1. Podcast Reviews:
The misfits podcast by the Misfits (Its available on Spotify, Apple podcasts, YouTube,
TuneIn, and Chartable.)
Structure: Intro-Middle/Story/Outro
Genre: Comedy
Episode One (The Poland Story) Review: The podcast starts with an intro, the middle is
pretty much just the entire Poland story, and it ends with one of the members of the misfits
giving us an outro to the podcast, therefore meaning the podcast follows the usual structure
(start, middle, end.) It is also a storytelling podcast that falls under the comedy genre, made
for a slightly more mature audience. The first episode begins with an intro to the podcast
with someone called “swaggersouls” introducing the group of boys, two of which are their
bosses Sam and Ryan. The episode focuses on a story they call “The Poland Story’. The
podcast also has some friends included which are there to ask the questions which we could
potentially be asking. They start off the story in Rotterdam taking edibles before they travel
to Berlin which starts our first story of the podcast. Ryan and the others get on the train,
after checking and being told they were on the correct train, it turns out two hours or so
later they were on the wrong train and they needed to head the entire way back which he
doesn’t tell the others until they have gotten off the train. Whilst trying to find a way to get
back to where they had begun, they ended up deciding to get a taxi with all seven of them in
all the way to Berlin, as the prices for the trip and the new train tickets weren’t that
different. A few stories are after this and they all include trips around usually including
alcohol or drugs. However, I’ll move onto the main story of the podcast. The boys end up
finding themselves going to a “sketchy” looking strip club and they end up drinking shots
and smoking along with already having taken drugs. A few of them go off and end up
starting to get lap dances seeing as they were already there and they found it fun. However,
Swagger (who introduced the podcast) realises that they were getting scammed by the
people running it as they kept increasing the price of how much it was to keep the dances
going whilst also attempting to manipulate the boys into buying more alcohol and helping
them out financially, also using the fact they were drunk against them to make them pay
more, causing Swagger to start a scene of sorts, yelling that they needed to leave as they
were being scammed. This then causes most of them to leave the club and head back
towards the hotel they were staying at. The next day the group wakes up in their hotel room
realising they all had lost thousands of dollars at this club, they also ended up missing a trip
to Auschwitz and their plane to Spain. This is then followed up by a misfits' member called
Fitz doing the outro for the podcast, telling the audience not to do drugs and not to go to
strip clubs after the drug filled story they had told. They then end it with an ‘I’ll see you in
the next podcast” and all of the members saying goodbye to the listener. Honestly, I really
enjoy this podcast and I feel that is because the people who made this podcast have a
teenage audience so they format the podcast in a way that appeals to people my age and
this is fluent throughout most of the Misfit podcasts. They have humour that is immature
and appeals to a younger audience which is also what makes me think that I would go back
and listen to this podcast often.
Let's talk about Mental Health by Jeremy Goodwin (Found on Spotify and other small
podcast sites.)
2. Episode 8: Let's talk about … Stress
Structure: Intro-Information/Middle-Outro
Genre: Mental Health and Advice
The podcast opens with an introduction to the episode and a small jingle, then also giving us
an intro to the podcast and what the podcast is. He starts the informational part of the
podcast by giving us an introduction to what stress is and then goes on to say that when
stress gets too much in our lives it causes us issues but also that we need stress to motivate
us. He generalises the issue of stress, saying we all have it in our lives then goes on to give
examples of when stress can motivate us like how athletes and musicians use it to their
advantage as it gives them an adrenaline rush then goes on to give us a quote that his boss
gave him which he looks back to when he feels overly stressed. “(If you don’t feel nervous
when you get up to present or train, you're probably not passionate about doing a good job
anymore and you may as well pack its in.”) He continues onto when stress gets out of
control and lasts for days, it can cause damage to your health in the long-term and could
lead to the need to go to the doctor or even death if it's so severe. He seems to be doing
this to try and make such a large issue such as stress into a less severe issue to some people
by talking to his audience about how its normal and although it's hard, if the stress is
continuous then help is something you should ask for. He goes on throughout the podcast
talking out how stress can lead to mental health disorders and continues to talk through
ways to avoid or deal with stress early or even before it forms. I think that out of all of the
podcasts I have covered that this would be the one that I would take the most inspiration
from not only because of the topic but also because I like the way that he formatted the
podcast, its enjoyable to listen to and he keeps a constant theme throughout all of his
podcasts.
Off Menu By James Acaster and Ed Gamble (I found it on Spotify)
Episode 4: Nish Kumar (Christmas Special)
Structure: Start/Intro-Middle-Outro
Genre: Comedy
This podcast begins with a sponsor from Hilton Hotels. Following this there is another
sponsor from The Guardian. A jingle then begins to introduce the podcast, followed by Ed
and James introducing the podcast as it being the Christmas Special. This is then followed by
the introduction of Nish Kumar, a friend of the two hosts. This podcast seems purely
comedic from the beginning, as they also introduce the challenge that if unsuspecting guest
Nish Kumar says he wants gold in his meals for Christmas he will be kicked off the podcast.
Throughout this they include small parts that are Christmas themed, and they share jokes
continuously with their guest, also focusing on food throughout their podcast seeing as it's
based on Christmas and a large part of that holiday is focused on food. They end the
podcast with an outro, promoting their guests tour that starts after new year (at the time)
and Ed Gambles tour that he would be going on as well at a similar time. They give us
3. another jingle to slowly ease us out of the podcast and that’s the end of this episode. TO be
honest I myself wouldn’t take anything from this podcast because I had trouble paying
attention to this podcast due to the way they had formatted the podcast itself. The podcast
didn’t feel very fluent when I was listening to it however this may be because of the episode
I had chosen with it being a holiday themed podcast and all. I also feel that I did not enjoy
this podcast as it felt as though I wasn’t part of the target audience for this podcast (which I
will need to take into account when creating my own podcast.) as the humour didn’t fit into
my own and I felt as though I was out of place when listening to it.
