meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
the memory palace

Episode 20 (This Ungainly Fowl)

the memory palace

Nate DiMeo

Radiotopia, Publicradio, History, Natedimeo

4.87.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2009

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you enjoy this story, do tell someone about The Memory Palace.

Thanks.

Nate

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is the memory palace. I'm Nate de Mayo.

0:04.0

He got on the wrong train.

0:07.0

He was headed to New York, but wound up in Baltimore instead.

0:10.0

We can't be sure how it happened.

0:12.0

We can't be sure about a lot of things that happened to Edgar Allan Poe

0:15.0

between September 27th when he arrived.

0:18.0

In October 7th, 1849, when he died of something he had washed in college hospital.

0:24.0

We don't know what killed him.

0:27.0

People have spent 160 years sifting through clues trying to figure it out,

0:31.0

like Poe's detective trying to solve those murders in the room or a spoiler alert.

0:36.0

It was the orangutan.

0:38.0

But even if they dug Poe's body up,

0:41.0

and ran whatever sort of CSI history stuff they can do these days,

0:45.0

the results might come up definitively cholera, or a brain lesion,

0:49.0

or alcohol poisoning, or even rabies, all of which people have suggested.

0:54.0

Now, while that might explain definitively why he died,

0:58.0

we won't know what killed Edgar Allan Poe.

1:01.0

But we know this. Poe is going to be married a few weeks later.

1:06.0

His first wife, Virginia, had died two years earlier, two years before he got on the wrong train.

1:12.0

Virginia was the love of his life, though she was his first cousin and was 13 to his 27 when they married.

1:20.0

It seems that one day in 1842 she was playing the piano and she started coughing.

1:24.0

And if you've seen just about any movie set in the 19th century, you'd know what that means.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nate DiMeo, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Nate DiMeo and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.