Stylistic and Research Techniques from “Space”

2 stylistic elements:

• Audio inserts of recognizable voices (like Tyson) that use certain ear-catching techniques (speck, speck, speck).
  • The audio inserts of what the people were talking about, such as Mozart’s music when they were talking about his music. Also, the audio inserts in the beginning, with Tyson and Sagan, added another layer to the podcast, as listeners get a glimpse of the voice of the person who will be discussed or who will talk later. 
    • We might be able to insert audio clips from well-known ghost hunters or even the ghostbusters movie, though I’m not an expert of copyrights so maybe not. 
  • They also use sounds in reference to what they’re talking about, like when they talk about death at one point they play a clip of a man screaming, which is something we might be able to do with ghost stories. 
    • This was a good idea, as we could insert creepy sounds, like wind howling or the “ooooooo” sound that is stereotypical of ghosts while telling a ghost story from Arcadia’s legends. 
• The use of creating a narrative and appealing to pathos to connect the audience to the content. 
  • For instance, the audio clip of Gandhi and how it relates to the Salt March was told through a narrative. The man told listeners about what happened and included his own experience reacting to the picture and the clip of Gandhi, as well as how the people who participated in that march felt in response to a government tax. 
    • It’s important to make people care by appealing to pathos. The podcast kept me interested through these personal narratives, whether it was about someone else or a personal story, like Ann Druyan’s experiences with Sagan. Ghost stories are present in every culture and there are certain stories from Arcadia’s history that involve children that we could play on people’s emotions with to connect them to the content. 

2 research elements:

• Interview of Ann Druyan 
  • This interview really supplemented the overall podcast episode for many reasons. She had first-hand experience of interacting with Sagan and she had influence over some things that they were talking about in the episode. 
    • We could interview a student at Arcadia to supplement our podcast. 
• Discussion of star Zeta star 
  • One of the hosts mentioned that he looked stuff up to find out the distance between spaces and the time it would take to travel there. They did not state the sources they looked at to give those numbers, but they do say that they did research to talk about that scenario. 
  • They also talk to a professor at Columbia who studies physics and mathematics and had certain specialties relating to knowledge regarding the neverending space of the universe. 
  • Neil Tyson also gave historical context of the heliocentric theory Copernicus presented which was revolutionary. 
    • We have plenty of historical context that we can insert in the podcast episode to give background information on the topic we are discussing.