Strangers (2nd post): Born Rich (Or Poor)

For the next couple of episodes of “Strangers”, I definitely took away different things and I had unique experiences as I continued on in this series. The first episode I listened to as I continued listening is called “Born Rich (or Poor)” and this episode is still the same with the listeners getting to hear several strangers’ stories. The episode starts out the same with a soothing music piece playing in the background and the narrator easing the listeners into what the topic of the podcast episode is. However, they changed it up this time with multiple subjects in the episode as compared to the first episode I listened to. The topic of this episode was trying to see the perspective of people who were born rich and how their lives and upbringing have been different than the average person. I thought it was a really good idea that the producers of the show decided to introduce multiple subjects in this story. For me, I would definitely want to hear more than just one rich person’s perspective because I know there are certainly different situations and different ways of getting rich. One person’s life story would not define exactly how it feels to grow up rich for everyone else who is in that category. The subject of the previous episode: David Terry, talked about his specific upbringing in a Christian Family and how he struggled with the balance between religion and his social relationships in life. I thought that was a really unique story and it was good that only one subject was featured in that episode. In this episode, I got to see three different perspectives: Moby, Laura, and Jamie Johnson. Jamie Johnson was bothered by the fact that his every move in the stock market or anything, in general, gets featured in the news due to his wealth. He is a very successful Wall Street broker and he does not like having all of his actions followed by all the major companies. He knew that if he did not have this much wealth, he would be able to live a more incognito life, but he does acknowledge the benefits of being rich such as being able to fly first class, etc. Laura was born into a rich family and she was the one I respected the most out of the subjects. She talked about how she feels a certain regret that she did not learn a specific skill set for a career since there was no need for her to do so. She said she is now too old to go back to school but if she could redo everything again, she would not hesitate at all.  Just like the first episode, the narrator follows each subject’s own narration of their life stories with her own thoughts and analysis. I enjoyed this part again because it allows me to see whether or not I agree with the narrator. The narrator said she never feels any type of jealousy for rich people because she feels that her time would be wasted if she did not have to work for what she wanted in life. I agreed to her statement half-heartedly because I felt that only those who are not rich would say that. However, I am also not discounting that she is not being genuine in her analysis. I hope to observe more as the series goes on.

Word Count: 569