This American Life

The radio show This American Life, gives us the chance to listen to the actual recordings that Hyder created while he was in Afghanistan that very first summer. It gives us the chance to hear his emotions and the sounds that his surroundings made. One part in particular that hit me the most was the recording after the bomb went off in the market place, which was located in the center of Kabul. While he was outside walking through the site where the bomb went off you could hear him kicking the car that held the bomb, which caused all the damage. You could also hear people sweeping up the glass that had fallen from all the windows as well as the sirens in the background. Personally, this description of it and the background sounds that went a long with it made it ten times stronger than how it was written in the book. In the book you read it, but there is no passion involved. But when listening to it you can hear his frustration and sadness coming from his voice while partially listening to what was actually happening afterwards. I found that listening to this radio show after reading the book was quite beneficial. When I read the book I usually find myself drifting off and therefore I miss some of the smaller details in the book, and occasionally rather large ones. But after listening to this I find my mind is “refreshed” and it helped my mind remember some of the events that happened in earlier chapters. For that I’m glad we had to listen to this. I found that sometimes when Hyder would record something knew it was very insignificant to the story in whole. An example of this would be his personal health. Every single time he felt sick, which was 3 times in this, he would make a new recording that would last 2 minutes long. After on e time of this I kind of got annoyed with it because it really adds nothing to the story. But, on a plus note a positive was the emotion in his voice. In the book it is all very dry and monotonic. But here we get a sense of what he is really feeling and we get a snapshot was what he was going through. I found this to be the best advantage of listening to This American Life.