After going through the various
provided links, I've decided to emulate the style/format/structure of the Freakonomics Fear Thy Nature podcast. This podcast is the only show I've listened
to that held my attention for it's full duration.
I started wondering how the
people of Freakonomics could keep me interested in what their faceless voices
had to say. I made a note of their intro music and various sound clips/sound
effects they used throughout. I also noticed how loud, crisp and animated their
voices were. Their pacing was slow, and sentences were kept short, focusing on
key information. They would even ask questions, engaging the listener's
critical thinking skills, changing the listener's role from passive listening
to active listening.
I appreciated Freakonomics'
consideration of other opinions, even those that challenged the dominant
narrative of the show i.e. it is human nature to be evil/bad. This made me feel
like the information was more important than their conclusions thus giving me,
the listener, a chance to form my own conclusions.
Fear Thy Nature discussed human nature and how context can effect
behaviour. I found the podcast so interesting that I pursued some brief Google
searches of my own into the experiments that were mentioned. That is the kind of engagement I want my
listeners to have. By providing examples/evidence for the topic of the show,
the listener, if interested in the topic, will want to know more about it; they
will want to continue the discussion.
The title was also attention
grabbing. 'Fear thy nature?' you think, 'what nature? My nature? What about my nature should I fear?!' You press play to
satisfy your curiosity...and maybe, perhaps, calm your nerves a bit, depending
on the kind of person you are.
The whole thing was all very
informal with bouts of humour throughout. Nothing grabs and maintains attention like humour cause who doesn't want to laugh? So good job to
Freakonomics.
My podcast show will center around
how to get your employee to smile in the customer service food industry. As
I've mentioned in my previous post, I am a manager where I work and find the psychological
effects of work hierarchy and customer-server relations fascinating. I feel
like the topic doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. SPARK, Student
Papers and Academic Research Kit, helped me narrow my topic. I knew I wanted to
explore customer service, but the industry really changes how you approach this
topic. There are also many subheadings under customer service. SPARK helped me
narrow my topic to the food industry and to the specific act of smiling.
My advice for selecting a topic,
before I wrap up this post, is to choose a topic containing at least one
adjective for every noun in your research question. If it's an industry, what
kind of industry? If it is a fruit, what kind of fruit? The more objective
adjectives you can associate with the nouns in your topic, the better! Good
luck everyone.
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