult the
Speaker 1: subject matter. I know that you like for people to
Speaker 1: come into your episodes without a lot of explanation in advance. Uh,
Speaker 1: but you were working on your first series of of
Speaker 1: the Memory Palace. Can you give us a hint of
Speaker 1: what we might expect from it? You know? Um A,
Speaker 1: I do want you to kind of come into things cold. UM.
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna sort of blow it, but I
Speaker 1: can tell you this that UM I was. I knew
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do it in seasons, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I mean and some of that
Speaker 1: was just practical. It was like, well, in the past,
Speaker 1: this is how I got the work done. Now, if
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do more episodes, how am I going to
Speaker 1: get the work done? How's this going to work, and
Speaker 1: I thought that was something I could pull off. But
Speaker 1: the second I got excited about it, um beyond this
Speaker 1: sort of like practical concerns and like building an audience
Speaker 1: through um, you know, by making sure they knew that
Speaker 1: there was gonna be something new every Monday or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. The thing that got me um excited
Speaker 1: about it was a dumb, romantic notion that it seemed
Speaker 1: fun that there might be someone out there who remembered
Speaker 1: the summer of two thousand fifteen as the summer that
Speaker 1: they listened to the Memory Palace a lot. I just
Speaker 1: like that idea, Like I like that there'd be some
Speaker 1: weird nerd kids somewhere, um who you know, like the
Speaker 1: Memory Palace. These stories kind of soundtracked. Uh, they're weird
Speaker 1: summer job and like the summer before they went off
Speaker 1: to college, or the summer they were back from college
Speaker 1: and living with their parents and things were weird and
Speaker 1: lonely or alternative the year they met that girl and
Speaker 1: everything was amazing and and uh and somehow the Memory
Speaker 1: Palace would be part of the background of that. So
Speaker 1: there was the romance that of it. But the other
Speaker 1: thing is you start to realize that like, oh, these
Speaker 1: stories are all going to be coming out in the summer,
Speaker 1: and um, so I think you're gonna find some warm
Speaker 1: weather stories. I think you're gonna find things. I think
Speaker 1: you'll hear things, um that uh, I think makes sense
Speaker 1: on the iPhone of that you know guy on the
Speaker 1: road trip or that person at the shore, or that
Speaker 1: person sort of stuck in their sort of office when
Speaker 1: it's sunny outside. Um. And also I do know, um
Speaker 1: because I've unless this thing falls apart because I can't
Speaker 1: pull it off, I know that there's there's at least
Speaker 1: one episode that is that is a very distinct twist
Speaker 1: on a topic that you guys have covered. That was
Speaker 1: one that you're like said that people have begged you
Speaker 1: to do it. So it is a very popular topic.
Speaker 1: And I'll leave it at that. I'm intrigued. I'm too now,
Speaker 1: I'm all excited. I know we have at least two
Speaker 1: episodes in the archive or we have specifically said there's
Speaker 1: one on the Memory Palace on this subject. Go listen
Speaker 1: to it. One of them is the New England Vampire Panic,
Speaker 1: and the other is the Lunar Beaver Lunar Beavers, Lunar Beavers,
Speaker 1: the whole Moon Hopes, which that for us grew into
Speaker 1: two episodes. It didn't it. Yeah, it's because I can't stop.
Speaker 1: I get really excited with the weird stuff, so weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why did that one grow for you? Because there are
Speaker 1: so many delicious weird details like the whole Oh and
Speaker 1: then we saw these bat people worshiping at this triangular
Speaker 1: thing and it's like, how could you leave that out there?
Speaker 1: And then the characters were good, like they were really good.
Speaker 1: They were Yeah, it's so good. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: delicious wildness to that one. I loved that episode of
Speaker 1: the Memory Palace also. Yes, Like as soon as as
Speaker 1: soon as Holly handed me the outline for that, I
Speaker 1: was I was like, there's a memory bolls on this
Speaker 1: and it's so great. Oh you say it right here. Yes,
Speaker 1: we we're big fans of the Lunar Beavers. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: is anything else on the horizon for you that you
Speaker 1: want to talk about or anything else that you want
Speaker 1: to add? Well, you know it's I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1: You know you guys have have um had the sort
Speaker 1: of great I assume great pleasure because you have you know,
Speaker 1: it seems like a pretty good give you guys have
Speaker 1: of being able to really focus on this and like really, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I know that you're doing it, um every
Speaker 1: week and know know that you're um you know have
Speaker 1: to sort of like both have to have to look
Speaker 1: for stories, but also that you get to look for
Speaker 1: stories and get to like, you know, follow your curiosity
Speaker 1: and do that stuff. And um, you know, so I'm
Speaker 1: really about to do that for the first time. And UM.
Speaker 1: So not only will people be getting sort of more episodes, UM,
Speaker 1: one thing that I've been wanting to do for a while,
Speaker 1: UM is to uh do live shows, which I know
Speaker 1: you guys are getting your went in and um, so
Speaker 1: that's been really fun for me. I had like kind
Speaker 1: of a background and kind of being in bands, and um,
Speaker 1: it's been a long time since I've had the sort
Speaker 1: of opportunity to perform. And I've done like single stories
Speaker 1: here and there, um in kind of like variety show
Speaker 1: context and it's been really fun. And so it's so
Speaker 1: I am in the midst of planning like a proper show,
Speaker 1: like a like something that can that can hold people's
Speaker 1: interest in and uh you know give people like kind
Speaker 1: of like a cabinet of wonder experience um at a
Speaker 1: live show and so um, so this summer I'll be
Speaker 1: playing in Seattle and playing in Portland and then in
Speaker 1: l a in in the early fall, and then I'm
Speaker 1: hoping to do like a proper like tour tour in
Speaker 1: with my you know next season, um sometime in uh
Speaker 1: late fall. That sounds amazing. Indeed, So your season is
Speaker 1: starting on June twenty one, right, yeah, runs to the
Speaker 1: whole summer. Yeah. So people can find the Memory Palace
Speaker 1: on iTunes. There's also the Memory Palace dot us. Really
Speaker 1: give a listen. It's great. You can, you can plow
Speaker 1: through the entire archive, uh and get all kinds of
Speaker 1: just wonderful gems of stories. They're great. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on show, Nate. Great.
Speaker 1: I'll be listening to you guys. We will be back
Speaker 1: to our regularly scheduled listener mail next time. We wanted
Speaker 1: to save that time to listen to a little of
Speaker 1: the Memory Palace this time around. But if you would
Speaker 1: like to write to us, we're a history podcast at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. We're also on Facebook at
Speaker 1: facebook dot com slash missed in History and on Twitter
Speaker 1: at miss in History. Our Tumbler is missed in History
Speaker 1: dot tumbler dot com and we're on Pinterest at petrist
Speaker 1: dot com slash missed in History. You can come to
Speaker 1: our parent company's website, which is how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and learn about many, many things. Or you can
Speaker 1: come to our website, which is missed in History dot
Speaker 1: com and find an archive of all of our episodes
Speaker 1: show notes for the episodes Holly and I have done.
Speaker 1: You will have links to the memory Palace if you
Speaker 1: would like to just find something and click on it.
Speaker 1: From there, you can do all of that and a
Speaker 1: whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or
Speaker 1: mtemistry dot com for more on this for thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how stuff works dot com. M