Genetics and DNA are what parts of our parents is passed down to us and what makes us our unique selves. Although this is a very important and interesting subject, I tended to find it hard to put this content into a five minute podcast in a way that would intrigue my viewers. How can you get the attention of people without using images?

 

Before even starting to work on the script of this project, we made a mind map to show how much we already knew about DNA and genetics.

 

 

The first thing that my partner, Isobel, and I thought of was to introduce characters and use them to tell an average science podcast in an entertaining way. We decided to make Isobel the interviewer at a podcast station and she introduced me as Jane, a DNA and genetics specialist. This specialist would answer questions that the audience sent in as well as the ones that Isobel asked along the way.

 

One of the hardest parts of making a podcast, is keeping the audio at a steady and well-paced tempo. Unfortunately, there is no media in a podcast, making the content and quality of the script very important. The main goal when making a podcast is to keep the audience entertained while you tell them the information they were looking for. As we were making our podcast, we came across a few problems in our original planning of our podcast.

 

Our podcast was driven by the question:

 

 

The main topic for our podcast was twins, and the likely hood of a pair of twins marrying another pair of twins and them all having twin babies. After researching this very specific topic we had enough information to start writting our script. Our script started out the way that you would expect for an average science video, but we added a few comedic sections so that by the end of the podcast you would want to hear what happens in the next episode. This form of podcast structure is similar to what actual podcast programs have, except for our telenovela style ending…

 

How could we make a podcast without having a plot twist? After thoroughly answering the twin based scientific questions, the DNA and genetics specialist used punnet square rules to find an unexpected secret about Isobel’s family.

 

 

Now that we were finished our project and knew so much more about DNA and genetics, it was time to make a new mind map that showed how much we have learned.