Since switching podcast players, it has been harder for me to track really good episodes I've listened to. Or, maybe, more likely, I'm becoming harder and harder to please as time goes by and I'm flagging fewer and fewer episodes as really good. As a matter of fact, I've started deleting episodes of some of my absolute favorite shows in the middle of episodes, including recents from both the Doughboys and How Did This Get Made?, two stalwarts in my feed.
So imagine my surprise when the newest Memory Palace episode caused me to pause in my tracks. Nate DiMeo is the writer, producer, narrator, and he should be regarded as a national treasure. I've said it before and I've said it again, but every writing instructor should be looking to DiMeo for examples of accessible short-form writing. His shows are bite-sized pieces of masterful storytelling. They range from just a few minutes to maybe fifteen minutes at the maximum, but they are powerful and stick with you forever. DiMeo has perfected writing for his own voice, writing for an audio medium, and writing for an audience of interested non-experts. DiMeo can look at any object in a museum or any footnote in a boring non-fiction book and spin it into ten minutes of unforgettable audio narration and he makes it all seem so easy when it can't possibly be so. He manages to write morality tales without coming off as preaching or patronizing or formal or stilted. I can't speak highly enough of this podcast.
So it is with this background in my slavish adoration to the talents of Nate DiMeo that I tell you about "The Adventures of Pearl," a tale of silent film start Pearl White. Film audiences were new, of course, and so it was assumed that the actress was doing all of her own stunts, but, as we know today, she wasn't. And that's just where DiMeo starts the tale.
A brief excerpt:
Some film historians speculate that she had spent the last two decades of her life self-medicating after one of the actors who was carrying her, bound and gagged, in a scene in The Perils of Pauline, had dropped her and it damaged her spine. But who can say? There is a fair amount of “but who can say?” in the biographical sketches and the entries in encyclopedias of silent film or of famous American women, though it has to be a pretty thick book for her to make it in one anymore. So much of the information that remains about Pearl White comes from her publicist, and they made stuff up all the time. And there are pages and pages and hours of interviews and quotes straight from Pearl about her work and her life, about her upbringing, almost anything you would want to know. But she made stuff up all the time, too. It was part of the job. And so we are left to sit here and marvel at this woman, larger than life, and flickering. Knowing we can never be sure what was real and what was acting.
But who can say? That is the story of many women in history, right? DiMeo weaves in that little history lesson without drawing attention to it with neon lights. Nate DiMeo, you are a genius.
And since it seems silly to leave you with just one brief ten minute episode as the best of May, let me also leave you with "The Clinch" from 99% Invisible. Technically it was released on June 1, but I'm a rebel. It's all about the surprising the history of romance novel covers, mentions Beverly Jenkins and that terrible book by Kathleen Woodiwiss that I couldn't finish because in the first 6% there were three rape scenes. It helps to explain the rise in cartoon covers in romance novels and why Beach Read has been so darn popular. It's a great episode and I love the journey the journalist goes on through the reporting process.
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