In Gimlet Media’s podcast The Habitat, it follows six people who participated in an experiment by NASA that is focused on getting humans on Mars. The real-life experiment stimulated the colonization of Mars on plant Earth, and this was done by caging the six people in a small dome named The Habitat located on a volcano in Hawaii for one year. For that entire year, these six people, who but just a few days before the start of the experiment were complete strangers, lived squeezed next to each other in isolation and with no contact with the outside world. They were given a small audio recorder by the show’s host, Lynn Levy, and the rest of the podcast explores what happens to these six people.
The first episode of The Habitat begins with much sensory details. The host Lynn uses strong imagery with her descriptions and sound effects to stimulate her audience’s attention. She starts off with the sound of a truck driving through coarse, dusty rocks and asks one of the participants of the experiment to describe the scene in front of them to which he replies “Um.. Black, jagged rocks, and there is just piles and piles and piles of them, extending as far as you can see…” Then Lynn goes on to describe what she feels seeing this simulation of Mars on a volcano of Hawaii saying, “This is… absolutely the weirdest landscape I’ve ever seen… It’s cold… it’s actually cold… and all I can see is rock. And the other thing I can see besides the rocks is a dome”. By giving such a description surrounded by suspenseful music, she creates an atmosphere of curiosity for her ears of her podcast. Then, she continues on with what the audience will expect throughout the course of this podcast series. It is straightforward and explains the stimulation by NASA and follows through with what these six participants will expect. By starting off with this direct yet detailed synopsis of the experiment, the host makes her story compelling and gains the curiosity and interest of the listeners. She introduces the audience to the six guinea pigs of this experiment and gives us an insight into what each of them are like and what kind of person they are. To do so, she uses interview clips of each of the members of the research experiment. All of these features combined works to build a sense of intriguingness because it shows how these six members are just regular humans like the any of the audience are but they are soon off to a year-long isolation in a small dome with five other strangers. The audience will want to know how everything plays out in the end. Furthermore, eluded above, music enhances the quality of the audience’s engagement by playing such that help amplify the emotions they feel through the narration going on. Towards the end, she plays a wonderous, floating, interstellar type of music that leaves listener’s also wonderous and prepped for the next episode. In this way, by the utilization of various techniques like imagery, sound effects, straightforwardness, and music, the podcaster captures the ears of her audience and pulls them through all the way to the end of the session.
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First and foremost I just want to say where did you find this podcast, it sounds really interesting and I would like to listen to it just for the fun of it. The introduction you gave at the beginning right away reeled me into the podcast of the Habitat. It was quick not too excessive but yet enough to to fully get the comprehension of the of the podcast’s story arc. Towards the beginning of when you begin describing the techniques used by the podcast you mention the music. That was a great call to mention in part of your response to the podcast. You stated a quote and if you had only stated the quote I would not think too much of it, perhaps a little creepy but nothing more than that, but when you mention there was music that matched the tone of the podcast that made me feel shivers and gave allowed me to feel what it would be to actually listen to this podcast. I fell probably an advantage you may have had would be this is an entirely new tone as to a story arc. With this being said then when you make a response it is a genuine first encounter response unlike if you constantly hear about murder, one can get numb to it. Perhaps that is also a disadvantage at the same time, since it is so new, one may pick up on the obvious, but yet again Matt loves to point out the obvious which I think is also good. I enjoyed reading your response, you did a great job in choosing a podcast.
It sounds pretty interesting that the background of this podcast reminds me of several movies and stories I heard before. Those stories share an uncanny similarity, which is a team consisted of strangers have to stick together to survive. This podcast even gave background on each stranger and information so that the audience can think and speculate what will happen next. The secluded dome in Hawaii can give the ambiance an earthly feel to the podcast because podcast based on crime or survival genre tend to take place on foreign places, making the audience exposed to different setting they live in to make them interested to the story. The host Lynn Levy definitely gave me a feel of overseer in play, and overseer’s role in this kind of story is either the villain of the story or catalyst of the conflict, and Lynn is the character that can give strangers’ conditions gave the audience a sense of doubt because Lynn was the only person to know what truly happened.
Another thing I noticed is that the relationships among each stranger is critical to the survival of all strangers. With being confined in an isolated dome in nowhere, strangers are forced to work together, thus the drama and sequences are what will be focused on next. Lynn being the person behind the test also gave her some strange vibe to it because the strangers are more or less normal people, but the role as a seer shroud more mysteries around the whole plot, helping the audience to focus on in the story. Lastly, only the seer can give the status of the strangers, filling the whole podcast with more suspense.