For this assignment I chose to listen to This American Life episode number 428: Oh You Shouldn’t Have. Although informative, I do have to say that this episode was very dry and did not keep my attention for very long.
This specific podcast was about the act of giving in America, and if sometimes giving is a bad thing. The first subject that was brought up was about a talk show that had been on television some time ago. In this show the host would give people things, or introduce them to people that they haven’t seen in awhile. The one example that the talk show host used was that of a woman who had been in a Nazi work camp in Germany. This woman had met a girl while she was in this camp and on the show was reintroduced to the girl she hadn’t seen since she was in the camp. The talk show host brings up the fact that this gift may have been a bit too much because it brought back the woman to a place where she most likely wouldn’t have wanted to be.
In the next part of the segment the talk show host speaks of an incident that happened in Israel. A woman went into a medical marijuana center and begged repeatedly for the people who worked there to give her more because she was in so much pain. Finally one of the girls that worked at the center gave this woman some more, but it turns out that the woman was an undercover police officer. Here the talk show host asks the listeners if this makes any sense. The girl that worked at the center was just trying to help someone who was supposedly in pain, and she gets arrested for this.
The whole idea behind this radio segment is to elicit a response from the listener. It is also to inform the listener of things that are going on in the area as well as in the world. I believe that this particular episode was very dry because the girl who was hosting the show was just a fill in for the normal talk show host. Because of this, I feel that this episode wasn’t as interesting as it could have been.
