{"id":547,"date":"2019-11-18T21:13:04","date_gmt":"2019-11-19T05:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/?p=547"},"modified":"2020-10-10T17:19:34","modified_gmt":"2020-10-11T00:19:34","slug":"cults-of-our-lives-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/2019\/11\/18\/cults-of-our-lives-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Cults of Our Lives: Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For this blog post, I listened to the next few episodes of the podcast Cults of Our Lives. <\/em>Although it was only a few episodes later, there were already lots of drastic differences I noticed, both good and bad. Despite these differences, the format stayed relatively the same and helped hosts Halle and Stasie strategically dive deeper into the craziness behind cults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One change was that Halle and Stasie no longer evenly split the narration as they had in the past. Halle re-counted almost all of the overview segment while Stasie interjected only slightly with side comments and facts. This is how most of the podcast continued, with Halle doing most, if not all, of the work. Although it made the podcast a little less interesting, as it was now just one person speaking instead of a two-person discussion, it also made it seem more casual. You could tell the two narrators had not discussed what the other was going to say beforehand and had each done their own research. This became evident when at one point, Halle mentioned an obscure fact about one of the cults and Stasie seems incredibly shocked and obviously had not heard this before. So, although this new dynamic took away from the engagement aspect of the podcast, it ultimately added to the casual tone of it all as they no longer seemed to be as concerned in making sure their narration was perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Halle and Stasie over time became comfortable enough to share their own political viewpoints with the audience. I was already shocked about their willingness to voice their personal beliefs online and was even more surprised when I realized that this was going to be an ongoing theme for them. In these next few episodes they said things such as, \u201c\u2026just like when people vote for a third party because they think it doesn\u2019t matter, but it does, vote, and vote for Hillary Clinton!\u201d and other sly remarks about Trump\u2019s heavy support from North Korea. Like I mentioned before, once Halle and Stasie had come to the realization of how small their following was, they felt that there was no reason for them to be scared of the backlash that comes from saying the wrong thing. I personally think this was a little too risky as they might have lost some viewers who did not agree with these statements. While I appreciate their openness, it seemed inappropriate and out of place overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halle and Stasie have also created a Facebook group as well as a Cults of our Lives <\/em>email for people to send them the names of cults they want to see discussed in the future as well as any criticism and other comments they may have. They mentioned this at the end of each of their podcast during the outro, but they also commented on something else during the end of one of their episodes. Halle and Stasie told their listeners that if they hadn\u2019t tuned in to all of their previous podcasts, to go back and listen to all of them except for their very first episode. They said that at the time of filming they were, \u201cjust young kids who didn\u2019t know what they were doing\u201d and that \u201cit was terrible\u201d. During my first blog post, I had mentioned that I didn\u2019t particularly enjoy it because, although they had a good layout and organization, it was too scripted and very boring to listen to. I enjoyed how even though they had only recorded a few more episodes, they had already realized that they had improved tremendously and didn\u2019t want their audience to have to endure a podcast that they were not particularly proud of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout making these blog posts, I have started to enjoy listening to Halle and Stasie attempt to explain the confusing but addictively fascinating lives of cult members. Although the podcast itself has not changed much from their original idea, they have grown so much as narrators and editors. These episodes captivate their audience and you can\u2019t help but to pay sole attention to their voices. It is easy to say that I will be continuing to listen to this podcast and cannot wait to see what they have planned for upcoming episodes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Word Count: 716<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this blog post, I listened to the next few episodes of the podcast Cults of Our Lives. Although it was only a few episodes later, there were already lots of drastic differences I noticed, both good…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-engl200c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mattpoland.net\/sherlockpod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}