Introduction
For this week's blog post I listened to the Radio Lab podcast for the first time! It was a great experience, and in this post I will share my insights about various aspects of the the episode that I listened to, which is mysteriously titled "More Perfect: Cruel and Unusual".
Four Kinds of Audio
For this week's blog post I listened to the Radio Lab podcast for the first time! It was a great experience, and in this post I will share my insights about various aspects of the the episode that I listened to, which is mysteriously titled "More Perfect: Cruel and Unusual".
Four Kinds of Audio
As described in the Poynter article, there are four basic kinds of sound which are used in most “multimedia” stories. These four types of audio are: interview clips, voice-overs, natural sound, and ambient sound. The Radio Lab podcast that I listened to, which is titled “More Perfect: Cruel and Unusual” features all four of these audio forms.
Interview Clips & Voice Overs
In this week’s installment of the podcast they are interviewing a young woman, and as she is speaking there are occasional clips from interviews and news programs thrown into the mix. I use the verb “thrown” because in many instances these clips are literally inserted while the woman is still speaking. Sometimes the clips even interrupt her to finish her sentence in a seamless fashion.
Natural Sounds
Throughout the podcast there are hints of natural sounds that can be heard in the background. For example, at one point the woman was describing a town in England, and as she is doing so you can hear the sounds of the city in the background, such as cars on the road, people chatting, and the usual sounds of hustle and bustle.
Ambient Sounds
There are also several random ambient sounds that are inserted in the podcast. At one point there was a not so subtle sound of fingers typing on a keyboard. I think this audio had some kind of reverb effect on it because it had a bit of an echo. The sound of keyboard clicking is not one that you would expect to hear an echo from, so that definitely stood out to me.
In this week’s installment of the podcast they are interviewing a young woman, and as she is speaking there are occasional clips from interviews and news programs thrown into the mix. I use the verb “thrown” because in many instances these clips are literally inserted while the woman is still speaking. Sometimes the clips even interrupt her to finish her sentence in a seamless fashion.
Natural Sounds
Throughout the podcast there are hints of natural sounds that can be heard in the background. For example, at one point the woman was describing a town in England, and as she is doing so you can hear the sounds of the city in the background, such as cars on the road, people chatting, and the usual sounds of hustle and bustle.
Ambient Sounds
There are also several random ambient sounds that are inserted in the podcast. At one point there was a not so subtle sound of fingers typing on a keyboard. I think this audio had some kind of reverb effect on it because it had a bit of an echo. The sound of keyboard clicking is not one that you would expect to hear an echo from, so that definitely stood out to me.
Radio Lab - "More Perfect: Cruel and Unusual"
This episode of the podcast revolves around the subject of capital punishment in the United States, more specifically, the death penalty. As the episode begins, the host of the podcast is interviewing a young woman. At first there are many things that are unclear to the listener. Or at least, that was my experience. Shortly after the episode starts it segways into a story of a man who was sentenced to be executed but could not be executed because the lethal injection drug the prison was using had not been cleared yet by the FDA. However, the prison was able to fix the situation and so the man was still executed later that same day. As I mentioned previously, I was not exactly sure how this story was going to fit into the big picture of this episode. But, as the episode continues things start to become a little more clear.
“Non-Knowledge, to A Little Bit of Knowledge, to ehhh”
Radio Lab is interviewing a woman who has been working hard at trying to eliminate the death penalty for years. Throughout the duration of this episode I could start to see what the Radio Lab hosts meant when they said that you go from “non-knowledge, to a little bit of knowledge, to ehhhh”. I can understand that statement now because when I first started listening I had no idea of what this episode was really about. Even the title mislead me to some extent. But then, as I continued to listen, certain things started to become more clear. At the end, I still did not feel like I fully grasped everything in the episode, but I definitely had a better understanding than I did in those first ten minutes.
Radio Lab is interviewing a woman who has been working hard at trying to eliminate the death penalty for years. Throughout the duration of this episode I could start to see what the Radio Lab hosts meant when they said that you go from “non-knowledge, to a little bit of knowledge, to ehhhh”. I can understand that statement now because when I first started listening I had no idea of what this episode was really about. Even the title mislead me to some extent. But then, as I continued to listen, certain things started to become more clear. At the end, I still did not feel like I fully grasped everything in the episode, but I definitely had a better understanding than I did in those first ten minutes.
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