For fiteen years, Nate DiMeo has written, produced, and hosted The Memory Palace, a podcast of short, narrative essays put to music that conjure lost moments and forgotten figures from America’s past or find strange, new magic in the familiar. The show has been a finalist for a Peabody award. Nate was the Artist in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 2016/2017.
On November 19, 2024 Random House will release The Memory Palace, collecting beloved stories from the podcast along with new, narrative non-fiction essays, archival visual material, original illustrations, and memoir in a dynamic and original, kaleidoscopic exploration of the history of the United States and the intertwining of personal and historical memory.
A translation of Memory Palace stories in Brazilian Portuguese is also available through Todavia.
Natedoes live shows, performing stories from the Memory Palace with music, pictures, animation and whatnot. He’s performed all over the U.S., Canada, as well as England, Ireland, and a field in Australia. Upcoming dates are here.
He is the co-author of Pawnee: the Greatest Town in America and was a finalist for the 2012 Thurber Prize for American Humor.
He spent a decade or so in public radio. You may have heard him back in the day on All Things Considered, or Morning Edition, or Marketplace. He’s written for NBC’s Parks and Recreation and ABC’s Astronaut Wives Club.
He lives in Los Angeles via Providence, Rhode Island.
The AV Club once said that “The Memory Palace podcast is among the most potent pieces of audio being produced today; the show’s short tales are so emotionally concentrated that, upon listening, they bloom in the space between one’s ears, like a single drop of dye propagating through an entire glass of water. Nate DiMeo, the show’s sole creative force, often seems to be operating on a level wholly separate from that of other podcasts” and Nate thought that was nice.
He loves getting emails from listeners. Write to Nate @ thememorypalace.us