podcast review episode 1

Kirsten Kessler

The very beginning of the episode is the opening for the rest of the episodes. It started off with a man who had a raspy voice, echoing gibberish in his sleep. That gave off an eerie vibe and set the tone for the rest of the episodes.

Right away, the narrator reveals a mystery. That mystery drew my attention and made me want to know what was going to happen next. He also introduced a character with their name and talked about them for a small period of time. That gave me enough information to follow that character.

I noticed that while he was narrating, more upbeat music was playing in the background. I thought that was a nice feature added because it leveled out the eerie vibe that was given at the start of the episode. I could tell almost instantly what the authors style was and I could infer what the series of episodes are going to be set up as next.

Every movement was heard in the audio and you could tell that their audio was prioritized because I could form a clear vision of what was happening in my imagination. When they played the tape he had, it started off quiet with the narrator talking and it continuously grew louder until the tape is all you hear, then it cuts off. That was a good example of how good the audio is because that moment was when the eerie vibe returned.

Some other things that I noticed was that at the beginning, the main character wasn’t introduced. I personally liked that because it created more mystery to make me wonder and ask questions. After a couple minutes, the main character was introduced so I could recognize him later on in the story. After he was introduced, the authors included some background information of the main character. That gave me an understanding of why the main character, Mark, wants to find these tapes that obviously made him feel ill. Another great element was that they made the main character the narrator. It gave more information and it gave more emotion to the subject because he has personal experience. This episode started off strong, but when Mark started to talk to people on the phone, I didn’t comprehend who was talking and what was happening. He started to talk to person after person about tapes and the people were never introduced. When he was talking to the people, he did get more information about the tape and it provided a better understanding of the tape than before.

In all, this was a strong first episode that lured me into listening to it. Even though some parts were confusing, there was information that helped with understanding the plot and the main characters.