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In Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, "Carlos Doesn't Remember," the structure and effectiveness of the podcast are discussed. Gladwell starts in the middle of the content to grab the audience's attention. He uses music to create suspense and emotion. The podcast includes personal stories and rhetorical questions to engage the audience. Gladwell's narration and tone create suspense and interest. The title, "Carlos Doesn't Remember," relates to the story of a person blocking their past from memory. The podcast encourages listeners to think and come to their own conclusions. Overall, Gladwell's structure and storytelling techniques make the podcast engaging and thought-provoking. Today, I will be talking about the structure and its effectiveness in a podcast by looking at Malcolm Gladwell's Carlos Doesn't Remember. The first part of this podcast is going to be about structure. Gladwell used the technique where he started in the middle of the content. He did this to catch the audience's attention and persuade them to listen to the episode. I think that this is a very important part of the podcast because some people, including myself, don't enjoy listening to podcasts. They need something more interesting and dramatic to reel them in. While doing this, it also gave Gladwell a bit of insight as to what he will be talking about and the topic of the podcast. In his podcast, at the beginning, he includes a line asking Carlos if he is being challenged in school. That builds the listener an idea of what he will be talking about to later find out that Carlos is one of the poor, smart kids. This is also a great way to create an introduction so that it doesn't start off going right away into the content. Gladwell also did a very effective job of adding music at the beginning of his podcast. Music is a way to invoke emotion and create suspense into the podcast. As you saw at the beginning of my podcast, I added in music to hopefully catch the listener's attention as to what I will actually be talking about. Mine was more of an eye-catching thing for the audience to hear the music and want to watch it, whereas Gladwell uses different music to support his story. For example, around 11 minutes and about 30 seconds, we hear suspenseful yet upbeat music. This fits into the situation because Gladwell is trying to lead up the listener to the result of the study. Alongside the music to invoke the listener's attention, Gladwell also interprets voices in his podcast. Gladwell provides context for what the guest has said. For example, Eric. Eric isn't directly speaking into the mic, so Gladwell rephrases what he is saying or quotes him. However, Carlos's lines are direct because he wants to interpret the narrator-character connection. This is very effective because the audience sympathizes with Carlos when hearing his voice and the emotions going through his voice. An example of this is about 20 minutes and 10 seconds in, when he whispers under his breath saying, I forgot. Gladwell does this in a way to show the audience that he is sad about his past and we can really hear it through the emotions and the feelings coming through his voice. Another thing that Gladwell does really well is he interprets into his podcast suspense. He uses suspense through the build of music, personal stories, and historical questions. Like I said earlier, that music invokes emotion and creates suspense for the audience. Different tones of music create different emotions through the roles, through different episodes, through different moments in time, throughout the story. As for personal stories, we are intrigued to hear the success through Carlos's life. Through Gladwell's structure, we hear short parts of Carlos's story mix of facts and information. This is effective because our curiosity regarding the story will be answered and the facts are also included. In addition, rhetorical questions are used. At about 7 minutes and 30 seconds, Gladwell asks, what's capitalization rate if you have crossed gang lines? And he does not give an answer. That sparks the audience's attention to continue to finish listening to the story so that the question will later on be answered or we can think about it ourselves to try to answer it. His use of rhetorical questions got me thinking. For example, I was curious and wondering about why Carlos couldn't remember and about his question about capitalization rates and it got me thinking and all in my head and giving me different examples in my head of why this could be this. And that's what Gladwell did really well and I'm sure with other audience members too is that he had us thinking, he had us in our own brains, he had us using our own head before he even come close to an answer. And that's probably what Gladwell tried to structure his podcast to be so that it sparks the audience's attention to continue to finish the story and questions will possibly be later on answered. With this, his narration and how he structured how he talked is key to creating suspense. His tone, his pitch, his volume varying makes it more interesting and makes us want to know what happened. I know that when he used different tones for Eric or for Carlos, I'm like, okay, this is a very serious topic and I want to know what happens next. And it got me really into the story and wanting to know what happens next and it made me want to continue to listen. Lastly, I wanted to mention the title. When I first started listening, I'm not going to lie, I was a little confused. But after finishing the podcast, I realized why Carlos doesn't remember his past. It's because he blocked his past from his memory. This is significant because his actions of blocking old memories is a direct result of bias in the school system, whether it's conscious or not. Gladwell did a very well job interpreting the title to the whole idea of the story. Like I said before, I was confused when I read the title and was not sure what it was going to be about. But then when you get into it, you kind of make your own conclusion based off of the title and based off of the facts and information he gives you. I came to my own conclusion about this and how Carlos doesn't remember his past and tries to block it out from his memory because that's what the story is building up to, in my opinion. It's all opinion-based of what you think the story is about. Gladwell will surely explain his opinion throughout different contexts and facts and everything. But you, as a listener, are supposed to be able to create your own conclusion of why he's doing this and why he wants to do this. And that's what Gladwell kind of interprets in the title. He kind of brings the connection from the title into his facts and his conclusion himself. Throughout the podcast, we know that Carlos went through a lot. So the title resembles that he doesn't want to remember his past and he brings the audience into thought. Like I said, it brought me into thought thinking he didn't want his memory about his past because we know he went through a rough time. And that's what the title sort of does. It makes us think of our own concept of why and ask ourselves, why does he forget? Why? Just plain on, why? Gladwell does a very good job at making the audience come to conclusions and think throughout the entire podcast. Music makes us feel, as audience, the emotions and the suspense. Tone of voice makes us feel understanding of the pain or feelings they are experiencing. The rhetorical questions get listeners thinking about why and asking themselves if they know themselves why. His structure connects his narrating and characters to the audience and reels them in to want to know the questions, which, like I said, is why.