It is interesting how about 3 weeks ago I wouldn’t have really thought outside of my comfortable safe little box, happily content to just keep watching and listening to the same programs I always would. Not necessarily scared of what I might find outside of that comfort zone, just not feeling the need to change those habits. It was about 1pm on the sweltering hot Saturday just past; I got my copy of the latest green guide and scanned it for something interesting to listen into.
I made my mind up early that it was going to be something from a community station, been the notorious day for the all year season of sport, which I might add does not fascinate me in the slightest . I decided that music shows could also be ruled out format is just songs, and not many stations please my ears often, so anything with a title implying music and of course sport, was crossed out. I’m not religious and I don’t speak Spanish, Italian or German. The choices eliminating themselves before my eyes, that and I wanted something right then and not later. Something did catch my eye, finally, and it wasn’t just that I’d eliminated most other choices it jumped off the page and bit me on the nose. This show was:
HUMAN NATURE on SYN 91.7FM Saturdays’ 1-3pm
I like a good discussion on human psychology from time to time, but it isn’t my most informed subject so it may not be something I chat about often. When I saw the title “Human Nature” I had a pretty good idea that it wasn’t going to have anything to do with the band, and figured hey this might be something interesting indeed. My expectations were that it would be RMIT sociology, philosophy or psychology students, having discussions about human behaviour.
I missed the very beginning so I can’t say much about the initial introduction however I caught the last few minutes of the segment before and they introduced the show accordingly, that helped me confirm that I wasn’t judging the book by its title.
It was a good sign at when I caught the middle of a discussion between the hosts about crude teaching methods. Of course like many discussions in any radio involving talk (e.g. Morning shows on commercial stations, like the Cage on triple M etc) generally stems from a story from the presenter, whether that happened to them or someone they know etc. I’m not sure why, but anecdotes tend to give me the impression of format behind it all, despite the fact it’s just someone telling a story. The topic was medium length in discussion maybe 5 minutes or more and they then opened up for SMS comments from the listeners just before going to a song.
I do believe there was an introduction of the song either before or after it was played. The presenters said who they were and there were even station IDs, I can’t say how much it annoyed me when I used to have my old walkman on, couldn’t see what the station I was listening to and I really wanted to know what I was listening too, if I’m enjoying something I want to know the station, song and host. So I give that gold starsJ.
The shifty volume control mid through a song got my attention, but technical mistakes happen. Unfortunately it happened in every second song played on the program, which was about 6 to 8 songs played in the 2 hour slot. I’m not sure it was accidental or a bit dodgy sounding by the end.
So I’d now established who the presenters were, two young women by the names of Emily and Virginia. (At first I thought maybe one of them was a guest due to an accent either Canadian or American I haven’t ever been very good at telling the accents apart at first hearing) The song had finished and the discussion about crude teachings lasted a few more minutes’ maybe, with the SMSs’ read out etc. The next topic was introduced, and it had something to do with relationships; lessons in love. Well that’s what was introduced. Unfortunately this topic turned into conversation about a date that one of the girls was going on that night, the where to go, how to impress, what to wear, date limits etc. Whilst it had plenty to do with the prospect of relationships it was really only a discussion or conversation even, about the presenter’s date. I felt a bit disappointed by that, but I didn’t give up straight away. Before they fired up another lot of songs they informed us about the upcoming guest speaker who was going to talk about things like the meaning of life.
I missed the beginning of this part, but still caught enough to give me most of the discussion. The speaker was a nurse named Pat. She was talking about varying qualities of life from what she had seen in alcoholic, drug affected or addicted and homeless people. This gave me the impression that Pat was someone who worked in the psychiatric parts of the nursing world. It was interesting insight about the outlooks these kinds of people had of life, she mentioned highs and lows these people often had. Pat then made reference to her past work as a mid-wife which added more interest to the whole quality of life conversation, from the other end of the scale. It drew me back into the show, out of interest and the feel that the format wasn’t actually just ramblings.
After Pat finished and the hosts said there thanks, they mentioned that another guest would join them after some music. I’m not sure I heard a topic introduced but there may have been.
The guest was a bubbly social science student named Carla, I think maybe a classmate of one of the presenters. It kind of led to discussion and reminiscing about a project all 3 of the girls were involved in on a weekend passed about how people react to social interaction with strangers, better term a social experiment. The basis of the project was discussed about how it was getting people to join in for photos. They used the reason of a photography project to engage the strangers, and the discussion went on how it worked well and a lot of people took part enthusiastically. The conversation went on for a while, but really the gist was the same right through, whilst a good form of discussion about human nature it left me disappointed again.
The end of the program approached and then it was mentioned that they were actually taking a break from hosting the show after next week, so it began to explain perhaps why the show was very casual sounding. All in all I expected more, however when I thought about it more I came up with the conclusion, that for a student program it was relatively ok. It’s just a shame I didn’t catch many of their shows before to establish if I had actually got the right book, but got caught in the wrong chapter.
