I enjoyed working on the Podcast for a number of reasons. First and foremost, this was entirely different than not only the infographic, but also any other project that I have worked on in the past.

While my topic was the same as my infographic, there were a number of differences along the way. The frame, however, was somewhat similar. Once again, I expected my audience to be generally unaware of coral reef depletion, so I looked at the subject in a very simple way with clear and concrete ways that we as individuals can make a difference. To frame the issue, I set out a general guideline from the start. The piece includes an introduction that sets out my layout for the project, a brief conversation with my guest, Phillip Osborn, an anecdotal piece to highlight the effects of coral reef depletion on humans in our world, and a final wrap up of the piece with ways in which we can help our world going forward. I think that by setting out this general framework early on, it allowed for my project to flow in a clear and concise path along the way. The final product of the podcast was informative, interesting, and (hopefully) inspiring to those who listened.

Looking back, there were many parts of the podcast that went well and were great to work on. First, I thought it was nice to have an interview in my piece – and it was even better that it was my friend from Northwestern who is a major in civil engineering. While I have heard briefly about his experiences exploring coral reefs around the world, it was great to dig a little deeper and expose his interesting thoughts to my audience. He, too, approached the issue in a simple way and was able to provide an understanding of what is happening in reefs, why it is happening, and the tangible ways that we can help. It was difficult, at times, to hold him back from going off on tangents – I actually had to cut a good amount of audio from our interview because he was so enthusiastic and dived into a number of topics that where somewhat irrelevant to my project. Additionally, I really enjoyed working on the project from a technical standpoint. I have never used a program like Audacity before, so it was educational and interesting to play around with the various effects (fade in, fade out, amplify, normalize, etc.).

In the end, I felt like my approach to the project was a good one. I think that often times people do view coral reef preservation as a very important part of humanity, but fail to understand the tangible consequences that humans face because of this depletion around the world. By bringing in the anecdote about the tribe in Madagascar, I think listeners are able to understand the crucial piece of coral depletion that I set out to make clear: our actions as humans affect other lives around the world, whether that be fish, wild animals, or other humans.

Looking back, I think I would keep most of content the same, but would definitely try to make things shorter. In our day and age, ten minutes can be valuable (especially for businessmen and women), so having a shorter product would have been helpful. While my initial submission was somewhat longer, I did try to account for this in my post here by making the piece shorter and easier to digest.