Episode 78 (no. 116,842)
the memory palace
Nate DiMeo
4.8 • 7.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2015
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Music* Under the credits is Harlaamstrat 74 off of John Dankworth's Modesty Blaise score.* First bit is called Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears by A Winged Victory for the Sullen from their self-titled album. * A brief bit of Occam II for Violin by Silvia Tarrozi scores the shuttle accident (non-NASA category). * We've got Eloy by Deaf Center. * Finish out with Call from Julianna Barwick's album Pacing.
Notes* There's no, proper, grown-up biography of Margaret Knight (as far as I've been able to locate). Though there are a handful of kid's books of varying degrees of charm and accuracy. She does pop up in a fair amount of "Lady Inventors!!!" collections. I read a bunch of these, but I want to single out one for its rigor: Autumn Stanley's Mothers and Daughters of Invention.
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| 0:00.0 | This is the memory palace. I'm Nate Demail. |
| 0:04.8 | The mind would wander. |
| 0:06.8 | How could it not in the mill? |
| 0:08.9 | 12, 14 hours a day. Same chattering machines, |
| 0:13.0 | chattering co-workers, same smells, |
| 0:16.2 | same flat winter light, |
| 0:18.5 | tufts of cotton, |
| 0:20.5 | flex of thread, |
| 0:22.3 | reds and browns and blues, |
| 0:24.5 | airborne on the cold draft coming through the gap between the window pane and the red brick. |
| 0:29.4 | The clack and shush of the looms |
| 0:32.1 | same rough tug of soft cotton on callous fingers as you built another bolt of cloth |
| 0:38.1 | thread by thread, |
| 0:39.5 | moment by moment, day after day after day after day after. |
| 0:43.9 | The minds of the women in the mill would wander as their eyes would drift to the window, |
| 0:48.6 | to the low hanging clouds, |
| 0:50.7 | to the deer tracks in the snow and the ice and the river, |
| 0:54.1 | that rolls just below and turns the wheel and turns the gears of the loom, |
| 0:59.4 | that you have to get your mind back to you right now, |
| 1:02.0 | so the machine doesn't jam, so you don't hurt yourself, |
| 1:05.8 | so you don't forget for a moment those movements you can feel in your sleep, |
| 1:09.6 | the rough tug of soft cotton on callous fingers. |
... |
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