The Memory Palace

May 14, 2009 10:35 AM

The Memory Palace is a short podcast about history. Ben Franklin's death ray! Franklin Pierce, the saddest president! The hollow earth!
posted by nasreddin (11 comments total)

Nobody has commented on this yet, and, knowing how I feel when I am waiting for comments on my posts, I'll just pipe in to say that these look absolutely awesome, and I am at work not and can't listen to them. But I will. Oh, I will.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:21 PM on May 14, 2009

Agreed, I am favoriting this so I can look it up tonight and have a listen.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 12:42 PM on May 14, 2009

I, too hafta wait til I get home before I can listen to this stuff, but I'm very intrigued.

(that was very nice of you, AZ)
posted by Spatch at 12:43 PM on May 14, 2009

nasreddin--All three segments you've linked to are . . . I don't have a good word for it. "Awesome" would work, but is so overused; I will have to listen to all of these. "The Hollow Earth" segment--I figured that'd be a good laugh, and it kind of started out that way, but, wow. It ended on a strangely moving note, human frailty and all that. Thanks for posting this.
posted by miss patrish at 1:06 PM on May 14, 2009

Hopefully I won't spoil anything by adding, after listening to all 10 episodes published so far, that these are wonderful. Little bite-sized chunks of audio goodness covering the kind of nutty, complex, quirky trivia that any Mefite would drool over. (I was blown away by episode 10, the true story of Mothers' Day (yes, the position of the apostrophe is deliberate... listen to the story)).

Not terribly surprisingly, the narrator, Nate Di Meo, is, in fact, a public radio producer, and he has that NPR-style delivery down perfectly. (Navigation to the about and footnotes pages of the site is somewhat hidden, at least in Firefox 3.5, although I am not certain if that is deliberate or not... the site is wonderfully low-key, and it is called The Memory Palace, after all).

Thanks very much, nasreddin!
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 1:10 PM on May 14, 2009

Mothers' Day (yes, the position of the apostrophe is deliberate...

Hmm. Until you wrote that, I never noticed that people usually place the apostrophe before the "s." I always figured more than one mother was the subject of the day. Guess I missed a memo somewhere.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:11 PM on May 14, 2009

These looked really awesome so I left the post in my RSS reader so I could sub to the podcast at home...and then I forgot to. :( Still, they look awesome and I can't wait to try.
posted by DU at 4:07 AM on May 15, 2009

Thank you for these nasreddin - they are fantastic!
posted by ninthart at 6:17 AM on May 15, 2009

I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed these. They were little bits of history, but surprisingly moving and meaningful.
posted by X-Himy at 6:28 AM on May 15, 2009

excellent substitute teacher material. thanks.
posted by RedEmma at 9:06 AM on May 15, 2009

I just discovered This American Life a week or two ago and am a little addicted, so it's weird how this is propping up a little Ira Glassification of my world in that totally compelling in its own way sort of way. Thanks!
posted by doobiedoo at 7:48 AM on May 17, 2009