10 years ago, pretty nearly to the day or the week or whenever you're listening to this,

I released the first episode of the memory palace. We had just had a baby in October of that year.

I must have been sitting on the episode for a while because I really can't imagine

getting it done in the fog of those early days as a new parent and I honestly don't remember.

But I put out an episode of the memory palace and then episode two not long after.

And I did with a very little plan. Mostly because I could, after years of working in public

radio, working on other people's shows, which was great by and large, I wanted to make something

in my own and podcasting let me do that. There was suddenly a technology that meant that I didn't have

to have any gatekeepers or editors. And if there was a goal, you'd be on carving out a space for

something solely mine as my wife was about to go back to work and my time working at home was

no longer going to be entirely manned to vastly understate the change going on in our lives.

If there was a goal at the time, it was to create a calling card. I had a dream of making an hour

long history magazine show that would air on your public radio station after this American life

or cartalker or whatever. And the memory palace would help demonstrate that I had a take,

that I might be a good host for this future show. But relatively quickly, I learned three things.

The first was that I was not going to be able to create that show. And the reasons for that are

bureaucratic and institutional and really not at all interesting. So I'll just leave them there.

The second was that there wasn't going to be any money in this. And I'll leave that here for a

second with the intention of picking it back up in a moment. And third, and by far the thing that

has proved to be the most important over and over and over again over this last decade,

was that I love making these stories. That this was the show that there was not an hour-long

version of it. This was it. These odd earnest, probably overly earnest,

...