The podcast I listened to is “99% Invisible: Pockets”, which tells a story happened in a liberal arts school about the cross-dressing dance. The two narrators who were the lender and the borrower of a dress encounter small but serious problems when Piers, the borrower, first found the dress has no pocket and merely locked himself outside.
The simple pocket on the dress reflects many things from the history of the clothes and labor distribution to the evolution in design and the gender stereotype among society. The pocket itself is small but the speakers expand the object to common phenomenons in our daily lives, which we often neglect and make them meaningful. For instance, men’s pocket is often larger than women’s, and a pocket is really different from other containers. The pocket is a symbol of our private and internal space so the unfair size on the pocket between male and female implies the gender inequality throughout history. Besides the history and gender issue, the smaller trend of the pocket is also a sign of future development of wearable devices which somehow become a part of us.
The form of this podcast is mainly dialogues between the characters and the story switches between scenes with the change of the background music and the sound volume of the narrators. For example, when they talked about the French revolution and the 19th-century custom style, the background music is romantic and classic. When they talk about the new technology on the wearable devices, the background music becomes more futuristic. The speakers use relaxing tones and raise questions from time to time to lead the audience to explore the story of the pocket. They also quote other experts words to increase the credibility of the story. However, one thing I found interesting not in this specific podcast but in many other audio works is the transition and connection between the words and the background music may sometimes be a little abrupt. This could become another way to call for audiences’ attention but I would prefer the connection to be more smoothly.