This is the memory palace. I'm Nate DeMoeu.

Guyelmo Marconi is the father of radio.

He didn't really invent it, he gets much more credit than he deserves, but whatever.

Guyelmo Marconi was the father of radio in the eyes of the world.

He was a hero on a scale that Italy hadn't seen since the Renaissance.

I have a postcard that I found in my grandfather's attic after he died.

It has a picture of Marconi on the front and a message in Italian on the back,

encouraging immigrants like my grandfather's family to express their pride in their countrymen

by investing in the Marconi company.

He was celebrated all over the world.

He died with presidents and kings and captains of industry and beautiful women, the whole thing.

He shared a Nobel Prize, Mussolini was the best man in a second wedding,

which I'm sure felt like a good idea at the time.

But we're told that in his 60's,

somewhere around the time was 4th or 5th heart attack.

The inventor began to think about mortality,

or rather, he began to think about immortality.

Marconi became convinced that sound never dies,

that sound waves once emitted from a radio,

from the vibrating strings of strata various, from whispering lovers,

from a baby discovering how to make a bar or gusset for the first time.

Sound lived on forever, its waves flowing permanently,

...