{"id":149,"date":"2025-07-11T01:08:42","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T01:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/?p=149"},"modified":"2025-07-16T00:49:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T00:49:01","slug":"what-mahmouds-story-taught-me-about-audio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/?p=149","title":{"rendered":"What Mahmoud\u2019s Story Taught Me About Audio"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From Princeton to Prison – Audio Storytelling Reflection<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Listening to Mahmoud Reza Banki\u2019s story<\/a> on The Moth<\/em>, I felt some sort of heaviness<\/em> settle in me. From Princeton to Prison<\/em> was about how his life flipped upside down after being wrongfully arrested for receiving his mother\u2019s divorce settlement money from Iran. What stood out immediately was how he started sharing with us his childhood in Iran. He said, \u201cLooking back now, the red alert sirens in the middle of the night, Iraqi missiles and fighter jet assaults, getting into bunkers as a child, all seemed routine and normal.\u201d<\/em> Hearing him say that so calmly made me pause, and stating that it was seemingly \u201croutine and normal\u201d… I thought about how experiences shape people so differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way he told his story didn\u2019t rely on sound effects or music, but his voice alone carried it and the humming of the recorder. His pacing was steady. He took appropriate pauses to gather his thoughts, making it seem like he\u2019s not reciting a story–he\u2019s telling a story. You could hear when his voice wavered or paused, especially when he described being dragged out of his apartment at dawn by SWAT officers. When he said, \u201cThey slam me against the wall and handcuff me,\u201d<\/em> it felt conflicting, because his voice was soft but the words themselves hit hard. There wasn\u2019t any dramatic music to push you into feeling this pressure and urgency. Instead, his soft voice left in it–the room<\/em> for the listener to feel it themselves. I noticed the lack of background music in The Moth\u2019s<\/em> production style actually made the story more powerful. It\u2019s another one of those audio techniques, that sometimes intentionally leaving out certain sounds can be just as effective as layering it in. Of course, the silence between his sentences added weight. When he described his first days in prison, he said, \u201cI laid down on my metal bunk and quietly, I cried. Not because I was scared, cold, or hungry. I cried because I could not be heard.\u201d<\/em> Hearing that in silence just made it feel even more real. His words came out slower. His words came out weaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banki ended his story by explaining that even after getting out of prison, the punishment never stopped. \u201cI am not equal. Prison, at some point, ends. The punishment never does.\u201d<\/em> I sat there for a while after it ended. It reminded me how important the choice of narration style is in audio storytelling. In this episode, The Moth<\/em> producers didn\u2019t add music or layered effects or anything. Instead, they let Mahmoud\u2019s voice carry everything. The voice that couldn\u2019t be heard during that tough time was given a chance to be heard, with no distractions. His pauses, his slightly shaky breathing. Those were enough to build the atmosphere. I think this style works for stories like his. When a story is already filled with injustice and heartbreak, adding dramatic music or heavy effects would almost take away from it. This episode showed me that audio doesn\u2019t always need to create<\/em> an atmosphere. Sometimes, it needs to just give space<\/em> for the speaker\u2019s reality to \u2018breathe\u2019 and come to life. That\u2019s what I want to remember in my future audio projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Princeton to Prison – Audio Storytelling Reflection Listening to Mahmoud Reza Banki\u2019s story on The Moth, I felt some sort of heaviness settle in me. From Princeton to Prison was about how his life flipped upside down after being wrongfully arrested for receiving his mother\u2019s divorce settlement money from Iran. What stood out immediately […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[9,32],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intro-sound","tag-ds106","tag-introsound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingtomyself.ericisinschool.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}