Today I listened to a RadioLab podcast. The episode name was Afterlife, where they discussed and asked questions about what happens once you die, a question man has always wondered since the beginning of times.

One thing I noticed was that they almost always had some sort of tune playing in the background during their talks, there was rarely a whole 5 minutes where there was just the hosts talking without background sounds or music. Another thing I noticed was the high use of sound effects to sort of create an image in your head of what’s going on. Some of the parts were also a bit depressing and dramatic, not only cause of the topic of afterlife, but because of the sounds and music they included along with the story. That just showed the power of adding sound effects and tunes in the background, it dramatizes the whole story two fold. Finally, I noticed how they had little cut off breaks where they included sponsor messages or bumpers. Overall, audio techniques made the whole episode sound more dramatic and just added more color to the piece than if it were just the hosts talking to one another. I enjoyed this particular episode since afterlife is something that I question a lot as well.

Episode Link:

http://www.radiolab.org/2009/jul/27/