99% Invisible’s podcast Vox Ex Machina is an excellent telling of the story of speech encryption. I found myself listening to a  intriguing story that sounding nothing like a excerpt from a textbook, and one can tell that the producers definitely enjoyed what they were talking about. This in turn made me take notice of the topic of discussion: the Vocoder.

The producer also points heavily to the most interesting detail of the Vocoder: it’s many useful implications. It’s predocessor, the Voder, was used to synthesize speech on a consumer level. The Vocoder was then constructed to better encrypt speech for communications during WWII. After the war and its declassification, the Vocoder was starting to be used in music. Now, it is used in technologies like cell phones, music players, and video compression.

To make the podcast interesting, its producers kept telling the story from an interesting perspective. From talking about the Voder in the World’s Fair in 1939 to the Vocoder’s heavy involvement in the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bombs, the producers keep the story compelling by giving listeners intriguing information. They even go as far to have people that actually used these devices to tell of their times actually working with these machines.

Based on Vox Ex Machina, I think I will try to make my podcast about something that really intrigues me. I believe this makes me enjoy actually doing the podcast, and if I enjoy it, that will push me to make my podcast more enjoyable for my listeners.