The Memory Palace: The Thundering Herd, The Vanishing American

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 Hrishikesh Hirway. This episode of Song Exploder is brought to you by Booking.com. My wife and I have been thinking about visiting some of our friends in Philadelphia this summer. And so while we've been daydreaming, I've been looking on Booking.com to check out places where we might stay in Philly. I put in our dates, and there are over 100 options listed. So I'm gonna start narrowing things down. I'm gonna choose places that have an eight or higher rating and a king bed available. And then I'm gonna focus on hotels in one of my favorite neighborhoods, the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood. And look, there's a hotel here with a 9.0 rating, and there's a note on the site that says, "Couples in particular like this hotel. They rated it a 9.5 for a two-person trip." All right, so look at that. That sounds pretty awesome. You can find exactly what you're booking for. Booking.com, booking.yeah. Book today on the site or in the app. Song Exploder is sponsored by Quince. They have so much great stuff on their website, from basics like socks and underwear to jeans and sweaters, all the way up to cashmere overcoats. Well, now that it's spring, I'm looking to get some stuff that feels appropriate for the weather. And so I just ordered a linen utility shirt. I'm very excited to get it. I know because I have other Quince stuff that it's gonna look sharp and be comfortable. Plus, I love that Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, responsible manufacturing practices. Refresh your every day with luxury that you're actually gonna use. Head to quince.com/songexploder for free shipping on your order and three hundred sixty-five-day returns. It's now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com/songexploder for free shipping and three hundred sixty-five-day returns. Quince.com/songexploder. When I first heard The Memory Palace, podcasts were still pretty new to me. [gentle music] It was 2012, and I, 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 DiMeo, features short stories about people or events that mainstream history has 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.