This American Media Response 4

(in the spirit of full disclosure, some of the things in this post are things I have articulated previously on my personal blog, because that's how much I love the show).

About 2 1/2 years ago, Amy handed me a bunch of iPods with microphones and said something to the effect of, "Let's use these in our media class." I figured we would do some sort of documentary project, but I had no idea what I was doing--I'd never really listened to audio documentaries, and I was just barely starting to fully understand what a podcast was.

So, I figured I'd better do some listening. A lot of listening. And that is where I found what is probably my absolute favorite media text (which makes me hesitant to write about it...): This American Life.

In an episode of The O.C. (which I don't watch), a character references TAL and another character dismissively asks, "Is that that show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are?" Her question gets pretty much to the point of what the show is about--showing how fascinating ordinary people are. This is one of the things that we talk about in our Hands on a Camera project, and I find it to be a deeply charitable notion: ordinary people have stories and are worth listening to.

I clean my house while listening to TAL, because it's a way to fill my house with meaningful voices. It helps me feel less lonely, but also helps me think more about the world. I certainly don't always agree with the people that are sharing their stories and perspectives, but I learn more about people and I find myself articulating viewpoints about important issues that I wouldn't have really taken the time to think about before. This is the thing that I find to be somewhat unique to radio: it helps us cultivate the art of really listening to someone talk (because we have no opportunity to interrupt them, no opportunity to interject our own opinion). Many of my students have a difficult time with radio, and I think it is because they haven't trained their minds to be fully engaged in something without a visual component.

If I'm ever feeling like nothing is happening in my life, sometimes I like to think, "If I were in a TAL episode, what would it be about? What would I say about these experiences? What would someone learn about me just by watching or listening to my routine?" Thinking like this has made me more willing to shovel snow in the winter, more willing to do the laundry, more willing to talk about my religion openly, because I feel like I'm revealing a character. Sometimes it motivates me to do things I really don't want to do because the character that I want to be is not the one who plays video games all the time, but the one whose life is engaged in meaningful service. So, while it's true that this motivation has a bit of a Narcissistic edge to it--I'm pretending my life is actually cool enough to be documented by TAL--it also gets me to do good things. Which is good.

This has gotten unnecessarily long, so I'll end it with this: I think that podcasting has revived radio in a major way (radio on demand), and while I think it is a venue that my students don't always get behind 100%, it's a unique medium in its ability to demand that we learn to listen. I agree with Jenkins et al. that learning to multi-task is good, but I also believe that we still need to have the ability to single-task, and listening to This American Life has helped me to do that.