Podcast Summary: The Memory Palace

Episode 161: Stories to Wash Hands By
Host: Nate DiMeo
Release Date: April 3, 2020

Overview

In this unique and timely episode, Nate DiMeo crafts a collection of twenty short, evocative stories—each approximately twenty seconds long—to accompany the recommended duration for handwashing amidst the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recorded from his Los Angeles home during shelter-in-place orders, DiMeo’s vignettes span history, memory, and unexpected connections, providing listeners with moments of wonder, irony, and humanity as a means of comfort and perspective during uncertain times.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Historical Vignettes as Handwashing Companion

Premise: The Centers for Disease Control’s guidance to wash hands for 20 seconds becomes the creative inspiration: “What follows are 20 stories each 20 seconds long to assist you in that task.” (01:57)
Approach: Each story is concise, surprising, and emotionally resonant, covering both well-known and obscure historical moments.

2. Range and Variety of Stories

Glamour and Risk in the Jazz Age:
- Dancers and call girls in Chicago’s nightclubs wore gasoline as perfume: “Nothing that said more about status and power … than the automobile, the dancers and the call girls dabbed a new perfume … straight gasoline.” (02:12)
Confession and Unexpected Life:
- Poet William Carlos Williams’ dramatic confession of infidelity to his wife upon facing mortality, only to live 14 more years. (02:38)
The Caprices of Fate:
- Wilmer MacLean’s homes both becoming historic sites against his will—the first at Bull Run, the second at Appomattox for Lee’s surrender. (03:01)
Environmental Advocacy Sparked by Art:
- Roger Payne’s recordings of humpback whales leading to the “Save the Whales” movement and ultimately a ban on deepwater whaling. (03:22)
Survivor’s Guilt and Loss:
- Dorothy Gibson, Titanic survivor, acting in a film in the same clothes she wore during the disaster, blurring lines between experience and performance. (03:45)
Forgotten Sports and Intimacy:
- Three-legged races and their world records, highlighting lost moments of communal fun. (04:11)
The Humble Presidency:
- After Lincoln’s assassination and Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, Grover Cleveland often answered the White House door himself due to budget cuts. (04:27)
Macabre Maritime Returns:
- An American sailor’s preserved body returns home in a barrel of rum after being refused burial abroad. (04:53)
Strange Cold War Commerce:
- The USSR paid for Pepsi with decommissioned military equipment, leading Pepsi to temporarily have the sixth-largest navy in the world. (05:17)
- Memorable moment: "The worst SODA in the 80s, the USSR wanted Pepsi ... so they gave PepsiCo $3 billion worth of decommissioned military equipment …" (05:40)
Global Entanglements:
- The iconic “red” of British military coats sourced via a colonial chain of labor and exploitation, Mexican Tinteros harvesting insects for dye under Spanish masters. (06:09)
Eleanor Roosevelt’s Feminist Legacy:
- Exclusive female journalist press conferences to keep women reporters employed during the Depression. (06:39)
Quaint Radio Advice:
- Excerpt from an old radio program offering dental hygiene tips at home, reflecting early broadcasting’s earnest ambitions. (08:22)
- Quote: “This program is designed to try to help you with your dental problems in the home…” (08:22)
Desperation in the Great Depression:
- Men setting fires in Oregon forests hoping for paid work fighting them. (08:43)
Unyielding Explorers:
- Lewis and Clark’s disappointment on realizing there’s no Northwest Passage and their choice to keep going. (09:11)
Vanishing Species:
- The extinction of the dusky seaside sparrow, with its final recorded song played during the launch of the first weather satellite. (09:35)
Lost Mega-Projects:
- The US’s aborted 1950s plan to nuke the Moon as a Cold War demonstration, abandoned out of concern for optics and hypothetical moon colonists. (09:51)
Founding Fathers as Tourists:
- Adams, Jefferson, and Madison acting mischievously at Shakespeare’s house, Adams pocketing a souvenir. (10:28)
Magic and Wonder:
- Brief awe at a magician’s indelible candle-and-moth illusion, the method not revealed for a century. (11:01)
Presidential Peculiarity:
- Andrew Jackson’s swearing parrot causing a scene at his funeral. (11:32)
Massive Blackout, Sudden Perspective:
- The 1965 Northeast blackout—thousands stranded, many gazing at stars newly visible without city lights. (11:59)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

On the episode’s concept and context:
- “This episode was recorded on April 2nd, 2020 in my home in Los Angeles while sheltering in place per the order of state and local officials. … What follows are 20 stories each 20 seconds long to assist you in that task.” — Nate DiMeo (01:32)
Life, death, and honesty:
- “So William Carlos Williams told his wife everything about the affairs, about how he had done her so wrong, so often, confessed all of it. And then he lived for another 14 years.” (02:37)
Strange historical trades:
- “They gave PepsiCo $3 billion worth of decommissioned military equipment, which the company then sold off … [so] Pepsi had the sixth largest military in the world.” (05:45)
Moments of awe and shifting perspective:
- “And who knows how many people looked up at who knows how many stars visible for the first time that night?” (12:13)

Timestamps for Important Segments

[01:32] – Introduction, COVID-19 context, episode premise
[02:12 - 11:59] – Main content: Twenty stories, each ~20 seconds
[08:22] – Old radio broadcast dental advice, a rare inclusion of archival audio
[05:45] – The Pepsi and the USSR story
[12:13] – Closing blackout/star-gazing story

Tone and Storytelling Style

Thoughtful, gentle, and at times wry or bemused
Reflective, sometimes ironic—especially in addressing oddities and contradictions in history
Warm, empathetic, and subtly encouraging in providing comfort during uncertainty

Final Notes

Nate DiMeo’s “Stories to Wash Hands By” serves not just as a chronological distraction, but as a meditative, comforting reflection on human complexity, strangeness, and endurance—invoking the passage of centuries in the span of a careful, necessary handwashing.

“Please be well. Please be safe, and take care of each other. I promise I’ll do the same.” — Nate DiMeo (End of episode)

Transcript

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B (1:32)

This is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate DiMeo. This episode was recorded on April 2nd, 2020 in my home in Los Angeles while sheltering in place per the order of state and local officials. I mention that for the benefit of those listening to this in the future, whether that is decades from now, somehow, or merely next week, when things may very well be very different than they are right now. As of this date, the Centers for Disease Control recommend that everyone wash their hands frequently and do so for at least 20 seconds. What follows are 20 stories each 20 seconds long to assist you in that task. 1. In Chicago, in the teens in the nightclubs, when there was nothing sexier, nothing that said more about status and power, about the thrill of being alive right then and there, than the automobile, the dancers and the call girls dabbed a new perfume behind their ears and the napes of their necks straight gasoline. Two. The poet was sure he was dying a heart attack. And then several strokes in staring oblivion in the face. He had to confess. So William Carlos Williams told his wife everything about the affairs, about how he had done her so wrong, so often, confessed all of it. And then he lived for another 14 years. 3 the Civil War came to Wilmer MacLean's house when Union soldiers came and took over his kitchen before the Battle of Bull Run at the beginning of the war and he was forced to move. He found a lovely new home in Appomattox, Virginia, where five years later, soldiers came and kicked him out of that house so Lee could surrender to Grant in his living room. Four When Roger Payne heard this, the first recording of the song of a humpback whale, he was sure it was the thing that would save him. If only the world could hear these creatures, it would stop the slaughter that had put most whale species to the brink of extinction. He released an album of whale songs which directly inspired the Save the Whales movement. A decade later, the International Whaling Commission banned deep water whaling. 5 if the first film version of Titanic, released just a month after the sinking, weren't lost, we could see Dorothy Gibson in the same white dress and same white cardigan she wore on the night the ship struck an iceberg and she was put into a lifeboat. But we couldn't know how it felt to be in those same clothes, pretending to be in that same lifeboat watching the Titanic sink below the cold waves. 6 There used to be three legged races at every track meet. Think of the skill, the intimacy, the rhythmic genius of two sprinters as they set the still unbroken world record in April 1909 of jointly running 100 yards in the time between the closing bell and right now. Seven After Lincoln was killed and his successor was impeached, north and south had shifted their conflicts to Congress. No one in government had an appetite for a powerful executive and the presidency was pointedly diminished. The staff budget was cut so much and so often that if you rang the front doorbell at the White House during the presidency of Grover Cleveland, the man himself would often have to get up from his desk and go downstairs to open the doctor. 8 A friend of mine once found a customs form from 1845 which provides all we know of this story. An American sailor named James Stirling died of unknown causes while at sea. When his ship arrived in Brazil, the colonial government refused to bury him, so he arrived home after months and months at sea spent floating in a barrel of rum. Nine in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev fell in love with Pepsi Cola, which started a decades long illicit affair between the elites of the Soviet state and sorry to editorialize here. The worst SODA in the 80s, the USSR wanted Pepsi. Trade restrictions meant that they couldn't pay cash, so they gave PepsiCo $3 billion worth of decommissioned military equipment, which the company then sold off to scrap metal companies. But until they did, Pepsi had the sixth largest military in the world. 10 the red of the redcoats that projected British power as they patrolled the cobblestone streets of the American colonies that Washington's men could see dotting the snow row after row as they marched to the battlefields of Trenton came from dye made by the subjects of another colonial power, Mexican Tinteros, in the desert sun, crushing the insects that live on the no Pal cactus for the profit of their Spanish masters. 11 the room was too small, and so many of the women had to sit on the floor. Two days after her husband's first presidential inauguration, Eleanor Roosevelt called the first of what would be 348 press conferences open only to female writers. It was the height of the Depression, newspapers were cutting staffs, and often the first reporters to go were women, so the first lady gave them exclusive access to information to help keep them employed. 12 in the 1920s, before radio was dominated by major broadcasters and big corporations, there were smaller players with their own visions of what radio should be.