RadioLab started a series about Dolly Parton and country music. I haven’t listened to their first episode but did listen to their next three podcasts: “Birdie in the Cage”, “Songs that Cross Borders”, and “Dolly Parton’s America: Neon Moss”. In the series they take a step away from scientific topics and focus on culture and music, origins of musical elements and where they travel to. I want to use “Songs that Cross Borders” to highlight some of the patterns that I’ve noticed in the series that helped create a consistent identity between podcasts.
One of which are the introductions and outros they do in their show. In all episodes, the listeners are greeted with their introduction, a mixture of different audio clips of different people saying “RadioLab” and “WNYC” in an interesting way. It’s like a remix of everyday speech with more artists than you thought was possible but still somehow sounds coherent. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich then introduces themselves and begin to give context. For “Songs that Cross Borders”, they referred back to previous episodes about song, dance, and the main question that centered each: who did it belong to? Who claims that a type of song, beat, dance belongs to them and their culture? This question is brought up to explore how music move through culture. It’s approached in two different ways in “Songs that Cross Borders” (SCB).
SCB looks at this question by first focusing on what makes country music so popular across the world. We learn that a lot of country music is about migration, longing, and nostalgia. People across the world can relate to these messages. The style of music that is country (the ‘cries’ and lonesomeness of the vocals and instruments) transcends its roots when cultures adopt these features and make it their own. The creators of the podcast used primarily lyrics/ sound bites of old country music with the cracks of static on top of the singer’s voice and direct narration in this portion. It’s effective because we’re given examples of nostalgia in the Western lyrics of the music itself and from the twangs of the guitar accompanying the singer. What’s interesting is the transition that they used to shift attention to how the Western influences music in other parts of the world. The journalist goes to Afghanistan in search for stories and what he finds are Afghanistized versions of country music. It’s more personal because we get sound bites from the events themselves as our hosts explain them to us. We hear the echoes of the room as the journalist asks his translator what he means about how the Western music is actually a famous Afghan singer’s songs. (This makes sense. I promise. The American journalist started to play his accordion as translator was doing ab crunches but translator was confused because journalist was playing Afghan music.) In this section we hear the conversations instead of just soundbites. It brings the conversation back to the present time. It’s easier to think that these discussions about how cultures influence one another is outside of our personal world but we’re hearing the direct conversations between journalist and translator about how Johnny Cash and Elvis were actually Ahmad Zahir. It’s jarring and mashes up worlds very effectively.
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Hey Tiff,
Great analysis on the rhetorical strategies and identity used in the podcast RadioLab, episode “Songs that Cross Borders”. In terms of what you discussed introduction and outros wise, I have a similar experience with my podcast the Serial. Just like yours there’s the typical greeting with sponsors of the podcast, and then a short recap of the previous episode. Though this is different than yours where you have individuals saying “RadioLab” and “WNYC” differently, we have similar formatting. I feel that is critical because it serves the same purpose as a theme song, an individual can immediately recognize it and have some sort of attachment with the podcast – producing a unique identity. At the same time, the recap is necessary to remind the listener of what happened in the previous episode and clarify any questions the audience may have.
Serial also introduces questions sometimes of what the audience thought about previous episodes or produce a call-to-action. From what you previously stated about RadioLab, I feel that it dives deeper into the questions and rhetorically asks these questions because they know that the audience could have similar questions. This is a strong strategy, because in the ending of an episode it allows the audience to think critically about any questions they have, and then have those questions answered – sort of like a Q&A. It helps produce a segment that can really help the listener to look forward to and keep increased interest in the podcast. As an experienced podcaster myself, these techniques are critical to making an engaging podcast, its unique and helps the reader from being disengaged or bored, which can easily happen when someone is simply talking.
Also, I like the fact that you mention that RadioLab discusses music like country that are meaningful and have messages. For example, we hear about migration, longing and nostalgia, like Afghani singers etc. but, in Serial, you have a meaningful podcast – however, completely different. For example, Serial talks about the criminal justice system, and makes a call-to-action to help citizens that are unaware of the injustices in America and make them aware. It introduces cases from small to medium – assault to felonies. Though our podcasts have different meanings they are important appealing to others, whether it may be to a single group of people or a whole country – they have a meaning and aren’t meaningless.
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