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the memory palace - Sometimes the Rain Just Doesn’t Stop

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Music

Notes

  • By far the most comprehensive resource I found was Florida's Hurricane History by Jay Barnes. If you're looking to learn more, I'd definitely start there.
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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Double-entry Bookkeeping

Luca Pacioli was a renaissance man – he was a conjuror, a master of chess, a lover of puzzles, a Franciscan Friar, and a professor of mathematics. But today he’s celebrated as the most famous accountant who ever lived, the father of double-entry bookkeeping. Before the Venetian style of bookkeeping caught on, accounts were rather basic. An early medieval merchant was little more than a travelling salesman. He had no need to keep accounts – he could simply check whether his purse was full or empty. But as the commercial enterprises of the Italian city states grew larger, more complex and more dependent on financial instruments such as loans and currency trades, the need for a more careful reckoning became painfully clear. In 1494 Pacioli wrote the definitive book on double-entry bookkeeping. It’s regarded by many as the most influential work in the history of capitalism. And as the industrial revolution unfolded, the ideas that Pacioli had set out came to be viewed as an essential part of business life; the system used across the world today is essentially the one that Pacioli described. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Handwritten accounting ledger, Credit: Suntezza/Shutterstock)
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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)