The Memory Palace: Episode 238 — "The Crypt of Thornwell Jacobs"

Host: Nate DiMeo
Air Date: November 6, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Nate DiMeo explores the story of Thornwell Jacobs, the largely forgotten—but grandly ambitious—creator of the world’s first modern time capsule: the "Crypt of Civilization." Framed by reflections on the fragility and selectiveness of historical memory, DiMeo uses Jacobs’ life, eccentric aspirations, and monumental project as a lens for considering what we choose to preserve, what gets left behind, and how future generations might interpret our own moment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fragility of Historical Memory

• DiMeo opens with a meditation on how little we really know about ancient Egypt, despite its monumental ruins and civilization's scale.
  • "How could it be that everything, literally everything people knew about ancient Egypt...came from fragments?" (03:01)
• He draws an analogy to life in a submarine: we see history through "periscopic" glimpses, missing the fullness of what once was.

2. Who Was Thornwell Jacobs?

• Jacobs is introduced as the president who founded Oglethorpe University, with an outsized sense of his legacy.
  • DiMeo offers a sardonic list of Jacobs’ self-avowed achievements, poking gentle fun at his inflated sense of importance.
  • Notably, Jacobs' 1100-page memoir is described as a work marked by "so much praise for the men he admired," though it also includes "a lot of positive ones about slaveholders, negative ones about Black people and Jews." (07:46)
    • Memorable, sobering moment: DiMeo does not shy away from acknowledging problematic aspects of Jacobs' worldview.
  • DiMeo paints Jacobs as a man desperate not to be forgotten, drawing a contrast between his desire for eternity and general historical anonymity.

3. The Birth of the Time Capsule ("The Crypt of Civilization")

• The main narrative: Jacobs, haunted by how little survived of ancient civilizations, wanted to gift future humans a much more complete record of his own world.
  • He conceived (and named) the modern "time capsule"—though his version was far more ambitious than the ones buried under school playgrounds.
  • The “Crypt of Civilization” was built in the late 1930s in the basement of an administrative building at Oglethorpe University, sealed with formidable care to last until the year 8113.
    • "I am telling you that right now...there is a room with a 2 foot thick floor set on 300 something million year old bedrock..." (13:46)
  • Design details: Floor and roof thickness, airtightness, nitrogen atmosphere, welded shut stainless-steel door—all meant to thwart decay.

4. What Lies Within the Crypt?

• The crypt holds a curated cross-section of 1930s (mostly American) life:
  • Common objects: "Toys, dresses, gadgets, an electric razor, a radio, a typewriter, a can of Budweiser, jazz records by Artie Shaw..." (20:14)
  • Big ambitions for knowledge: Thousands of books on microfilm plus instructions and equipment for reconstructing the English language and the technologies needed to read those records.
  • Period artifacts: Newspapers, a mutoscope (film viewer), eugenics publications, and sound recordings (including world leaders Hitler, FDR, Stalin, Mussolini).
• Jacobs wanted future discoverers to have more than fragments—to have context and explanation, not just artifacts.

5. Why Bother?

• DiMeo reflects on the philosophical implications of time capsules:
  • They're a chance for present people to imagine themselves as ancestors and to confront the poignancy and strangeness of fading from the future’s memory.
  • He gently mocks the fleeting popularity of time capsules, but recognizes their power as thought experiments.

6. Contemplating Legacy and Misunderstandings

• DiMeo muses on the unintended consequence that future archaeologists may find the crypt and assume Thornwell Jacobs was a pivotal figure of his era—because his name is everywhere in the crypt.
  • "Those people could possibly, perhaps reasonably, assume that this Thornwell Jacobs was an enormously important figure in our ancient civilization..." (28:20)
  • This irony echoes the episode’s recurring theme: how our view of past civilizations may wildly misrepresent their priorities.

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On historical fragments:
  • "A periscope can only see so much. And most of the time, most of one's life is spent underwater." (05:17)
• On time's constant change:
  • "One moment's east wing is another moment's ballroom. One moment's paradise is another moment's parking lot. One moment's jewelry factory is another moment's hot yoga studio. It's all a Spirit Halloween of the soul." (14:59)
• On the ambitions of the crypt:
  • "He wasn't going to provide the future with a periscopic view of the past. Wasn't going to leave them wondering how we lived... He wanted to give them the whole picture." (19:10)
• On misunderstanding the past:
  • "It may well be that our own civilization...may be more legible to the people of the future than ancient Egypt has been to us. But it also could be that they assume Thornwell Jacobs was the mightiest among us. I am pretty sure I know which of those he would have preferred." (29:56)

Notable Segments & Timestamps

• [03:01] — Introduction of Jacobs’ obsession with historical fragments
• [07:46] — Discussion of Jacobs’ memoir and problematic legacy
• [13:46] — Description of the physical crypt and its location
• [14:59] — Reflection on impermanence: “spirit Halloween of the soul”
• [19:10] — The crypt as a comprehensive, anti-periscopic archive
• [20:14] — List of crypt contents and the details of their preservation
• [28:20] — Irony of Jacobs’ likely future fame and the fallibility of historical memory
• [29:56] — Meditation on how we might be understood by the distant future

Tone and Style

• DiMeo balances gentle irony, empathy, and poetic reflection throughout.
• He weaves in dry humor and melancholy, with asides confessing his own methods and inviting the listener to reflect upon their own lives and legacies.

In Summary:
This episode beautifully layers historical narrative, philosophical rumination, and a portrait of human longing for remembrance. Through the story of Thornwell Jacobs and his outsize ambitions, DiMeo urges us to consider what it means to be remembered—or misunderstood—by the future, and how the fragments we leave behind will shape the picture of the world we once inhabited.