Few topics create as much anxiety at college and community radio stations – not to mention many a commercial radio morning show – than broadcast indecency. Since the dawn of broadcast regulation in the US there have been legal restrictions on the kind of speech that may be broadcast on the public airwaves, with a particular focus on the topics of sexual and excretory functions. Yet, for all the worrying and fretting, for much of history there hasn’t been much action by the FCC. And even when there were more fines and actions, the actual number was still relatively small. Prof. Christopher Terry from the University of Minnesota joins us to help unravel this history and set the record straight. First we have to define what “indecency” is, because the specific definition used for broadcast enforcement is not necessarily aligned with the common sense definition, nor is it the same as “obscenity,” which has it’s own particular legal definition. Just because some might call a word...