How to get your sense of wonder back (w/ Nate DiMeo) (Transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

[00:00:00] Chris Duffy: You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy. Today on the podcast, we are talking with the host of one of the most unique and long running audio shows around The Memory Palace. Nate DiMeo, who created that show is someone who, for me, really embodies the spirit of curiosity.

Nate's able to find these deep, powerful meanings in stories from the past, and he has this superpower where he can tell a true story from hundreds of years ago and make it feel completely alive and at the same time, he shines a light on the historical context and also the parallels to today. So when I think about questions like how do you make sense of the present and how do you find wonder in the past?

There's no one who is better at answering those questions, in my opinion than Nate DiMeo and Nate is on the show with us today to help us answer those questions and so much more. To get started, here's a clip from Nate's new audio book, which is also titled The Memory Palace.

[00:00:56] Nate DiMeo: Something moved me once. That's how all these stories begin for me. Some historical, something, some fact or anecdote came into my day, usually unannounced over the radio at a museum. A text from a friend on one of the 700 tabs open on my browser or embedded in some larger work and changed it somehow managed to cut through the were and sputter of life and move me often.

I don't know why that fascinates me. Why this story? Why this video? Why has some other person's experience and memory from some other time made their way into mine? Why in the rushing roiling stream of information that inundates pretty much all of us, pretty much every day, pretty much all day long was this bit of the past.

The thing that glinted and caught my eye and connected snap me into presents, filled me with wonder, and why was this the thing that stayed with me sometimes for years? These things that move me once. So often, I think the answer to that question comes down to this in that moment. I knew that that thing about the past was real.

I got it. I felt that flash of connection. I understood that that person in the story or who made that object in that museum, or who was on my screen in some archival footage, Lindy hopping or walking down the street with their child on their shoulders had once been alive.

[00:02:27] Chris Duffy: As you can already tell, Nate is able to tell stories from history in a way that no one else can. He takes these events from the past and he uses them to snap us more fully into the present. We're not just learning about history, we're also feeling it. I'm so excited that we were able to get him on the show and have him here with us today.

[00:02:46] Nate DiMeo: Hi, I'm Nate DiMeo. I produced The Memory Palace podcast and I am the author of The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past.

[00:02:53] Chris Duffy: You are are known for telling stories about the past in the podcast and the book, The Memory Palace, but you don't approach it as a historian. So for someone who is new to your work or not necessarily familiar with it, how do you think about conveying a deeper meaning, and connection to the past, that's not really about dates or, or even necessarily facts as much as it is about the, the narrative and the emotions.

[00:03:18] Nate DiMeo: Yeah, I think that it really comes down to this sort of initial urge I had to start the podcast at all. Like all these years ago. I noticed that I had become something of a history buff without wanting to claim that title.

You know what I mean? There was something about history buff that sounded a little bit dad-core as a younger person, um, and even as a dad now, and even as like a middle-aged dad, it still doesn't quite match up. And like I am not, you know, sort of on the couch with the History Channel or you know, in the den with history books.

Like I mostly am reading history on the clock, but I love movies and I love novels and I love poetry and I love music. And I discovered that when I was a younger person, that I was really starting to find a lot of what I loved in those things, like on museum tours and on like tours of historic homes.

And often I found that historic stuff, historic stories, matched up and broadened, you know, something that I was already fascinated with, which was just simply memory. Starting as a young kid became very, very fascinated with the way that memory worked, you know, with the way that a dream I would have would be in my head. The images from that dream would be in my head in the same way that things that actually happened to me, that I realized that one was real and one was not. But at the same time in my memory, they were kind of the same thing. And I also noticed in these formative experiences of listening to my parents and, and my grandparents tell stories about their past.

I was noticing that their memories, the things that they were sharing with me, kind of like lived in my own head. And there was some real magic in that. The idea that the past, no matter how true it is, no matter that we can, you know, dig up the bones and, and, and read through the diaries and or even watch the videos of things that happened in the past, no matter how real they are, where they live is in our imagination.

There's really been this abiding fascination that you know that exists in The Memory Palace and that I try to articulate and the easiest way to kind of say it, this is a history show that is much more about feelings and wonder than it is about facts, even though it is factual.

[00:05:30] Chris Duffy: What is wonder for you?

What does that mean? Because I think it's a really important piece of my experience of listening to The Memory Palace.

[00:05:37] Nate DiMeo: Let's take it this way that, you know, it's not hard to find out stuff about the past. Like it, it's easier all the time. You know, A, if you wanna look something up, you can just Google it.

If you wanna find out what happened in, you know, 1952 in Indiana or whatever. And it's not difficult for me as a professional to like think of like find things that might someday be a story, but I learned really early on that, in that chaos in like the, the, all the tabs you have open and all of the stuff that is coming into your feed or all of the facts that you might encounter when you're on, you know, a, a historic home tour, or all the things that you might learn about Lewis and Clark in a seven hour, Ken Burns document, Lewis and Clark.

There's gonna be something in there if you're lucky, that steps out and moves you. That where suddenly things crystallize, where it connects deeply with something that is in you, whether it has triggered some trauma or whether it, you know, factors into, you know, something you've already been like rolling around in your head.

And it helps crystallize that. And to me, those moments when something kind of reaches out of the past here and touches you. You know, I never thought to define it before, but what wonder is, is something that snaps you into presence. You know, it's something that like takes you out of the kind of war and sputter of the day to day and moves you where you have learned something about your present because it's just matched up with something, paired with something in the past, like, oh, and learning this thing about Dwight Eisenhower, I've actually learned something about my dad, or something like that.

And those moments of connection are both the things that drive, you know, my work. Like I am looking, you know, among the millions of different stories one could tell about the past. I am trying to find the things that move me and then trying to find ways to move other people and share that experience of wonder, share that experience of connection, share that moment when I really do understand that the people and the past are real people, which despite.

You know, the banality of that statement is also a fairly profound thing. When you are really present with this fact, that's when wonder can kind of step into the room, I guess you would say.

[00:07:40] Chris Duffy: It's so interesting because I spent a lot of time in the course of my, my career, but also, especially in the past year, thinking about how to express and how to think about like finding the thing that is funny, the little seed of a comedy piece.

And it's really cool to talk about this with you because in addition to the incredible work that you do as, uh, a writer and, uh, producer and, uh, the author of Memory Palace, you also have written for comedy shows, you've written for Parks and Rec, so you know about this as like a professional piece of, of comedy too, but is how do you be really present so that you can find the odd little detail, the thing that is like a tiny bit off, that's the start of, of something funny.

The either the observation or the emotion or just the, the the weird little bit and, and it actually sounds like that little grit that turns into the pearl is the same thing that you're looking for when you're finding historical stories as well.

[00:08:30] Nate DiMeo: I think that that's true. The process for finding stories, you know, whether they're in the book or whether they're on the show, is kind of the same thing all the time, which is, I am just, you know, professionally open to history stuff, right? And so I am paying attention to it when an interesting thing like comes into my feed, you know, or I'm reading in a novel or some larger work that there's the, the strange detail that just kind of jumps out at you.

And I'll go off and I have a document and I'll write those things down.

So. There's two things going on there. One is that I have learned to kind of trust that if, if, if it has jumped out to me, then there's some reason and that if I really interrogate what that is, then I might find something within myself. And then there's this giant list, and it might be dozens and dozens and dozens long of, you know, of, of small things.

Like the first elephant arrived in the United States in 1803 or whatever. I'm not sure about the date, but it is a fact, you know? And that, yeah, at some point, at some point it did, you know, and so and so, there'll be this list of things that, you know, just kind of sits there.

And sometimes I'll be like, oh, what am I gonna do for this episode that's coming up? And I will look at that list. And there might be dozens and dozens of things that at one point like said, oh, that's cool, but they won't mean anything to me. Like I will say that elephant thing is ridiculous. Like, who cares about the elephant thing?

And so what often I'm doing is I am waiting for this factoid, this scenario, this person's biography, to allow me to articulate something about the present. Where suddenly like this story about, you know, about the first elephant, you know, might allow me to just kind of explore something that is about like the wonders of like kind of animal cognition, like of like living with your dog and like knowing them so well, but truly not knowing what's going on there.

Like, let me really think about what it meant to, you know, for the person that brought the elephant, why did they choose to bring this creature, you know, all, uh, across the world, you know, when they're bringing this Indian elephant to the United States like what are they not doing? What are they not loading their cargo hold with? What is the economic calculation of like, okay, I could have brought this all this tea, but instead I'm gonna bring this elephant. Like, let's take this thing seriously. Not only do you find a story that you'd find something with characters and motivations and stuff like that, but you start to find, you know, resonant things.

And one of the themes that comes up over and over again, but one of the things I'm just always interested in is the way that novelty wears off and it becomes this kind of mundane thing in the same way that your phone with its, you know, when you first learn how to make a bitmoji, you're like, oh, cool, I'm gonna bitmoji.

And then after a while, not only do you not care after a while, you feel kind of dumb for even having done it. You know, it's not just that these are historical stories and they are, but they are stories about the past. And there are stories about the wonder of like living with the past and living through time, living with time.

[00:11:27] Chris Duffy: As you continue to live with time, we're gonna take a little bit of it right now to go on a quick break. We will be right back.

And we are back. I don't wanna get too, you know, highfalutin and philosophical about this. But I do think that it's, it's interesting to think about like these, these kind of virtues that your work embodies, right? Like there, there's this pursuit of meaning, but there's also this like question of wonder and how long wonder can last and how we can bring it into our life.

And then obviously curiosity is a really big piece too, that you can really have empathy for the people of the past, people who aren't even around now, who aren't related to you in any way, but that you can really think like, what would they be feeling? What would they, what would their experience be like if they're on this boat with the first elephant traveling across the ocean?

Yeah. And I, I've heard someone say before that the, the benefit of fiction is that it's, it's a way that you can build empathy. Right? Yeah. Like you experience the world through the eyes of a different person. You experience the daily life of someone who lives 500 years ago or 500 years in the future, or on a different planet, and you can feel what it would be like to be them, and you are doing the same thing, but it's with real people and with real events.

[00:12:40] Nate DiMeo: I think one of the reasons why I'm excited to be on this podcast is that I think that there is something about just, I think of doing the memory palace as a way that allows me to live better. You know, in, in that.

[00:12:52] Chris Duffy: Tell me more about that.

[00:12:53] Nate DiMeo: I basically have a story, you know, a new story every couple of weeks that shifts when you're writing a book and all that stuff.

But that's basically the rhythm of my life for the past many years, and I find that it is personally useful to pause the past and engage with like the lives of people that have beginnings and middles and ends. Like I find it useful to remember that we're all gonna die, that our time is short. You know, I find it useful to, you know, to see what someone was able to make of their time or to like see that like the ways in which their life was constricted in a way that mine might not be.

Both to not just to feel sort of lucky, it's more just to like be snapped into presence in the present. That like our present moment is historical. That, that the lives that we get to live, like the lives that the, the people before us, you know, are, are contingent upon the technologies that we use are contingent upon, you know, the cultural mores, like the jobs that are available.

You know, whether you're able to afford a home, who might be attracted to us, like what they, you know, the most intimate of things, like what we smell, like what is in the air we breathe are historical. And I find that over and over again, it is useful, not like, partially in sort of like a “yolo” way. Like, let me just remember that this, that time is short.

But also just like to kind of turn on this kind of like empathy engine and really like, you know, try to put myself in someone else's shoes or to wear my own shoes and walk around in a different time and just kinda look, look around and, and see what's changed or not. I find it like, kind of like, it makes me, it like helps me be a better citizen.

Like it reminds me just how quick, uh, quickly things can change sometimes, or with how much effort it takes to change them. And, you know, it also just on a simple level, like reminds me to be a sort of like more patient human being. I. You know, and, and more empathetic human being.

[00:14:39] Chris Duffy: There's also something that I'm curious about for you personally, which is you have a lot of really dedicated fans and people who are passionate about the sound of your voice.

So I wonder what the feeling is to kind of have a, a level of celebrity that lets you to be in some ways, a real genuine celebrity and in other ways have the, an anonymity on the street where as long as you don't speak, no one's gonna recognize you. Uh, have you ever been recognized by your voice and what does that feel like?

[00:15:07] Nate DiMeo: I have not, like, I think you might be overestimating how big this, how big a celebrity is, or how big the show is. If one were to listen to the show from the beginning, you'll see that the red shirt of my voice goes down, and some of it is aging. But some of it is that at some point I developed a slightly more dramatic radio voice.

But the truth of the matter is I've only been, I feel like I've been, you know, recognized like twice and it's been by name. But that said, as a person who. Like listens to a lot of podcasts and you know, really, like I'm well aware of the strangeness of the parasocial relationship, but I also say that I'm not sure that anyone's life has ever been improved by knowing what the people on the radio sound like.

So it is a, it is a personal, it is a personal challenge. Like there have been dark times in which like someone on Twitter will say like, do yourself a favor and never find out what Nate DiMeo looks like. And I don't know what that means. You know, it's like that kind of thing. It's hard. It's hard.

[00:15:56] Chris Duffy: Well, I think there's something really cool about the idea that you have this public presence, right?

Like there's “The Memory Palace,” Nate DiMeo, and he has a slightly different voice and he has a slightly different angle on the universe. Maybe less like looking for the joke and less upbeat. Um, how does, knowing that there are these kind of two versions of you, one of which would probably be much easier for future historians or, or people looking back to find and to access, how does that change the way that you think about the people and the subjects that you talk about to know that, you know, they, they may very well have a similar split that you do.

[00:16:28] Nate DiMeo: That is like so core to just like who I am and how I approach the world. I walk around just sort of like deeply aware of that. You know, it's not that we're sort of, you know, a million different people, it's that it's hard to hold the totality of other people, the other people in our lives, like the people we are most intimate with, like our children and our, you know, our spouses and partners and.

And, you know, and longest term friends, like part of the gift of having those intimate relationship is, is like you're used to seeing them in all their different colors. You're not jarred when like they have the weird mood swing or whatever. But because of that, because I am aware of that and like that, you know, I do wanna be seen sort of like as a, you know, a person, you know, in my sort of totality and for, you know, being funny and being earnest and being being Nate DiMeo in, in all of his various facets. I think because I sort of like so value being seen in that way.

I also try to do my best both as a human in the world, but certainly as a person, you know, who is trying to take the people in these stories seriously. You know, try to go in with that same assumption like that they are, you know, complicated human beings who are more than the thing that we know them for. And in that very merely sort of like unearthing, like the other things that they did and cared about, like a theme that comes up over and over again is I often do wonder what it is like after people do the thing that they're known for.

Like, what was their, what was the next 30 years after they invented that thing? Like what other inventions did they try to invent? Like what was it like to live with the knowledge that like, oh, one time I walked on the moon and, and now I'm just a guy. I'm very interested in that and part of it is like, because that's the kind of thing that like I try to figure out for myself all the time, like, what is it like to be, you know, an artist?

What is it like to have an audience? What will happen if the audience goes away? Like, who will I be then, or whatever. Like, those are just, I, I'm sure I write those stories because I'm interested in it. Life is always more complex than we think of, like, than the stories tell us.

Like there is life beyond the story that I wanna hint that there's even life beyond the story that I'm telling you that there's a thing in my audiobook that only exists in the audiobook that is about Scott Carpenter, the astronaut, you know, who's famous for, for spending about six hours in space one day in 1962.

And you know what? And it's a little bit about his life afterwards and, and the things that he chose to do, like, while other people chose to continue to fight to like go to the moon. While his buddies are like, you know, from the space program are like doing that and are being feted as, as you know, have, were able to walk on the moon, you know, or able to like be feted in the White House yet again or have another ticker tape parade.

You know, he had this dream of of exploring the ocean and so, and which he was sure was gonna be just as big of a deal. And so he went and became a part of the Sea Lab thing and lived under the water for, you know, a hundred days or something like that. When you start to really think about him and his totality and start to think about these other dreams that he had, you know, some that are failed and some that aren't, you know, these other romances that he had, you know, many that failed.

Not only do you get a fuller picture of this person, I'm kind of hoping that you just get this sort of sense that like God, it is all more complicated and more beautiful, and more life is more, you know, mysterious and strange than the stories that we often receive with let us believe that there's life that exists between the plot points in everybody's life, and in fact, that might be where life really is.

[00:19:52] Chris Duffy: There's a lot that I, I relate to in, in everything you're saying, especially because I think just like even on paper, right? Like Los Angeles, middle-aged Los Angeles dad podcaster and also what TV writer, comedy person. I'm like, okay, there's a lot we haven't in in common, but I think that pretty much anyone can relate to this idea of.

Trying to figure out what your thing is gonna be. Yeah, absolutely. What you're gonna be, what you're gonna be remembered for what, whether you're building towards something, whether you've already had the thing and you're, yeah, trying to figure out what's next. A person who I've become really good friends with, who we've interviewed on the show is this swimmer Maurine Kornfeld, who now is, she's 103 years old.

But what's incredible to me is she's won these, all these awards. She, she still competes. And when she competes every single time she sets a new record. Right. People call her Mighty Mo. Um, but the thing that is most amazing to me is that Mighty Mo didn't start swimming really until she was in her sixties.

So like when she passes, she's gonna have this incredible, you know, all these awards and accolades written about in her obituary, and that is a piece of her life that just like didn't exist for the first 60 years. And when I think about that for myself, right? 'cause I sometimes get into this like, am I ever gonna do anything or like, have I done the thing or what?

Sure. What would the thing be as we all do? Yeah. It's fascinating to think that here's this person who I know who and love and think is amazing and, and her thing, I'm still like 30 years away from her thing. Maybe, you know, it's interesting to think about the, when you have that perspective on the past, even from the present as well.

[00:21:22] Nate DiMeo: There's a story that that's actually a pretty good illustration of kind of like my whole deal and some of the things we've been talking about.

So some years ago I was at, I was in Santa Barbara for a wedding. I. And walked across the street to the hotel bar in Santa Barbara. Beautiful old hotel bar. And at the bar there's a, there's an aquarium in the bar so you can look at the fish while you drink. Your cocktail is delicious and fantastic. And so on the wall of this old bar from the 1920s or thirties, there are pictures of all the celebrities that have been there.

It's all of the celebrities from Hollywood that used to drive up to Santa Barbara and go to this hotel and, and hang out at this bar. And among, you know, all of the familiar faces, the Humphrey Bogarts, et cetera. There is this really lovely photo of this woman, kind of like a, in a bathing suit, and I misread it and it says Florence Chadwick.

And I think that she's the first woman to, to swim across the English Channel. I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. And then she came here 'cause she swam to the Channel Islands, you know, the eight, 12 miles or whatever off the coast of Santa Barbara. And so I put that in like a notebook and put it in my Notes app that this will go on the list at some point, maybe I'll do something about.

The first woman who swims across the English Channel. So at some point I look back to that and I'm like, oh, let's, let's look into that English Channel lady. And I realize that she's not the first woman to do it. She's the second. And then I'm like, there's no story in the second woman to swim across the English Channel.

And it sits there on my list for a really long time, until eventually I realize what this story can be about for me. What's interesting to me is that she swam to the Channel Islands, you know, off the coast of California, like what's going on there? And it turns out like she would kind of like show up in town and she'd, you know, like someone might pay her to like to come to promote the hotel, like go swim to the Channel Islands and back and put you up.

Suddenly, like this becomes a story that intrigues me because it's about like building a life around these passions that you have. And suddenly the, the story of Florence Chadwick, the, the second woman to swim across the English channel, becomes this story about this dedicated woman who has this dream and this goal, and isn't it lovely that she, that this dream that she achieves at 31 or something like that.

But then it, what it really comes about is, is her life after which she spent sort of like swimming, any channel that need a crossing, she would swim these channels that like no one had swam across, but were like lesser channels,

[00:23:40] Chris Duffy: Uhhuh.

[00:23:41] Nate DiMeo: Or she'd become the first woman to do it, or for the first person to do it in the opposite direction.

And she just built this kind of like life and career, like from channel to channel to channel. Like each diminishing fanfare. You know? It's like she had done this big thing and sometimes she fails and sometimes she doesn't. I'd become start, become very moved by this person who is on some level trying to do what I'm trying to do, which is to like move from story to story.

It's like to try to like seek these new achievements and like seek, seek this like new beauty and meaning in my life. And there's even these things that I find about like her sort of like. Being very workman-like 'cause you have to be like you. You know, you are building up your body. You are going like right arm, breathe, left arm.

You're finding the rhythm. And that is like what a musician would do. And that is what a writer does. And so suddenly this story that is, you know, uh aa pretty traditional memory palace story, which is tell the story of some unsung hero or some, or some forgotten person or, or a person, you know, who is in a category, whether it's an identity category or job category that we just don't talk about enough.

But what it really becomes about is, is I'm merely using the past and using this person's story to figure out something about myself. And then find a way to articulate it in a way that you two might connect.

[00:25:06] Chris Duffy: We're gonna take a quick break and then we will be back with more from Nate.

And we are back with Nate DeMio, host of the podcast, The Memory Palace, and author of the book of the same name. Nate was just telling us about an episode of his show he did, where he dove into the history of Florence Chadwick, whose photo he had stumbled across on the wall of a hotel bar. So for someone who's listening and they're like, I wish that I could do something similar, how do you build that muscle of creativity to, to get that little photo that you saw and then to start pulling deeper threads out of it?

And I don't necessarily mean to make a public work, but just to enrich your own life maybe. How do you like find. How do you build that muscle of being curious as an adult? Because I think kids are really good at this and a lot of adults, uh, are not. They, they see that photo and they go, huh, lady that swam interesting.

And then they never think about it again.

[00:26:07] Nate DiMeo: Some of it's like sort of a self-knowledge question, and it's about sort of like knowing kind of like who you are and what. You're interested in and then like leaning into it and developing it. But that is also not so simple and like that's like, that starts maybe for me, it started earlier than most or something like that because like I do actually think that that is a thing about me.

I feel like I've, I've been very self-interrogating for a very long time, but what we were talking about in terms of like how the idea then spurs another thing. There is like a, a kernel that I feel like is sort of universal in that we are what we pay attention to.

[00:26:39] Chris Duffy: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:39] Nate DiMeo: Like we are what we care about.

Pay attention to what you care about. It's the kind of thing that like, you know, 10 poets walk into the same garden, you know, they're gonna come up with a bunch of different things because one person is really into flowers and one person is really into soil and one person really is to like the way that light through the leaves.

And, and we are each unique in our own way that like our attentional lens like is truly definitional to like our character. It comes from trauma, it comes from epiphany, it comes from a million different things. It comes from the way that our brains happen to work. That like I happen to like see color in a different way that someone else might and therefore like certain things are more appealing.

Like who knows? But it is like part of the cultivating the curiosity. Begin sort of with yourself, start to pay attention to like what you are noticing. Like what is it like within your TikTok feed? Like what are the things that, like you really wanted to turn to your like boyfriend later that night and be like, oh man, I saw this incredible thing about this like otter, this Otter like lives in this crazy way. Hmm. Like what is it about that Otter? What's, why is that the thing?

And when you start to like kind of understand like a little bit about of like the, the patterns and the themes that kind of keep re-recurring. Like there's art to be made there. You know, I keep being really interested in these people that like figure out mechanical stuff.

And you may well be, you may well discover that like you're, you will be the next great inventor of conveyor belt technology, whatever, but it starts with just noticing what you pay attention to and noticing what tickles your brain and stuff like that.

[00:28:11] Chris Duffy: It's interesting to also think about this in light of modern technology.

I mean, you brought up TikTok and I think social media is a really big thing and I, I just wanna say I wouldn't have a career if it wasn't for new technologies. Right? Sure. Like, it's not like podcasting existed a hundred years ago. Yeah. So I'm grateful that there are new, weird technologies that people have invented in that it has allowed people like you and me to have a way to, to reach people.

At the same time, some of the ways that technologies are optimized are to get our attention. And so I feel myself when I am more on my phone and I, the goal is not to be not on my phone. That's, that's not my goal. Yeah, sure. But when I am like binging, let's say whatever that means, I feel that my attention muscles get a little weaker.

Yeah. That it's harder to pay. To pay slow, quiet attention. So for people, especially young people, right, who are dealing with AI, with misinformation, with just this whole attention economy. How can you allow yourself the space to think about the present and the past while not becoming some sort of, I wanna say Luddite, but I actually feel like you're gonna have some sort of really interesting historical revelation about what the Luddites were actually like.

So how can you, without the Luddite in the way I mean it,

[00:29:21] Nate DiMeo: Like I could go on and on about like my own sort of relationship with technology and I constantly end up taking Instagram off my phone because I actually feel like it's also not feeding me stuff that's very exciting. Like the algorithm just doesn't work very well.

For me personally, the key is, what actually bothers me is algorithmic thinking. That's the thing. Okay. Like, I don't mind, like if someone is curating stuff and they're firing it at me, a lot of times, like there, like there's joy in that. There's joy in the DJ, there's joy in someone's letterbox, you know, feed.

But it is the fact that like the algorithm like is, is steering you towards things artificially, you know, because if the memory palace is interested in anything, it is what is the life that has lived between the plot points and what the algorithm does on some level is it is, it is only plot points. It is only like, these are two songs that people have said are fantastic and we're gonna put them back to back and they might be fantastic.

But if you are only falling a chain of songs that people thought are fantastic, then you are never going to hear the in-between songs that might mean more to you. And so the thing that bothers me about the, the Instagram algorithm or the Spotify algorithm or any of them, it's not that they're feeding you interesting things, 'cause they probably are and they probably are interesting, but it is what life is.

What life are you missing out on by only being led in those directions. That is fundamental to what I'm trying to do. If the memory palaces were algorithmic, then we would not find Florence Chadwick.

[00:30:49] Chris Duffy: I've had the experience a few times where I've worked on a project for a long time and it kind of felt like that was my thing.

Sure. And then for whatever reason, either it ended or I decided to move on from it, and it's a. It's this really strange feeling I, I think I'm really lucky that I've, um, been together with my wife for long enough that she has known me through a few of those. So she can always remind me like, this thing is, you created this, it didn't create you. That's the way that it went. You're bigger than the thing. Right? Um, it's not bigger than you.

As a fan and, uh, of your work. I'm not in any way trying to suggest that you should move on from The Memory Palace, but I, I wonder how you personally deal with that. As someone who does and has many other talents as well, how do you personally find that line between, um, here is me, Nate DiMeo, and here is me, the person who makes the memory palace.

[00:31:34] Nate DiMeo: The truth of the matter is like, I think that a smart thing that I like when I was in my twenties and it was in like, you know, a, a band that, that literally no one knows that like got to open up for our favorite bands for like a year and a half in Providence. But it was this wonderful thing, like to be in this band, you know, loved it.

It was like a number of different things I was attempting to achieve a bunch. Like it, it was a great lesson to like, to meet some of your heroes and like realize that they're just people. Like all of these things were very important to me. But there was a point where the band broke up because bands break up, and like the dream would've been to be like a slightly successful indie band, not to be some like big career band.

And um, there was just this sort of moment in my life where I was like, well, what do you do next? I was like, listen, like, let me really think about what I love about doing this thing, about being in this band. Like, I like making art. I love hanging out with my friends. I love the possibility that we might travel.

I love having working really hard on something and then having it go out into the world like performing the show. And I'm like, is there a way without just getting some other band to like achieve some of those things? And I started to find over time that a lot of those things were embodied in public radio.

Like I could travel, I could make these little beautiful things that I, you know, could like fuss over. And then it just over, you know, and I could collaborate and there were just a number of different things, but I kind of like set this idea that like all you can really do, um, is you just gotta like, it's like you have a flashlight, you shine it out front and like you go in this direction and anything outside of this flashlight, you can't do it 'cause it's out there in the darkness.

But you just have to cast a widen of beam and start. Walking and hopefully, you know, if you set your goals straight, like anything that happens within that beam is probably gonna be pretty cool and might like lead you to that next thing. And so I just kept, like had these in the back of my head that there were just some things that I wanted, like I wanted like an art project with an audience.

Like I would wanted to, like wanted do something publicly like was important for me to like kind of test myself against. The world and not be too hermetic and stuff like that. And um, at some point I stumbled onto the, the, to the format of the memory palace that there was like, that I'd always been interested in small things and pop songwriting and like always wanted to have something where I could move from thing to thing and not have to be an expert in anything and like get to know a lot of different stuff.

And at some point I just had stumbled, realized that I had achieved that. That and that The Memory Palace itself, um, even though it's a very basic, you know, it's the same format every single time, it's just me talking over music. Like, or me just writing a short story for the book, finding a couple of pictures, um, that for as small as it was, that it was kind of like writing songs that, like whether the chorus goes on, whether you repeat the chorus twice or whatever, like it becomes a fundamentally different thing.

Even though it's just a thing with a four, four beat that lasts between two and a half and five minutes, and I was doing the same thing, but like I, it was infinitely reconfigurable. And in the same way that like that people are still writing songs, different ways to talk about, you know, romantic love, like the past is a big enough subject.

Um, and the format is flexible enough. It is sort of like a vessel that is, that I've discovered. It's just kind of like capacious enough to hold whatever I pour into it and like whatever I want to talk about. Um, I mean, I'm sure at some point I'll do it less frequently or it will wax and wane, but there is a version where I'm doing some version of the memory palace and whatever that might be, and whether it's in some different format or in some different form.

You know, we are who we pay attention to, and, and I don't think I'm going to, you know, change that much about what I pay attention to.

[00:35:13] Chris Duffy: Well, Nate DiMeo, thank you so much for being on the show. This was seriously a fantastic conversation. I'm so glad we, we were able to do it. Thank you so much.

That’s it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human! Thank you so much to today’s guest, Nate DiMeo. His podcast is called The Memory Palace and his book is also called the Memory Palace. The audio clip you heard up top was excerpted courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio 

I’m your host Chris Duffy and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects, at Chris Duffy Comedy dot com.

How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team who live inside an audio palace. On the TED side, we’ve got historical icons Daniella Balarezo, Banban Cheng, Cloe Shasha Brooks, Lanie Lott, Antonia Le, and Joseph DeBrine. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Matheus Salles, who make sure we keep the record books accurate.

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