Episode 122 (Hercules)
the memory palace
Nate DiMeo
4.8 • 7.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2018
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows.
Music
- We start with Facing the Obstacles, from Robert Simonson's score to The Final Member.
- Nice Breeze Isn't It? by Simon Rackham
- The Things Left Unsaid, by Caleb Burhans.
- View from a Balcony by Isorinne.
- 1979 by Deru.
- The Julianna Barwick remix of This Will Destroy You's The Puritan.
Notes
- I found this article by Chelsea Lenhart particularly useful.
- As I did this one by Edward Lawler, Jr.
- And this one by Kathryn Gehred.
- As well as W.E.B. DuBois' The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study.
- Fritz Herschfield's George Washington and Slavery, A Documentary Study.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the memory palace. |
| 0:02.0 | I'm Nate de Mayo. |
| 0:03.9 | Hercules was a real-life man. |
| 0:06.6 | There are a number of reasons we know for sure. |
| 0:09.0 | His name, just the one name just Hercules, shows up in tax records. |
| 0:13.0 | He's there among a list of taxable property. |
| 0:15.8 | In the census of slaves conducted in 1787, he is listed as a cook. |
| 0:21.0 | He is mentioned in a handful of diaries and letters. |
| 0:24.0 | There is a portrait that people think is him. |
| 0:26.3 | A black man and a white chef's coat. |
| 0:28.8 | His dark hair barely contained in his tight white chef's hat. |
| 0:32.4 | It is probably him. |
| 0:34.0 | But it could be someone else entirely. |
| 0:36.0 | But Hercules was a real man. |
| 0:37.8 | We have the evidence. |
| 0:38.9 | And we have that evidence, those records, the diaries, the probable portrait, because |
| 0:43.1 | George Washington owned him. |
| 0:44.8 | And when you are George Washington, people save your stuff. |
| 0:47.8 | They keep your writing. |
| 0:49.1 | They keep the diaries and letters that your friends and your family wrote. |
| 0:52.8 | Just in case you, first president, founding father, hero of the revolution, show up in |
| 0:57.5 | those diaries. |
... |
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