The podcast I subscribed to is called “Strangers” on Apple Podcasts. This podcast’s title caught my attention because we do not usually associate ourselves in our daily lives with strangers let alone having interactions with them. As I looked more into it, this podcast is a weekly narrative where each episode will feature a fascinating story about various people whom we can pass by every day on the street. The podcast description is for the listeners to put themselves in a stranger’s shoes and experience the connections we make, the kindnesses we encounter, the heartbreaks we suffer, and those self-discovery moments in which we find out who we really are. This week, the podcast featured a Greek-American named David Terry and his upbringing. The podcast is presented in a way where it was very easy to follow along for me. The narrator, Lea Thau, starts off by introducing the backstory to the spotlight of this week: David Terry. A specific quote that Lea Thau said to peak my interest was, “We all tend towards this dogmatic outlook, even if we’re non-religious…true open-mindedness is what David showed when he allowed his actual encounters with actual people to change his actual point of view and David did it without rejecting the people whom he loved who had raised him in the faith.” This quote was really successful in that the narrator was able to give a brief overview into the journey of David Terry’s self-discovery throughout his life in which we are about to listen to. During Lea Thau’s introduction, the podcast also played a piece of soft and calming music to ease the listeners into the story. In addition, the narrator describes the setting in which we are going into the main spotlight of this podcast: David Terry. After the introduction, the podcast shifts to a brief three-second pause in which to let the listeners know that the story is starting. I was caught off guard, however, when I heard the person himself: David Terry, begin to talk about his childhood. I thought it was a great idea for the podcast’s main feature to go through his/her own life. This allows me to better see myself in that person’s perspective which is the whole series’s objective. The fact that this podcast is not necessarily an interview, and it is more of David Terry narrating his own story in which he has control over what is important for the listeners to know. David Terry’s journey through self-discovery was rather interesting. He grew up in a Catholic family and he talked about how he had to learn English as a second language because he moved here from Greece when he was in fifth grade. As he struggled to communicate with fellow students, he was bullied and his faith kept him going. I really liked the way he told his story here because he did not make it sound very superficial but he talked about how the church was the only place he could find common ground with people. Fast forward to college, he was surprised when he started to meet people who feel uncomfortable when he attempts to talk about his religion with them. He begins to put himself in other people’s shoes and see how other people’s upbringings brought them to where they are today. As the story ended, Lea Thau picks it back up and summarizes and offers her own reaction. It felt different for the narrator to give her own thoughts into these topics but I thoroughly enjoyed it. This makes the podcast much more interesting to listen to as opposed to a narrator simply making bland statements.
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Strangers definitely sounds like an interesting podcast, especially how it’s narrated by the subject of the episode, rather than having the podcast author act as the narrator. Like you said, by having David narrate the podcast himself, it makes it easier for the audience to connect with. I mentioned something similar in my post about Kristina Kylie, the narrator for A Murder on Orchard Street. In that podcast, Kylie was reflecting on the murder of Burke O’Brien which was a story that she had originally covered in 2003 as a news reporter. Having Kristina Kylie as the narrator for A Murder on Orchard Street is similar to how David is the narrator for his episode of Strangers because it allows for the audience to see a first-hand account of the stories they’re telling.
You also make an interesting point with how David narrating his story gives him control over what he feels is important to share because it’s very similar to how the Sherlock Holmes stories are narrated by Watson. I’m pretty sure it’s been mentioned in class before, but the stories being written from Watson’s perspective means that the audience is seeing a version of events thats skewed from his point of view. Funnily enough, in The Red-Headed League, Sherlock even mentions that Watson exaggerates some of the details of their adventures.
I’m not sure how relevant this would be for our assignment, but something interesting that could be done for our own podcasts is maybe doing a sort of roleplay where people narrate the podcasts as characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories. “Watson” would be the main narrators and “interviews” could be done with the other group members who would act as “Sherlock” and other major characters from the story.
Hey Ricky! I enjoyed reading your blog post about the “Strangers” podcast. I thought the plot and the narrative choices presented in the podcast you’ve chosen to follow are very unique. In the podcast I’m following, there is a pretty “standard” setup in which there is a narrator who gives most of the backstory of the characters throughout the episode. The characters may have quick interviews or interjections where the listener is able to gain a fundamental understanding of who the interviewee is, but this is generally not enough to truly understand the character’s perspective of the narrative being told.
In your podcast episode however, it was very interesting to read that the narrator actually allows the character (David Terry) to fully narrate his own life. I think some of the main advantages that this narrative choice allows for are along the lines of credibility and emotional appeal. When the primary source of the information is able to recount on the actions and emotions that they experienced, the narrative posed is able to explore a whole new dimension of depth that is merely lost without a primary perspective.
While the primary perspective is able to add a lot of detail, I think it is often inaccessible or impractical. In the podcast that I am following, Elizabeth Holmes (so far) has never spoken directly to the host of the podcast since she is facing charges in court and cannot speak openly about her personal reasons for taking the actions she did. Furthermore, if we wanted to apply this “primary perspective” idea to our English 200 podcasts it would be quite literally impossible to interview Sherlock Holmes or Watson. However, I think there is great value in choosing the closet source to a primary source whenever a podcast is made so that the greatest amount of credibility is reflected, and the narrative told can be further researched on if necessary!