Sarah Clarke
February 23, 2017
Dr Naydan
Major Essay 2
Podcasts or the Audio Storytelling Genre
In today’s generation, the format of podcasts has become the superior domain for audiences to listen to stories of all sorts. Podcasts are defined as “digital audio file[s] of speech, music, broadcast material, etc., made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or portable media player; a series of such files, new instalments of which can be received by subscribers automatically” (podcast, n.). This style of storytelling/communication has begun to usurp its competitor: audiobooks. Podcasts usually are episodic and can encompass a variety of topics from politics to horror. The podcast Welcome to Night Vale written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor is presented as a radio show in “a small desert town somewhere in the Southwestern United States, where strange, supernatural events are commonplace” (Bottomley). Podcasts cover a variety of different topics from a fictional town’s radio show (Welcome to Night Vale or King Falls AM), a zombie apocalypse (We’re Alive – A Story of Survival), book recommendations (Slate's Audio Book Club), or discussions of recent news and pop
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A podcast is presented as an episodic series, broken into successive episodes that are released on a schedule; usually released daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly. There are different styles that podcasts are formatted: roundtable discussions, interview, local/regional/national news, advice, radio show, etc. Usually, listeners have the ability to subscribe to the podcast and the episodes are automatically pushed to the listening device when they become available. People can even binge-listen to podcasts if they just started a podcast that has already been running for a while or have missed a few for whatever reason. Podcasts are a great new way that information and stories are being