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

Let's take a few minutes to remember the story of Joyce Heth, though there's so little we know of it.

At least the parts that weren't made up.

We'll start in Lower Manhattan in 1835, where there's a salesman working the front count of a general store.

He's 25 and bored, wishing he were doing something different, wishing he were living more, usual, and then walks a man.

Now we don't know where this actually all went down, but to keep our story streamlined and dramatic, we'll just say it all happens right there in the store.

So, in walks a man named Corey Bartram, and he steps up to the counter and tells our bored young man that he's got a proposition for him, a

business deal that will change the young man's life.

And though neither man, of course, knows it at that moment right there in the store. It will wind up changing the world.

Bartram tells the young man that down in Philadelphia, there's a show that he's just got to see.

And the guy who runs the show is looking to sell. He's looking for someone to take it over for like 3,000 bucks.

So, cut to Philadelphia.

The two sit in the audience in a dingy little theater.

And the show is pretty good.

However, 3 grand is a lot of money in 1835, especially for a 25-year-old sales clerk with no experience at all in show business, but this is no ordinary sales clerk.

He was born for this sort of thing. He's in natural, and he knows that there's incredible potential here, but he doesn't let on.

He hems and haws about the price. He says he's just not sure, even though he's totally sure.

And he talks the owner down to a thousand dollars.

Both men walk away feeling like he just got away with murder.

Though from the twinkle we can see in the young man's eye, we know who's right about that.

The young man is Phineas Taylor Bartram, a Bethel Connecticut.

In his career as P.T. Bartram, world famous showman, starts here with this thousand dollars.

...