The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.
A note on notes: We’d much rather you just went into each episode of The Memory Palace cold. And just let the story take you where it well. So, we don’t suggest looking into the show notes first.
To recognize Black History Month, Book of the Day is digging into the archives to bring you some important interviews. In 1977, author Alex Haley told NPR he didn't want to put the main character of Roots, Kunta Kinte, on a slave ship. To prepare for writing that portion of the novel, Haley flew to Africa and caught a voyage home on a cargo ship — sneaking down into the hold after dinner. In the mornings, he would write notes about what he thought Kunta's experience would have been like. He told NPR's Marty Griffen that the experience weighed him down so much it nearly cost him his life.
New York City has been called the city that never sleeps. It is the world center for finance, the location of the United Nations, and a center for fashion and entertainment.
But why did this city become so important, and why did such an important city get founded where it is? Was it chance, was it history, or was it geography?
Learn more about New York City, as much as is possible on a daily podcast, on this Episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
As part of Black History Month, we are running interviews from our archives. The Color Purple is about the survival of Black women in a male-dominated world. Author Alice Walker said that she just wrote what happens in the real world. At its core, this is a story of women loving and helping other women. Walker told NPR's Faith Fancher that "one of the reasons I wanted to have strong, beautiful, wonderful women loving each other is because I think that people can deal with that. [...] I think that the people who are uptight and bigoted and afraid in their own lives will have difficulty."
I’m sure all of you are familiar with Watergate. You also might be familiar with Gamergate, Contragate, Pizzagate, Partygate, Chinagate, Deflategate, Sandpapergate, Winegate, and Chinagate.
There are dozens and dozens more of these scandals which have all been named with the suffix -gate.
But why do scandals get affixed with -gate in the English language, and where did the word originally come from?
Learn more about scandals ending in -gate, and why this suffix came to denote a scandal, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
For the first full week of Black History Month, we dove into our archives to bring you some older interviews by Black authors. The first is an interview from 2009 with writer Toni Morrison about a collection she edited from authors facing censorship called Burn This Book. This conversation is especially relevant today with many important books under scrutiny – and being pulled from library shelves and school curriculums. Morrison, whose books have also been banned in some places as recently as this year, told NPR's Liane Hansen that in some countries censorship can be far more serious.
Almost 2,800 years ago the Ancient Greeks held a sporting event every four years on Mount Olympus.
The festival was part competition, part religious celebration, and it was considered so important that wars would come to a halt in honor of the games.
Then in the 19th century, one man came up with the idea of bringing the games back to life.
Learn more about the Modern Olympic Movement on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Computers have obviously transformed our world. You wouldn’t be listing to my voice right now if it wasn’t for computers.
However, the first computers, a device that could perform arbitrary calculations, actually came well before electronics. It was made of gears, cogs, and levers, and it was able to perform mathematical calculations as well as run simple program.
Learn more about Charles Babbage and his analytical engine, the world’s first mechanical computer, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
For thousands of years, humans have traveled on the water and have wondered if it was possible to travel under the water like a fish.
The idea of underwater travel stuck around for centuries, but eventually, humans did figure out how to travel underwater, even if the first efforts were not successful.
Learn more about the submarine, how it was invented, and how they work, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The first interview today is with debut novelist Lizzie Damilola Blackburn about her book, Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? The protagonist Yinka is constantly being hounded by her family to get married. But Damilola Blackburn tells NPR's Sarah McCammon that learning to love oneself first can be important. The second interview is with award-winning writer Edmund White who is out with a new book about sex. A Previous Life follows a couple – they are writing to each other about their romantic pasts. White told NPR's Scott Simon that though the book might offend some, he has always written this way.