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This American Life: The Walls

Hi, I'm Jordyn Whitted and I am a sophomore at HPU. I am a Strategic Communications major
 with a marketing minor. One day I hope to work on an advertising team for a large company (maybe Google!). I am originally from Mebane, NC.


The podcast "The Walls" Ira Glass is using several interviews he has conducted, to talk about the effects structural walls have on society. He opens with an interview with a man from Morroco and he tells of the struggles he faced growing up with his family divided by a border wall. The information in the podcast was very useful considering the current political climate the US is in.

Early in the podcast, Ira Glass uses interview clips to tell his story. Within seconds, you hear him and Muhammedsalem having a conversation about what life was like living with the border wall in Morrocco. A few minutes, there are clips from another interview between Glass and Conor Garrett talking about the wall in Nothern Ireland that divides the Catholics and Protestants. As the article states, interview clips help bring the stories to life and make them more personal. The listener of the podcast now feels connected to the story and sees how the subject impacts everyday people.

In between the interviews, Glass provides voice-overs to supplement the interviews. In these narrations, Glass is providing key background information about each specific wall. For example, he introduces his segment by bringing up two prominent fences in Africa. This narration helps provide the listener information that they may not gather from the interview and helps connect ideas.

Ambient sounds are also used in the podcast. Inbetween narration and interview clips, Glass inserts sounds of people yelling in different languages. These clips are important because they coincide with the segment of the podcast. For example, when talking about the people in Africa being fenced in, Glass includes the sounds of people yelling. This addition helps catch the listener's attention and build up the suspense on what will happen next in the podcast.

Lastly, Glass also uses natural sounds in the background of this podcast. The natural sounds are just noises that are used in the background that are picked up when recording.

Ira Glass uses anecdotes in his podcast to make the podcast relevant to the listener. But Glass also uses a moment of reflection to make the listener really think about where they stand on the topic at hand. At the end of the introduction, Glass connects his first two interviews to the current issues that the US government is facing about border walls. This provides the listener a reason to keep listening and to worry about this subject. The moment of reflection really allows the reader to understand why the topic is important and worth talking about.

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