Journal Entry Two- Mode in which to address Mental Health Awareness.

After being able to hear a couple of podcasts in my class this week as well as on my free time and seeing the different ways in which I can approach my own podcast, I feel that I have a better Idea of where to start for my final project.

The first podcast that was played was a podcast where the two hosts were women. This podcast was called Chingonas and Bad Bitches, which is a comedic and conversation-like podcast that served to provide laughs along with some information or opinions that they believed were valuable.

Although I do enjoy a good funny podcast on a long drive to my house after school every night, I can’t say I was a big fan of this particular podcast.

I’m all for funny moments on podcasts but what I cannot get on board with is the lack of organization that occurred in this particular podcast and the amount of inside jokes that came with it. I don’t know about other people but whenever I listen to podcasts, i’m hoping for some entertainment as well as some education. Neither of which I felt that I got out of the first podcast. It was just very unorganized and not very funny unless you were actually in that room with them.

The second podcast we listened to in class was created by a teacher to open up a discussion about teaching. The podcast is called Pedagogue and the host is named Shane. He has other educators come on his podcast and talk about different topics surrounding education and teaching.

Right from the start, this podcast came off as more professional. The intro didn’t have music that you would find on the radio, rather had a calming and pretty instrumental piece to introduce his podcast and the purpose behind it.

The way his podcast works is through form of interview. This type of podcast can be difficult at times since a lot of the direction and content that is presented is dependent on another person and how they choose to respond to the hosts questions. But with that, the host is still able to maintain a certain amount of agency in their podcasts in the sense that the questions that they ask and the way that they ask these questions have the ability to make sure the podcast stays on a certain track.

By prompting the person being interviewed with certain questions or comments, the host can lead the discussion to a place that he or she feels was the point of the episode. For Shane’s podcast , you can tell that Shane is very well researched as he oftentimes cuts in to provide some background information and context.

The person being interviewed also seemed very well versed on the topic of education that they were discussing. It made me think that maybe this podcast episode was partially scripted and pre-planned because it moved entirely too smoothly. It felt like I was actually learning something which are the types of podcasts that I enjoy and would like to mimic.

For my final project, I already established that I want to do a podcast. After watching the two podcasts in class, I realized that I want to a professional sounding podcasts that provides the listeners with information. I choose to do this in this way because I feel that mental health awareness is such a serious topic that I don’t want to make a joke about it for people’s entertainment. I want to be able to inform my audience of the dangers of unattended mental disorders and the rise of male suicide as an epidemic.

I am still torn between making my podcast as an interview and interview a male in my life that experiences mental illness or if I want to make it more informational where I am the only one speaking – in the form of an audio essay. Once I decide which would be more beneficial for the people, then I can begin to create either a script for the audio essay or the interview questions if I want to go in that route.