I found This American Life by Ira Glass to be so entertaining. He had my attention the entire time. It was unlike any other podcast that I have listened to (not that I have listened to many). He included clips from real life, for example, in the Jose Cuervo segment, there were actual recordings of the Cuervo man doing his thing in a bar.
In the segment entitled, Why Talk?, a woman Starlee Kine becomes friends with a woman who makes a tape telling Starlee about her life. I thought it was really cool how Starlee told a brief summary of something that occurred in the tape and then an excerpt was played. I found this to be very effective for story telling because it kept me engaged and helped me to visualize what was going on. I actually pictured Starlee’s friend, Robin, walking down the street and going up to the guy that said in a thick italian voice, “happy birthday Staaaalee”.
It was really interesting to listen to each segment because they were so different yet similar. Every segment had the same theme, someone turning to plan B- the backup plan. Glass gave little descriptions of each segment in the beginning of the podcast to make you want to hear more, and it definitely worked.
I felt the most engaged throughout the whole podcast when the clips were played from past events or when a story is told play by play. Glass even said that was one of his story telling tactics, “no matter how boring the story is if it is in a story form and there is an anecdote happening” it makes it have some suspense and becomes less boring. Glass also stresses having a balance of narration and conversation. You can tell that he practices what he preaches in Plan B. The listener gets the feeling that Glass and the person he is interviewing are friends because of the way that he presents himself and conducts the interview. Due to listening to the podcast and hearing what Glass had to say about storytelling got me more excited to do my own podcast and I learned a lot about how to approach starting it. I feel like I especially have a better understanding about how to speak into the microphone. Glass puts emphasis on words which takes away the monotonous tone that I assume I will have when I do my first recording!
I enjoyed the “Why Talk” segment also. It was a very interesting story and it was told very well. It did feel as if you could hear her going up and down the street. It was interesting how her recording was not as fine tuned as Ira’s voice, and that also gave a sense of her walking up and down the street screaming. All of the stories were very interesting, but this one, along with the Tequila one had the best imagery.
Event though Why Talk? was not my favorite interview, the way you describe it makes me want to listen to it again to see if I could feel the same energy and emotion you had while listening to this section.
I definitely agree with you when you say: “I felt the most engaged throughout the whole podcast when the clips were played from past events or when a story is told play by play. ” But when does too much outside sound become overwhelming for the audience?
I also found ” This American Life” to be entertaining. As I talked about in my last blog post, the podcast I listened to was very boring. Listening to Ira Glass was exciting and kept my attention. I can open my mind up to listening to podcasts instead of closing it.
Glass chose a really good theme when he chose Plan B because it can relate to a lot of different people. In today’s society not many people are still on Plan A, most have turned to Plan B.