Worlds Turned Upside Down Podcast

     The Digital History project that I would like to review is the World Turned Upside Down podcast which is narrated by Jim Ambuske and is produced by Jeanette Patrick. This podcast is about explaining the events leading up to the American Revolution through the perspective of the British subjects living in the American colonies. The podcast starts around the Seven-Years war and goes over events such as Pontiac's War, the different taxation acts, which its latest episode that released on October 22nd going into detail about how the Sons of Liberty and other patriots were doing acts of resistance to the British Crown. 

    This podcast is affiliated with George Mason University, and is one of a series of podcasts that are connected with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. Some of its major supporters have been The McCormick Center for the Study of the American Revolution, The John Carter Brown Library, and it has also received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

    This podcast is very new and began publishing episodes to all places where you can listen to podcasts in July of 2023 and are still actively publishing episodes around every 2 months. The podcast does enter into a large field of other Early American podcasts which it "competes" with. What I think is unique about this podcast is its emphasis on the storytelling/narrative aspect of the American Revolution. The objective of the podcast is to not just throw chronological facts in your face in hopes that you are learning more about the Revolution. Instead, Dr. Ambuske's script is more suspenseful, and especially the events portraying warfare or conflict, his dramatics I believe help the listener stay engaged with the podcast without embellishing too many details. The production is also stellar. Through the few episodes I have listened to, Dr. Ambuske and others who are using the R2 Studio, where the recording takes place, sound crisp and clear, while some of the guest that are not recording in the studio have varying microphone quality. All of the guest thus far, however, have add a lot to the narrative the podcast is telling, and the small drop in microphone quality does not take away from the facts being shared.

    Going into a bit more detail on the production, another element that sets this podcast apart from others in the same field is the music and sound effects. Much like how in a play an orchestra can heighten the audiences sense of fear or suspense in scenes, the background music does exactly that in the podcast. One example is during the first episode, Dr. Ambuske is describing a scene that started the French and Indian War, there is eerie background music. For me, this emphasized how for the soldiers on the French and the British side, they are in a conflict, but to the viewer and someone who has hindsight on what is to happen as a result of their engagement, it adds to the heaviness of what the event symbolized. The event Dr. Ambuske was describing was the British attacking the French in Jumonville Glen, which was the catalyst that started the French and Indian War. The music and sound effects kept me engaged with the whole section regarding this event. 

    Overall, I believe that the more I listen to the World Turned Upside Down, the more ways I will see that they are trying to keep their listeners engaged. This is a public facing project for the general public, and so much of the information given lacks the usual academic jargon. The podcast also bring in many different guest that are specialists in Early American history after the "dramatic" storytelling of events by Dr. Ambuske which add an extra layer of validity and credibility to the podcast.