Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 805, Listening to Shock Jocks.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 805.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Home of Center for Educational Development.
Oh, yeah, and Hollywood and a few other things.
Our website is eslpod.com.
Go there, download the learning guide right after you become a member of ESL Podcast.
This episode is about shock jocks.
These are people on the radio who like to say surprising and unusual things.
Let's get started.
I like listening to the radio on my morning commute each day.
This morning though, my favorite DJs weren't on the air.
Do you know what happened to the Kelvin and Ben show this morning?
Calvin and Ben are both on suspension.
The FCC fined the radio station.
Apparently, Calvin and Ben said some things on the air two weeks ago that the FCC found objectionable.
That's crazy.
Calvin and Ben are shock jocks.
They're supposed to say things that are provocative.
They work in a big market producing a morning show with a lot of competition.
They have to push the envelope.
That may be true, but the FCC said that they went too far.
On Mother's Day, they invited several mothers to be in studio guests for a segment.
They cursed them, said sexually explicit things, and called them obscene names.
They did that?
I guess you weren't listening that morning.
No, I wasn't.
Now I'm truly shocked.
This episode is about shock jocks.
We actually talked about shock jocks back on English Cafe number 144.
But...
© transcript Emily Beynon And they attract interest.
They get people to listen to them by saying very unusual things, perhaps expressing opinions that they know people will be offended by.
People won't like, people will be shocked by.
To be shocked by something means to be surprised and perhaps angered at something.
The word jock comes from jockey.
A disc jockey.
We usually just call them DJs by their initials are people who host radio music programs, who decide what songs are going to be played.
You can also have a DJ at a dance club.
He or she is the person who is deciding which songs are going to be listened to and danced to.
So DJ means disc jockey.
And the word jock in the expression shock jock comes from jockey.
A jockey, you may also know, is the person who rides a horse in a race.
I'm not sure why we call people who are on the radio disc jockeys who play music, but we do.
So.
After that long introduction, now let's get to our actual story and dialogue.
It begins by me saying I like listening to the radio on my morning commute each day.
Your commute, C-O-M-M-U-T-E, is the trip between your home and where you work.
If you don't work at home, if you work in an office or a school, a hospital wherever, then you have a commute.
You have a trip between your home and your work and then back again.
Commute has a couple of meanings in English, however.
Be sure to take a look at our learning guide for some of those.
I say that this morning...
My favorite DJs weren't on the air.
We mentioned DJ means disc jockey.
To be on the air means to be on the television or to be on the radio.
You can hear them on the radio or you can see them on the television.
But this morning, my favorite DJs weren't on the air.
They weren't on the radio in this case.
Instead, we hear a shock jock by the name of Howard.
And Howard begins by saying, do you know what happened to the Calvin and Ben show this morning?
The Calvin and Ben show, we must guess, is another radio program.
Robin, the other DJ, says, Calvin and Ben are both on suspension.
To be on suspension means that you are not allowed to do something.
Usually it's because you did something wrong or they are investigating the possibility that you did something wrong.
To be suspended or on suspension means to be temporarily, for a short time, not able to do your job.
Robbins says the FCC fined the radio station.
FCC are the initials for the Federal Communications Commission.
This is the US government agency responsible for regulating television, radio and other types of broadcast communication.
The FCC.
The FCC fined the radio station.
To fine, F-I-N-E, as a verb, means to charge a fee when you do something wrong.
So, for example, if you go too fast on the freeway and the police officer catches you, he or she may give you a fine money that you have to pay the government as punishment.
Apparently, Robin continues, Kelvin and Ben said some things on the air two weeks ago that the FCC found objectionable.
Something that is objectionable is something that other people might find very rude, very unpleasant things.
We might say offensive.
It makes them angry.
Howard says that's crazy.
Kelvin and Ben are shock jocks.
They're supposed to say things that are provocative.
Something that is provocative is done in order to get a strong reaction from someone else.
It's done in order to make other people feel very strong emotions.
To be provocative means to try to get the other person angry.
Although you could also use this word in a sexual sense.
To be sexually provocative would be say to dress in a certain way that would cause other people to take a sexual interest in you.
But we're not talking about that.
We're talking about being provocative in the sense of making people angry or have a strong emotion.
Howard says that these shock jocks work in a big market.
A big market here does not refer to the supermarket or a place where you might buy milk and cheese.
Here, market refers to a group of people who might want to buy your product or service.
So when you say it's a big market, you mean it's a large group of people who might be interested in what you are selling or what you have to offer.
Sometimes when we talk about television and radio, it refers to the area where these people live.
So Los Angeles is a big market.
So is New York.
So is Chicago.
These are large cities and they have a lot of people who live there and who might be interested in listening to something or watching something.
That's what Howard means when he says that Kelvin and Ben work in a big market.
They produce a morning show with a lot of competition.
A morning show is just a radio or television program that's on in the morning.
I think these are popular in most countries throughout the world.
When you're driving and listening to the radio, you have often two people who make jokes and think they're very funny and play music.
That's a morning show.
Howard says that these shock jocks have to push the envelope.
The expression to push the envelope E-N-V-E-L-O-P-E means to do something more than what was expected or to go beyond some sort of limit, to do something that hasn't been done before.
Robin says that may be true, but the FCC said that they went too far.
They did too much of something.
To go too far means to break the rules, to go beyond what you should do, but to do something wrong.
It's a negative thing.
You've gone too far.
You've been too extreme.
On Mother's Day...
Robin says they invited several mothers to be in studio guests for a segment in studio means the people were in the same room as the DJs.
Sometimes you will have DJs or television people interview someone who's not in the same room.
They may be in a different city or they may be calling by telephone from a different part of the country.
Well, these were guests.
These were people in the same room where they were recording the program.
A segment is a part of a large show, a larger program.
So we talk about segments on our English cafe.
The English cafe is divided into different parts, and we call those parts segments, or we could.
Robin says the shock jocks cursed the mothers.
To curse, C-U-R-S-E, means to use bad language, to swear, to be vulgar, to say bad words.
The shock jocks also said sexually explicit things.
Something that is sexually explicit is something that has a very obvious sexual meaning and usually used in such a way to shock or provoke someone to offend someone.
Obscene, O-B-S-C-E-N-E, is similar.
Anything that is obscene is something that is not acceptable by society.
Something that is obscene could be sexually explicit also, but it could be just something that was very rude or offensive or disgusting, something that people don't accept and don't want to see or don't want to listen to.
That's obscene.
Sometimes we use this as an adjective to to mean too much or extreme.
The housing prices in los angeles are obscene.
You have to pay an obscene amount of money.
Well, we don't mean anything sexual or even anything vulgar, we just mean it's way too much.
It's so much that it can make you angry even.
That's how much you have to pay for a house in Los Angeles, which is pretty true, actually.
Howard says they did that.
They did all of those terrible things.
Robin says, I guess you weren't listening that morning.
Howard says, no, I wasn't.
Now I'm truly shocked.
I'm really shocked.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I like listening to the radio on my morning commute each day.
This morning, though, my favorite DJs weren't on the air.
Do you know what happened to the Calvin and Ben show this morning?
Calvin and Ben are both on suspension.
The FCC fined the radio station.
Apparently, Calvin and Ben said some things on the air two weeks ago that the FCC found objectionable.
That's crazy.
Calvin and Ben are shock jocks.
They're supposed to say things that are provocative.
They work in a big market producing a morning show with a lot of competition.
They have to push the envelope.
That may be true, but the FCC said that they went too far.
On Mother's Day, they invited several mothers to be in-studio guests for a segment.
They cursed them, said sexually explicit things, and called them obscene names.
They did that?
I guess you weren't listening that morning.
No, I wasn't.
Now I'm truly shocked.
We hope our scripts are never objectionable, certainly never obscene.
I don't think they will ever be that way, because they're written by the wonderful writer Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
