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- [00:07]
Nate DeMaio
Hey, folks, it is Nate. Before we get started, I want to ask you to consider two things. I'm talking to you today at kind of a pivotal moment in the history of this history project that you know as the Memory Palace.
- [00:21]
Pablo Torre
Here's the first one.
- [00:22]
Nate DeMaio
On November 19th, I have a book coming out, and I am delighted about that. For years, I have wanted to collect the sorts of stories that I do in this podcast in a book, like something that you can hold in your hands, give as a gift, and something that could live on your shelf. As a kid, I grew up loving these old paperback collections of Ripley's Believe it or not, also things like where the Sidewalk Ends, the poetry book by Shel Silverstein. It's collections of short pieces that you could turn to again and again. You could find new things every time you took it off the shelf and maybe find that they connect differently this time now that you're that little bit older or a little bit changed since last time you read it. And I want to make one of those books, you know, but for adults that might have a little bit of that same magic. And I'm excited now to see that if that magic trick works. And so I am here today, days before its release on November 19, to encourage you to order the book, to help it jump out of the gate with some momentum so other readers might find it, especially people who don't listen to the show like you do. So that is thing one and thing two is deeply related. This show, book or no book, successful book or flop, will go on. And it will go on, thanks to listeners like you. Each year, we at Radio Utopia ask you directly to support the work that we do. We are one of the rarest, and I am more convinced all the time in this time of increased media consolidation and corporate nonsense and private equity raiders, that independent media is vital. I look around my industry and I see layoffs and cost cutting at big podcast companies. I see terrific shows getting worse because some corporate suit says they need to come out more often the episodes and more often that the people can make them or at least make them well. Or these shows are just shutting down because some investor needs someone to cut some bottom line to meet second quarter estimates. And that doesn't happen at Radiotopia. At Rodeotopia, what shows sound like, how often they come out, is up to people like me. The people make them. And whether those shows survive and thrive, it's up to you, honestly. Listener support provides the foundation of each of these shows, including mine. It allows me to keep the lights on at the Memory palace even in times like these when ad revenue is vanishing. It has allowed me in this last stretch, which has been fairly rough honestly, to wait out the storm. It is thanks literally to listeners like you. So if you would like to join the tiny fraction, the select group, the elite squad who contributes, if you want to do it this time, in this moment, for this show and for the uncertain times here in these United States, it is a perfect time to join them and join us. You can donate to help this show and the work that Radiotopia is doing, the fight we are fighting in this very strange landscape.
- [03:23]
Pablo Torre
We are very proud of what we.
- [03:25]
Nate DeMaio
Have built together and we would love.
- [03:27]
Pablo Torre
You to be a part of it.
- [03:28]
Nate DeMaio
So donate today if you can at Radiotopia fm. Donate and thank you so much. Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Memory Palace. I am Nate DeMaio and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
- [03:52]
Wesley Morris
You trust us to surprise you. You don't trust us to give you the thing you already know you want.
- [03:58]
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
- [03:59]
Wesley Morris
And you in your anti algorithmic sensibility are so much more hardcore about that than us.
- [04:06]
Nate DeMaio
On the day my book came out on November 19, 2024, while I was running around trying to tick off too many things on a too long to do list, I kept passing through my living room where my mother in law Elaine in from New York to come very kindly hello Elaine, I'm sure you're listening to my book release event here in California. In the living room she was watching me on the television on YouTube, which is a very weird thing for me to see. It is always weird to find out what you look like. She was watching me in an appearance on one of my very favorite shows, the podcast YouTube show and I believe but I also kind of can't believe show on the cable television network. Is it that I am not really sure. The Draft Kings network from the DraftKings sports gambling empire. Which is a crazy thing to say and that maybe should be illegal. But I digress. That show is Pablo Torre finds out. And I found out recently that Pablo, a guy who I have been watching appear on various screens, typically on espn but lately on cable news thinking that this he is the rarest thing in those spaces, a likable, reasonable, sharp talking head. I found out that this guy who you know, I've been watching for years thinking, you know, I like this guy, you know, in that classic parasocial way that gets weird if you think about it too much. And lately as he has been doing a podcast called Pablo Torre Finds out, which I'll talk about in a second. I have been listening to it and thinking I think this stranger and I are kind of kindred spirits in this weird way. So I have recently come to find out that he has been listening to the Memory palace thinking the same thing about me. And so the other day I was on his show talking about the Memory palace, talking about my new book, talking about what happens when we remember some sports guys. And it was extremely fun. So today you can listen here in my feed to my appearance on Pablo.
- [06:13]
Pablo Torre
Torre Finds out on one of my favorite shows.
- [06:17]
Nate DeMaio
And so I'm delighted to share this with you. Not just because it is a particularly fun interview and not just because I think you'll enjoy hearing this stuff that this particular interviewer approaching the show and my whole deal from a fairly different approach angle than other people have see what it yields. But I am delighted to do it because you should be listening to a show. It rules. It is often about sports, but not always.
- [06:52]
Pablo Torre
It is like the show led by.
- [06:54]
Nate DeMaio
Its hosts, idiosyncratic curiosity. Often you will take a look at the title or whatever and you will think you have a handle on what.
- [07:02]
Pablo Torre
The episode seems to be about and.
- [07:04]
Nate DeMaio
You might not think that you are interested in that thing. For me, that is any episode about college football. I do not care about college football. But the next thing you are completely fascinated even when it is about college football and you are totally glad you clicked. As we mentioned in our conversation, I loved an episode he recently did in which he and Wesley Morris of the New York Times, who I am convinced is America's greatest talker, talk about the night that they both spent becoming among the handful of people to have seen a nine hour documentary that Ezra Edelman made about Prince for Netflix that Prince's estate is essentially forbidding Netflix from ever airing. It is great and that is a terrific one to go listen to after you listen to this one. So here is me on Pablo Torre Finds Out. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on the cable channel that you probably already have if you happen to be a self proclaimed degenerate sports gambler.
- [08:02]
Wesley Morris
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
- [08:09]
Pablo Torre
I truly think he is probably the least qualified baseball player to ever suit up and participate in a Major league baseball game.
- [08:15]
Wesley Morris
Right after this ad.
- [08:18]
Pablo Torre
You're listening to DraftKings Network.
- [08:34]
Wesley Morris
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.
- [08:41]
Pablo Torre
I very much appreciate that in your.
- [08:43]
Wesley Morris
Case also re listen to a bunch of your podcasts. Re familiarize myself with why I'm actually passionately, genuinely into this.
- [08:53]
Pablo Torre
That's exactly right.
- [08:54]
Wesley Morris
That's the mission for everything. And I say that to you, Nate DeMaio, because this is also something that I think we are a bit of a kindred pair of spirits about.
- [09:03]
Pablo Torre
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. 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.
- [09:35]
Wesley Morris
To fully explain why it is that I am so moved by Nate DeMaio 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 viscerally, that I have never been more jealous of the man in studio with me today. Because Nate Demeo 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 that.
- [11:15]
Pablo Torre
I fear what you're about to say. Tell me what you're going to say. No.
- [11:17]
Wesley Morris
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.
- [11:27]
Pablo Torre
That's exactly right.
- [11:28]
Wesley Morris
We're trying to make a show here on Pablo Dore 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.
- [11:39]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, absolutely true.
- [11:41]
Wesley Morris
It was the Prince episode, I believe.
- [11:42]
Pablo Torre
Right.
- [11:43]
Wesley Morris
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.
- [11:58]
Pablo Torre
And it comes down to this thing that, like, that is just fundamental to my understanding, not just to the past, but the way that I just sort of, like, 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. If you're on the subway and you're reading a book about Gettysburg and part of you is on the sixth train and part of you is in the bloody junction or whatever the names of the places are at Gettysburg, I don't think that's one, but it sounds like one.
- [12:34]
Wesley Morris
Wherever you are in somewhere where Trench foot. Somewhere.
- [12:36]
Pablo Torre
Exactly. Where people had trench mouth, Trench foot, all the trench stuff. Like, it's the same thing. If you're sitting there and you're reading about, like, Middle Earth, like, you are transported to this imaginary space in which the past lives. And that is true of Gettysburg, and that is true of Normandy beach, but it is also true of, like, the story that your buddy tells you at the bar of the thing that happened to him. It happened to him. It is already living in his memory. But when he's recounting it, it creates this kind of, like, fictional space, you know, where you're picturing your buddy hitting on this girl. I haven't explained exactly what she looks like, but you can kind of picture her. You can, you know, you can conjure this thing. And I am fascinated by the way memory works. But what I really love is that.
- [13:19]
Wesley Morris
Conjuring act, because we are relating at every possible juncture to the details we're imagining.
- [13:26]
Pablo Torre
That's exactly right.
- [13:27]
Wesley Morris
Our imagination is inevitably, yes, a character in this story. In fact, it is more than that. It is the narrator of our interpretation of the story we are hearing. You go so far as to not even include the names of the people that you're making episodes about in the descriptions of the episodes.
- [13:48]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I mean, and I'm sure that has cost me money. I guarantee I have bad news.
- [13:53]
Wesley Morris
It's cost you a lot of money.
- [13:54]
Pablo Torre
I guarantee that that's true. And believe me, this is a conversation that I have ongoing in any number of venues. And that is the truth. Like at the beginning of an episode, there's often a cryptic title and then there is no, like, hey, we're about to talk about the Korean War. We just start talking about the Korean War. Part of it also comes down to like, I got into this whole thing in part, like through music, you know, like when I was in my 20s, I played in bands that people don't remember and love that experience. But what I really loved was the idea that one day the song will be on the radio. That a song that I write might come in and change someone's day out of the blue. That they're in one mood and then the song comes in and they are changed. And I started to notice that that's the way that radio works. And I started to fall in love with public radio in part because a story from the news could sneak into your day the same way. Here you are wrapped up in the whir and sputter of just like of. You're trying to find a parking spot. You're trying to remember what you're supposed to do that afternoon. You're replaying the fight you had with your girlfriend the night before or whatever it turns out to be. And then suddenly some beautifully crafted thing comes into your day and snaps you out of it. This is the memory palace. I'm Nate DeMaio.
- [15:09]
Elaine
The sound of the chains, the creaking door, the lumbering footsteps. They'd recorded all that before Bobby had shown up in the studio right on Sunset Boulevard, a stone's throw from Hollywood High. That location alone still had some magic in it for Bobby Pickett. Only six years since he'd graduated high school himself, on the wrong side of the tracks in Boston.
- [15:32]
Pablo Torre
Part of, you know, not telling people what the story is about is because I want to take them on a ride, but I also don't want them to prepare.
- [15:41]
Elaine
Not long after his ill fated stint in post war Korea, all kitchen duty and bordellos and blown curfews in court martials. And just months since he'd come out to California to make it, to take a chance on his henchman to the teen bully in a beach party movie, good looks and his fourth best singer in a five man boy band voice. But he was starting to find his footing, make friends, make connections. Meet that guy at the bar who knows the girl who works on the desk of some agent who knows this producer who knows this woman who's one of the mistresses to the aging actor. He used to play the buttoned up dad on that sitcom and is trying to pull together his next project.
- [16:18]
Pablo Torre
That whole hopscotch of like the best, like, writing advice I ever got from a former host of the public radio show Marketplace, when we were writing the little introductions to the thing he said, every introduction that you hear in public radio, almost everyone tells you the whole damn story. And what you need to do is you need to raise a question. And I have realized that every single line ought to be either raising or answering a question. Because that journey, it turns every story into a mystery, no matter how straightforward. And I do think that people have found in its weird, like, hyper sincerity and kind of purity they have, like, connected to the project on this sort of deeper level. Cause they feel like they're not being kowtowed to or manipulated.
- [17:04]
Wesley Morris
The retention editing of everything. Retention editing being the term on YouTube for the way or on TikTok or anything for how you edit it such that the person is not merely hooked, but is almost neurologically. Yes, entrapped. You have me here and you have me at second number two, and then three and then four, and it's just so manipulated. Yeah, I do have some appreciation for the general mission there. Right. Which is, as you said in your sentences raise questions. Also, the way I put it is make it so that there are as few exit ramps as possible.
- [17:42]
Pablo Torre
Sure.
- [17:42]
Wesley Morris
Sentence by sentence in retention editing.
- [17:44]
Pablo Torre
Mr.
- [17:45]
Wesley Morris
Beast is trying to do that too. I'm about to show you what a half a million dollar experience looks like. I promise this is going to blow your mind.
- [17:54]
Pablo Torre
One starts to realize, I mean, like, you must contend with this all the time as you have a new venture, as you are trying to make sure it gets in front of everyone and gets in front of different audience. It says like, all the while knowing certainly that, oh, this show could have a bigger audience than it does. There is freedom and release in the notion of like, well, let's let the algorithm do this. Let me allow it to tell. But at the same time, it's like, what's the version of the algorithm of the past? It's sort of like you look back and you see these polls of the stories that you know.
- [18:20]
Elaine
Right.
- [18:21]
Pablo Torre
That if you're talking about World War II, you can rattle off the handful of facts you might know and you can picture Marines storming Normandy beach and you can maybe picture FDR speaking at some conference or whatever. And you can picture these different moments.
- [18:35]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, you got Douglas MacArthur.
- [18:36]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, exactly.
- [18:37]
Wesley Morris
Wading through the waters of the Philippines, vowing, I shall return.
- [18:41]
Pablo Torre
That's exactly right.
- [18:42]
Wesley Morris
He didn't return in the way that we wanted.
- [18:45]
Pablo Torre
So whatever matters to you Filipino American might be different than what matters to me and what matters to the audience, et cetera. But you look back at these polls and you look back at the story we're told, and I'm constantly sort of aware and kind of trying to unearth and ultimately trying to imagine and trying to find the facts that allow for better, more accurate imagining and more sincere and more sort of ultimately like more true guessing and gap filling.
- [19:15]
Wesley Morris
All we gotta do though is just make sure that we do a good Mr. Beastface into the camera so that they have the teaser image.
- [19:22]
Pablo Torre
That's exactly right.
- [19:22]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, just a big.
- [19:25]
Pablo Torre
I'm always taken by the, like the, like. I'm puzzling something out today. It's amazing. I'm glad to participate in this. I'm glad to thank for dragging the purity of the memory palace.
- [19:35]
Wesley Morris
I'm glad to drag you down to the trench.
- [19:38]
Pablo Torre
Thank you so much.
- [19:39]
Wesley Morris
That is discoverability.
- [19:50]
Pablo Torre
And all day long you can see endless debate about, you know, whether Carl Anthony Town's interior defense, what that might.
- [19:58]
Wesley Morris
Mean to shooting 90% on him in the pain.
- [20:00]
Pablo Torre
Exactly right.
- [20:01]
Wesley Morris
I should make clear, if it's not clear enough already by virtue of you just casually referencing Carl Anthony Towns.
- [20:06]
Pablo Torre
Sure.
- [20:06]
Wesley Morris
So you are a guy who likes to remember some guys.
- [20:09]
Pablo Torre
Absolutely. Because it, in a way, because it is anti algorithmic, you know what I mean? Like, yes, you can look up any guy, right. You can look up anything. But to just sort of sit here and just let your mind go.
- [20:20]
Wesley Morris
Scott Roland.
- [20:21]
Pablo Torre
Yes, exactly. To just say, like John Candelaria. Right. And to just throw out these names like for every. Like Greg Agney, you know, like Eric Gagne. Eric Gagne. Because they're paired in your head in the same way. Kirby Puget will suddenly enter the picture and you won't know why Kent Herbeck is there. All of a sudden it just like activates this weird, you know, sensation. Like that is part of like the conjuring act that I tried to participate in.
- [20:43]
Wesley Morris
The name that I want to remember, the guy I want to remember is a guy I can only remember now because I listened to your episode about it, about him. And his name is Charlie Faust.
- [20:53]
Pablo Torre
Ah, Charlie Faust.
- [20:55]
Wesley Morris
So the episode, the episode title is Victory.
- [20:58]
Pablo Torre
You can look for that, but don't expect to, like, have any other useful search for it.
- [21:02]
Wesley Morris
If you're going to search for this in Nate's feed, you got to look up the word victory. This, I think, is the least athletic player, arguably on the medal stand for least athletic player in the history of baseball.
- [21:15]
Pablo Torre
I truly think he is probably the least qualified baseball player to ever suit up and participate in a major league baseball game.
- [21:21]
Wesley Morris
And he's just one of those people where I'm like, I should have known about him long before I listened to this, and I didn't. He fell through the cracks. And so the story of Charlie Victory Faust begins where Nate.
- [21:36]
Pablo Torre
Well, for me, it begins in Germany. You can understand who Charles Victor Faust is by. You're thinking about his father leaving Germany in, like, 1880 something, traveling across the world, ending up in Kansas. Classic immigrant story. And what is he going to do? He's going to buy some land. He's gonna, like, have some strong sons. They're gonna take over the farm one day. And he has this son who simply can't. Charlie Faust. He is neurodivergent in some way. Like, people, you know, at the time, you know, call him an idiot or a moron or simple or simple or whatever their pejorative or even technical term they're trying to apply that now seems like, you know, chaotic and cruel and imprecise. We don't know what that means to him. We don't know whether that was a thing that pained him. We don't know if he could understand his father's disappointment. But what we do know is that one day he shows up in St. Louis, Missouri, in the summer of 1911. He has traveled hundreds of miles from Kansas, which one would assume would be a very challenging thing. The New York Giants are in town. And he gets the attention of John McGraw, the pugnacious manager of the New York Giants.
- [23:08]
Wesley Morris
By the way, John McGraw is a harsh man, one of the greatest managers and one of the. It sounds like, according to historical record, also one of the cruelest at times.
- [23:17]
Pablo Torre
Yes, exactly. So here comes this man, Charlie Faust. He essentially says, like, hey, Mr. McGraw, I have something to tell you. He speaks in a apparently, like, accent that's part sort of German accent, part kind of like hick from the country. And he says, a month or two ago, I went to the fair in Wichita, and I talk to a fortune teller. And at this point, McGraw is like, Fortune teller. Do tell. Because he is pugnacious. But he is also apparently, like, super, superstitious. He is a lucky penny picker upper. He is a, you know, okay, guys, let's wear the road uniforms even when we're home. Let's break this streak.
- [23:58]
Wesley Morris
You know, he's a true baseball man. He's like.
- [24:00]
Pablo Torre
He's Wade Boggsian, and, like, he's gonna eat chicken the whole time. Whatever.
- [24:03]
Wesley Morris
Jason, John be wearing the gold thong.
- [24:05]
Pablo Torre
Ah, Jason Giambi wearing the gold thong. So you've done it again. No, remembered some guys. And he says, okay, so, you know, so you. What do you have to tell me? What did this fortune teller tell you? And the thing about fortune tellers is that they are typically giving you the most vague thing that will resonate specifically. So Charlie Faust tells John McGraw, this fortune teller told me that I am going to pitch the New York Giants to the World Series. John McGraw looks at this guy. He's 6 foot 2, he's corn fed. Something's a little off with him for sure, but he has no idea. Like, this is 1911. Like, the greatest baseball player ever to live might be in the next town. Undiscovered.
- [24:53]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. Fan graphs didn't exist yet.
- [24:55]
Pablo Torre
Absolutely. John McGraw, superstitious man, says, okay, let's see what you can do. So Charlie Faust is there, like, in his Sunday suit. He walks out to the mound. John McGraw gets behind the plate, puts on his glove. You know, he says, okay, it's one finger for the fastball, two fingers for the curve. If you got something else, that'll be finger number three. And Charlie Faust gets out there, and he gets into his wind up, and then his arm starts flailing around.
- [25:22]
Wesley Morris
You're doing the Bugs Bunny.
- [25:24]
Pablo Torre
Not even. Like, Bugs had way more grace than that. It sounds like it's just this sort of chaotic mess, you know? And he fires that ball, and it very slowly glides to the plate. You know, it is, like, pretty straight. It is roughly accurate and is incredibly slow. He puts down the number two. It is the same pitch. It is straight, it is slow. It is just imminently crushable. People are gathering around. The other players are watching this, and they are certainly laughing at this guy they think is simple or whatever. They let him bat. He swings 20 times. He hits something into the field. Everybody's kind of in on the joke. So they're, like, letting him run around the bases. They're fumbling. They're pretending they can't tag him. He slides into home and he gets up and he says, like, when am I starting?
- [26:11]
Wesley Morris
Right? So John McGraw, just to be very clear, here is now going along with this in a way that has made this itself a spectacle.
- [26:20]
Pablo Torre
They're walking that fine, you know, fine line between laughing at and laughing with.
- [26:23]
Wesley Morris
Yes.
- [26:24]
Pablo Torre
And they invite Charles Victor Faust to hang out on the bench with them that night. They give him a uniform. They intentionally give him a too small uniform. It is comically small. They are playing a joke on this man. Like they are being cruel to this man sitting on the bench at a major league baseball stadium whose whole dream has been to do this, whose focus has been after someone has told him with a presumably straight face that you, sir, you, young man, are going to pitch the New York Giants to the World Series.
- [26:56]
Wesley Morris
Yes. What we're watching here on this field is both joke and prophecy.
- [27:01]
Pablo Torre
Yes.
- [27:02]
Wesley Morris
Unfolding hand in hand. And I just want to point out that this is insane.
- [27:08]
Pablo Torre
It is insane.
- [27:15]
Wesley Morris
And so this is where I do need you to know that you can actually look up what happened next in the record books yourselves. Because while we do not know and cannot ever truly know what Charlie Victor Faust had by way of inner monologue at this time, what he really thought of himself, we can confirm that the 1911 New York Giants in St. Louis, with Charlie Faust sitting right there in the dugout at age 30, wearing that too small uniform that John McGraw had given him, proceeded to win. They shut out the St. Louis Cardinals eight, nothing. And so John McGraw brought Charlie Foust back the very next day in that uniform, and the Giants shut out the Cardinals again. And so John McGraw did the exact same thing. Charlie Foust was back on the bench. The Giants won again. Charlie Foust and the New York Giants wound up just a half game out of first place in the National League, when it was finally time for them to leave St. Louis.
- [28:19]
Pablo Torre
And they've taken him out to dinner, they've bought him some beers. They've, like, bought him a burger. They've said, like, hey, we've had a fun time with this rube or whatever other more cruel thing they've been saying about him. And they say, like, yeah, have a nice life, man. Thanks for these victories. You really helped us out.
- [28:34]
Wesley Morris
And so the Giants decide to leave St. Louis and Charlie Faust, who had been waiting to pitch this entire time, behind. At which point the Giants proceed to lose four in a row in Pittsburgh and then Chicago.
- [28:54]
Pablo Torre
They thought they were in, like, spitting distance of being able to play for the pennant. Everything has kind of fallen apart in this thing.
- [29:01]
Wesley Morris
But when the New York Giants get back home to Manhattan and they finally get back to the Polo Grounds, their home ballpark they find a very familiar face waiting for them. Somehow, Charlie Victor Faust.
- [29:20]
Pablo Torre
Who previously had crossed 300 miles or so to get from Kansas to St. Louis, he has now crossed half of the United States, has seen Manhattan for the first time, has showed up at their stadium and is like, am I going to pitch tonight? And they say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. Who knows what'll happen? But, hey, we need some luck.
- [29:42]
Wesley Morris
Let's. Let's.
- [29:43]
Pablo Torre
The penny has suddenly rolled back in front of me. Let's pick it up again. They win 36 times when he is sitting on the bench. They lose twice in the rest of the regular season. Every night, Charlie Faust is saying to John McGraw and saying to all the guys, saying to the equipment manager, saying to the peanut guy, to everyone, like, tonight's the night. I'm going to get in the game. I'm going to get in the game. And he's driving people crazy, but they don't mind because they're also winning. He eventually does get in a game, which is when he becomes the least qualified person to ever play in a Major League baseball game.
- [30:21]
Wesley Morris
I just can't believe that he actually got into a game.
- [30:25]
Pablo Torre
It's September. They already booked their ticket to the World Series. They can lose any of these games. He comes in in the ninth, he pitches. The other team is, like, in on the bit. You know, they're swinging and missing. Some guy really tries to take him for a ride, but he just kind of gets under it. And the ball goes deep to right field and someone catches it.
- [30:47]
Wesley Morris
By the way, you can go look this up on baseballreference.com and he's there. 4.50 ERA.
- [30:54]
Pablo Torre
Yes.
- [30:54]
Wesley Morris
Two innings pitched.
- [30:56]
Pablo Torre
Everyone in the papers is like, they're covering Charlie Faust all the time. For a long time. It's this great bit. They have changed his middle name to Victory Faust. The Giants go on to lose the World Series that year. And the joke is that it is because the Mojo in the Philadelphia Athletics dugout. Cause they have their own cruel mascot, which is there is a little person in their dugout who has a hunchback.
- [31:26]
Wesley Morris
Louis Van Zels.
- [31:27]
Pablo Torre
Louis Van Zels. And they have been rubbing the hump in his back for luck, as though it is the Buddha's belly at a Chinese restaurant for their whole season. And apparently that mojo brings them to victory.
- [31:41]
Wesley Morris
Just baseball, man, baseball.
- [31:45]
Pablo Torre
And the next year comes around, and Charlie's like, all right, let's do it again. Let's roll it back. And like, hey, you know, I'm really sorry. I must have let you guys down. Cause I like the prophecy. So clearly, this is our year. I mean, the truth is, he's also a person who was struggling being a person. He's a little bit too insistent. He gets a little bit too agitated.
- [32:03]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. It's not a joke to him.
- [32:04]
Pablo Torre
It was fun for them for a while, and now it's not. And, like, how do they adjust when it's fun? And I'm sure some of the guys were total. I'm sure some of the guys weren't, and. Because that's just the way people are. And they tell them to take off, you know, and they'd say, we'll catch up with you. And they never do. And in a lot of places, like, this is where the story ends. Right. You can either do, like, some sort of weird movie version, which, thank God, they would not make today, but they might have made in, like, 1968, where Charlie Faust, you know, is hoisted on someone's shoulders after sliding into home. You know, hey, Charlie, it's been a good season.
- [32:37]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. You make it narratively convenient.
- [32:39]
Pablo Torre
Yes.
- [32:39]
Wesley Morris
So they can feel like, actually, this was nice all along, you know, but.
- [32:43]
Pablo Torre
The truth of the matter is, like, that's not the way we tell stories anymore. Charlie Faust, he goes back to live with a brother who lives in Seattle, who, like, tries to take care of him as best as he can. But at some point, Charlie is found wandering in Portland, you know, having walked all that way. And he's looking for the New York Giants. He's trying to connect with them in Portland, where. Where they will never be. He's remanded to an institution where he dies in poverty, like, quite soon thereafter. This sad death.
- [33:10]
Wesley Morris
But there is this scene where, you know, before victory, before Charlie Faust dies, he checks into a hospital.
- [33:18]
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
- [33:19]
Wesley Morris
And the thing that he does there is a marker of this is how he thought of himself.
- [33:26]
Pablo Torre
He is supposed to, for record keeping, write down, what sort of work did you do? And he writes baseball player, which is entirely true. And however he came to it, the truth of the matter is this guy played baseball.
- [33:42]
Wesley Morris
In fact, he is a guy. He's a guy that one can remember. Yes.
- [33:47]
Pablo Torre
And, you know, we've created this little memory palace here. And now you, too, can remember some guys.
- [34:01]
Wesley Morris
Storytelling is one of the most overused words, sure. Across human civilization at this point. But the reason I cling to it as this heading is because it implies something. Because you're writing and you're structuring, which is to say that you are strategizing and manipulating yeah, sure. And I do the same. And I just want to know for you what is the voice that you're. That you're listening to as you're trying to formulate your own.
- [34:28]
Pablo Torre
When I think about trying to write the best memory palace story, or trying to figure out, like, what's the mode that I want to be in, it really comes back into what are my favorite ways to have heard a story. And it is some version of, like, your best friend at the bar where they have just read some incredible book, or they have come back from a trip to Venice, something has just happened to them, and they have come to you and they have thought about what you, Pablo, you, Nate, kind of need to. What's really going to get you going. And they have, like, blown your mind. It's this kind of, like, intimate thing where someone has thought it all through and they have a sense where, like, well, if I tell you this first, you're going to be thinking this, and then I'm going to flip it over. And so there's craft stuff. But ultimately, what underlines that and under and underlies it is meaning that the past is just like the present. It is just as complicated. The big picture understanding is that it is everything all at once, that it is as complicated as today feels that the people in the past are just as human as we are. And it's surprising how hard that idea is, you know, for even me to hold. Who thinks about that all the time. I am not an expert in history, but I think about how we live in time all the time.
- [35:39]
Wesley Morris
The fact that you had to close your eyes shut as you grapple, how much you are thinking about the past.
- [35:45]
Nate DeMaio
Think about it all.
- [35:46]
Wesley Morris
It's very convincing.
- [35:47]
Pablo Torre
And thinking about the present as this, like, historically constructed thing in the way, you know, it's. You know, it's hard to. It's hard to just, like, hang out in the Walgreens and hear and hear a song on the radio and not think to yourself, boy, 1997. They were really thinking, like, the ways that they were sanding off the rough edges of grunge in this one, you know, or whatever. It's like, it's constant. It's a constant presence.
- [36:09]
Wesley Morris
I should confess that I didn't expect my ass to be kicked emotionally by a story about pigeons. For our YouTube audience, we have a treat for you. If you're just listening on audio, go to our YouTube channel. And my God, I sound like a YouTuber when I say such things.
- [36:26]
Pablo Torre
That's right.
- [36:27]
Wesley Morris
But I want you to Enjoy this.
- [36:33]
Elaine
It's impossible to know for sure, but ornithologists tell us there were 5 billion passenger pigeons in North America at the beginning of the 1800s. That is one out of every five birds. And when they would fly south in the fall and north again in the spring, the birds would literally darken the sky. The flocks would stretch out a mile wide and 300 miles long. They would take hours, often all day, to fly overhead. You'd wake up in the morning to the sound of approaching birds, and while you ate breakfast, tended your fields all day, brought your livestock in at night or whatever. The flock would still be overhead when you went to bed. The sound must have been incredible. The droppings, the. From a couple of million birds would rain down, defoliating whole swaths of forest, making fields fallow. When all those birds would set down in the woods as a layover, it would take years for trees to recover. One nesting site occupied 850 square miles of Wisconsin. There were as many as 136 million birds there at a time. But all of this made them incredibly easy to hunt. It is said that if you shot a rifle into the air as they flew overhead, one shot could take down 30 birds. They were flying so close that they collide like some sort of horrible highway pileup, and they plummet. As the American human population spread west, the forest started to disappear. And as industrialization and immigration swelled the eastern cities, people needed meat. Industrial hunters stepped in. They'd light fires and stands of trees to smoke the birds out and kill them. They'd take a single pigeon and sew its eyes up for some reason. Then they'd tie it to a school so its panic flapping would cause curious flocks to land. Then they'd be trapped and killed. Sometimes they'd soak bird seed and alcohol to get them drunk so they'd be easier to kill. In Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878, 50,000 birds were killed every day for five months. They were packed into boxcars and shipped to New York or Boston or Providence or Buffalo or Newark or Baltimore. That same year, a different Midwestern supplier shipped another 3 million passenger pigeons, and the birds started to disappear. The females only laid one egg a year, which is a terrible evolutionary strategy. By 1900, the flocks were gone. By 1909, the American Ornithological Society was offering $1500 to anyone who found a pigeon in the wild. The last known passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati zoological Park in 1914. She was stuffed and mounted in the Birds of America exhibit at The Smithsonian some years back. She was put into storage.
- [39:24]
Wesley Morris
I mean, look, we're a show that is perhaps biased towards remembering some guys and also remembering some animals.
- [39:35]
Pablo Torre
Great. But that's why I turned to it.
- [39:37]
Wesley Morris
Of course, I should have known that the passenger pigeon was so numerous as to be omnipresent.
- [39:43]
Pablo Torre
But more than omnipresent, it literally darkened the sky sometimes with these stories. Like, the point on some level is to be like, people are just like us. Right. You go back and you're like. You find yourself connected. But there's also such value in just being like, yes, but the past has changed so quickly. It is so different, like, from 5 billion down to, you know, the one stuffed in the Smithsonian.
- [40:08]
Wesley Morris
Right.
- [40:09]
Pablo Torre
That there was, like, a single bird just, like, sitting there is stunning. It really is. And every once in a while, you are at a museum or you are, like, you know, scrolling through TikTok or whatever, and something comes in and knocks you out. And this is one of those things that knocked me out. And for a long time, the memory palace was things that knocked me out 12 years ago that I could not shake and that I would roll out occasionally, like, at that bar, you know? And, like, you know, it's a thing that will blow your mind. And I've come to just sort of trust that if I noticed it, there was some reason I'm inherently interested in why we remember the things we do. And sometimes it's because it was traumatic. Your reptilian brain has, like, put up some warning sign and made you remember it.
- [40:54]
Wesley Morris
The sky can be blackened for numerous such reasons.
- [40:57]
Pablo Torre
Yes, exactly. Right. You know, but the other thing about it is, like, kind of like the inverse of trauma is like, epiphany, you know, and joy, which, you know, that there are these things that happen that are novel and wonderful. Like the thing when you're suddenly like, oh, wait, shoot, this is the way the world works. Or even more importantly, this is the world the way the world can work. Like, there are times that this sort of wonder is around you, and, oh, my God, sometimes it goes away. There's something useful about just sort of realizing how radically things can change and how at one point, these birds darken the sky and they are no more. Then what is it that is around me all the time that I'm taking for granted that I might engage with more deeply.
- [41:39]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. And how can you communicate that to somebody such that they remember it, too? One of the things that I learned from one of my sort of mentors, but just like a writer, I looked up To SL Price, Scott Price is just how he approached kickers and endings, which is that you want the last line of something to be a bell that is ringing in someone's head.
- [41:58]
Pablo Torre
Yeah. And exactly right.
- [42:00]
Wesley Morris
Such that when you stop reading it or you stop listening to it in that literal sense, you're still. You're still hearing it.
- [42:08]
Pablo Torre
Yeah. I sometimes think about it as, like, I love going to the movies in the middle of the day, and you walk out and you forget that it's daytime and to have been just moved by something really wonderful and having your day change by art or by, you know, a beautifully told story. What I want to try to do is I want to move you and give you that experience. Sometimes. I like the kicker. I think about it as like a tiny little note that I passed you so that you can open and be like, oh, that's what that thing is.
- [42:36]
Wesley Morris
About, actually, you know, thinking about what are the through lines through any given episode, but also your whole catalog.
- [42:51]
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
- [42:52]
Wesley Morris
It does feel like we're all gonna die is a real key aspect of it. Sure.
- [42:58]
Pablo Torre
I mean, it is. Does come with the territory. Part of it is like, you know, if I'm telling some story about this remarkable athlete who had this incredible triumph, on some level, I'm just like, it's never that satisfying. Because the truth of the matter is, what is often so interesting to me is like, well, what else do you do? There's a story from the podcast about this woman who swam the English Channel, and she became the second woman to do it. And for a long time I was like, well, what's, you know, that's not a story. But ultimately it becomes a story about keeping going, that it's actually okay to be the second to do it. That, like, it is in the doing that there's this pride.
- [43:34]
Florence Chadwick
After landing, Florence got into the accompanying boat and returned immediately to France. You might think, of course, that conquering the channel would be enough swimming for a bit, but not for Ms. Chadwick. Oh, no. She was soon in the sea again. And she obviously has the know how.
- [43:49]
Pablo Torre
She then, like, went around the world, like swimming, like any channel that needed crossing.
- [43:54]
Florence Chadwick
This was her own comment.
- [43:55]
Pablo Torre
Hello, folks, I'm feeling fine after my big swim. Like any place where people are like, boy, it seems far over there. She'd be like, I'm going to be the first person to swim these lesser channels.
- [44:05]
Wesley Morris
Yes.
- [44:05]
Pablo Torre
But there's something really beautiful to me about the keeping going. And there's something really beautiful to me in the right arm, breathe. Left arm breathe. Of these repeated movements that does sort of resonate. But ultimately, a thing that, you know, ties these things all together is that, yeah, everybody dies. And I find it very useful to remember that this is the time that this person had. And, you know, here I am in 2024, and this is the life that I get to live. Like, every couple of weeks, I sit down and I put on, like, I start to imagine and start to conjure these spaces and think about these other people's lives, and it helps ground me in that way.
- [44:44]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. You know, I get the sense, you know, part of the kindred aspect that I feel with your show is that however futile in the big picture, this mission is, we are trying to make stuff that lasts.
- [44:56]
Pablo Torre
Sure. You know, even while it's ephemeral, even.
- [45:00]
Wesley Morris
While we know we are the raccoon dipping cotton candy into water, then wondering, where did our beautiful treat just go?
- [45:07]
Pablo Torre
For as ephemeral as it is, and for the fact that we have just dipped cotton candy in the water and it has disappeared and dissipated, and the water is just slightly pink, and that's the only thing that we can hold on to. It's those things. It's that I will carry that with me. That that is now in, you know, my sort of personal, like, memory palace. All of the stuff that we are doing, besides the fact, you know, we will all die, you know, things will. Things will crumble to death. It is only the Shakespeares and the McCartneys and the Lennons that will, you know, persevere and for who knows how long.
- [45:36]
Wesley Morris
Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know how much longer they got at this point.
- [45:39]
Pablo Torre
That's exactly right. And this book that I have written, like, truly may not sell very many things, but at the same time, you know, like, the person that finds it and the person that flips through it, where that gets, you know, knocked on their ass by one story, that little thing will live on.
- [45:55]
Wesley Morris
Yeah. Nate DeMaio, thank you for leaving a little bit of sweetness in the. In the waters, perhaps, of these lesser channels such as mine.
- [46:04]
Pablo Torre
Very excited to be here. I really am.
- [46:14]
Wesley Morris
This has been Pablo Torre Fight Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.
- [46:39]
Pablo Torre
Radiotopia from PRX.