For this assignment I listened to Radiolab’s talk entitled the “Death Mask.”

Listen here:  Radiolab’s Death Mask

This was an interesting talk, especially since I do not normally listen to radio shows, but I loved this and maybe I will start . The story goes like this, there was a toy maker whose son had drowned and when the toy maker found him, he was able to revive his son by shaking him. This was before the idea of CRP and mouth to mouth. Well at the same time a man who was trying to develop the idea of CRP and mouth to mouth heard about the incident of the toy maker’s son downing and being revived. This man contacted the toy maker and asked him if he could create a model that could be used to practice CPR and mouth to mouth on. The toy maker accepted and decided to make a dummy, the hard part came when he was trying to figure out what to make the face look like. He decided on a woman because he thought people would be less shy blowing in the mouth of a woman rather than a man. Well one day the toy make discovered the face of a mask and fell instantly in love with it. He decided that would be the face of the CPR dummy. Problem was no one knew who the beautiful face belonged to. This is how that story goes. A 20-something girl came to Paris. She fell in love and things were going great until they weren’t anymore. The man left her. Some say she was pregnant and others say she wasn’t, but either way she was so upset about it that she threw herself off of a bridge. She ended up drowning. When pulled out of the water and taken to the police station to so people could identify her, no one did. The morgue worker made a clay mask of her face because it was so beautiful. Somehow it ended up being sold on the streets of Paris and then ended up in the family house of the toy maker.
So after deciding that was the face to use for the dummy, the toy maker created the dummies to practice CPR.  (Fun fact from show: Made in the 1960’s, 300,000,000 people were trained on the dummies with the beautiful face of the unidentified woman.) The mysterious face still has a place on some dummies today. She became famous, there were even poems written about her.  However to end, it should be mentioned that the story of the mysterious lady may not be true.  Reason being, the same death mask (face of the beautiful lady) was found in Liverpool, with a similar yet different story, this story was about a twin who was identified.  The mystery lives on.  Believe the story or not, it’s up to you, but you should definitely listen to this radio story (link to the show is above).

This was so cool to listen to, not only for this crazy story but also because I paid more attention to what goes on during a radio show.

So on to audio techniques, I noticed a bunch of different techniques occurring. To start they had an opening for their show that introduces Radiolab. It was different people speakings pieced together, to get this one introduction. Then the radio broadcasters introduced themselves. They gave background on CPR before telling the story. There was snippets from interviews in the broadcasts which was neat to hear. There was music occasionally in the background playing, which went along with what they were talking about at the time. For example, there was like a sad suspenseful type of music when they talked about the lady throwing herself off of the bridge. Questions were asked and answered. Also, there were people from Paris visiting the death mask shop and they were describing what they saw and some of the masks, while the broadcasters were talking about them as well.  Sometimes the people from Paris were the only ones talking while other times they were in the background talking while the broadcasters were the main talkers. Also this show had different people read different parts of a poem written about this beautiful face. Maybe to give a dramatic effect, whatever the reason it just worked and made the show that much better. They included sound effects. For example, they talked about how you had to climb wooden stairs to get to the area with the masks and while they were talking you could hear what sounded like someone climbing the stairs. When they talked about the lady jumping off of the bridge, you could hear the splash of water. To end, the broadcasters thanked their readers and interviewees. Then a Radiolab listener called in and talked about who supported the radio show, she gave information and a number to reach the sponsor if you wanted more information. The broadcasters thanked the listeners and then gave ways for the listeners to follow them via Radiolab.org, Twitter or Facebook. It took all of this to make a cohesive, great radio show. Now time to go incorporate some of what I found into my own radio show!