I’m not particularly sure about what makes an essay great. From what I can tell from this article, that’s about 5,000 words long, is that it’s very relatable. And the whole article does explain a lot of things that a normal person would understand with basic knowledge. The way it’s written is for the general public, it isn’t towards a particular audience therefore, it’s easy to read. Another thing that I think the article/essay talked about was not only the problem of “clean eating” but, also addressing other problems that many people feel together.
“Among other things, clean eating confirms how vulnerable and lost millions of us feel about diet – which really means how lost we feel about our own bodies.” With this quote, I believe that many people related to it. Everyone’s conscious about how we look, and I think that it has to do with not only our society but, also with media. Media, itself, is narcissistic. Everyone cares about how many likes we get on a post or how viral a video is when we post one on Instagram or youtube or wherever and on the internet there are people who judge other based on how they look and when that happens people start looking at their bodies and want to change themselves and therefore look at books on how to eat healthier and look healthier too. 

What makes this essay much more interesting than just talking on and on about an annual food festival held in Maine about Lobsters is that he make the essay just not about it the festival. I don’t know about anyone else in the world but, I love food in general. I find out random facts about food so, this essay was intriguing to me right when I started to read it. 

David starts out with talking about the festival but, as you read more he goes so much more than just the festival. He mentions the history of the animal and its biology; such as the origin of its name, its central nervous system. He goes into a deeper topic of how the lobster can be prepared and the different methods of cooking it as well. 

As you read more into the essay it sticks to a specific type of topic; killing the animal. As it was mentioned in the essay, at the Maine Lobster Festival, all the lobsters that are served at the festival are cooked (boiled) alive, all together in a giant pot. Now that does sound a little bit crazy but, he mentions other methods of “preparing” the lobster rather than boiling them alive. From then on, he goes onto the topic of the brain of the lobster. Talking about its non-existent cerebral cortex, and that in the cerebral cortex that’s where humans experience pain in the brain to send signals within the central nervous system. He also mentions the fact that even though there is a “merciful” technique, it might not even be where the lobster may particularly feel anything or nothing at all. As mentioned in the essay, Lobsters are almost like worms, where the idea of physical pain doesn’t pertain to them. It’s more of a disability rather than pain but, of course it has its own preferences of having a claw or not.

I really did enjoy reading this essay though. It was going in a different path than what I thought it was going into. I honestly thought that the essay was going to be about the festival and its history throughout the years. But, it turned out to be completely different and went into, just not the festival, but the way we cook things as well. Another thing that I didn’t really expect would be the mention of PETA. I honestly forgot PETA was a thing but, I digress. The mention of PETA was a surprise but, also at the same time it wasn’t. Of course, PETA would be all over a food festival, especially a festival that had to do with food. But, overall the essay was different than a lot of essays that I’ve read because it was completely different than what I had expected.

To start off, the platform, Medium is a member subscription-based article website where people can write about anything and everything that they would like to write about. So having Royte talk about “sex, trash, and nature in the city” is a particular type of topic that only a selected amount of people would like to read. Since it’s a subscription-based type of website, these are people who like to read topically, not just randomly founded articles that they might’ve scrolled by while looking for something interesting. So, not only does the website helps the writers to start somewhere but, it also helps the writers collect an audience. While reading the article, it was very personal. She wrote the article in a precise way that I don’t really see all that often. She starts off with something that we all have done in our lives, running. But, soon she slowly but precisely goes into public sex. She adds personal stories with people that she’s encountered with. And while the platform itself is helping writers just by subscriptions but, also by the different visual styles that each writer can use. Some articles that I’ve seen other than Roytes’ article, are mostly pictures but, she decided to use more than what I’ve seen throughout the website and its articles.  But, what’s particularly eye-catching is that while she progresses through the article, the pictures or visuals, are moving along with the story. For example, when she talks about confronting litterers, she puts a picture of a lubricant packet, there’s also a factoid along with it. “Plastic Litter Has Increased 165% since 1969. – KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL” Along with the pictures, the sizes also have different purposes. The smaller images that are wedged into the article itself are there to support the paragraph or point out things that people may or may not have known before reading the article. The larger images that are spaced out through the article, in my opinion, are ways to set the pace of the article. And while the larger images set the pace of the article, if you pay close attention to them, there are shadows within the image. What I think of that is that while we may have one perception of a topic doesn’t mean that we can’t see the other side. That while it may be unknown to us, it’s our job as readers to know the whole part of the story.

For our group work, it’s very similar and seems about right when he talks about knowing “everything about something”. We as a group are doing something similar to what Jay Rosen is talking about. We took something about Arcadia made it in our way a “niche” about ghost stories on campus. Sure Arcadia is somewhat known for it because “we have a castle on our campus guys!” but, we made it our own because we decided to talk about it more in-depth. We are all researching different topics, the history of ghost stories, anthropology in ghost stories (cultural differences from ghosts), and the science behind ghosts. We’re all doing things differently, researching different things and coming together collectively to expand people’s perspective of ghosts and their long tales. And to answer the question of “Why aren’t interviews enough?” is that it just isn’t really enough information to get something from. Like it’s not enough to give more information to others. For our particular situation, the question would probably be “What’s your experience with ghosts?” or something very similar and that’s authentic to the person’s experience not really based on anything else other than that. To have more information from different perspectives gives you a pool of data that is credible. And even though you may have one thing assigned for you to research, having more information wouldn’t hurt to learn about. Having a plethora of things to talk about and write about will have other people trust you and the sources that you read. You don’t go into a court case with evidence that isn’t credible right? It would make no sense, for anyone to believe in that. Just like in the article, Jay mentions about being a reliable source to your readers. He mentions that if you don’t really update often on whatever it is that you talk or write about, people are going to stop relying on you as a source, keeping up with new things that are happening in your expertise. But, in my opinion, the same goes for your own intellect in the field. If you don’t know what you’re talking about people will not go to you for information. He mentions that people who like whatever it is you’re talking about are smart. They are going to know more things than you might think and it’s important to keep up with things and update your knowledge in the field. 

To start off, I was in a group with three people so we decided to have one person listen to one whole episode while the other two listen to half of a episode. I only had listened to half an episode (which was only 13 minutes). From those 13 minutes, it sets up what kind of podcast it is. It goes into the history of the host (himself) and talks about others who have gone into stocks and the business industry. It sets the foundation of what the podcast is about and that is, starting up from literally nothing to something big.

In the beginning, she had a bit of difficulty finding the first clue as to how to find Hans. She contacted his art teacher way from before and started asking questions. She was confused as to why there were so many different foods and such on the buckle asked if the teacher if he was a chef and she didn’t know. So from there unintentionally, the teacher actually helped her by giving her an example at how to look/draw a horizon. Basically, she interpreted that as looking at a glass half full/empty and decided to look around more. After that, she had trouble looking at more clues and finding more things to find Hans. She wound up looking around more and she found a post on webfoodpros.com that was posted in 1998 from Chef Carl and that led to Chef Rene. When she went to the meeting of chefs, there were multiple people that had fit the profile of Hans, she had trouble finding him even though he wasn’t there whatsoever; after that, she had trouble finding him at all. But, Chef Rene calls Hans and it actually happens. Interview pursues, and she returns the belt buckle. 

In the end, she finds out what the actual story behind the belt buckle, it wasn’t lost, it was stolen. She also finds out he didn’t make the belt buckle. It was actually a gift from Bob 6, who was actually the chairman of continental airlines for 50 years. And evidently, he was a “cowboy”, he had worked on a ranch and he was riding horses all day and chasing cattle everywhere.

In my opinion, I think the worst case of authorial misconduct has to be Fareed Zakaria. He has this, sort of, reputation to repeat things that he has already has said in the past. Such as saying similar things at a graduation commencement at Harvard and Duke. He said very, very similar things compared to Jill Lepore’s article on guns. The least objectionable, in my opinion, would have to be Jonah Lehrer. I mean sure its plagiarism and very looked down upon in the journalism world but, is it really the worst thing that could’ve happened? It’s all technically original but, also not at the same time, since he’s working for multiple different news sources and such. I think all three aren’t really that similar, I mean sure, it’s all connected through plagiarism but, they’re all different cases in different situations. Fareed Zakaria is him basically stealing from another article, Lehrer is him plagiarizing himself but, from different sources, and Chris Anderson is stealing from Wikipedia so in all just different.

Compared to the Fast Fashion podcast, this podcast was in collaboration with multiple people within the industry. There were multiple experts in their own specific fields and it was a complete change from the previous podcast that we listened to. In the attempt to really downsize this hugely complex problem, they brought in agents, people who were on the brink of bankruptcy, people who experienced fraud from companies/banks that were just giving out mortgages that the people could not pay off monthly. And most of these problems that occurred were due to miscommunication and, well, just fraud itself. This podcast had most, if not all, of the strategies that we had learned in class. Organized very, very well with topics that transitioned really, to a point where I didn’t even realize it was changing. The problem was about money and how it was brought up and how it was used in many ways and how these people were earning money too; essentially, the cycle of money. The podcast also has gotten interviews with multiple people who have first-hand experience with the corrupted system of mortgages. Now in the podcast, it mentions how some people just borrowed tons of money, like a good $100,00, and with that, they don’t have to report anything along the lines of income or anything else like that. This went on for years and years, and it probably still goes on up to this day. (I am not 100% sure about that statement.) Even in the podcast, and I quote “Kerry Campbell: $16,250 a month, which means your salary on a yearly basis would be making– you’re making just under $200,000, $195,000 to be exact. Richard: I wish. In 2005– and they used my 2005 taxes– I was making $37,000 a year.” But, I think over the whole podcast, everyone is trying to fix this epidemic, and trying to fix it before it becomes even worse than it already is.

I would say that both the podcast and article bring different things on the table. The article is bringing more of a historical artifact and the podcast is going on the more modern type of fashion compared to the Great Depression era. From the author of the article “How Depression-Era Women Made Dresses Out of Chicken Feed”, Rebecca Onion does bring a lot to the table, she’s a culture/history writer for many different news sources and has a Masters and Bachelors in American Studies. She uses sources from the Library of Congress and Smithsonian National Museum of American History through pictures of products that women wore in the Depression era, she also explains the culture behind it, explaining how wearing these chicken feed fabric outfits was a symbol of poverty. Not only does she use photographs from those times and real products as well, but she also has another source that could help her argument of how fashion has really evolved since then. It actually connects to the podcast meaning, it has a somewhat connection. From the podcast, they talk about how there are multiple issues within the industry. The podcast itself has been around for a quite a while, since 2009. But, the overall purpose of the podcast is for conversations of feminism. It’s very organized and not really off-topic, the particular episode goes into environmental problems that come with Fast Fashion, along with companies that considered fast fashion. What’s different compared to the article, the podcast has two people in it instead of just one’s opinion. Therefore, potentially, there could be a different perspective on things or just even different ways of thinking or one person thinking of something that the other person would’ve never thought of beforehand. 

Everything that everyone says about the suburbs being the best place for Americans isn’t all that true. Just like everything else in life, there are pros and cons to many different things. Adam Conover goes into research of many different things that make the suburbs so “safe”. He goes into the history of lawns, housing situations, schools, and etc. He also gives out facts and other methods of “teaching”. Instead of using statistics to persuade audiences, he actually makes the audience critically think and piece things altogether. He’s connecting back to history and how it not only affected people back in time but also how it affects us here today in the present. 

This type of research actually connects back to the article “We Are All Confident Idiots”, in my opinion. Mentioned in the previous paragraph, just about everyone believes that the suburbs are completely safe because compared to the city there isn’t much crime committed in the suburbs. And even though that may be correct there are still other things that contribute to that myth. This video alone has shed light on the problems that many people look over. 

The humor in this episode is very light and not very pushed. Which actually does a lot better rather than knowing it’s supposed to be comedic. But, with the comedy in the video, it connects to us better rather than boring statistics and other visuals that would not grab the audiences’ attention.

From what I start to realize from the episode is that it’s good to see a topic from a different set of eyes. To look at things that are in the shadows and highlight them. Because it’s things that we lack to show are the things that people most see. The whole episode is Conover’s evidence. He shows us everything that is not in light on problems that people decide to overlook because “it’s just how things are here.”