This week for my composition class, we had to listen to the
introduction of an episode from the podcast, This American Life. To start
off, I am very familiar with This
American Life, it is the podcast that created my favorite podcast, Serial.
(Shout out to Sarah Koenig, I <3 you) For the assignment I only had
to listen to the first six minutes, which was not bad at all. The episode is titled "Call For Help" and is about a family who sails
across the world on their boat, but needs to be rescued. The family is rescued and people freak out
because it’s not traditional to sail your kids around the world.
The purpose of the introduction of the show is to give
readers a short summary on what they are about to listen to. It also gave background to story, like the
actual story about the whole rescue. It also tries to get listeners into to episode.
The episode is an hour long, so listeners want to make sure they won’t waste an
hour of their time.
The audience that This
American Life wants to reach is Generation Y, or the Millenniums. People
who are currently in their late twenties or early thirties. People who listen to This American Life probably live in big cities like New York,
Chicago, or LA. Most likely, the listeners
of this show are defiantly your stereotypical hipsters who drink craft beer and
hate everything mainstream.
The tone that the introduction takes part varies. At first,
it has a “Why is this even being talked about?” tone from the host Ira
Glass. Glass makes it known from the
start that the story was hyped up. He
then plays the clips from the media, who sound shocked and angry at the
parents. Everybody only cares about the children, not the parents. Also, This American Life tends to make their
podcasts sound eerie with their background music.
-- Courtney Daigle
