Hello everyone and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
I'm your host Oliver, and I am delighted that you have decided to join me again for another hopefully, great episode.
As always, this is the best place to practice your English listening skills, all while learning new vocabulary and phrases and even practicing your pronunciation.
Occasionally on this podcast, I like to do something a little bit different, and today's episode is just that.
The truth is, I have another series for learning English.
And those of you who are Patreon subscribers or who have been listening for a long time on the podcast know this.
And that is News in Easy English on Patreon.
And today I want to give you one of these episodes for everyone.
So I'm making a main episode of the Easy English Podcast for everyone on the topic of a news article.
If you're not a Patreon subscriber or you haven't heard about this series.
Essentially, what I'm going to do is I'm going to read a news article in English and we are going to learn vocabulary from it, while also breaking down the article sentence by sentence to make sure that we can understand it.
Today, i am first going to read through the full article in one reading.
And then we will go through each part bit by bit to make sure that you understand it.
And then I will read it again for you at the end.
This series is usually a Patreon exclusive.
And if you like this episode and you like that it's a bit different, you can head over to the link in the description below and subscribe to the Easy English Patreon.
There are already over 16 episodes of News in Easy English on the Patreon, as well as lots and lots of bonus episodes and main podcast episodes too, with full transcripts and vocabulary lists for each episode.
Okay, let's get started with today's News in Easy English episode.
Today's article.
So we've got one to start with, and that is an article called Dead Singers Sing Again.
Hmm, sounds very interesting.
So let's understand the title first, so that we know what the topic is about before we start to read this story.
Dead singers sing again.
Dead is, of course, the opposite of alive.
So someone who has died.
And in this case, we are using the adjective dead.
A singer is someone that sings songs, like Madonna, for example, or Ed Sheeran.
They are singers.
So the article is saying that singers from the past that have already died, that are dead, are singing again.
First, I'm going to now read the full article for you.
Don't worry if you don't understand a lot.
We are going to go back and look at each part of the article to understand more of this vocabulary.
And then I will reread it again for you to hopefully understand a lot more.
Let's get started.
Dead singers sing again, deceased artists are performing as holograms and they are even releasing music through digital updates.
However, this technology raises many concerns.
The concerns started with the holographic resurrection of Tupac Shakir at the 2012 Coachella Music Festival, which critics called creepy.
The use of the technology continued with tours for jazz rock musician Frank Zappa.
Opera singer Maria Callas and RB singer Amy Winehouse.
The family of pop singer Selena Quintanilla announced a new posthumous album, and it will digitally age the artist's voice to make it sound as if she were still alive.
Over the past years, many have questioned whether these posthumous performances are celebrating a legacy or exploiting the dead.
A documentary about food icon, Anthony Bourdain used AI to recreate his voice and say things that he never said.
This incident raised concerns about what happens to our digital likeness without our permission.
Okay, hopefully you understood some of that.
But don't worry, let's take a look and break down each part.
But first, before we look at some of these words, I would like to remind you that if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't yet followed or subscribed, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
Make sure that you are following and subscribed to the Easy English Podcast so that you don't miss out on cool new episodes like this one.
Okay, let's look at our article bit by bit.
So dead singers sing again.
Our first sentence here is deceased artists are performing as holograms.
Deceased is another word for dead.
So deceased artists an artist, in this case a singer, who is already dead.
Deceased artists dead artists are performing as holograms.
I could also add that deceased, to me, it sounds like more of a formal word for dead.
The other key part of this sentence is holograms, holograms.
What is a hologram?
Well, a hologram is a digital image of something. that looks like a real thing.
So it's not real, it's a digital creation of it and it looks real.
So these deceased artists are performing with like a digital creation of them that looks like it's real?
And they're even releasing music through digital updates.
So they are creating and putting out new music to the world.
However, this technology raises many concerns.
The technology raises, it means that it brings to mind, it creates almost many concerns.
It makes us think about many concerns or issues.
Let's continue.
The concerns started with the holographic resurrection of Tupac Shakur.
Holographic, this is an adjective and for that word hologram.
So something that is made using these holograms.
In the sense we can just think of this like digital.
So the concerns or the issues that people had started with the digital resurrection of Tupac Shakur.
A resurrection is to return from the dead.
Tupac Shakur is already deceased or dead, and this holograph resurrected him for a performance at the 2012 Coachella Music Festival, which critics called creepy creepy.
Creepy is like an unpleasant, sort of a little bit scary, uncomfortable feeling.
Let's continue.
The use of the technology continued with tours for jazz, rock musician Frank Zappa, opera singer Maria Callas and RB singer Amy Winehouse.
Now that part's understandable.
It's just saying that they used the technology for these other artists, these other singers who are already dead or deceased.
The family of pop singer Selena Quintanilla announced a new posthumous album Posthumous.
What might that mean?
Posthumous is something that happens after a person's death.
So after they are deceased.
So this album, this music album is after their death and it will digitally age the artist's voice.
It will make the voice sound older.
To make it sound as if she was still alive.
Now, our final paragraph.
You're doing very well.
Let's keep going and we're almost done.
Over the past years, many have questioned whether these posthumous performances are celebrating a legacy or exploiting the dead.
Quite a hard sentence.
So posthumous performances, again, that is performances after the person is dead.
They questioned whether these after-death performances are celebrating a legacy.
A legacy is what is left behind after the person dies.
We often think about this, like all of the great things that they have done, or if it's exploiting, which means trying to take a benefit From the dead.
And our final two sentences, a documentary about food icon Anthony Bourdain used AI to recreate his voice and say things that he never said.
This incident raised concerns about what happens to our digital likeness without our permission.
Likeness means something that is like you.
So digital likeness, it's a digital copy of you.
And permission is whenever you say, yes, that's okay.
But in this case, without permission, you have not said that's okay.
Whew.
Okay, so it's a very interesting article and it does raise some important questions about these digital performances and a lot of this new AI technology.
What do you think?
Do you think it's okay to recreate dead singers or deceased artists and make money from it after they are dead?
What do you think?
I would love to hear your opinion on this article and topic.
If you enjoyed this reading of the article and breaking down of each part of it and you're not a Patreon subscriber, then do go and check out the Easy English Patreon.
The link is in the description of every podcast episode.
So you can click there, go to Patreon, there's an Easy English page, and I post every single week.
And every week I upload not only the main podcast episodes with transcripts and vocabulary lists, but also bonus episodes such as this series News in Easy English.
So if you want to take your learning to the next level, then become a Patreon supporter.
Now, if you've listened this far, I would advise you now to go back, rewind the podcast a little bit and listen again to the article.
Listen to me reading through the article. and see if you understand a little bit better.
Thank you very much for listening or watching today, and thank you so much for your support.
I get so many kind, lovely messages every day from you great Easy English learners and fans and I'm so glad that we have such a lovely, friendly community of learners.
And I see every day so many people trying hard to improve their English.
And I just want to say you're doing a great job.
Even the fact that you're listening to this podcast shows that you are trying to improve your English.
So well done.
You're doing so much more than so many people are doing with their language learning.
So thank you so much for listening, and I hope to see you in the next episode of the Easy English Podcast.
Have a lovely rest of your day.
Goodbye.
