For this assignment I listened to “Helping The Dogs of Chernobyl” told by Stephen Quandt and “This Couple is Fighting for Equality and Safety for Two Spirit People on Tribal Land” told by Felipa Deleon Mousseau and Monique “Muffie” Mousseau. Both stories originally aired on NPR’s morning edition last year. Both stories are about three minutes long.
The first recording includes a short teaser for the story to come, which makes sense because the content of the story is not obvious from the line shown on the main website, which only states “every single night a huge group of dogs would come out of the forest”. Stephen tells his story alone for the most part, with the host of the segment only introducing him and then providing no further commentary. The story he tells is very insular, he’s recalling an interaction he had with one man while working in Ukraine.
The second recording is told by two women who are describing some of the adversity they have faced as queer native women. There is no host introduction or teaser for this piece, it’s just the two women talking about several events that have occurred during their lives together. The audio has clearly been cut together because the women switch topics suddenly without any lead up but all the things talked about are connected. Hearing their stories from both their perspectives adds some depth to the things they are talking about.
The audio quality in both recordings is almost identical, as both are from the same segment of NPR’s broadcast. In my opinion NPR tends to over-compress their audio, it sounds fine over the radio but with a streaming service it sounds like the speakers are being recorded under a blanket. The lack of ring or natural echo in the recordings makes the audio sound a little dead which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when only recording