I listened to the documentary on infant mortality. I found the information surrounding mortality rates very sad and multi faceted. As an audio piece it was interesting because the information was interesting but also because there were many different textures and transitions. I really like how sometimes there wasn’t any background noise and sometimes there was chatter or music. It helped keep my interested.

In my women’s health class we went over similar information regarding what causes low birth rates and the effect of a persons race, socieconomic status and other factors can have on their health. I like how they had a lot of different sources that weren’t always medical. There were also people talking about their personal experiences as well as facts and figure and medical professionals. I think it humanized the piece.

I also liked how the piece ended. Despite all the facts and figures and the information being very heavy they tried to end on an uplifting note which makes me hopeful for the future rather than thinking nothing is going to change. It was a very specific kind of choice and direction to have as the final note and I’m glad that is the direction they chose. 

I really enjoyed Rebecca Williams’ piece on Living With Cancer, and found it to be a quite emotional and interesting story.

Throughout the three parts of the expose I found myself wondering a lot about how Williams was able to find these people that she interviewed. How do you search for people that are able to best frame the story you have in mind? Or do you let these people frame the story’s path for you? I hope to ask her about her experience in finding subjects for her stories, as well as what to do if you interview someone who ends up not being as good as a storyteller as you thought.

Obviously the challenge in radio is to provide voices that are engaging, clear, and tell a story well. I wonder how Williams is able to find all three of these in a person, or what she does if someone only fulfills half the criteria.

On a separate/more critical note, it was a little hard for me to grasp the overall structure of this story. She jumped from very scientific analyses to personal stories, but I didn’t really find an overarching theme that linked all of these pieces together in one cohesive way. I think in the end it was really interesting and well done, but at times it was hard to imagine where she was going with the story. I’d like to ask her about her thought process in structuring stories.