You're listening to Away With Words, the shell about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. I had the great good fortune recently to join some

friends for a concert by the San Diego Symphony. And what made this evening really special

is that the concert was outdoors at the new Rady Shell at Jacob's Park, which is this spectacular

new venue right there on San Diego Bay. And thanks to the Shell's design and the state of the art

acoustic system, the sound was also just stunning. In fact, Grant, the acoustics were so good that

at intermission, we sought out the sound engineers to check out their board. And the Symphony's audio

director was sitting there and he had a score that he follows during the whole performance.

And that's because he's responsible for creating what he called the cocktail effect. And so, of course,

I got all excited to learn a new term because when you're in a crowded setting and everybody's

talking, you can still tune in to what somebody near you is saying because your brain lets you

focus on the sound of that one person and you filter out all the rest. And I learned that people

who work in the acoustics field call that phenomenon, the cocktail effect or the cocktail party effect.

And so that's what the sound engineers were doing that evening. They were letting us focus in,

for example, if a violinist had a solo. So it was this splendid evening all around just,

you know, gorgeous sound and a summer night by the bay. And I learned a new term.

Yeah, that's a well spent evening, right? Beautiful music, beautiful scenery and beautiful language.

Yes, I figured you probably already knew that term.

Yeah, I was all excited.

Yeah, it's a good term, though. And the sound world is filled with language. We get lots of

email and phone calls from people who want to share their excited to share the language of their

fields or their hobbies or something that they learned when they were out there working with

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