You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe.

When I first heard the Memory Palace, podcasts were still pretty new to me.

It was 2012, and I'd only listened to a handful of shows, but the Memory Palace was so different

from anything I'd heard before. The show, which is made by Nate DeMail, features short stories

about people or events that mainstream history is maybe overlooked. Sometimes the stories were

just a few minutes long, and they were so beautifully told that they felt more like poems than some

kind of documentary.

And when I first started daydreaming about Song Exploder around the start of 2013, I took

some inspiration from the memory palace and the dreamlike feeling that I got when listening

to Nate Speak. And I felt like it gave me permission to make very short episodes

if that was what felt right for the story.

And I think it just overall raised my ambition

for the creativity behind the show.

Nowadays, I feel very lucky to count Nate as a friend.

But most of all, I'm still just a fan.

And recently, an episode of the Memory Palace had a different kind of influence on me.

One of the songs on my new album owes a lot to an episode of the Memory Palace.

And, you know, a lot of times on Song Exploder, artists will talk about their influences.

But in this case, I didn't just want to talk about it.

Nate said I could actually share the entire episode with you.

So today, I want to present a kind of two-part story.

...