The podcast is essentially about a person observing a cow and its surroundings for 11 hours, starting at 6am, breaking for lunch, and then going until the host loses track of the cow. The setting is in a very holy city in India. It starts with the host just sitting next to a cow, observing what it is doing, what people around it are doing. He comments that the cows are treated like regular people, walking into shops, lying down, being avoided by vehicles, etc. In between his observations, people sometimes come around to ask him what he’s doing or where he’s from, such as the man at the end who sings for him. During his observations, he’ll just comment into a sound recorder, where the listener can hear the background. From this background, we sadly only heard the cow moo once. However, there are other interesting things going on, such as a couple hundred extras there for a Bollywood dance shoot or something similar to that. The episode ends with the host losing track of the cow after listening to someone singing.

In terms of storytelling strategy, it’s about as linear as you can get, since it just follows a person’s observations over the course of the day. For example, we hear about the dog attacking the cow, and from the way it was acting the host thought it might have rabies. Background sounds help tell the story, as we can hear what’s going on in the host’s surrounding area, such as with the Bollywood dance shoot. This background sound helps us feel more immersed in the scene; rather than just listening to the host’s voice, we almost get to switch places with the audio recorder, since we can hear all the sounds around the host. The host’s soft-spoken voice also plays into this, as we can focus more on the background, rather than his voice and what he’s saying.

Culture obviously plays a huge part, since he’s observing a cow, a sacred animal in Hinduism, and people seem to come by to check if he’s doing anything to the cow. These interactions allow him to talk to locals, and learn more about either the person or the culture/area. Language also has a minor role, in that sometimes the host and the locals have some trouble understanding each other, but we also hear a song in Hindi that describes something important to their culture.