This week I chose to listen to 3 radio drama broadcasts from The Truth. I listened to “Eat Cake,” “Lucy and the Bike Girl,” and “That’s Democracy.”  I have never listened to audio stories other than just audio books where someone is reading verbatim from the text. This was a very interesting experience that I was honestly dreading. I really did not think they would be as intriguing as they were. I felt like I was watching little mini movies without images. It was really entertaining and each story was very unique. I have NEVER heard a story with any of those story lines or anything even close to them. The sound effects in these stories were great! They made the stories so realistic for me.

“Eat Cake” began with an animal sound effect and Eliza making a cake and talking to herself as she baked. At the same time Eliza was narrating her story. It was awesome how these sounds were layered so perfectly. It really reminded me of a novel because there was narration and there was dialogue. I felt that it was the perfect mix of both.

In this story, Eliza has her entire valentine’s day planned out (alone). She is making a cake for herself when a stranger, Brain, calls her to wish her a happy valentine’s day. His tradition is to call random people from the phone book on valentine’s day. At first, Eliza is kind of creeped out  by Brian calling her, but as the call progresses she drops a not so subtle hint that he should meet her at the movies. He resists the invitation, but then shows up anyways. I guess he just could not pass up the coconut cake offer.

This story was kind of like a romantic comedy, it had a funny story line and the 2 characters seem to really hit it off towards the end. Also the music when Brian was making the phone calls added an interesting effect; it reminded me of the same effect as the jeopardy theme song for some reason.  I really like the taxi cab stopping, door closing, and driving away sound effects.

“Lucy and the Bike Girl” begins with the sound of Lucy getting her chest beaten to get the mucus out (it sounds pretty gross.) This story is narrated by an outside narrator, not a character in the story. In the story, Lucy sees and hears the bike girl dressed like Pippi Longstocking everyday. They meet in an online CF chat room through pregnancy posts. Lucy wants to tell the bike girl who she is everyday because she lives right down the street, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t want things to be awkward between them since they know too much about each other. They both end up getting pregnant at the same time but know they could most likely never meet.

As the story is being told, the audio is going back and forth between a narrator and a real interview. I love this, it helps it feel more entertaining! I like how consistent the bike bell is, you hear it all through the story when the bike girl passes.

“That’s Democracy” begins with a very chattering classroom. It sounds very chaotic, I am thinking there must be layers of sound. This story is composed of sound effects and dialogue. The students are being extremely disrespectful to the teacher who is obviously extremely annoyed. The teacher tells the class to put their books away and they are going to have a debate. They class will vote and the loser will die. The teacher pulls out a gun, then the class really began to pay attention. He said he failed to commit suicide that morning. The class is now panicking.

The sound effects made this story feel so realistic. It was like listening to a movie and I could picture what was happening in my mind. When the gun goes off and you can hear the class scurrying all around, I found myself panicking for them. I was almost emotionally involved in a way. The story ends with the teacher saying “That’s Democracy” and killing himself.