Digital Voices

“This I Believe” response

I’m beginning to understand podcasting now. I already knew a couple things about podcasting but now I feel like I’m learning more. I noticed that the speech I was listening to sounded like one of the mp3s I normally listen to on my iPod. The sound was clear and it didn’t even sound like someone recorded it through a microphone; it sounded like the speaker was in front of me speaking.
The essays I listened to were “Music Makes Me Come Alive” by Joan Tower and “Failure is a Good Thing” by Jon Carroll. I selected Joan Tower’s piece because I’m very interested in music. And I chose Jon Carroll’s piece because the title caught my attention. You rarely hear “failure is a good thing,” so with that interesting title, I decided I would read it. Both essays were very well written. I think Joan’s essay reflected on how most people feel about music. Like how it nourishes your inner soul and how you can relate yourself to other people you don’t even know through music. And I think Jon’s essay could really teach people a lesson. That failure isn’t as bad as people make it seem, you can actually learn from it.
The introduction of Joan’s speech talked about the importance of music in the world and the speech just continued on from there. It was a great way to begin an informative speech. And the introduction of Jon’s speech had his own personal story. He talked about his granddaughter starting kindergarten and how he hoped she would strive for failure, which to me, sounded odd. But it definitely caught my attention.