Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. I’m Conner from polyglossa.com and you’re listening to Episode 18 of the Listening Time podcast.

This podcast is designed to help English learners practice their listening skills. So, if you’re in the process of learning English, and you’re having trouble understanding native speakers when they speak fast, at normal speed, then you can listen to this podcast to help train your ears and give yourself more practice for your comprehension. In this podcast, I talk about different topics each episode. And in each episode, I speak normally, naturally, using normal words and phrases and expressions. But I speak a little bit more slowly, and a little bit more clearly than the average native speaker. So, I’m speaking using natural words and phrases, but a little bit more slowly so that you can understand a little bit better.

So, eventually, after listening to this podcast for a while, your ears will start to get better, become more skilled at understanding me. And then, hopefully, you’ll be able to transition and start listening to normal podcasts made for English speakers. Also, remember that for each episode, the transcript is available. You can access it in the Details part of the episode. So, you can listen to each episode multiple times, and maybe the first time, you don’t use the transcript, and then the second time, you use the transcript to help you understand the words and phrases that you missed the first time. And then maybe you can listen again without the transcript to see if you can understand those words and phrases the third time. That’s just one example of how you might want to use this podcast. And remember that I’m not reading a script. So, everything I’m saying is natural, and I’m just speaking as the words come to my mind. So, this podcast should be a good resource to help you understand English better.

And I just want to note that in some episodes, my voice sounds a little worse than in other episodes. This is because sometimes, I record this podcast early in the morning, like today. And so my voice is just barely waking up, so it doesn’t sound as great as in other episodes. And also, I want to note that, I think, the schedule for the podcast has become pretty regular. So, you might have noticed that I’m uploading an episode every week now, one episode per week, and I upload each episode on Monday, so I think that this schedule will stick. When I say that it will “stick”, I mean that it will stay. It won’t change. And so, you should expect a new episode every Monday. And, yeah, I think that I’ve found the schedule, the rhythm that works for me.

So today, we’re going to talk about the circus. This is an interesting topic. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. So we’ll talk about that today. And before we start, remember to sign up for our one dollar Listening Practice Seminars at polyglossa.com and, of course, remember to like this podcast, and give it a rating, a review, and share it with anyone who might find it useful. Alright, let’s get started.

Okay, so today, we’re going to talk about the circus. The reason why I chose this topic for today’s episode is because on the weekend, I actually went to the circus. So, it’s on my mind, and I thought it would be an interesting topic to discuss. So first of all, I want to mention that this was the first time that I ever went to a classical circus. So, it was an interesting experience for me. I didn’t know what to expect exactly. But of course, I had some ideas from movies that I had watched, because, of course, I think we’ve all seen the circus in a movie or a TV show before. So obviously, I had some ideas, but it was interesting to finally see one in real life.

So, this was a small circus, very small, actually. And it was just a modest production. In English, when we say that something is “modest”, we’re saying that it wasn’t very expensive, or extravagant or fancy. It was just a nice, simple performance. So, it cost only… I think it costs only 1.50 or 2 dollars to enter here in my city, in Mexico. And there aren’t many seats at the circus here, but I think there are enough for the amount of people that go. And so the first thing that you’ll notice about the circus, anywhere is that it takes place in a tent. We usually use the word “tent” when we’re talking about camping, right. You sleep in a tent, usually on the ground. Well, at a circus, you also have a very big tent… obviously, much bigger than the type of tent you use for camping.

So, you go inside this tent, and you find your seat, and then the show begins. So, at this show that I went to, at the circus that I went to, there were a few classic elements of any circus, I think. For example, there was a ringmaster, as we call him. The “ringmaster” is the person who introduces all of the different acts. Right. He’s the one who’s hosting the event. When someone “hosts” an event, we’re saying that they are the person who is in control, they’re doing the event. So, the ringmaster hosts the event, and he talks into the microphone and interacts with the audience. And as I said, he introduces each individual act. So, there was a ringmaster. And there were clowns. “Clowns” are those people that dress up in funny clothes, and they paint their face, and they wear a wig. A “wig” is fake hair, right. If you’re bald, you can wear a wig so that it looks like you have hair. So, clowns often wear a wig, and they wear a lot of funny things because the purpose of the clown is to be funny.

So, there were a couple of clowns there, and then there were also acrobats. “Acrobats” are the people that fly through the air holding a rope, and they do many scary… they do many scary tricks and maneuvers in the air, and it’s one of the classic elements of a circus, I think. So there were acrobats. And then one other element, one other act that we saw was the tightrope walking. A “tightrope” is a very small rope that goes from one side to another. And then the “tightrope walker” is the person who walks along this rope, and they balance, so they don’t fall on the ground, and they do different tricks and things on this small, thin rope. So, it’s very very difficult, but this is something that the tightrope walker trains for… probably very often, and they get very good at walking on this very thin rope. So, those were some of the elements that we saw at the circus.

In general… at circuses, in general, there are also many other common elements or acts at the circus. For example, there is juggling. “Juggling” is the act where people have three or four or more objects, and they throw them in the air, and they use both of their hands and they keep these objects in the air. The objects never fall to the ground. So, this is one very common act at circuses. And then another act is unicycling. A “unicycle” is like a bicycle, but it only has one wheel. So, I think, at some circuses, there are unicyclists who juggle or do other things while they’re riding a unicycle. And one other act that I can think of is knife throwing. This is where someone throws knives in the direction of another person, but they don’t actually hit the person, right. They hit the wall behind the person. They get very close to hitting the person with the knife, but obviously, they don’t actually hit them. So, this is another classic act at circuses.

So, one major element that circuses used to have that nowadays, they often don’t have is animals. So, when people think of circuses, usually, one of the things they think of is lions and tigers and elephants and interesting animals like that. However, nowadays, I think that most circuses don’t include this element because people have complained about animal abuse, and they complain that animals are mistreated at circuses. So, I think because many people complain about that, circuses have been forced to abandon this element. I don’t really know much about the issue, but I’ve just noticed that animals are often excluded from circuses nowadays, and maybe they’re always excluded… I don’t really know. As I said, I haven’t been to other circuses, so I’m not quite sure if others circuses have animals or not, but I think that most of them don’t.

Another reason why circuses might not have animals is that they can have some pretty bad accidents with these animals. I think that, for example, if you have a lion, this lion can attack the performer. Maybe they’re not very well-trained or something like that or maybe they get very frustrated or something, and they can attack humans. So, I’m sure that’s another reason why having animals is not the best at these circuses. So, let’s just talk a little bit about the cultural significance of circuses and a little bit of the history. From my research, I found that circuses began in the 18th century in England. So, the first modern circuses took place in the 1700s, I think, in London, and at first I think they didn’t always use a tent. They might have used a real building, but later on, they adopted the style of using a tent and traveling around with this tent.

So, the traveling aspect of the circus is another very important element. In the past, circuses would travel around the country, and so the performers would have to travel between cities, and they would spend weeks or months on the road. And this is something that you’ve probably seen in movies or read in books or things like that, you know… circuses would come to town, as we would say. So, the circus would appear in your town, and then you would go see the show. So, this is an important element about circuses, is that they travel. Nowadays, I don’t know if this is still true. If circus performers have to travel all the time and go on tour, but I’m sure they do, because different circuses like to perform in different cities. I’m sure they still do some traveling like that.

And circuses are something that capture the imagination of children. So, I think that children have always been interested in circuses. And if you see circuses in movies or TV shows or in books, you can always see children getting very excited to go because circuses are very mystical or magical events. They involve a lot of strange things that we don’t normally see in our daily lives. And so, it’s very interesting for people, especially for children, to see these strange elements and strange people and strange events at a circus. So, I think even in my experience, when I went to the circus this past weekend, I could see the children very very captivated by this performance. When we use the word “captivated”, we’re saying that someone is very interested in something that’s happening. They can’t turn their head away from… from watching this performance. They’re captivated by the performance. So, the children there looked like they were having a lot of fun, and it was something really cool and different for them.

So, I think that circuses have changed throughout the years and they’re different now from how they were in the past, but I’m sure that circuses will continue to exist because I think that children will always be intrigued by them. So, as long as children are interested in circuses, I think that there will be circuses. So nowadays, I think, in the United States circuses aren’t extremely popular. Like I said, I think they will continue to exist, but I have to admit that I think most people in big cities don’t really think about the circus that often. Like I said, I had never been to the circus before this past weekend, but one style or one type of circus that people do really like is Cirque du Soleil. You might have heard of this company before. This is the name of a very famous circus company based in Montreal, Canada. The name Cirque du Soleil is a French name, and this company is very, very famous because they have really good performances. Their shows are extremely well done and very professional. And so, everyone loves watching these performances.

I’ve been to one Cirque du Soleil performance before. It was in Las Vegas, and it was extremely impressive. I had never seen anything like this before. The level of skill and the level of danger that I saw at this circus performance was amazing. The type of tricks that they were doing were really, really incredible. It was a little scary to watch because I felt like the people there… the acrobats, they were doing things that were really, really dangerous, so it’s kind of hard to watch in my opinion. But it’s really amazing, and I was captivated the whole time when I watched that performance. And I think for adults, it’s just as interesting as it is for kids. So that is one style of circus that’s very popular nowadays.

And there are other themed circuses. When we say that something is “themed”, we’re saying that it has a style or story or appearance that is different from the classic version. So, one example of a themed circus could be a horror circus, a scary circus. I I’ve seen some of these along the side of the road here in Mexico. These types of circuses are designed to scare you. They’re designed to be scary, and not only entertaining, like normal surfaces, but scary. So, I know there are some different themed circuses as well. So there’s a variety in the world of circuses.

Okay, so I’m going to stop there for today. Hopefully, this episode was interesting for you. And hopefully, it was good practice for your ears. Make sure to sign up for our one dollar Listening Practice Seminars at polyglossa.com and please give this podcast a like a rating a review and share it with anyone else who might find it useful. Thank you for listening to this episode, and I hope you’ll come back for Episode 19 of the Listening Time podcast.