Fear is something that all people feel at points in their lives. We can’t live without it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle when something frightening is presented to us. A lot of different factors heighten this emotional response, and one of which is lack of sleep. While not getting a lot of sleep, or sometimes even no sleep, is harmful to one’s help, it is also something a lot of college students deal with as well as the name of the wonderfully spooky podcast by David Cummings and his crew of voice actors. With Halloween swiftly approaching, it’s a better time than ever to take another look at our favorite podcast, NoSleep. This time, however, I’ll be analyzing the differences between season three, which I looked at in the first post, and season eight, a light middle ground between the current season and some of the older ones. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the horrifically interesting podcast.
Upon first listen, there are many changes between the third and eighth seasons of NoSleep. What stood out to me right off the bat was the introduction. Like many podcasts, with the growth in their popularity, the creators behind them begin to take more of a hold on what their creative interests are for their work. For NoSleep, one of these factors was an updated intro. Similarly to the opening in season three, the new and improved opening of season eight was filled with eerie music and sounds to put the reader on edge from the start, but this time it was different. While the season 3 opening was filled with wispy voices and an overall creepy atmosphere, season eight’s opening starts more harshly with the beating of a drum and the main narrator telling the listener to “give in to your fear” and that “tonight there will be no sleep”. From there, the music picks up similarly to how it did in the third season, giving the listener a sense of familiarity amongst the uneasy way that the music makes the listener feel. As mentioned in my first blog post, I love the horror genre, and this musical choice really helps the podcast set its atmosphere and get me into the mood to listen to the stories to come. I felt that this change was a good way to both make the podcast have a different spooky ambiance to it, so seasoned listeners can get new senses of fear instilled within them from the start, as well as keeping the podcast fresh so the uneasiness that comes with the podcast doesn’t wear off over time.
Onto the content of the stories themselves, there wasn’t much of a change between the type of content in both seasons; both seasons had scary, well-written stories within them. However, the one thing that jumped out at me when the first episode of the eighth season that I listened to, which was episode thirteen, was that the story narrators were different. I was immediately met with a woman’s voice instead of the man’s voice that I grew accustomed to and I felt that this was a good change of pace. While I enjoyed the spooky atmosphere that the main narrator’s, being David Cummings, voice gave to the podcast, having every story primarily narrated by him made it feel like I was being told a story by a narrator rather than the person whose story it was telling me the story itself. This switch made it so that I felt as though the narrator was living the story as they told it to me, and this made each story more interesting and even more creepy. For example, in season eight episode thirteen, the story The New Beginnings Center follows the dialogue of a woman whose family puts her into an eating disorder facility that turns out to do more harm than good. This story is narrated by a woman rather than Cummings, and this creates the notion that we are listening to the main character’s story right from her mouth rather than hearing it from someone else. Choosing to change the style of storytelling makes each story stick with the listener better and, in my opinion, makes the podcast better than it was before.
Overall, I love the direction this podcast is going and all of the improvements its made to make the listening experience more intoxicating and fulfilling. I am quite ecstatic to continue listening to the podcast and to see more about how it grows and changes. Next time, I’ll be jumping into another season of the podcast to see what improvements, or setbacks, that the podcast has come across in its making and development. Until then, get some sleep and remember not to be afraid of what’s waiting for you in the dark.
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Hi Annamarie! I really enjoyed reading your post although I have to say I don’t think I could ever list to NoSleep because I hate horror and hate being scared. So I try to avoid those things. That being said, I could really tell how much you enjoyed the podcast through your writing of it which made for a cool read. It makes sense that you jumped from season 3 to season 8 in order to get a good and clear sense of the changes that were being made overtime. I started listening to my podcast Ear Hustle from season 1 episode 1 and listened to season 1 episode 5 before writing my second post. I think because the jump wasn’t so big, I wasn’t able to find very many big changes that were made, so I just pointed out things in the second post that I might have neglected in the first. Although, I was able to tell a little bit that the creators of the podcast were getting a little more comfortable and creative in the sound editing and effects. I think a podcasts intro and opening is very important because it is the first thing the listener will hear that will determine whether or not they will want to continue listening, so they want to make sure it reflects the podcast well. Based off of your review, it seems like NoSleep does a great job of this and establishing what they are all about and really setting the mood. In contrast, the Ear Hustle intro has a very modern, hip-hop, upbeat mix which sounds really cool but is counterintuitive considering the fact the podcast itself is about prison stories.
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