This podcast was interesting because as a podcast I would not consider it as a well-produced – but the content was really useful to me as I am planning on interviewing someone for my final audio project. A quote that stuck to me throughout the podcast was “anyone telling stories can understand this idea: you prepare and prepare, you dive in deep, and then something clicks, and it’s like a little bit of magic, and you find the thing that makes an unforgettable scene, or turn, or feeling.” A podcast is a great tool not only to convey information to listeners that are always on-the-go, but it’s also a great tool to make things personal and tell a story.

I wasn’t a fan of this podcast because it all felt really disjointed – I understand that she was discussing the various different topics she had written about, but when she jumped around from pasta to Trish Trash the Roller Derby player, I got lost really quickly. The impression I got from this podcast was that it seemed more like an audiobook than a podcast, especially with her monotoned tone of voice and the various different clips that were spliced together without much transition or introduction in between. I think if she were to introduce different speakers or switch to a complete different speaker (a whole new soundbite, if you will), a small introduction would have been more helpful to the listener. Podcast listeners aren’t really always paying “full attention”, and unless you are paying full attention to this podcast it was easy to lose her in her train of thought.

I also found the background music when she was speaking quite distracting, because it was too repetitive and commercial. This also added to the confusion, because there was a lot of different background music coming from all of these different clips weaving into one another. I understand this because part of being a producer is being a curator, but I feel like she had her hands in too many baskets for this one.

However, I found the content to be EXTREMELY useful. I’m going to be interviewing a couple of friends of mine who attended the March on the 21st in Washington D.C., and knowing how to approach that interview will serve to be very useful. I was going to go into it with a blank slate, just so that the exchange can be more conversational. Although this approach works, a better one is to set the “interview arc” before you go in – so you have an idea of what the whole narrative is going to look like. As the producer suggests in this podcast, I think I’m going to give Megan (my sorority sister who attended the march) a call beforehand to ask her some pre-interview question to vet her and find out whether or not if she is a suitable candidate. I also have a couple of interesting interview questions I want to ask her, like “when did you start doing this (interested in feminist issues)?”, “what did your parents think about you participating?”, “tell me about your commute there.”. I’m also going to approach this as me being someone knowing NOTHING about the march, so that I can get simple and honest answers without any self-selecting responses or forced responses.