This is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate DeMayo.

When he came to, he had no idea what had happened.

He was in the hospital, his head was killing him, and he was seeing double.

Whether he fell and in so doing, knocked down the shelf and with it the tomato cans that rolled out across the floor of the Heinz factory

or whether it was the shelf with the tomato cans falling that had knocked him down no one knew

but it hardly mattered bob switzer had a broken skull he had brain damage internal bleeding

memory loss.

His optic nerve was frayed and nearly severed.

One of his eyes was now pointing in the wrong direction.

He was 19 years old.

He had just finished his freshman year at Berkeley, and instead of spending his days working

in the warehouse, he would spend his summer, the summer of 33, and the basement below his father's pharmacy,

in the dark, to keep his eyes out of the sunlight while they healed.

Meanwhile, his little brother Joe was having the best time.

He had just graduated from high school, he had lots of friends, and honestly, with his big brother out of commission, he didn't have to wait in line to borrow their parents' car anymore. So that was great, and he was always going to parties, both because he was the extroverted Switzer brother, outgoing, and a good hang, and because he was kind of in high demand. People wanted him at their parties, because he was really into magic, which was cool

then, I guess. It was a different time, but he had this whole sleight of hand routine, and he had

the patter down. Joe was a showman. He would perform wherever and whenever he could, and he started

to get ambitious, started thinking about making a real go of it. He could always fall back in chemistry like his old man, the pharmacist,

like his brother who had been studying the subject before the tomato cans came tumbling.

But he started thinking big.

He started to build an act.

And he may have been the funny brother,

...