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the memory palace - Two Small Sculptures (The Met Residency Episode 8)

Show Notes

Nate DiMeo was the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Artist in Residence for 2016/2017. He produced 8 episodes inspired by the collection and by the museum itself. This is the eigth episode of that residency.

This residency is made possible by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Chester Dale Fund.

This episode is written and produced and stuff by Nate DiMeo with engineering assistance from Elizabeth Aubert. Its Executive Producer is Limor Tomer, General Manager Live Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Artwork Discussed

Music

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - S-Bend

If you live in a city with modern sanitation, it’s hard to imagine daily life being permeated with the suffocating stench of human excrement. For that, we have a number of people to thank – not least a London watchmaker called Alexander Cumming. Cumming’s world-changing invention owed nothing to precision engineering. In 1775, he patented the S-bend. It was a bit of pipe with a curve in it and it became the missing ingredient to create the flushing toilet – and, with it, public sanitation as we know it. Roll-out was slow, but it was a vision of how public sanitation could be – clean, and smell-free – if only government would fund it. More than two centuries later, two and a half billion people still remain without improved sanitation, and improved sanitation itself is a low bar. We still haven’t reliably managed to solve the problem of collective action – of getting those who exercise power or have responsibility to organise themselves. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Vadon and Richard Knight (Image: S-bend, Credit: ericlefrancais/Shutterstock)
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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Radar

How the high-tech ‘death ray’ led to the invention of radar. The story begins in the 1930s, when British Air Ministry officials were worried about falling behind Nazi Germany in the technological arms race. They correctly predicted that the next war would be dominated by air power. To address the problem, Britain launched a number of projects in hopes of mitigating the threat — including a prize for developing a high-tech ‘death ray’ that could zap a sheep at a hundred paces. But even though the project failed to develop such a weapon, it did result in something potentially far more useful that was able to detect planes and submarines – radar. And it was an invention that was crucial in the development of the commercial aviation industry. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Abstract radar with targets, Credit: Andrey VP/Shutterstock)
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Uncivil - Coming Soon

America is divided, and it always has been. We're going back to the moment when that split turned into war. This is Uncivil: Gimlet Media's new history podcast, hosted by journalists Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika. We ransack the official version of the Civil War, and take on the history you grew up with. We bring you untold stories about covert operations, corruption, resistance, mutiny, counterfeiting, antebellum drones, and so much more. And we connect these forgotten struggles to the political battlefield we’re living on right now.

For early access, check out uncivil.show

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