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“This American Life”, episode 648: “Unteachable Moment” puts together stories that seem impossible to explain, in which people encounter cultural, linguistic, and social differences. Each segment focuses on a moment when effective communication breaks down, even when everyone in the scenario is trying their hardest. The main idea of the episode is that navigating difference…

Pittsburgh Plates is a podcast that celebrates the food, the people, and the hidden cultural stories of Pittsburgh that make it home. Each episode digs into the local flavors-like Polish heritage foods or the city’s emerging coffee culture-while highlighting the communities behind them. The digital strategies I chose align directly with this purpose. By using…

  Jessica Abel’s “Make It Work” shows the real juggling between creative passion and practical survival. One of the strongest strategies she introduces is designing a “minimum viable output,” which encourages creators to choose formats and schedules they can actually sustain without burning out. She also stresses diversified income, such as workshops, memberships, or bonus…

In understanding how podcasts expand beyond audio, I’ve looked at the digital ecosystems of This American Life, The Kitchen Sisters, and Sporkful. These shows build rich, interconnected spaces that help audiences go deeper into the stories. Where They Live Online • Websites with transcripts, photos, and archives • Instagram/TikTok for behind-the-scenes clips and visuals •…

Using the Content Composer in Revision Mode allowed me to really see how my first two episodes connect and what direction my podcast season is taking. Initially, the episodes on Polish food and on Coffee & Culture felt very different from each other. But once I laid all of that out on the digital post-its,…

A part of BBC’s Between the Ears series is the episode “A Cow a Day”.In this episode producer and poet Pejk Malinovski follows a single cow through the streets of Varanasi,India, from morning till night. The episode showcases the question of “what happens when we slow down enough to see, and hear the world from…

In this episode, what truly got my attention the most as a listener was simply how alive and vivid the landscape was sonically. I enjoyed the clip-clops of the horse hooves, the subtle crunches of the gravel road, and the soft blowing of the wind, which really encapsulated the moods of the Appalachian Mountains. I…

Language has also been of interest to me as it is such a big part of how people identify themselves. Although I am only an English speaker myself, my father’s side of the family is Polish, and this has definitely influenced my thoughts on culture and identity. As we worked on our initial podcast episode…

It was both difficult and gratifying to edit the “ode” audio file in audacity. The hardest part was removing glitches in the narration. Especially with the amount of coughs and repeats the man had. Several careful cuts and playbacks were needed to make transitions between lines smooth and natural. Layering ambient sounds was also a…

Arming our food and culture podcast in Pittsburgh provided me with a real awareness of just how much language is tied into identity. When we interviewed the proprietor of the Polish restaurant, she boasted about her family recipes and had a tendency to mix English and Polish words together. It made me hyper-sensitive to how…