Storytelling in Podcasts

I got hooked on Serial 1 (the crime story of the murder of Hae Min Lee). I skipped the second season and then doubled down on my love for Serial 3 (S-Town). I loved the artwork of the site, the topic of clocks and a man's struggles living in a small town. I even wrote a poem about it.

I've been thinking this last week about why I loved those podcasts. And I think it was all the great sound effects added in so you could really imagine the stories. Like novels, podcasts depend mostly on words and insist that you create visuals entirely with your imagination. It's always shocking later to Google pictures of the real people and modify your imagined versions of them. 

The Serial writers also piece-apart their stories well, segmenting them into different points of view and angles of meaning. Both stories illustrate the difficulty of digging out truths from tragedies. 

My Dad and I are always having philosophical arguments about technology and modern life over the phone. I live in Albuquerque and he lives in Cleveland. I usually put him on speaker phone so I can hear him better. One day my husband confided that he listens along and that we should have been recording podcasts of our conversations all this time. This is a strange idea to me. But someday I'll wish I had done it. Family story podcast might be very helpful for tracking our histories. Who cares if the audience right now is just your family. 

Two people talking is another type of podcast I enjoy, especially etymology podcasts like Way with Words and the older episodes of Lexicon Valley with Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo. But those aren't really stories outside of the longest story of our culture: the way language evolves. Those types seem easier to produce though. Story podcasts seem to require more effort and ambiance of sound.