I listened to “Kid Politics” on This American Life. It showed several different social experiments that a group of children were apart of. In the first, students were made to reenact the political decisions of Reagan’s decision to invade Grenada, in which they would decide whether or not they would make the same decisions as Reagan. In Act II, they discuss whether climate change should be taught in schools, and whether both sides should be discussed. In Act III they conducted another experiment. The students were given the authority to run the school. It was interesting to see how the children decided on certain issues. Act I was the most interesting to me because it showed how teachers force students to believe everything that’s in their history books and take everything face value. It really made think of my perspective on education.

I did take notice to the audio used during the show. The most effective use of audio, in my opinion, was the overlaying of sounds. During the first experiment, the students got very rowdy when condemning the press for leaking top secret information. The show overlaid the voice of the speaker with the arguing children in the background. The narration and the actual sound of the classroom helped to understand the experiment.  I also noticed the transition music that was used in between acts and at the end of the show. They were effective in switching from one topic to the next.