Dr Death Episode 5 “Free Fall” and 6 “Closure”

The Dr. Death podcast has been an intense ride of emotions. The writer, investigator, and narrator of Dr. Death, Laura Beil, uses a very disturbing outlying case in the medical field of the US to pose a question to her audience. She uses impressive investigation skills and data/fact collection to paint a troubling picture of a notoriously devious neurosurgeon, Dr. Duntsch, who plagued the Texas medical community. She uses this case as a narrative tool to demonstrate why she feels it is necessary to consider a system, which is meant to be in place to protect people, as flawed and possibly in need of reform or review. This will focus mainly on the last two episodes of the podcast but will incorporate aspects of the entire podcast series.

The events described in the first four episodes all lead to the explanation of Duntsch’s eventual arrest in the Free Fall episode and his trial and conviction in the Closure episode. These two episodes are connected through mostly the events which transpired leading up to the decision being made that the DA needed to get involved and prosecute Duntsch as a criminal and his conviction by jury. This is an investigative narrative podcast and thus, Laura, relies heavily on presentation of facts and the use of testimonials and interviews to facilitate the comprehension of her narrative by the listener. She connects each episode with the last through continuous dialogues with physicians, patients, and family members who had been directly affected by Dr. Duntsch’s actions.

Each episode has its own theme which is presented in the tittle of the episode and this helps the listener to have an idea of what to expect while moving from episode to episode. The choice of music cuts used for transitions and background support for pieces of the narrative are deliberate and used in a way to convey the emotional weight of the current information being presented in the narrative. For instance, when there is a troubling or sinister underlying tone to the music it is most likely because something of that nature had just be divulged and also when there was hope inspiring information being given to the listener the music fit that situation as well. The music is also used to set up the emotional state of the listener, in certain situations in this podcast, to be more receptive of what is about to come. Laura Beil has an impressive ability to grab the attention of the listener just through the way she speaks as well. When she wants the focus to be placed on a message she is trying to convey, she will add a certain distinct serious inflection on particular words of her narrative to grab the listeners attention and focus it on what she wants them to get out of what she is saying.

Laura didn’t use many analogies, but she did wrap up the series with a pretty good one, I thought. I’m paraphrasing here, but she basically states that “she has heard that when planes crash it is not because one big thing went wrong but many small things went wrong at the same time and that’s why plains don’t crash very often but sometimes they do but still we fly. We board the plane with little worry about getting home and we should feel at least as safe entering a hospital”. Laura used this to show that there are things that can go wrong in a hospital that may be out of our control, but we should not have to worry about a system allowing someone to be there who would intentionally harm us. The whole point of this podcast was to shed light on a troubling reality, that the system we put so much trust in, may in fact, not be as impeccable as we would like to think and was beautifully captured in the decisions made while making this podcast.

Word count: 654