The most interesting thing I discovered about the episode was how much of an impact the work of Bell Labs has on our lives today. In listening to the description of the amazing machine from the World’s Fair in 1939, I immediately assumed that all of its technology was incredibly outdated. However, I was amazed to learn that the technology is very important to the use in our phones today. Furthermore, I was also amazed with how quickly Bell Labs created such a security machine under such a time crunch. With the safety of the entire world possibly at sake, they were able to create the SIGSALY machine which allowed safe communication across the ocean.
I was very impressed with the noises used in the background of the podcast that related to the topic at hand. For instance there were man clips of conversations between FDR and Churchill, and also instances where the Voder was demonstrated. This helped to not only give the listener a better idea of what happened, but also to make it a much more enjoying podcast rather than just hearing one person talk for the entire time. Even the background music provided a nice contrast to the voice of the speaker.
The producer made the technical aspects very understandable by not assuming that the listener knew about the topic at hand, and therefore thoroughly explaining each step of what happened. By doing this the audience was able to understand complex and confusing things, such as the Voder, without ever seeing an image of what is like. I was very impressed with the podcast because I looked up what a Voder looked like after the podcast and it was very similar to what I had pictured. This means that the producer did a good job in making the concepts very accessible.
After listening to this, I would like to do my podcast on something similar, an obscure machine or company that was incredibly important in coding/decoding messages. I think I would like to do my podcast on something that is more important to present times, but then again it can be overstated how important the products from Bell Labs are to our lives today, for instance by making our cell phone transmissions work.
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