1. The author promotes the idea that Whole Foods is a lot more complex than it may seem. By using the language “Every time you set foot in a Whole Foods store, you are stepping into one of the most carefully designed consumer experiences on the planet,” the reader recognizes how intricate and subtle designs of stores can be.
2. “Between the first supermarket chains that replaced small-town grocers, and Whole Foods, the special effects have improved but what we inhabit is still recognisably a simulacrum of a Jeffersonian past, not the real thing. To pierce the veil, all you need to do is wander around to the loading docks. The Jeffersonian bazaar is no seamless matrix,” is a great example of why this essay was well received. The reader is told to pull back the curtain, Wizard of Oz style.
3. “For me, the ritual pilgrimage into the heartland is an opportunity to reconnect not with the bare-metal cloud in the abstract, but with a thousand particular clouds, each with its own visible motif. Sometimes we can name the motifs that attract our unsupervised attention: pylon, container, landfill ventilation pipe, big tire. Other times, we can only pause and remark to ourselves: ‘That’s an interesting-looking widget. I wonder what it’s for?’” This paragraph reminds me of Consider the Lobster where the author arrives at a strange conclusion, not one that we were taught to reach when writing in high school.

I believe this essay was included because of its sort of “lets look deeper into things that we don’t want to.” It pulls back the curtain on topics we try not to think too much about (meat industries, coal industries, etc.).

Wallace introduces the event while teasing that there is something deeper going on then just an event where people can come and eat food. The reader is already intrigued, “how could a lobster eating festival be ‘more that just that?'” Wallace then provides information about what lobsters and the benefits of lobster when compared to other seafood or meats. He then discusses the history behind lobster eating and how it was for the poor due to their abundance. That is a polar opposite to the sentiment around lobster today where it is considered a posh cuisine, similar to that of caviar. Wallace continues, eventually reaching a point in which he delivers context on how lobster is a seasonal food. In doing so, he goes through the various ways to cook lobster. This is when things turn from being about a festival he attended to him asking the readers about the morality of boiling a living being alive just so that we can enjoy it. He compares the festival to that of a Roman circus or Medieval torture event. Wallace begins his piece simply talking about an event he attended and eventually reaches a place that delves deeper than simply discussing what he is seeing, smelling, or tasting. It could even come as a shock to certain readers. He goes from explaining how to cook lobster to asking if we should we even be cooking lobster in the first place. Wallace turns this ordinary experience into a captivating essay by delving deeper, not examining the event on a surface level, but rather to the core of its existence before asking about the morality of the situation as a whole. Readers knew that Wallace would bring something “more” to the piece since he said he would right at the top of the page. But when he actually did, the reader begins to think deeper about events like a lobster eating festival and other things similar to it. The piece does not come off as one that will bring morality into question. It seems like an assignment Wallace was given in which he would have to go to the festival and give it a review. To ask a question that delves deeper than simply reporting on how a festival turned out makes for a compelling essay. Royte’s work is similar; readers are fooled into thinking that the essay will be about one thing when they are presented pretty pictures of a forest but they then are presented with used condoms all over their screen. Wallace surprises his readers in the same way.

Ref, You Suck – Nik

The podcast opens with the host walking around, describing his surroundings as a place with no greenery, a few chain motels, and what he calls “someone’s idea of a mall” in Secaucus, New Jersey. The host then peaks the listeners interest by saying he has a hunch involving a “crisis we find ourselves in.” The host does not say what the crisis is right away, teasing the listener. The host then reveals what he’s doing in the city neighboring New York City: he’s visiting the NBA’s replay center, a place where referees watch replays and relay the proper call back to the referees at the actual game. Still, one minute into the podcast and the listener still doesn’t know what this particular episode is about or how the host will spend the next 39 minutes of the episode. After a quick music break the host introduces himself as Michael Lewis. As he’s about to explain what the show is about Lewis interrupts himself and says “give me just a minute to get to that.” The listener has likely become eager to hear what the show and particular episode is about to the point that Lewis has them locked in. He’s done a good job of teasing the point of the show by giving description where he is and telling the audience that there is a crisis. By not telling the audience what the crisis is, they’re more likely to keep listening. Lewis then taps into audiences knowledge of the NBA by playing various clips of player feuds with referees. By doing this, the listeners can get excited because they know the players being mentioned and some may even know the particular encounters that are being sampled into the podcast. 

Heartbreak – Gigi

The first thing you hear is an add for stubhub, which would normally be annoying (cmon everyone hates commercials), but they use this as a pretty smooth segway into what they’ll be talking about: pop music. The hosts, Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding begin by talking nostalgically about past relationships and heartbreaks and how music can even now bring them back to that time. The two men discuss both the literal music (major and minor chords, rhythm, etc.) as well as the feeling these iconic pop heartbreak songs evoke. They keep their audience interested, they discuss three songs from different subgenres of pop so there’s something for everyone to enjoy. However, Sloan and Harding talked mostly about the technicalities of the songs without really relating it back to their personal experiences which doesn’t really help to keep the audience who aren’t musical experts enthralled. Their saving grace is that everyone has experienced heartbreak or at least heartache and is able to relate to the feelings discussed in this episode of Switched on Pop.

Response – Nik

That’s interesting, my podcast focused more something less educational, moreso entertainment based. It’s cool to see people have various podcasts that can be informative but be focused on something educational or not. 

Welcome to Millenial – Hannah

Megan Tan, the host of “Welcome to Millenial” sets the stage of her podcast as being a heartfelt throwback of the times she used to go school supply shopping. She tunes in to a phone call with her mother as she describes her daughter Tan as “practically being born on the first day of school.” Pomp and Circumstance plays in the background as she recalls getting her college diploma. Although what is known as typically a cheerful song, Tan says she felt the pressure of not knowing what she would be doing with her life hit her hard at that moment. “The thing no one teaches you how to be a millenial and really navigate your twenties.” Podcast includes funny news clips about the horrors of millenials. Includes sound bytes of her conversations with friends, family, driving back home, etc. It all leads up to a climactic ending where the promise of her moving back home to re-evaluate her millennial lifestyle comes to a crashing halt due to her mother moving out and leaving Tan with a disheveled home and single father. Similar to the “Ref You Suck” post, the listener also does not know necessarily what this episode will be about as they listen for the first few minutes. Both podcasts use teasers to pull in their audience members. It is an effective way to keep people listening and willing to tune back in for more episodes.  

The Alibi – Kapri

The podcast opens with a recording of a phone call, setting a very mysterious scene for the rest of the recording. I think it’s interesting that, similar to “Welcome to Millennial,” Sarah Koenig, host of The Alibi, starts talking about high school as well. However, hers is a less happy story. It involves the murder of a teenager, Hae Min Lee, and what she was doing for 21 minutes after school when she was supposed to be picking up her cousin. She goes into the basic ideas that immediately come to mind of what a high school senior could be doing after school and who she might have been with. Essentially the podcast goes through the stages of asking questions and finding possible answers, with the reminder that our host is not technically an investigator. She also incorporated a bit of humor at the beginning. She wanted to make a point about the fact that this case was in 1999, before everyone was texting and on social media 24/7, and that the teenager she was trying to find an alibi for, Adnan Syed, wasn’t questioned until 6 weeks after Hae went missing. To prove how hard it is to remember exactly what you did 6 weeks ago without digital reminders, the host questioned a few teenagers and their answers were often that they couldn’t even remember if they’d gone to school or had a skip day. The podcast gives exact facts about the murder case and tells it in a story-like manner, not just as a presentation of facts, and it came with a twist. It wasn’t just an unfinished case with the possibility of the wrong man being arrested. There was reason to believe that the lawyer who had presented Adnan had botched the case purposefully to get more money. The interviews that followed told several opposing stories and the case was never truly resolved.

Response – Kapri

I enjoyed how Gigi looked at how the Heartbreak podcast is able to pull everyone in with their experiences and the mutual feeling of heartbreak and heartache. While my podcast was very different, the host of The Alibi was also able to pull in her audience through a similar story-telling method.

The article advises new journalists to find their niche, to find a particular pocket in which they can be confident in their information rather than be all-encompassing. This absolutely applies to our project as the goal is for each member to research a particular topic and then present it on the podcast, as well as write an article about it. We delve further still as we even assign particular kinds of research to different members. I, for example, am doing travel. I have also been assigned to collect statistical data while the other three members of the group have split up archival research, interviews, and scholarly research. With our projects, it is up to each member to know more than the others about whatever their topic is. That way when we record our podcast they can lead the discussion during the segment involving their topic. Having different people in the group more informed than others about various topics creates an organized discussion in which they present information and then the others discuss it. As well, having different members cover different kinds of research makes for a more cohesive project. Utilizing various research shows a diverse type of data as well as keeping the research presented to the audience fresh, they won’t be bogged down by statistics or interview after interview. Speaking of interviews, they aren’t enough for that exact reason. An interview is not all-encompassing, it does not present information in a way that can be satisfactory when working on a large project such as this one. It is one thing to interview someone either based on their experiences or if that is their field, etc. It is another to show data presented in scholarly sources or statistics from a travel website. Keeping the types of research varying is both interesting and more effectively informative.

The best question Marc asks Terry was when he asks her if she has ever asked someone she is interviewing a question for herself, something she needed an answer for. Not for the article, not for her bosses, but herself. That is an interesting question because it shifts the focus of the interview into more of a conversation between two people as almost more of a therapeutic thing than as something someone is doing for a job. The most interesting thing Terry asks Marc is when she asks him if he ever “goes places” with the people he interviews that he doesn’t with his friends. This question poses an interesting idea that an interview can be a candid thing that can sometimes be deeper than conversations with friends. An interview can be something that asks deep questions and wants even deeper answers.

This podcast presented information by speaking with people who went through this crisis while also giving adequate context and sources around it. The majority of the podcast is spent communicating with others, specifically those who either bought houses or who were selling mortgages. The difference between this podcast and the Fast Fashion one is that the Fast Fashion podcast was entirely based on the conversation between two people who had a casual conversation on a given topic, providing some research from internet sources. The Giant Pool of Money podcast operates much more like a news report while the Fast Fashion podcast is more like a dialogue between two people. This podcast presents research to listeners in what can be considered a simple format, a concept is presented and then a person who went through the concept is interviewed, providing context to what was previously presented, hopefully generating an understanding with listeners as they receive a real-world example. The Fast Fashion podcast did not include interviews but rather research through online magazines and other publications that the two speakers on the podcast presented to the audience.

1. After speaking with former chef intern, Kline was out of leads but managed to find another clue through an ambiguous message from an online message board from 1998. After meeting chef Renee at the pizza place in Phoenix, he doesn’t actually remember much of what led Kline to him and to Phoenix. However, he was still determined to help her and Kline managed to pivot by simply learning more about Hans. Kline went to a chef meeting expecting Hans to be there. But it turns out that he wasn’t. However, Kline asked the chefs there if they had any leads as to where Hans was.
2. When speaking with Donna, Kline learned about seeing the horizon properly. If Kline hadn’t pursued this mystery, she would not have learned about this unrelated subject. . Kline also got a primary source from the immigration of European chefs in the 1950s and 1960s. During the chef meeting, Kline also got plenty of knowledge about the prominent chefs at the meeting.

The article, titled How Depression-Era Women Made Dresses Out of Chicken Feed, relies mostly on images for their research. However, there are a few quotes laced in as well. The images come from reputable, public sources like the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Museum of National History. The quotes come from sources at magazines as well as one individual in Kendra Brandes. The methodology behind the writer’s implementation of the sources is to display real life examples from the time period (the Great Depression) to show how women of that time used feed sacks to make clothes. To do this, the writer shows photos from our government’s records. With the podcast, titled The Cost of Fast Fashion, the research is being presented to the audience with spoken voices. Rather than reading information on a screen, audiences can almost simulate being in a conversation, changing the way in which they are receiving information. Hearing two people having a relatively relaxed conversation, speaking as friends, changes the dynamic in which the audience retains information. The sources are presented in a way that is similar to a conversation that members of the audience would have with their friends. The two forms of media (print and audio) shown for this assignment present research in a different way. The podcast presents research/information in atypical fashion (a pun :D) when compared to traditional forms of information distribution. This modern form encourages dialogue rather than having sources, opinions, and information simply being handed to the audience. The article uses images as the bulk of their research in order for the writer’s point to be made.

In Adam Ruins the Suburbs, Adam Conover spends 24-or-so minutes dispelling common beliefs about life in the suburbs. In the eight minute to 12 minute section, Conover mostly speaks to the topics of health and environment. Specifically, he cites various sources in stating that those who live in the suburbs typically endure more stress, struggle with obesity, and even divorce at a higher rate. Conover even cites a Swedish source that says that those who live 31-or-more miles away from work die at a more frequent rate. Conover continues by bringing up the environment and that those who live in the suburbs actually end up polluting more than those who live in cities with a carbon footprint up to four times the size of city-dwellers. Conover punctures these myths by citing specific sources. He does not delve into the specifics of the research in the video, rather he communicates with the “suburban dad” character which in turn gives the audience a visual representation of the information. The method that Conover uses to puncture these myths is effective because commonly held assumptions of life in the suburbs get shot down one-by-one in rapid-fire succession. As the suburban dad gives a reason he believes the suburbs to be good for the environment, his family, etc. Conover shoots it down with statistics and research. The suburban dad then gives another reason he likes the suburbs, only to be shot down again. This rapid-fire research communicates to the audience that there is plenty to not like about the suburbs. There could even be the implication that there is nothing to like about the suburbs at all. Humor plays into this form of writing with pure goofiness, making the visual attractive for viewers. One concept that I did not know before was that there are cities that have to implement programs just so that suburbs can pay for their infrastructure. Conover places tags at the top of the screen that cites a source while delivering a cartoon of a city “floating” money to a suburb.

McSweeney’s essays, Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and College Writing Assignments with Real-World Applications, use deprecating humor towards newer generations and their use of technology as a means of communication. The essays are styled as information for made-up courses for “internet-age” writers while the essays actually serve as a critique of the members of society, assumably younger people, who are shying away from print and in-turn are embracing social media and the trends that come with it. The essays’ humor serve as a way to expose those who have fallen into, or were even born in, the deep, dark pit of social media that is filled with societal expectations, weird or even dangerous trends, a desire to be noticed or go viral, and self-absorption. The first essay spends time belittling text-talk such as “LOL,” etc. as well as commenting on how invasive social media can be with the sentence, “Students will be encouraged to show honesty and vulnerability in their tweets: ‘Lydia is lounging about in her underwear at 401 Park Street apartment #2, feeling guilty about telling her boss that her uncle died but enjoying the day off.'” While the essay is humorous, it does bring up serious issues such as how people’s information, private or otherwise, is readily available and never all that hidden. The essays are making the points that there is a growing abandonment of print and traditional literature. However, they express this point by creating criteria for made-up classes in which students learn how to tweet, abandon proper grammar, etc. Although exaggerated, the essays do bring up relevant points about educating the public on proper ways of communicating in the internet-age. The essays are filled with sarcasm, humor, and stereotypes that should not be followed but they do bring up valid points about people exposing too much information about themselves, losing competency in grammar and writing mechanics, and getting lost in self-absorption. There is something to be said about the growing, negative trends of the internet-age and it is not a ridiculous idea for there to be education on how to properly conduct oneself on social media in order to stay safe and respectful. Technology isn’t going anywhere, all that can be done on an academic level is to evolve and educate.