**Analyzed audio: **https://transom.org/2019/sound-can-not-hear/

The podcast I have chosen is All The Sounds We Can Not Hear, which is a part of the HowSound podcast series, “a bi-weekly podcast of radio storytelling produced by Rob Rosenthal...” (Transom.org). Unwavering from the objective of this series, the piece I have chosen aims to provide tangible insight into a particular segment of audio production, while simultaneously showing listeners the mesmerizing world of sound. The story revolves around an independent producer, Jeff Emtman’s journey of making the ultrasonic sound of bats audible to the human ear. Rosenthal, the producer for HowSound, intertwines Emtman’s podcast with his own commentary to dive further into the technicalities which made Emtman’s sorcery possible. The podcast is distributed directly on the Transom website, which allowed Rosenthal to include rich background information on how the podcast came to be. Included are the email exchanges between him and Emtman, with descriptions of how exactly the bat sounds were recorded, which adds another layer of technical depth to the content. There were also several spectrograms of the audio included in the description, which allowed listeners to be stimulated visually in addition to the audio.

For my analysis, I will be dissecting how the different uses of sound make this podcast so mesmerizing and extend the discussion to the importance of sound in expanding our understanding of the world. There are three main points that I wish to highlight: (1) key sounds and what makes them important, (2) sound technique during transitions, and finally (3) sound used for audience interaction. The structure of my analysis will be a back-and-forth of laying out the overall structure of the podcast while intertwining the three points I mentioned above in no particular order.

As a prelude to how impactful this podcast was for me, I will start by mentioning that I did not plan on doing an audio analysis. In fact, I was trying my best to avoid it because sound was outside the scope of my previous knowledge and the other topics seemed much easier to do. I quickly changed my mind, however, after how mesmerized I felt upon finishing my chosen piece. Why did I feel so much more excited about sound than I had been a short 12 minutes ago? The following is simply my attempt to dissect what exactly about the audio made this particular podcast stick.

The podcast begins with upbeat background music while Rosenthal explains the importance of sound in making an audio story. The music then fades out into silence as this question is posed: “But what if the story you’re producing features a sound that can’t be heard?” (Rosenthal, 0:30-0:35). Just 30 seconds into the piece, we run into the first subtle yet effective use of music and silence. The upbeat music creates a mood of happy indifference as Rosenthal states the obvious—the fact that sound is important in audio storytelling. The use of music is important here because it contrasts well with the silence which follows, naturally making us inquire and pay attention to what is said next. Not coincidentally, the next line is the central topic of the podcast. This technique is not solely pertinent to podcasting and is often used by advertisers to allow the audience to recall specific bits of information (Olsen, 2). Sound and silence are used in this way to draw attention to important segments of the podcast.

Next, as Rosenthal introduces the star of the show, Mexican free-tailed bats, we hear the sound of bats for the first time, chirping away in the masses. The bats are a key sound effect and are important because it serves both as a self-standing artifact of the audio magic produced by Jeff Emtman and as a sound that helps us paint a picture of the intradiegetic narrative level within the podcast. Defined as “[describing] the relations among the [various] narrating instances within a narrative”, narrative levels help differentiate between different scenes or dimensions of a story (Didier and Pier, 2011). In All The Sounds We Can Not Hear, there are two levels: the explanatory (extradiegetic) narrative level of Rosenthal’s commentary, and the immersive (intradiegetic) narrative of a bat expedition undertaken by Emtman and his friends. So, we’ve gathered that the bat sounds help paint the picture of the bat expedition, but they alone do not signify a transition in narrative level—remember, Rosenthal used the sound for explanatory purposes at the beginning of the podcast. In the following section, I will describe the additional audio techniques that are used during transitions.

As you can probably tell by now, the structure of the podcast follows a back-and-forth between Rosenthal’s commentary and Emtman’s expedition; sometimes overlaying one over the other. Now, the transitions are by no means subtle—the narrator and style of narration change after all—but there are subtle uses of sound that make the overall podcast feel much more immersive. The first technique I want to highlight is fading. Fading, in and of itself, is primarily indicative of changing scenes and or narrative levels (Huwiler, 57). However, by prolonging the fade-in or fade-out of the intradiegetic level, we get an enhanced sense of audio-visual imagery as Rosenthal verbally narrates the scene of the expedition. The intradiegetic level included wind, drops of rain, breathing, among other scenic ambience. The second transitional technique I want to highlight is pitch shifting, which is highlighted in what I personally think is the most effective moment in the entire podcast. Pitch shifting is explained by Rosenthal prior to this scene, where listeners learn that it is the process of bringing inaudible frequencies into our range of hearing (Rosenthal, 5:40-5:50). Not long after listeners learn what pitch shifting is, they get to experience it. The transition takes place during Emtman’s expedition, when finally, after what is depicted to be a long and thrilling journey, the expedition crew discovers the bats they were looking for—thousands of them. At this moment, the pitch of the ambience slowly drops along with the voices of Emtman and his crew. The long, drawn-out sound of the lowering frequency creates a mental image of the world slowing down for the listeners. It feels as though you're slipping into an alternate dimension. That’s when you hear the bats. You get taken into a different world of sound that cannot be experienced anywhere else, even if you were up on the mountain with Emtman and his crew. This transition takes us to another narrative level, which does not involve Rosenthal’s commentary or the ambience of Emtman’s expedition. It is just the sound of the bats, accompanied by explanations of the world in which the bats live. In hindsight, I think his transition was the reason I decided to do an audio analysis on this particular podcast.

Before my conclusion, I will briefly talk about the effective use of sound for listener interaction. Near the beginning of the podcast, Rosenthal goes into a deep technical discussion of sound and what makes it audible to the human ear. Aside from the background sounds, like ocean waves—which helped paint a visual image of the explanation—sound was used to “show” listeners the different frequencies of sound. From the lowest audible frequency of the human ear to the highest, listeners get to engage with the audio to test their own hearing while digesting what is being discussed. I thought that this interactive use of sound was particularly effective in adding some fun to perhaps the “dullest” section of this podcast.

My biggest takeaway after listening to this podcast is the power of sound in storytelling and uncovering the world around us. It is mentioned in one of our readings that audio dramas were traditionally known to be a word-oriented form of dramatic genre—merely an extension of the visual arts and primarily poetical (Huwiler, 46-48). In our visual culture, it is often easy to forget about the importance and depth that the world of sound can hold. Although in the context of the medical field, another article supported this view by discussing how sound and listening skills are often neglected even as scholarly interest for other sensory skills has grown over the last decade (Harris and Van Drie, 99). Before listening to and analyzing this podcast, I think I had a similar neglect for sound. I always viewed sound as an accessory—something that happened in the background of my life, in film, and in other art forms. After hearing this podcast, my view has shifted significantly. The use of sound in this podcast allowed me to hear the inaudible, transition seamlessly through different narrative levels, and exist in another dimension for a fragment of time. It made me cognizant of the vast potential of sound in expanding our understanding of the world. I hope that through this audio analysis, I was able to provide sufficient proof for why this podcast stood out to me, and perhaps convince you to not see, but hear the world differently.