Nate DiMeo recasts his quirky podcast histories for the page

With his podcast-turned-book “The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past,” writer and host Nate DiMeo aims to show readers that history isn’t just a dry accumulation of dates and bold-faced names. Rather, it’s a living, breathing thing that can hold personal relevance for us here in the present—provided we’re able to see things through the right lens.

Since 2008, DiMeo has plumbed the murky depths of the past for his podcast, which sheds light on obscure people and oddball events that have fallen through the cracks of our collective memory. A Rehoboth native, DiMeo found early inspiration as a teenager exploring his family’s own history in nearby Providence, Rhode Island.

“I have a lifelong fascination with the inherent unreality of the past,” says DiMeo, “and the idea that these are all things that really happened, but that the only way to access them is through an act of imagination.”

His new book includes nearly 50 short vignettes. Though there are a few running themes, there’s little to connect them to one another save that they struck DiMeo’s fancy or tugged at his heartstrings. Some are frivolous and lighthearted, such as the tale of Caroline Shawk Brooks, who in 1873 embarked on a successful, if not well-remembered, career sculpting classical busts in butter. Others are more weighty, like that of Hercules, a man enslaved by George Washington who, in his pursuit of freedom, became irrevocably separated from his family. Each is told in DiMeo’s signature style, which uses narrative techniques more commonly found in fiction to infuse the stories with emotion, suspense, and pathos.

At times, his stories recall the wistful nostalgia of radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, whose long-running program, “The Rest of the Story,” teasingly unfurled forgotten bits of lore about famous celebrities and important historical figures. Where DiMeo differs from Harvey however, is in his willingness to tell tales that complicate our view of the past and bring uncomfortable truths to the fore.

I have a lifelong fascination with the inherent unreality of the past.

Nate DiMeo

DiMeo is keen to show readers how the lives of his subjects unfolded in ways that were shaped by factors unique to their time, factors that were often beyond their control. “I think it’s useful, especially today, to understand how the economics and technology and social structures of your day can dictate the kind of life you get to live within it,” he says.

Nowhere are these ideas clearer than in the story of Elizabeth Hughes, one of the first diabetic patients to receive insulin treatments. It’s a heartwarming story in which the suffering young girl is rescued from certain death by a powerful new remedy that was discovered almost by accident. But DiMeo is quick to put it in a sobering context. “We should think, too… of the other patients who didn’t live long enough for the treatment to be discovered,” he writes. “Or whose parents weren’t justices of the United States Supreme Court,” as Elizabeth’s father was, “and couldn’t get insulin in those early days.”

Other stories emphasize the chaotic, contingent aspects of history. In “The Nickel Candy Bar,” DiMeo takes readers on a wild adventure through time that begins with the creation of the Baby Ruth candy bar and ends with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Reading it feels something like falling into a particularly fascinating rabbit hole while clicking links on Wikipedia or getting lost in the fictive realities of postmodern novelists like E.L. Doctorow and Benjamin Labatut. Through this simple story, we’re able to see the implausible connections and uncanny coincidences that put the lie to our studiously linear conception of history and reveal how peculiar and conditional the past really was.

DiMeo maintains a casual tone throughout the book, seeking to keep things light even when venturing into darker territory. In his telling, George Washington regards the escape of Hercules, his enslaved cook, as a “bummer.” Recalling the well-intentioned yet clumsy relocation of Plymouth Rock in 1774, DiMeo begins by saying he likes “to think of the men in the first part of this story as just a bunch of dudes, just a bunch of dudes doing dude things.” When the dispute over the ownership of the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur devolves into a “period of protracted litigation,” he declares the back and forth “super boring” and pledges to “jump over it.” As a storyteller, DiMeo is here for a good time, not a long time.

He’s also aware that many, if not most of the stories he retells here may not speak to everyone—but if even one manages to inspire a sense of wonder in a reader or gives them a fresh perspective on what’s happening in their own lives, he feels it’s all worth it.

“With these stories, I’m trying to activate a sense of the life within these historical figures,” says DiMeo. “They might be wracked with anxiety or have ambitions that are unmet. These are feelings that we ourselves have. And that’s the stuff that often gets left out of history. I don’t think that anyone necessarily needs to remember any of these people. What I’m saying is they might be useful to you. And occasionally, you may find a new hero or heroine that informs how you live today.”