Stuff You Missed in History Class
Hosted by Holly Frey and Tracy V. Wilson
Tracy talks with Nate DiMeo about podcasting, varying approaches to talking about history, and his new book, "The Memory Palace."
11,056 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and Holly is not here today. So instead I have a very special guest, which is Nate D'Amio of the podcast The Memory Palace and also author of the forthcoming book, The Memory Palace, which is coming out from Random House on November 19th. If you're not familiar with Nate's show, you will get a chance to change that in just a few minutes. Hi Nate, welcome to the show.
I am so happy to be here. I'm a longtime fan of the show.
I'm a longtime fan of your show also. You have been on our show once before. That was nine years ago, which is hard to believe. At that time, you had 65 episodes. Now there are more than 220 episodes of your show from just looking at the website today.
How are we both still doing this? I guess that's my first question. Does it surprise you that all these years later, we're both still doing the same thing?
You know, it does and it doesn't. On the one hand, you know, nine years. So I was realizing that I am, this is my 15th year of doing The Memory Palace. I'm about to enter my 16th year and that is sort of insane and it's been easy for me to keep track of that because it kind of started shortly after my daughter was born. And I was like, oh, I need to make sure I. Have like a creative outlet that I'm like building and and she's she's about to turn 16 in a couple of weeks. So here we are.
Wow.
Yeah. But that's it. The thing that is actually more surprising than just its longevity is the notion that, you know, nine years ago, it felt like we'd been doing it for a long time.
It felt like it really. It did.
It really did. But on the on the other hand, like I discovered fairly early on when I started to do these short narrative, you know, historical stories, put them to music, kind of found a voice that was, you know, factually accurate, but also a little bit dreamy and a little bit, you know, focused on sort of wonder and and kind of just like the mystery of not just like the mystery of of living in the past, but living in the present with the past, you know, the way that just for people who love historical stories like we do and thinking about it, that just kind of like magic place that invoking the past and the people that live there kind of brings out in you.
I really discovered fairly early on as I started doing this, that setting aside, you know, careerism and setting setting aside deadlines. There was just something I found personally useful and kind of exciting about doing these stories and about like taking the time to to read about these figures and forgotten moments and, you know, you know, find words, you know, and find words in music and the combination of those two things to like kind of share that that sort of wonder that I that that experiencing those things like brought out in me and share them with listeners. And so like as a result, like this just kind of feels like a thing. I feel like I found a thing that was useful to my life.
And as a result, it feels like a thing I'm just kind of going to be doing in some capacity forever. Like I felt like I stumbled upon a venue in the podcast to like express these things. So on the one hand, like, yeah, 16 years is a very long time. But in the other hand, it's a little bit of like, yeah, this is my life now. And it's it remains a big and vital part of it.
I love that. It sort of reminds me of how. I used to say that the first thing I found that I was really good at was being in college. And when I was hired to write for the website howstuffworks.com, which is a totally different website now than it was when they hired me, it was like being in college again, because I was spending all of my time learning something and then writing about what I learned. And now my job is still that, but now I say the thing into a microphone afterward. And so it continues to be sort of an evolution of the first thing that I found that I thought I was good at and also enjoyed.
That's exactly right. And the truth of the matter, too, is there's also that aspect of like, at some point, your spouse, or your friend, or the person at the bar gets a little bit tired of you saying, oh, I just learned this amazing thing. And now you can put it out into the, you know, one puts it out into the air and hopes that the people that will be excited will find it.
Yeah. So Stuff You Missed in History Class and The Memory Palace, these are both podcasts about history, obviously. You and I and Holly, all three of us are taking an approach that a lot of people describe as thoughtful. But your shows are like a third the length of ours most of the time. The last time you were on the show, we talked about the fact that you have some episodes that are five minutes long, that Holly and I get into the same story, and we wind up with two 30 to 40 minute episodes. Something you talk about in your book that I think sort of highlighted the way that we are each approaching history in ways that are both similar and different, is you talked about
that all of the stories you cover on your show start with something that moved you. Holly and I often talk about starting with things that interest us. So sort of your show starts with kind of a thoughtful meditation on something that moved you, while Holly and I are more explaining all the things that we found interesting about a particular subject. So can you tell us a little bit about like, what has led you to focus so much on being moved by something and on that level of emotional impact in historical stories?
Yeah, I think that similar to your notion of like, that the thing that clicked for you. Was when you found a job that felt like you were back in college. For me, when I first got into journalism, there was just this sense of like, I was a kid. And then a young adult who was always like, oh, I'm one of those people who's kind of like good at a number of different things and interested in a ton of different stuff. And it's hard to choose. I was one of, one of those people. And in journalism and now the memory palace like kind of allows me not to choose. It's like, it, it puts the value on like, oh, I am interested in a lot of different stuff. And so, yes, there is that interest that one might be interested in, in how bridges are constructed.
Or one might be interested in the invention of the zipper or, or what happened at this battle or that battle. But the thing that I find when I go to museums and the things that I find when I read history is that like, that over and over again, what, that, that spark where I'm sort of like, oh, I do need to go tell this to my spouse. I do want to text my friend about that thing. Is that this thing has moved me. And like, and I mean that like very in the, in the straightforward sense, like that it has like spurred some emotion. It has made me think nostalgically about old friends. It has taught me something about parenting. It has, you know, just like, like thrilled me with like, oh my God, I cannot believe that people live that way. How, you know, and reminded me that we live differently.
And that notion of being moved, like to me, it's a, that's, you know, that's what I look for in life. It's what I look for in a movie is that I want to, you know, come out and feel a little bit differently than I went in. And I just kind of had discovered that that was true of the past, that there was this kind of like magic that the, that the past held for me, like that it was this kind of like imaginative space that you could go back and you could read about George Washington, or you could go back and you could read about, you know, Shipwreck Kelly, the guy who became, you know, famous for, you know, sitting on tall objects for inordinate amounts of time. And that real space, these are, these are real things that happen to real people.
But what it really is doing is it's exciting your imagination, like that reading about history, when it's good, is no different than reading a, than reading a novel. And I wanted to create a show that took that approach to history. And it doesn't mean that, you know, you know, that it doesn't mean that I'm any less serious about getting the facts straight. But I have always been very feeling forward when it comes to experiencing that stuff. And so the format that made the most sense to me was also very feeling forward. Like, I want to create a show and write stories for this book about history that make you feel things, that, that break your heart, that delight you.
And yeah, and, and there's something, you know, when I, when I read my own book, as I did recently with my, you know, with, with sections of my audio book, I'm like, boy, this is an earnest person. That's just, it is the truth. Like, it is a very feelings forward approach to history and a very wonder focused approach. And it continues to delight and drive me from story to story.
Well, it may please you to know that I started crying while reading your book about a story that not only did I already know, but that we also have covered on our podcast, which was about Ruth Harkness and the first panda brought to the United States. And just sort of the discussion of Ruth and who she was and thinking about what her interior world was like as all of that was going on. I was sitting at my desk and realized, I was like, I've been moved to tears by this thing that I already feel very intimately familiar with.
That's, and yeah, no, I think that that really. I think all the time about why we remember the things we remember. You know, that like in some of it is, oh, I remember that experience I had at the park. That scary experience because, you know, our bodies are telling us to remember the trauma of that. But I also like, think a lot about the kind of inverse of trauma. Just that things that are so delightful, like things that like allow you to connect with, with another human being. Like, those are the other things you remember. You remember that, you know, novel, exciting day with a parent when they took you to the park, when you weren't expecting to go to the park or something like that. And I, you know, think all the time about like, why it is that I remember, you know, certain events in my life.
We are constantly like inundated with historical information, like, like not just because we might be history buffs, but things pop up on the internet, you know, and things in your Instagram reel. There are all these like little, you know, facts about history, but there are just aren't that many that are the ones that like make you suddenly tear up or that, you know, again, make you wanna, you know, turn to your spouse or text your friend. And I've come to really like trust those things and be fascinated by why those are the things that move me. Like, why is it the story, you know, of Ruth Harkness and this woman going out to continue her husband's mission to find a panda? Her recently deceased husband's mission to bring a live panda back to the United States?
The first one, you know, that will leave China? And when those things move me, then I turn around to try to figure out, like, how can I also share this experience with someone else? And I'm glad that it seems like it worked in this, in this case.
My next question was going to be about how you decided which stories to put in the book. And I'm imagining that everything you just said was probably a big influence on that.
Yeah, I think so. You know, I, I grew up really loving kind of anthology books. You know, whether it was just sort of like the book of lists or like Ripley's Believe It or Not. Like these, like these books of these short little pieces of different types, like just held such sway on my like young reader life. But that's not really a thing that exists as we, as we become adults. Like there are magazines and magazines kind of have that, can have that magic. But I wanted to kind of create one of those kind of like magic books that you get lost in. But ultimately, that was one for adults, that these were, that these were going to be stories that had like heft and that had, you know, depth that did have the ability to move you and to, you know, potentially change you or change the way you think, you know, not just about the past, but the things, you know, the way that you might live your
life in the present, like, you know, to be really kind of pretentious about it. But I also wanted to just simply have the power to kind of change your day. That you have this book of these short stories that you can, like, I really, for the first time in a long time, The Memory Palace, you know, has always just kind of been this, you know, nice evocative name. But I kind of wanted to create something that felt like wandering in through a museum. One that you could take at your own pace, you know, one that you could read a couple of stories and put down, you know, one that you can pick up in the middle and see a picture that grabbed you and just start there. Like, I wanted to create like a book that was like a little bit of a portal or something like that. And so as a result, it just kind of became this, this, you know, practical question of how many
stories should be pre-existing stories that people love from the podcast? How many of these stories should be new? How many stories should be, you know, favorites that people who've listened, been listening for a long time, you know, will want to have the opportunity to kind of own and hold in their hands, you know, which is an opportunity that like, you know, as fans, as a person who loves your show, it's like, I don't quite have, like, there is not that chance to just like, you know, in the same way that, you know, that there are episodes of yours that I love, in the same ways that I might love, like, that I might have, like, loved a book. But there's just, it would be nice to have that episode on my shelf. And it's been nice to give people the opportunity to do that. And so someone is like, which ones might people want to read and own and hold? Which
one of these are simply just the best of what I've done? Which one of these frankly will work well on the page? There are some stories that are clearly audio stories from the podcast that because they have, you know, a bit of audio, or there's just something about the way the music needs to work, or there's just something about the way that I need to dictate pace with my voice, that simply just... Don't hold up on the page or don't work as well on the page. And so there are those considerations. And then there were also considerations about what opportunities does a book present? And for me, a lot of that was visual. So I created a number of new stories that hinge upon seeing images, which created a whole set of stories that are about photographs, but also about the history of photography and about the history of seeing
and the history of living with visual records of our lives and our memories, which was its own opportunity. But then there was also a question that came from the publisher, which is essentially like, is this a chance that you have to let people under the hood who do like the show? Like to let them know where these stories come from or that sort of thing? And every idea they pitched on that sounded like bad DVD commentary.
And I was just like, no, no, no. I would be delighted if every Memory Palace listener bought this book. But the truth of the matter is this is a great opportunity to get in front of people who are just readers. And the notion of like, hey, this story that you just read about Ruth Darkness, let me tell you where that came from. Like, that's not the way books work. They don't come with that sort of experience. But I ultimately did find, as I was compiling the book and as I was really engaging with the breadth of the work over the course of all of these years, I just kept having this feeling that I'm kind of an odd duck. This is an odd passion that I have.
And this is like a slightly skewed perspective on sometimes familiar things. Or just that my curatorial vision about the things that move me and the things that interest me and the things I feel this weird need to share with people comes from a kind of strange person and a strange consciousness. And as a result, I was like, I think it is kind of worth unpacking. And so I ended up developing this series of memoir stories, these kind of nested memoir stories, that I think ultimately give the reader, whether they're new to the stories or not, the sense of what makes them tick through the lens of what makes me tick.
I love all of that. And I loved those final stories in the book. I was not expecting to have those and to have kind of a personal insight into sort of some of your thought process. Um, we are going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get to hear a show from your podcast.
First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
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The next thing that you all are going to hear on the show today is one of Nate DeMayo's episodes of The Memory Palace. It is called "The Temple of Dender," and we will just let that go.
This is The Memory Palace. I'm Nate DeMayo.
At the start of a timeline of the history of the Temple of Dender, there's a story that goes that Caesar Augustus, the first Roman emperor, the adoptive son of Julius Caesar, after defeating Antony and Cleopatra and taking over Egypt, wanted to keep his new subjects in line. So, he built a number of temples up and down the Nile to the local gods. It was a way to show the folks, though, that the new boss wasn't so bad. He wasn't going to force some weird new religion down their throats. And it was a show of largesse, a splash of cash on a public works project. He picked Dender, or his people picked Dender, just north of Aswan, because there was a smaller temple there already to two princes
who drowned nearby in the Nile and had, through some mechanism of belief that held sway for a relatively brief time in ancient Egypt, become gods. And so the people of Dender had been used to going to that spot already to make offerings to deities, to ask for bountiful harvests and mild flooding and healthy sons who wouldn't drown. And so the Romans signed off on that location for a modest structure, and a few years later, around 10 B.C., there was this temple. Dedicated to Isis and Osiris and the two princes. And there were men there who had cut sandstone from a cliff face in a quarry, who'd carved it into blocks, who dragged them across the desert, who'd hefted them on their shoulders,
who were sat upon them, still warm beneath them as sunset cooled the air and a breeze shook the reeds, as they floated in a flat-bottomed boat down the Nile where two princes had once drowned and become gods. And there were men who stacked those blocks, who chiseled them into columns and lintels, and falcon-faced gods set them in place just so, sat and ate in the shade of a wall they built with those blocks. And who would think, from time to time, as their lives went on, and they would see the temple, see it change colors with each change of the lead, or shimmer in the heat on the horizon, or see it half-submerged by the Nile, flooded again? They'd see this temple and think, "I built that. I was here."
And tell their kids, who'd say, "My father built that. He was here." Maybe their grandkids. Until eventually the Temple of Dender was just landscape and landmark, sandstone eroding.
At the next points in the timeline, the story goes that travelers, explorers and soldiers and wealthy dilettantes, discovered the Temple of Dender over and over again. Saw it in the distance as they came around a bend in the river, as their caravans crested a hill, and they stopped for a spell, watered their horses or their camels, rested for a bit in the shade of its walls. And carve their names. You can see them there. The first one is in an ancient script. Some tagger scraped it in, like, 2,000 years ago. But you can still make it out. And then there's someone named Dravetti in 1816. And then El Politi in 1819. Leonardo, Luigi, Leandro, we don't know.
But we can still almost see him there. Moustachioed, sweating through wool and linen. Chipping his name in the soft stone of this temple. There was an antiquities dealer, or thief, depending on how you want to look at it, from Baltimore. His name's there, too. And there's a New Yorker, Louis Bradish, who came upon this minor temple on his way to see better sights. It took a few moments out of his grand tour one day in 1821 to carve his name and say to history, "I was here."
The story goes that the Nile flooded too high, over and over again. For millennia, that was the way of the Nile. And there is a point on the timeline in about 1954, when there were 23 million people in Egypt. And the flooding was brutal. And there was only one crop that year. And there was a food shortage that threatened to become a famine, but didn't quite. And so the government decided to raise the height of the Aswan Dam and make a lake that could help irrigate enough land to ensure three crops a year and food for those 23 million. But that lake would drown the Temple of Denver in many other archaeological sites far more significant. Hundreds of tombs and towns and forts. In Abu Simbel, the great temple of Ramses II, the one with the four-seated pharaohs carved into the hillside.
You know that one, I bet. The Egyptian government went to the UN, which was brand-new back then, and asked the nations of the world for help. And fifty countries gave money to save it, and save as much of this history as they could. Afghanistan gave two grand. Togo, newly independent, gave eight hundred and fifteen dollars and thirty cents as one of its first acts on the international stage. President Kennedy went to Congress and made an impassioned speech, asking them to help preserve the antiquities and to seize their own moment in history and make their mark. And the United States donated twelve million dollars. And that money paid for cranes and trucks and chisels and contractors and archaeologists and day laborers
to dismantle and box and store as many tombs and temples as possible, like this one here, before the waters rose and rose.
There is a point on the timeline marked November twenty-second, nineteen sixty-three, when a young president was shot in the back of a car and fell onto his young wife beside him, and then was shot in the head while it lay on her shoulder, and he died.
And then a couple of years later, after everything, after LBJ, one hand on a Bible, and one in the air on Air Force One, Jackie beside him in the pink Chanel, still bloodstained. After Jack Ruby in Oswald. After John Junior saluting. After all of it. The Egyptian government offered the American government a temple as a thank you for helping save so much from the flood. Other countries would get stuff too, but the United States gave the most money, so it would have first pick. And the story goes that Jackie was asked to make the choice because saving the temples and the like had been a cause so dear to her late husband. That story is not entirely accurate, but that's how the story goes.
And it goes on to say that she chose Dender. She chose this temple because it was the most beautiful, and Jack would have loved it the most. And what she wanted, what she wanted for this temple, what she wanted for her husband, now two years dead, was to rebuild it in Washington DC amidst the faux Greco-Roman temples to Lincoln and Jefferson, the fake Egyptian obelisk that is somehow supposed to evoke Washington. She wanted to use this real temple to Isis and Osiris and to two princes who drowned too young in the river and became gods as a memorial to the man she'd once met at a dinner party at a mutual friend's place and then fallen in love with and set out to spend the rest of her life with and then...
The story goes that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had hired a new director. His name was Thomas Hoving. He was 36, which was remarkably young for a job like that in a place like this, especially then. But it was 1967, you can find it on the timeline there, and he was charged in part with harnessing the spirit of that age and making the Met a little less stodgy, within reason, certainly less sleepy. People who have been around the museum for a long time will tell you stories about coming here to look at art on summer afternoons when school was out, when tourists were in town, and have whole wings to themselves. And Thomas Hoving wanted to change that. He wanted crowds. Now, at the same time, President Johnson was deciding what to do with this gift from Egypt. He had already
ruled out Jackie's idea for a memorial. He wanted no part in deifying his predecessor. Instead, he wanted a kind of contest. He had museums and cities tell him why they thought they were the best place in America for an Egyptian temple. Not much of one, admittedly. Didn't come with any mummies or anything. Wasn't even all that old. But there were proposals from all over. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Smithsonian, Memphis, Tennessee, and Cairo, Illinois pitched their respective downtowns because they were named after cities in Egypt. Wouldn't that be cool? And now you, listening to this story about a temple at the Met, while maybe looking at that same temple at the Met, have a pretty good hunch how all this turns out.
But the story here is that Hoving made a choice. He too knew this wasn't much of a temple. There were already dozens of objects in the museum's Egyptian art department, far more important. He knew that it would cost a fortune to bring it here. He knew it had questionable aesthetic and historic value. But he also knew that you and I wouldn't really care. And he wanted to leave his mark on the history of the Met. He wanted to say, "I was here."
There's a black stripe that stretches along a section of the timeline of the history of the Temple of Dender. It delineates the period of protracted competition and debate over who would get to have it. But that section is super boring, so we'll skip over it. But there's one part of that story worth telling. And we'll mark it with its own little dot. When Thomas Hoving ran into some particularly thorny obstacle in the process, he called Jackie Kennedy, who was just about to get remarried. And Hoving asked her if she could help, if she could put in a word with President Johnson on behalf of the Met. She said, and Hoving said he wrote it down, word for word, "I want it to be built in the center of Washington as a memorial to Jack. I don't care about the Met.
I don't care about New York," she said. "I don't care if the temple crumbles into sand."
The story goes that the Temple of Dender sat in pieces on an island in the middle of the Nile for almost 20 years. Then it was packed up into 661 crates, sent up the river, tamed by the dam by then, and loaded onto a Norwegian freighter and borne across waves to New York. That was 1968. It sat around for nearly a decade. They built a plastic dome outside the museum where conservatives could work on it and keep it out of the elements. They were mostly waiting for a new wing to be built, in a room, here, with a high ceiling and a wall of glass looking out onto the park, made specifically to house the Temple of Dender. And then curators and teamsters and workmen brought it inside and put it back together.
They are still around, a lot of them, still saying, surely, to themselves, to their kids, to the grandkids now, that they built this.
That they were here.
And there's another point on the timeline, another part of the story. The Times wrote it up. "One day, they were rebuilding the temple, scaffolding, hard hats, ancient dust catching the light through the windows, and work just stopped because Jackie Onassis and her daughter Caroline, who was just about to turn 18, came into the room." Jackie lived a block away. It was 1975. It had been 12 years since her husband had been shot in the head while it lay on her shoulder. The Times didn't record what she said, or know what she felt, of course, just that she looked around a while and signed autographs to the workers.
And the timeline stretches on, with a point marking the opening reception in 1978. Champagne flutes, wide lapels. There's a point placed at Hoving's death in 2009. Dender is mentioned right near the top of his obituary. There are new placards on the wall opposite the park. The old ones had yelled with age. "We'll mark a point for their arrival." The curators are very proud of them. "They are filled with all sorts of details that will help the curious visitor place this temple in its proper historical context, to understand what distinguishes it, built as it was in the so-called Roman period (30 B.C. to 640 A.D.) from temples of earlier
epics, those epics traditionally being distinguished by various things."
There is a point for the teachers telling school groups the story, explaining how this minor temple comes from the tail end of what we think of as ancient Egypt, the golden sarcophagus is and mummies and stuff, a time when the old gods were on their way out, and explain that we are closer in time to its construction, right now, by almost 500 years, than the construction of the pyramids and the Sphinx were to the men who built this temple and sat in its shade. But you can just tell that the story, when the kids get home, will be, "Mom, I saw the place where they put the mummies." And good for them.
Mark a point for the night when one of those kids sleeps and dreams of Dender.
Mark a point for the selfie taken at arm's length, the tourist saying, "I was here." Another for the security guard saying, "No flash, please," for the gajillionth time that day. One for the toddler eyeing the pool with the papyrus, with his parents warning him away lest he be drowned in deified. Mark a point for each change in the light, and how they change how the temple looks. And mark a point for you, here, now.
This episode is written and produced and stuffed by me, Nate DiMeo of the Memory Palace Podcast, and executive produced by Limor Tomer, General Manager of Live Arts at the Met, with research assistance from Andrea Millen and engineering assistance from Alyssa Dudley. My residency is made possible by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Chester Dale Fund. The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia, a network from PRX, which receives support from the Knight Foundation and from its generous listeners. Learn more about The Memory Palace at thememorypalace.org and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
So now that everyone has heard the Temple of Dender, something I found very interesting about this episode of your show is the fact that it was at, it was done as part of your residency at the Met. And I remember when that residency happened, I thought it was such a cool opportunity to combine museum with an audio production and to put all of these things together. And now this has moved into a new medium of a book. And it gave you the opportunity to follow up the episode with another chapter, basically, of the book that is parts excised from that story. Do you want to talk about that a little bit, how that evolved?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I absolutely love being the artist and resident of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And it's still like, it's, it's still, the off chance that I get to go these days as a West Coaster, boys, it's still really cool to see a little plaque that says the name of the thing, that says the name of one of the episodes that I produced, and then my name, like, then like, "American born 1974," as though it's just like any other artwork in the Met. It's incredible. And I really, you know, in, in doing these stories about like the stuff that moves you, there's just like nothing sort of more kind of magical than some of these incredible spaces that they've created in the Met. And so, you know, to create a story about, you know,
to be listened to ideally in one of those spaces, but also that is something that's so iconic to the museum. And then to kind of like draw out the, the sort of like wonder in the mundanity of that story is really where the Memory Palace lives. Like, the notion that, that this can be this run-of-the-mill, you know, minor temple, but that has been imbued with such meaning over the years is a thing that just I find enduringly fascinating. And when I was walking around the Met, looking for stuff to do stories about and talking to the curators about it, and there's no, there's nothing more fun in the world than talking to an expert about the thing that they love. And so to be able to get to do that was such a thrill. And I was like, oh, cool. So I'm going to do this story about
this American painting, and I'm going to do this story about these objects, and then I'm going to do a story about the Temple of Dender. And I just wanted to be really straightforward. I want to call it the Temple of Dender. And I was told, yeah, you can't do that.
I thought I was like the artist of residence. I thought that like, you know, I had free rein to do whatever I want. Like, yeah, of course you have free rein to do whatever you want. That's fine. But you can't actually just call a thing the Temple of Dender, because it turns out, as many people know at this point, that that, and I did not, that the Temple of Dender, in every mention, in every, you know, in every publication that the Met does, and this would fall under that category, had to, by contractual agreement, say that it was the Temple of Dender in the Sackler Wing of the Sackler Gallery of the Sackler whatever, sponsored by the Sackler family, you know, who made their money, you know,
first in medical antiseptics, but then selling drugs directly to, using doctors to sell drugs directly to patients. And they made so much of their fortune on selling oxycontin to people. Not only was this a key component to the history of the Temple of Dender, that I could never quite find a way to tell, even, you know, with the residency of the Met, there was just something about, the story began to overwhelm it, and which didn't feel, it just didn't feel right to the kind of magic of that place, and the magic of frankly, of what the Met has built there. And so I was like, oh, I feel like this, this now
needs to be a thing that like, becomes part of the story, because it's very clear. And I kept sort of trying to shoehorn it into the story, and it just, everything kept falling apart. And I realized that it needed its own addendum. It needed its own sort of moment in the kind of like shifting sun of the gallery of the Met. And it was one of these kind of cool opportunities that that the book provided like that, to be able to kind of return to that story, to tell how the Sacklers became involved and to tell ultimately, you know, how activists led by Nan Golds and the artist were able to, you know, change the history of that, to put their own mark on that room and put their own mark in, you know, their own place in the timeline. It felt like kind of a real gift to the book.
And also just to be able to frankly, restore the very simple title. This is always supposed to be the Temple of Endure and it now can be again.
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Livright, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
Has there been any other thing or person or whatever that you've covered on your show that you have later wanted to have some kind of addendum to clarify anything about it, add any new lines, anything like that?
You know, not too often because the truth of the matter is like, like for a Memory Palace story to feel finished, then I kind of need to figure out what it means to me. Like, it really comes down to that. Like, that one, you know, finds a story about, you know, as we both do, as we trawl or we just stumble upon exciting things and one finds a story about Ruth Harkness and and her panda. And on the one hand, it's a very, it's a very easy story to make cool. It's a very cool story. There are like lots of interesting facts and, and, and exciting incident. But the question always, you know, I have this, I have a list. It is dozens and dozens and dozens of potential topics long. I'm sure you guys have the same kind of file.
And I look at it sometimes and I'm like, how come there's absolutely nothing I want to tell a story about?
I have the exact same experience.
Like, and also you're just like, why did I ever care about that thing? But then over time, sometimes like something frankly, often like occurs in your life and you're, and you'll say like, oh, I realize that this is a story about having aging parents. Or, oh, I realize that this is a story about an ambition of a certain type of thing that I'm currently now feeling. This is about, and so I wait for that feeling. I wait for like, this is the thing I want to say about the world to pair up with one of those stories. And so suddenly like Ruth Harkness's story, you know, comes a little bit about like these times in your life, when you let yourself like go on an adventure and that can be a true adventure, like Ruth Goes On.
Or it can be just like, oh, I pursued this thing that took me beyond what I thought I might be capable of. And that you go and do that thing and it, and it kind of fills your life in a certain way. And, and, and everything feels right. And I was very moved by the fact that she, you know, as her life falls apart, as frankly often it happens in these stories that, you know, one thing about history is get the whole span of the life. And I am very interested in what happens to people after they do the thing we know them for, and how they reckon with it and how it lives with them. Ruth's story is one of these things where, you know, you think back to it. And I'm so interested in like, oh, like things felt right for her for a while and then they don't.
And there's something, I find a lot of sort of particular sadness. It was worth exploring in there. But that said, so when the memory palace feels done, it feels done. Like it feels like, oh, I've said the thing I need to say. And there might be like extra stuff that I kind of wish I can get in there. And there might, but that usually means, so let's wait for another time to like tell that other aspect. Let's wait for a different meaning as opposed to like, let's just get some more information in there. That make sense?
It does. It definitely does. And I think that's sort of one of the things that's reflective of differences between the way your show works and the way our show works, because ours is often a very this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened chronological story. And so occasionally, there will be a discovery about one of the things that we thought happened that didn't real happen, or, you know, a realization, somebody will find, you know, some previously unknown document that reveals new insight.
That did happen in this book, now that I think about it, you know. But it was not one of those things where I'm like, oh, great, here's an opportunity to revisit this story or add to it. It was like, oh, shoot, I have to reckon with this. And that is the story of Hercules, who was an enslaved, you know, a person enslaved by George Washington. When I did that story originally, in like 2015, or something like that, the end of the story hinged upon the wonder and strangeness and kind of magic of the notion that after his escape, like, people lose track of him. And that, you know, in that he can kind of only live on in our imagination on some level, this real person who's become this thing.
And if that's the case, then like, let's make sure that we hold him in a similar way in our imaginations that we hold George Washington. And let's hang his, you know, his memories and sort of like, you know, the crime of the ownership of this man on George Washington. And let's like, let's keep that going. And like, let's, we have the ability to kind of control what we take from this story. And this is what I'd like you to take. And it turns out that six months after I released that episode, they figured out where he went. And I did not know that. Like, I just, I missed the news because it was not after front page news. And during the fact checking process, someone's, excuse me, it's like, oh. And so, so there was this real question about like, oh, this thing needs an entirely
different ending. And this is a story I like, and there's a real value in this. And there's value within the kind of like, construct of this book to have this type of story in there at this particular moment. I'm like, oh, but then one has to find, not just a different ending, you know, it's not, it's not. It's not a language question, it's a meaning question. How does this change the meaning? And yeah, and it was a, it was a surprise challenge, but one that again, it was kind of lovely to immerse myself again, sort of in that moment and kind of see like, oh, have I did what I got out of it then? Not only does it hold up under these new facts, but does it also hold up, you know, several years later as I have changed? Yeah, it was exciting to revisit it.
So is there anything that you want to make sure that people really know about this book or your podcast, what you're working on, any of that?
I like to think of what I do in terms of like writing these short stories, that every two weeks I'll be at the podcast and then, you know, more often when I was working on this book, I've discovered that I really have this like, it's almost, it's almost become like a yoga practice where like, it just does me good to think about the past. It does me good to think about the way that lives go. And it does me good to remember that we're all gonna die someday and that our time is short. And I've just found such value in sort of like writing these things. And, and I really do think about like the value of, of the stories themselves and in what I kind of want someone to get out of it. And the truth is like, I kind of wanted people to get what I put into it.
I don't mean that like the, the sweat. I just mean that like, I like to think of these stories as having the ability, when they work well, to kind of like inject like a little shot of feeling into one's life. Like we are all, and I certainly am, just like wrapped up in the kind of like, in the just whir and sputter of the everyday. And I want each of these stories to kind of just have the ability to kind of like shift your day a little bit, if that makes any sense? And again, I want it, this to be the, like, I want the podcast to kind of be like the thing that can like, to bring like, sort of like genuine wonder in like the strangeness of the world into like the span of a dog walk.
And I want, you know, this book to be this thing that like sits on your shelf or you have in your pocketbook or you have, you know, in your carry on bag, that like you know that at each turn, you're gonna start, you don't know where you're going to go, but that you'll be like, that things will be a little different on the other end of the story.
I love all of that. Having read this, this is really, it's such a lovely book. And I think it's the exactly the kind of book that I would, if I had not just read the entire thing, preparing to talk to you about it, definitely the kind of book that I would have nearby for when I had a moment and needed a moment to sort of reset my brain and my perspective. Also, every time I hear the words, this is the Memory Palace, I'm Nate DeMeo, I feel comforted, even though I know there is a chance that what I'm about to hear is going to be heartbreaking. So, take that as you will, listeners. I said
earlier, you have been on our show once before. If folks are listening right now and are thinking, I want to hear this other episode where they talk to Nate DeMeo. Holly and I both interviewed you on June 10th of 2015. That's when that came out. So long ago. And your book is being published by Random House on November 19th of this year, which is 2024, right?
That's correct.
So, if you haven't heard The Memory Palace before, you can find The Memory Palace on anywhere you get your podcasts. Same with us. And with Stuff You Missed in History Class, anywhere you get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Nate, for talking to me today. I hope everyone has enjoyed listening to you and listening to your show today.
Thank you so much.
Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Livright, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in his colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
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