"I would like jump on planes and travel, and... sit in people's backpacks. That would be pretty sick"

 

 

EPISODE 2

Welcome to 'You, the People',the 'Where's Waldo' of podcasts.

Every week we serve up answers to questions that are never asked, in a mosaic of voices from the street.

Can you guess what we're talking about?

'You, the People' is a weekly podcast of curated vox pops produced by Greg Shapley. Join our Facebook group, also called 'You the People' to propose questions to our answers and suggest questions to be answered. Email enquiries to [email protected].

Thanks for listening!

 

A Word from the director, Greg Shapley:

 

A long time ago I made radio pieces in the current affairs genre for a community station. A staple of these was the vox populi - snippets of real people recorded on the street and edited together as if to present the popular view on a given topic. These days the vox pop is not often used. We now have the internet with its endless comments sections and verbose social media platforms.

Vox pops are seen as rather quaint and far less democratic than how they seemed at the time. 'You, the People' is an experiment to bring back the vox pop – not as an audio comments section or a feeble attempt to be democratic, but as an audio form, one that organises disembodied words from the street into collections of ideas and vocal trends. The question asked is not presented (a form that I explored in my radio days), thus throwing the audience right into the thick of the answers. It can seem surreal and bewildering, but at times there is much repetition. This could come across as dull, but it is an attempt to demonstrate trends in language and indeed in thought. It is staggering to discover that no matter how original you think your comments are, chances are someone else is thinking exactly the same thing (and they may even use the exact same words). I also have a background in minimalist music, so to me repetition is not boring, it is a rhythmic and laced with nuance.

I'm not sure what you are going to take from this, but I thought this short explanation might aid the listening process.