Radio Chthulucene 87.9 FM

Listening to Marco Werman’s episodes from PRI’s The World and his class visit challenged me to think about a different angle from which to engage with our class themes for my final project. After reading Dictee and selections from Asco and Gomez Pena’s Son of a Border Crisis, I approached my workshop piece by drawing from my personal cultural experiences. Furthermore, in terms of the stylistic choices for my piece, I focused mainly on either doing prose or poetry. With this first workshop piece, I struggled a lot because I was not sure about the direction that I wanted my final project to go in. 

After our discussion with Marco Werman, I feel inspired to think about how I can integrate my background and interest in Political Science into my final project. When Marco Werman said that he is making connections for Americans through his podcast, this really stood out to me. He made a great point about how Americans feel physically and emotionally distant from foreign affairs. This led me to reflect on what kind of impact I can make through my radio station, especially in light of the fact that my work will be broadcasted to others on campus. 

I also really enjoyed learning more about journalism and news reporting as another form I can use, other than prose and poetry. Gaining insight into Marco Werman’s process in creating an episode gave me insight into what kinds of elements I can consider including in my final project to create a certain experience for listeners. For example, he talked about how he implements music, background noise from his recordings, and voices to help listeners to create their own scene and to move his listeners through the episode. It was interesting to see how he uses interviews to create a narrative. I loved being able to see his script, which gave us even more insight into his thought process as he decides how to structure his episodes to create an impactful narrative. 

Now, thinking about my own piece, I am considering how I can incorporate interviews into my own piece. Furthermore, I am interested in potentially starting over and taking more of a journalistic approach rather than a more personal narrative approach. Alternatively, I may try to combine the two.