Humpty Dumpty Mix

Music: A Short Affair by Tom Fahy

The Future, What's Yours

The "R" Word

On this project, I will be working with Brailey. We decided to do our project on interracial relationships in today's society. In addition to interviewing each other on our experiences, we will also be interviewing Lilly, who has been in an interracial relationship as well. We be talking about the responses of others to the relationship and the differences of ideas and customs we were exposed to while dating the person. The main conflict of the story is a combination of person vs. person and person vs. society; the levels of acceptance of interracial relationships in different settings, and the cultural gap between two people. We plan to use the sound of people whispering to portray the judgement in society, which we can collect rather easily in class or in our dorm room.

Storycorps Podcast

Storycorps Podcast: "Most of my interaction with people was the worst moment of their life"

      Mark Edens is telling his daughter Jessie about the part he plays in his career as a policeman. He tells her about a time where he had to break the bad news. There was a head on car collision where a man died. He knew the man which made it even worse. The man's wife thought he was out bowling this whole time. He went to their house that night and had to wake her up to tell her that unfortunately, her husband was killed in a car crash. His conflict was that he had to be the one to tell her this. Most people would tell them and run because they are too afraid and feel too bad about the situation. He felt as though he had to stay because it was the right thing to do. 

The conflict that was present in the story was a person vs. person because he had to deal with inner conflict, whether or not he was going to tell her about her husband right away and how he was going to say it. There could also be person vs. person because he had to tell her and deal with the outcome. He was having a conflict with another person.

"Vox Pop"

Vox Pop: I am stuck between a few Vox Pop audio interview questions...

~Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
          This can vary from person to person. Everybody has different dreams and goals. I think it would interesting to learn about other peoples desires and thoughts about the future.

~What is the best part about being in college?
          You wonder why people go to college. Is it just for the education or are there others reasons as to why they go? It would be interesting to learn of the different reasons why certain parts of college are better than others.

Getting Away With It

Ep. 477 - Getting Away With It - 10.19.12

     The main theme in this podcast is about doing something and not getting caught. It is about sneaking your way through something for either yourself or others. They tell the stories of their stealth acts.
     They start of in the prologue by telling the story of the airplane. He has a travel gadget that stops the seat in front of him from reclining. He was explaining how he felt like a "dick" for disabling the seat in front of him, but even more for using the courtesy card. The person in front of him knew what he was doing, but it was a time that he got away with it.

Act 1: Take Your Kid to Work Day: This is the story of a middle school boy and his family. His family was losing money quickly and by the time he reached his middle schools years, they were wiped clean. Nothing. They need money. One day, he is sitting in school and he gets pulled out of class. He leaves school with his mom and they are on their way to be the lookout for their dad. He tells his story from the passenger seat. His dad is trying to make money by selling weed. He watches his dad and his brother Dan do this. His dad and his father keep going. He and his mom go back to Brownsville and he falls asleep.

Act 2: Get Away With it After the Beep: This is a listener call-in. They are stories of listeners that got away with it.

Act 3: Crime and Tutus: Molly Shannon, a comedian, tells the story of how her and her friend snuck on an airplane from Cleveland, Ohio to New York City. They were 12 years old and wearing tutus.

Act 4: Pre K-O: Producer Alex Blumberg tells his story about how he had come to have the best publicly known pre-school system in the country. Oklahoma is very conservative. It was about the expansion of education through public pre-school. A conservative place like this would never do such a thing. It was about sneaking it in. The people voting on this most likely did not know they were even voting on this. They discovered a loop hole.


Crime and Tutus
     I thought the most interesting act was the one about the plane and the two kids. It was engaging because it was funny and she sounded like she was having fun just by telling the story. The central conflict was the fact that they snuck onto a plane and they got to the city, but then they didn't have enough money for anything and they didn't have a place to stay. Their dad told them to just sneak onto another plane home but they were all full. None of the hotels wanted to take responsibility for the two young girls so their dad had to pay for them to get back. It was interesting because the characters are so young and these days, that would NEVER happen. Airports are very strict and this one was laid back because of the time period. The story was not boring and it kept going. It had a nice flow to it. There was always more to the story.

Malcolm Gladwell's Approach on Snap Judgments

Name: Big Ideas (Video) on iTunes

Title: Malcolm Gladwell on his best-selling book Blink-2005

Host: University of Toronto

This was independently hosted by the University of Toronto in 2005. Malcolm Gladwell was delivering a speech to an audience at the university about The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

    This Podcast was based off of Malcolm Gladwell's best-seller, Blink. He talks about how people make snap judgments so naturally. During this podcast, he gives several examples of how people make snap judgments, including one about auditions back in the day when women were not given a fair chance. He explains this in four lessons. 

    In lesson one, he says that we make these complicated, problematic, and counter-intuitive snap judgments. He says that in an audition, the judge, which in his story was the maestro, made judgments automatically. Some will say that it takes them 10 seconds to make a judgments, others will say it takes them 5 seconds, and some will say that even before the person speaks, they will make a judgment solely on what that person looks like or what they are wearing. It is a first impression based thing, kind of like love at first sight. Making judgments are a central part of how we make sense of the world and how we think. We make them automatically. They are decisions "made like that". 

    In lesson two, he talks about how women's auditions may have not been fairly judged. The maestro's judgment was clouded by sexism. Our snap judgments are corrupted by forces outside of our awareness. We may not even know why we are making these judgments to begin with. They are coming from a force within us. The hard part is that we make them with certainty that they are truthful and correct. We are making these from prior knowledge and therefore making these accusations or judgments. 

    In lesson three, he tells us the story of the screen. In the audition, they did not want any bias. Someone may be the son or the nephew of the judge and they didn't want them to be chosen because they knew somebody. They only wanted the best of the best. They put a screen in front of the people auditioning so they could only use their auditory information. It is harder for a bias approach when you have that visual aspect taken away from you because that is usually the first thing that you use to judge somebody with. Appearance is important. Visual Information takes up 80-85% of our judgment. Snap judgments are less likely to happen when out information is simplified and clarified, when we only have certain things to focus on. This helps us to become better decision makers. The screen hid the musician playing that beautiful music. Moral of the story...that musician was a woman and she got the part, because she was the best. 

    In lesson four, Gladwell explains that changing the context in the situation can help to make a better decision. Without the screen, that woman may not have even gotten the chance to audition. They would have made a snap judgment because she was a woman and would not have even considered her. They can be horrible and lead to a jump in conclusions. When you are in a certain situation, you can make a snap judgment based on your current state of mind and it can be destructive. This mistake is commonly  made with cops. They see the perpetrator reach into their pocket and assume they are pulling out a gun, when they were really trying to pull out their ID or a phone...and they shoot an innocent person.

    It is all about making the right decision and not getting ahead of yourself. 

• This fits perfectly into its category. It is a typical podcast for its genre. Most or all are done by professors or professionals in their field. It has an obvious educational aspect to it because it is informative and done in the University of Toronto. 

• The quality was clear. Everything was easily understandable and easy to follow. It was engaging for the people in the audience. I could tell because they were laughing at his jokes and clearly paying close attention. It was engaging to me because Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite author. He kept them engaged with story telling. He wanted them to be a part of his speech by involving them. It sounded very professional, but at the same time, it had a relaxed element to it which was inviting for the audience. I did not notice any technical mistakes if there were any. 

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