Before class tonight I spent about forty-five minutes listening to a segment entitled “In Dog We Trust” from  “This American Life.”

It took some time for me to select a show I wanted to listen to becuase they all had such intreguing titles. (Titles are kind of my weakness; they are the one component of almost any media that pulls me in. Even if I very much don’t have time to listen/read/view something, if the title sounds good I always end up engaging in it. I’m just a sucker for a good title. :/ ) The title of this particular show caught me on two levels: one because it mentioned dogs (which I happen to love more than -nearly- anything on earth) and two because it referenced distinctly American phrase (from our bills). I was thinking this might have to go with the history of dogs in America.

….I was sorta right. This show really talked about how pets play an important part of many Americas’ lives.

The format of the program was that there was a prologue, followed by three acts. Each one had a different topic and a different speaker(s). Even though the program was broken up into different segments, there were still some features which help unite all the topics. The most obvious unifier being the topic of pets. Secondly, the main narrator connected all the stories by introducing them and putting them in the context of where they were recorded and who is speaking. This narrator also interviews the speaker in the second act. Thirdly the music and sound clips that are featured and layered in throughout the program all seem to be from the same (old-timey) period. The songs used (which sounded to me like they were recorded circa 1930s/40s) actually referenced pets and their owners’ feelings toward them. I thought this was a really clever way to pull the stories together. The bumpers didn’t include lyrics, but had the same old (possibly jazzy) sound, which kept with the theme.

I kept having to remind myself of the purpose of the assignment (to listen to the audio techniques being used) because I was getting so into the program itself! By far my favorite segment was “Act One: The Youth in Asia.” This piece was written and orated by David Sedaris and appears in his book “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” This was such a hidden gem because I happen to love Mr. Sedaris (more specifically his book “When You Are Engulfed in Flames”) and I didn’t even know he would be a part of this show! So that was a fantastic little surprise.

The layering of the audio clips were very subtle. In fact, I am sure that I missed most of them. When I did notice, they were soft pieces of music that played under someone talking. Usually they occurred during transitional topics within one act.

I really liked listening to this show and I am definitely gonna keep an ear on this website for new programs. Yay radio!