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Nate DiMeo

the memory palace

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. 

Music

 • The Lady With the Golden Stockings from the Sun Ra Arkestra

 • The Sage from the Chico Hamilton Quintet

 • Falling in Love with a New York Pigeon by Birb

 • Bocherini's fourth quintet as performed by the Ensemble of St. Martin of the Fields

 • From a Dream by Oregon

 • Jaybird from the great Charlie Parr

 • Pool of Love by Les Baxter

 • And House Tuner Theme from Will Bates' gorgeous score to The Sound of Silence.

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Episode 239: Blank Pages

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House.

Buy the audiobook wherever you get audiobooks (like libro.fm!)

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. I have recently launched a newsletter. You can subscribe to it at thememorypalacepodcast.substack.com. 

Audio excerpted courtesy of Random House Audio from THE MEMORY PALACE by Nate DiMeo, read by a full cast. Excerpt read by Nate DiMeo, © 2024 Nate DiMeo, ℗ 2024 Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.

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From The Memory Palace Audiobook: Fine New England Granite

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. 

Music

 • Kara-Lis Coverdale's A480

 • Palimpsest from Will Bate's score to The Sound of Silence

 • Harriett Smith and Robert Martin Meet in the Rain from Isobel Waller Bridge's score to Emma.

 • The Play from Dan Romer's score to (the terrific) Station Eleven.

 • Cutting Branches from a Temporary Shelter from the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

 • Sustainable from H. Takahashi.

Notes

 • There's a particularly good 
article • by Colin Dickey about Jacobs and The Crypt in American Scholar. 

 • You can read all 1100 pages of Jacobs' autobiography 
here • , if you haven't already.

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Episode 238: The Crypt of Thornwell Jacobs

On Sunday, October 26th, 2025, Nate DiMeo of this here show, The Memory Palace, and his friends and colleagues at his fellow Radiotopia show, This Day, will be holding a good, old-fashioned teach-in in defense of history and museums currently targeted by the Trump Administration. Readings and lectures from sun-up to sundown on the National Mall in Washington D.C. 

Learn more here. 

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. 

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A Teach-In for History

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. 

Music

 • On-ness by Tom Rogerson and Eno.

 • Etude by Joep Beving

 • Ebb Tide by Houston & Dorsey

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Episode 237: Vigil

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. 

This episode was originally released in October of 2018.

Music

 • We start with the very English, 
Voluntary No. 4 in b-flat Minor, • by Margaret Phillips.

 • Hear 
Nero’s Nocturne • from Chilly Gonzales.

 • Some of
 The Stars vs. Creatures • by Colleen.

 • 
Abide with Me from the Thelonious Monk Septet • off his Monk’s Music album.

 • 
Walzer fur Robert • by Anne Muller off of Erased Tapes Volume 5.

 • 
Evening at Eight • by Keith Kenniff.

 • and 
Berceuse • by Alexandra Streliski.

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Episode 133: Antidisestablishmentarianism

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. 

Music

 • A couple by C. Diab: Tiny Umbrellas and Crypsis

 • The beginning of Cats Cradle (Iris) by Hannah Epperson

 • Dawning and Wind by Shida Shihabi

 • A couple from Ceeys: Neighbour II and Union

Notes

 • I really enjoyed reading both Lew Irwin's Deadly Times: the 1910 Bombing of the L.A. Times and America's Forgotten Decade of Terror, and Bread and Hyacinths: the Rise and Fall of Utopian Los Angeles, by Lionel Rolfe

 • As an, at this point, long-time Angeleno, I highly recommend visiting the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

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Episode 236: The Times

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. 

While Nate takes a little summer break, he reads you two poems. 

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Summer Reading: Two Transcendent Poems About Public Transportation

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. 

Music

 • Joy, by Jeffrey Cantu-Ledesma

 • The Cradle by Frederico Albanese

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Episode 235: The Girls, their Teachers, their Parents

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. 

Notes

 • Go to 
adoptastation.org • and pitch in.

 • Listen to the incredible documentaries by Lloyd Newman, LeAlan Jones, and David Isay, at David's (Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded) 
Storycorps.org • 

Music

 • Herbert's Story from Mark Orton's score to Nebraska.

 • Kyu from Sylvain Chaveau

 • Smygkatt by Shida Shahabi

 • Roedelius plays Rolling

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Episode 234: Looking for Parking, Late Winter, 1996

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows.

Music

 • 
Sad Seine • by Lambert.

 • 
Titan's Island • by Ancient Ocean

 • 
Flowering Jasmine • as performed by Georgs Pelicis and Gidon Kremer

 • 
Malpensa • by Julia Kent

Notes

 • I first came upon the Calhoun bit while re-reading 
Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism • by Barbara Weisberg.

 • Which us, among other places to J.H. Fowler's 
New Testament "miracles" and Modern "miracles" • 

 • And to the delightfully named, 
The Ordeal of Life: Graphically Illustrated in the Experiences of Fifteen Hundred Individuals Promiscuously Drawn from All Nations, Religions, Classes, & Conditions of Men Alphabetically Arranged and Given Psychometrically, Through the Mediumship of John C. Grinnell, In the Presence of the Compiler, Thomas R. Hazard. • 

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Episode 119 (John C. Calhoun from the Opposite Side of the Line that Divides the Living from the Dead)

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