Piece Comment

Review of Dating, Romance, and Heartbreaking Robots


First of all, I love the title of this piece! If Heartbreaking Robots don't intrigue you then your forehead's warm and your throat scratchy.

In "Dating, Romance, and Heartbreaking Robots" producer Zoe High unveils how middle-schoolers feel about adolscent dating.

Zoe consults, as she so humorously puts it, "dating experts" - aka three sixth graders - about their perception of pre-teen dating.

One of the "dating experts " we here from is Leander, a insightfully-silly and yet sophisticated sixth grader who tells us that the future of dating will consist of online robots who will inevitably break the hearts of their companion's once it's revealed that they're in fact robots.

Zoe does a great job of moderating through out this piece and poses thoughtful questions to the sixth graders. The six graders in return answer bluntly about the informal awkwardness of pre-teen dating.

It's revelaed that "going out" with someone doesn't mean you actually "go out" in public with, rather it's just kind of something you say.

My only suggestion would be to include a different thumbnail picture; something that compliments the story that's being told here. It's important to realize that as people scan through youth-produced radio pieces their eye's tend to be drawn to pieces with captivating pictures. It would be a shame to have this piece, and other well-crafted pieces alike, overlooked because of a bland thumbnail picture.