We are entrapped by an algorithm preying on our most terrifying human vulnerabilities. But inside us exists a cabinet of curiosities, and few are better at finding poetry in our past than Nate DiMeo of The Memory Palace, an award-winning podcast and new book. Pablo's kindred spirit conjures a time before Jason Giambi and the golden thong, when the least qualified Major Leaguer of all time was also, somehow, the luckiest. Plus: a new video about pigeons; swimming “lesser channels”; and, yes, raccoons failing to eat cotton candy. Buy the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-memory-palace-true-short-stories-of-the-past-nate-dimeo/21177599 Subscribe to The Memory Palace: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-memory-palace/id299436963 And listen to the Prince episode of "Pablo Torre Finds Out": https://podcasts.apple.com/jm/podcast/when-docs-cry-inside-the-secret-netflix-masterpiece/id1685093486?i=1000672194989 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of the episode?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
I truly think he is probably the least qualified baseball player to ever suit up and participate in a Major League Baseball game. Right after this ad.
You're listening to DraftKings Network.
The number one rule I have for this show is that if someone is going to be a guest and they've written a book, I must read the book. I very much appreciate that. In your case, also, re-listen to a bunch of your podcasts. Refamiliarize myself with... why I'm actually passionately, genuinely into this sh**. It's exactly right. That's the mission for everything.
And I say that to you, Nate DeMeo, because this is also something that I think we are a bit of a kindred pair of spirits about.
Yeah, I think that's entirely true. I think that... One of the things that is key to me when I sort of look out in the world and try to find these different stories, because it's super easy to find things that you might potentially write about, you know, like in one's algorithm, it will just feed you like fun factoids.
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Chapter 2: Who is considered the least qualified baseball player ever?
A thing that makes it a memory palace story, instead of just like a sort of interesting thing that you heard once, is that it has to move me in the same way that it has to move you.
To fully explain why it is that I am so moved by Nate DiMaio and his show, which is now a book, The Memory Palace, I feel obliged to let you in on what I consider to be a deeply embarrassing secret about how my own show gets made, which is that we spend a lot of time trying to figure out the optimal title and optimal description for every single episode that we make.
And I should say that we do this because the subjects we cover, the stories we tell are so deliberately not engineered for the algorithm. We do stuff on this show that nobody else in sports media will or wants to or can. And so for that reason,
We also felt the need to create an entire Slack channel where we will argue over how to best persuade the sun god that is the algorithm to perhaps one day shine its light upon us. And I hate that part of my job. I hate it so much, miserably, that I have never been more jealous of the man in studio with me today.
Because Nate DiMaio has been hosting and producing The Memory Palace for 16 years now. And just one reason it is so deeply respected in what I will call the public radio cinematic universe is that his podcast marketing strategy, when it comes to including any such identifying or searchable or discoverable or clickable bits of information of any sort, can be summarized in two words. F*** that.
I fear what you're about to say. Tell me what you're going to say.
No, which is to say that I am trying to make a show that is not reverse engineered according to the popularity, the whims of the audience that we are trying to capture. That's exactly right. We're trying to make a show here on Pablo Doria Finds Out that I'm so delighted that you enjoy. And you said one of the kindest things a person can say to me, which is I listened to one of your episodes twice.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely true. It was the Prince episode, I believe. And I thank you for that because you trust us to surprise you. You don't trust us to give you the thing you already know you want. And you, in your anti-algorithmic sensibility, are so much more hardcore about that than us.
And it comes down to this thing that is just fundamental to my understanding, not just of the past, but the way that I just sort of move through the world, is that the past is inherently fictional. Like no matter the fact that we know that this stuff happened, we can dig up the bones, we can read the letters, we can read the diary entries. The way that we can access that is an act of imagination.
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