Airtime

I have always enjoyed listening to the radio. I grew up with parents who frequently tuned in to the BBC and NPR on long car drives and in the evenings at home. Living overseas for most of my life--where television channels are sparse and broadband internet is not always available--the radio was one of the more reliable sources of news, entertainment and the latest in popular music. For today's radio-less radio-lover, podcasts are the next best thing. Subscribe to your favorite radio programs on iTunes and then download to your iPod or iPhone--for free! It's essentially audio TiVo.

I think analyzing and creating podcasts will be more fun (at least for me) than reading a multitude of blogs and websites every week. In some way, as a listener--or viewer for those who watch videocasts--podcasts allow for more interaction because you have to work harder to understand the narration or storyline and come up with images yourself. Also, I spend so much time perusing the internet on a daily basis that it will be nice to have an excuse to tune in to This American Life more often.

Host Ira Glass always adds a fresh twist to stories of everyday life. He begins each episode by summarizing the main themes and arguments that will be covered over multiple acts, by different narrators, telling different tales. His tone is always conversational, with frequent deliberate pauses and pacing based on the content of the episode. Glass emphasizes certain words or phrases, as you would in a conversation, in order to inject a variety of tones and emotions into his narration. The language used in all of the stories is simple and easy to follow, which brings the listener further into the story.

The argument of "Plan B" is that people change their life plans, or are changed by their life plans. No one follows one route through life. Plan B is a great collection of "5 Acts" that tell the story of people whose lives turned out differently than they had expected. Glass immediately catches the listener's attention by asking a crowd what life plan they are on, "c, d, f...?" Each story deals with a different version of Plan B. A recent college graduate faced with unemployment puts his Ivy League education to use as a "party catalyst." A woman and her co-worker share their life stories through cassette tapes. A failed real estate mogul tries to re-invigorate his business by kidnapping. A telemarketer realizes how good he is at selling newspapers over the phone. Inanimate objects like blue jeans and pill bottles have a second life.

The writers/narrators of each story do a great job of building the action piece by piece so as not to give the listener all the information right away, much as a successful text would do. Listening to the radio can be difficult because you are trying to comprehend oral commentary without a visual image or physical speaker to watch. However, there is a freedom in radio-listening to imagine the scene in anyway you choose. In "Act Three: Kidnapping as Plan B," Glass and Barry Keenan, the kidnapper, provide many precise details to set the scene, but the listener is free to envision the action and characters as they wish.

I appreciated the circularity of the five stories. From the youth-filled "It's Another Tequila Sunrise" to the last descriptions of various objects in "The Accursed Items," each story provides a Plan B for listeners of various ages. The connection between the stories is strengthened by the music that plays in the background throughout most of the episode. However, each story has been assigned a unique song to help tell that specific story, so that the individuality of each "act" is not lost.

Image: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/cbu/lowres/cbun44l.jpg