In our Workshop this week we spent some time listening to the “Sleep” episode of Radiolab, a science/discovery podcast produced by WNYC Studios, and noted down some of the elements that make up narrative audio:

• Music
• Narration
• Interviews / conversations
• Sound effects
• Atmosphere / sync sounds
• Archival recordings
• Vox pops

Apart from archival recordings and vox pops, the Radiolab episode used every single one of these elements — and in fact, often several were in use simultaneously.

Personally, I’ve tried to listen to Radiolab in the past (because the subject matter interests me), but in general I find their style far too busy and overly constructed to comfortably listen to. Compared to a show like This American Life or Planet Money, which are relatively unadorned and mostly let subjects/interviewees speak in full sentences, Radiolab barely goes a second without using some kind of audio edit, either by the host chiming in to lead the narrative, or an inserted sound effect, music, etc. This cacophony of sounds overwhelms my ears and I lose track of the narrative thread, which is a cardinal sin for documentary podcasts like Radiolab.

This episode of Planet Money, which aired this week, seems by comparison much easier to follow:

It still uses all the same elements as Radiolab (plus vox pops), but they are layered in a far more spacious way so they don’t conflict with one another.

A narrative documentary podcast is one format my group is considering for the audio essay in Project Brief 4, so seeing and dissecting how the professionals do it will help immensely.