Podcast Process Note

The main takeaways from the podcast are that abolition is still seen as a radical idea and that reforming the criminal justice system may not be effective. The debate section of the podcast was the most engaging and thought-provoking, as it showcased the emotional attachment to these ideas. The audience was hesitant towards the idea of abolition, but believed that the criminal justice system could be fixed. The podcast aimed to provide evidence from both sides of the argument and used a debate format to engage listeners. The title and episode title were chosen to create a thought-provoking sensation and highlight the magnitude of the topic. The guest speaker was chosen for their research and ability to speak well. The script provided organization, but some deviations were made for a more natural conversation. The difficult part was considering the perspective of the listener and balancing education with entertainment. The key takeaways of the podcast are that abolition is still a radical idea. There are multiple moments in the podcast that kind of hint at the fact that, you know, abolition is still a radical idea, and that it's a complete eradication of a system that's already been put in place, and Matt, the guest speaker, does a good job of pointing out in the debate section how abolition would pretty much lead to more violence, potentially, and that if not done correctly, it could be worse than the system that we have right now. Another key takeaway was that reformism, or like reforming the criminal justice system might be bad. It might actually entrench bad ideas about the criminal justice system as a whole, because reformism only works at the top level of criminal justice reform, and like it doesn't actually solve any of the key issues. So like the major power structures are still in place in the criminal justice system, and like we talk about like how protests like really don't do much, and like even if they do move something, it still like creates a negative end goal, because then people look at that protest, and they see like, oh, we only got this little bit out of it, and there's still bad things happening. So I think those are the two main takeaways, and maybe the last one is that this is a heated topic. The debate portion of the podcast proved that it can be very contentious and sometimes can get out of hand. I think it was educational, because we brought a lot of outside opinions into the argument. We took a lot of articles from real researchers from colleges, and then we took real world examples that are happening right now, and then we implemented that to give examples of how abolition or reformism is working or not working. The most entertaining element of the podcast was the debate portion, because that's when all of the arguments were put together, because people may have lost their attention, but what they did get at the end was a more heated, emotional, thought-provoking ending, which left readers believing, like, wow, this could be pretty contentious. And I think it was most engaging, because that's when people actually see how all the arguments are put together, especially when two people are emotionally attached to those arguments, because when we're talking about criminal justice reform, especially radical ideas, there tend to be emotions attached to those. So I think it was the most engaging and entertaining, because those emotions were put on display. The two most important questions that we got from the survey was, should the criminal justice system be abolished, and can the criminal justice system be fixed? What we found in the first question was a majority of the responses said that, no, the criminal justice system should not be abolished. And then 100% of the responses said that the criminal justice system can be fixed, implying that people would be hesitant to this idea of abolition. So those were the most critical ones to address. And I ended up getting the information that I needed by throwing both sides of why reformism is bad and why abolition is good, why reformism is good and why abolition is bad, in order for the listeners to think that, okay, I'm hearing both sides of this, and even though the majority are going to think abolition is a ridiculous idea, at least the person who's doing the podcast acknowledges that. And I think we did a good job of compiling enough evidence to provide both sides of the arguments that the listeners were satisfied. One of the main decisions that I made in making the podcast, and I talked about it with my guest speaker, was the idea that the audience might be hesitant to this radical of an idea. So we made sure that we used phrases like, while this may seem radical, and then insert like some author, some accredited author, of why their precondition of believing that reformism is good and abolition is bad, and trying to counteract that with real evidence. So we made those kind of decisions, and then we also knew that students typically don't want to listen to this type of information or data from scholarly articles that's just spewed to them. So what we did is we put it in a debate style format that allowed some emotional engagement, which then gave listeners more of a connection or feeling like they might be able to implement this themselves in a real world environment, which is what people want to ultimately take away as something that they can use or that matters to them. And then some of the defining characteristics of the audience would be that, I mean, the main one is a lot of them had this precondition thought that the criminal justice system should be reformed and fixed, and it shouldn't be abolished, and that's extremely important because that's one of the two main arguments in the podcast is that maybe abolition, complete eradication of the criminal justice system is actually a good idea. Another defining characteristic is people said they wanted the podcast to be thought-provoking and funny, and we did that through the – and it's extremely important because that's what ultimately people are going to look for when they go to grade it and listen to it and maybe tell other people about it. And so we implemented the debate portion, which had some of those funny moments and also had some of those thought-provoking moments as well. The title of the podcast, Is This a Crazy Idea?, was specifically chosen to create a thought-provoking sensation with the audience. It brings them into the conversation by saying they have a say in it. It's not just whether or not I think it's a crazy idea or not. And also, the title also implies that maybe these crazy ideas aren't that crazy in the first place, and maybe we should listen to it, and that's the whole point of the podcast or future episodes would be to bring more ideas that most people think are crazy and then prove them wrong, but also maybe prove them right through like a debate style. And then also the episode title, Should We Burn the Criminal Justice System?, was – and the most important word in that title is burn, just because it like speaks to the magnitude of the idea that we're talking about. You know, burn implies like lots of – not violence, but a really awesome magnitude of destruction. And that is what abolition would do, is it would completely tear it down, but also build it up. So when people see that statement, they're going to initially think this is a crazy idea, and that's the whole – that's how it ties back to the main title of the podcast series. In order to determine who should be on the show, I picked Matt Conway because he had researched my topic. It was a pretty easy decision. I needed them to know evidence so that way they could contribute, and I needed them to be well-literate, and he's on the debate team, so I knew he could speak well. And he just had a lot of – he understood my goals, and he had to be on the same page, which was we're trying to hear both sides of this argument, and then we're also trying to get thought-provoking feelings out of the podcast. And so I needed them to be willing to take advice from me and what I wanted, and then also provide some of their own information so that way they weren't just spewing nonsense. The script was very helpful in that it created just a general organization of how I wanted to break up the podcast, specifically which sections I wanted, and I think the sections really help people feel like they've gotten through a chunk of text. So like maybe if we lost them at the end, like, okay, they can pick up at this new section. And we ended up deviating from the script quite a bit in terms of the actual language, but the organization of it stayed pretty much the same. We used a lot of the evidence that was in the script, and that was pretty much the same in the actual podcast. While we did end up deviating from the script kind of bit, I would say the reason for that was because the natural flow of the podcast took us in certain directions that we felt like were more natural than just the podcast that would like relate more to the listeners because it sounded like a real conversation. If I were to conduct a critical analysis of the podcast, I would ask the creator, why did you put a like almost a funny comedic moment right before the debate? And then another question would be, why did you save arguably the best part of the podcast for the end? Like why wouldn't you put it towards the beginning and then explain what happened in that debate? What was the reasoning behind that? I would also maybe, why didn't you include like statistics of what generally happens, like percentage of reformism working or abolition working? Like why didn't we have more statistics? I might ask, why didn't you specifically talk about statistics regarding the podcast survey? And maybe like, why did you pick a tone that was like more conversational instead of like an interview? Yeah. The most difficult part of the assignment was trying to think like a listener. What I mean by that is like, what, what would a listener like to hear on this topic and how would they like it to be said? It's easy to think about yourself, like I would just want to read it, but someone else might want more entertainment value from it. So that was like, and then there was a question of, well, how much entertainment is too much entertainment? Can you go too far? And so we tried to balance it with education and entertainment, but that was a difficult decision. Just trying to compile all the evidence and picking certain pieces of evidence that we thought had thought-provoking warrants from both me and the guest speaker. We were trying to think of what would be the best kind of evidence. And that was hard because we found good evidence that we thought was good, but wouldn't be necessarily entertaining or thought-provoking for the podcast. So trying to find that evidence and also thinking like a listener really stretched our capacity for making podcast, making this podcast and choosing the route in which to take it.