Episode 218: Olga

the memory palace

Nate DiMeo

Radiotopia, Publicradio, History, Natedimeo

4.8 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

A Note on Notes:

I always prefer that the listener goes into each episode cold, not knowing what it's going to be about. So, you might want to tread carefully, as there are spoilers in the notes below.

Music

L'espagne pour memoire by Michel Portal
Find me Tomorrow from Christophe Beck's score to Charlie Countryman
The old Soviet philharmonic plays some Shostakovich.
The London Symphony Orchestra plays The Blue Danube Waltz.
We hear Walt by Mother Falcon.
Sombolero by Luiz Bonfa

Notes

Like a lot of people below, say, 55, I first heard about Olga Fikotova-Connolly when reading her obituary in the New York Times.
By far the best thing you can do if you want to know more about her is track down her out-of-print memoir, The Rings of Destiny, which, despite its rather puffed-up title, is so warm and detailed and intimate. It's a delight.
You might also enjoy this late-in-life interview with Olga as well.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate De Mayo. They found a place to put her.
0:05.4	She was an exceptional athlete, had excelled at team handball for one of the biggest youth athletic
0:10.3	clubs in Prague in the years after World War II, took a basketball team to the finals of an illustrious competition.
0:17.0	And the Czechoslovak Athletic Committee had their eyes on Olga Ficotova, tall and strong, bright and pretty, wide smile, a bob of brown curls.
0:28.4	She was a star student studying medicine at an elite university. They had their eyes on her. But everyone had the
0:36.0	rise on everyone. Watching, noticing, asking other people to watch and notice and
0:41.9	report back was at the heart of the Czech Communist Party's means to power.
0:47.5	They had a file on everyone.
0:50.0	But hers was thicker than most.
0:52.0	When she was starting high school, her father was disappeared for months,
0:56.0	swept up in a purge of former military leaders from the previous regime,
1:00.0	jailed without trial by the secret police.
1:04.0	After his release, when it was determined he was sufficiently loyal to the new state,
1:09.0	the Central Committee kept close tabs on his whole family,
1:12.0	especially his headstrong daughter, who had turned
1:15.1	down a chance to join the Communist Party. She said she liked to go to church too much.
1:20.8	She said she would never be able to fully embrace all the principles of Marxism and dialectical materialism.
1:26.0	She didn't want to pretend she could just to gain social advantage,
1:29.0	but she assured her interviewer that she loved Czechoslovakia, that there was nothing she wanted more in this world than to bring glory to the nation while furthering the cause of global communism by winning gold at the Olympics.
1:42.0	Probably in Hanball. She was really good at the Olympics.
1:42.5	Probably in handball.
1:44.2	She was really good at handball.
	...

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