When people use sound to convey a message, they usually make deliberate choices based on their intended message and the listeners they’re trying to reach. When you analyze sound, it’s important to think about the composer’s choices. Consider King Anyi Howell’s podcast, described in MM3-d. Why did Howell choose to create a podcast rather than make a movie to be watched or write a story to be read? Perhaps Howell imagined that a single listener, surrounded by the sounds of the podcast, would be more absorbed in the story than a viewer distracted by images on-screen or a reader with only words on paper to consider. A listener has to imagine the scene; the background sounds Howell provides along with the spoken story makes imagined visuals vivid and absorbing.