Next episode is the 200th, therefore this is the 199th. I raid the 66 pages of ideas for episodes I have been keeping for nearly a decade, and present to you 199 that I have not yet made into podcasts (except for this one). Find the episode's transcript, plus more information about the topics therein, at theallusionist.org/199ideas. If you fancy concocting a quiz question for the imminent 200th episode, go to theallusionist.org/quiz to submit it; your deadline is 6 September 2024. To help fund t...
Aug 30, 2024•38 min
Since 2019, Marwan Kaabour has been collecting Arabic slang words used by and about queer people, first for the online community Takweer, and now the newly published Queer Arab Glossary. "When researching for this book, I discovered so much of the sociopolitical, cultural, linguistic, and historical layers that make up the words," he says. He also discovered quite a lot about frying, white beans and worms (metaphorical ones). Find the episode's transcript, plus more information and links to Marw...
Aug 12, 2024•41 min
At the Scripps National Spelling Bee, behind the spectacle of kids vying to be champion spellers, a whole lot of work goes on to make words into this word sport. Offering a peek into the apiary are the Bee's executive director Corrie Loeffler, and Ben Zimmer and Jane Solomon from the Bee's word panel. Find out more about this episode, get the transcript, hear the other Beelusionist episode about the Spelling Bee, and listen to the rest of the Word Play series, at theallusionist.org/wordsport. An...
Jun 30, 2024•45 min
I went to the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee, to marvel at kids spelling words I had mostly never even heard of. But when you’re at Bee Week, the competitive spelling is merely the tip of the icebee. Find out more about this episode, get the transcript, and listen to the rest of the Word Play series, at theallusionist.org/beeing. And visit spellingbee.com for all the information about this year's tournament. Members of the Allusioverse also got daily Beecaps from my time at Bee Week, so if y...
Jun 10, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Cain's Jawbone, a murder mystery cryptic puzzle novella in the form of 100 pages presented in the wrong order, has many millions of possible solutions but only one that is correct. 86 years after it was published, writer, comedian and crossword constructor John Finnemore solved it. And then, craving another 100-page cryptic puzzle murder story, he wrote his own. Get the transcript of this episode, and find links to more information about the people, puzzles and topics therein, at theallusionist....
May 28, 2024•35 min
Exciting things have been happening with crossword puzzles in the US: more constructors, more outlets to get puzzles published, clues and answers that would never have appeared even a few years ago, and puzzle packs raising a whole lot of money for charities and humanitarian causes. You hear from crossword constructor extraordinaire Erik Agard, Juliana Pache of BlackCrossword.com, Rachel Fabi of These Puzzles Fund Abortion, and Adrian Johnson from Puzzles for Palestine. Get the transcript of thi...
May 13, 2024•49 min
AJ Jacobs makes The Puzzler podcast, wrote The Puzzler book, and sometimes turns his whole life into a puzzle. He comes bearing word games, explanations of anagrams being used to precipitate wars and were key evidence in trials, tips for writing with a quill, below-the-knee insults, and tales of living constitutionally. AJ's new book is The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning. Find his work at AJJacobs.com. Get the transcript of t...
Apr 23, 2024•52 min
This episode, and the next couple of episodes, are about word games! Today, Joshua Blackburn recounts how his sons' uninspiring English homework led to him inventing the language quiz game League of the Lexicon; and Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyalıoğlu of Thorny Games explain how they make topics like language loss and deciphering alien language into creative play. Get the transcript of this episode, and find links to more information about the topics therein, at theallusionist.org/wordplay2. Word...
Apr 09, 2024•45 min
The word 'hypochondria' has travelled from meaning physical ailments in a particular region of your body, to ones that are only in your mind. It has been in fashion, and thoroughly out; it has been subject to a range of treatments; it has been lucrative for quacks; and it's a very understandable form of anxiety - which I have, and so does Caroline Crampton, author of the new book A Body Made of Glass: A History of Hypochondria. Content note: this episode contains a lot of discussion about health...
Mar 23, 2024•53 min
"It's quite a big undertaking going through every named feature in the whole solar system and trying to find out who that person was." When PhD student Annie Lennox discovered a crater on Mercury, she got the chance to name it. Which sent her on a bigger space mission. Content note: this episode contains mentions of, but not descriptions of, sexual violence. Get the transcript of this episode, and find links to more information about the topics therein including how to get involved with the next...
Mar 11, 2024•40 min
This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, soothe your brain by saying a load of words that don’t really mean very much, to give you an emotional break by temporarily supplanting your interior monologue with something you can benignly ignore. Note: this is NOT a normal episode of the Allusionist, where you might learn something about language and your brain might be energised. The Tranquillusionist's purpose is to rest your brain and for you to learn nothing. If you like it, ther...
Feb 26, 2024•1 hr 6 min
At Lunar New Year, certain foods are particularly lucky to eat. Why? Because in Chinese, their names are puns on fortunate things. Damn, maybe noodles are all it takes to get me into puns after all... Professor Miranda Brown, cultural historian of China specialising in food and drink, explains the wordplay foods of new year, and why names are so resonant in Chinese. Get the transcript of this episode, and find links to Miranda Brown's work and more information about the topics therein, at theall...
Feb 10, 2024•27 min
Lipreading has been in the news this month, thanks to gossip-stoking mouth movements at the Golden Globes that the amateur lipreaders of The Internet rushed to interpret. But lipreading tutor Helen Barrow describes how reading lips really works - the confusable consonants, the importance of context and body language - and gossip maven Lainey Lui explains why these regularly occurring lipreading gossip stories are unworthy of a second or even first glance. Get the transcript of this episode, and ...
Jan 28, 2024•43 min
It's our annual end of year parade of all the extra good stuff this year's podguests talked about, including a mythical disappearing island, geese, human dictionaries, the dubious history of the Body Mass Index, Victorian death department stores, and much more. In order of appearance, we hear from: Translator and author Caetano Galindo on how the countril Brazil got its name Lexicographer and Countdown's Dictionary Corner-er Susie Dent on pleasing words Academic and collector of dictionaries Lin...
Dec 24, 2023•1 hr
We’ve got knitting! We’ve got eponyms!! We’ve got knitting eponyms!!! Which come with a whole load of battles, f-boys, duels, baseball, espionage, scandals - and socks, lots of socks. Fibre artist and Yarn Stories podcaster Miriam Felton discusses why grafting should ditch the name 'kitchener stitch'; we learn about the eponymous cardigan; and three towns in Ontario take pretty different approaches to having problematic namesakes. Content note: this episode contains mentions of war, death and in...
Dec 12, 2023•33 min
We’re returning to the theme of renaming, for two food-related renamings: the first one that mostly happened, the second that mostly did not - but in a good way. Dr Erin Pritchard persuaded a British supermarket to rebrand a type of sweets that had a slur in their name. And Chris Strikes recounts the renaming conflict that was the Toronto Patty Wars of 1985. Content note: the first part of the episode concerns an ableist slur, so there are incidences of that slur, and discussion of ableism and l...
Nov 20, 2023•36 min
The word 'misophonia' describes a condition that statistically, 20 per cent of you have: an extreme reaction to certain sounds. "For me, it was a relief to have a word for what I'd been experiencing," says Dr Jane Gregory, author of the new book Sounds Like Misophonia: How to Stop Small Noises from Causing Extreme Reactions, "because I thought for a long time that I was really uptight or maybe a bit controlling over other people, and that that was a problem with my character, as opposed to it ac...
Nov 06, 2023•53 min
All aboard, we're off to the 2023 Apple Festival at the University of British Columbia, to taste some apples and, most importantly, enjoy some apple names. And before that, we return to the classic Sporklusionist applesode to refresh our memory about how apple names are chosen - eponyms, portmanteaus, geography, or corporate R&D, just like how our ancestors named apples. Dan Pashman hosts The Sporkful podcast - head to the Sporkful podfeed or sporkful.com to listen to the companion episode w...
Oct 22, 2023•41 min
When Spanish missionaries arrived in what is now called Florida, there were 100,000-200,000 Timucua people in the region. Just two centuries later, there were fewer than 100. Soon, with all the people who spoke it dead, the Timucua language died out, too, preserved only in a few Spanish-Timucua religious texts. In the 21st century, linguistic anthropologist Aaron Broadwell and historian Alejandra Dubcovsky have been decoding and translating these texts to understand the Timucua language and the ...
Oct 09, 2023•34 min
Lexicographer, author and Dictionary Corner resident Susie Dent has been studying words to make us feel happy. She brings etymologies concerning cows, gas, guts and fat, of bellies and breathing and bonanzas. And some that came from the high seas and aren't made up! Find out more about this episode and the topics therein, and obtain the transcript, at theallusionist.org/siblings-of-chaos. Become a member of the Allusioverse at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent pod...
Sep 24, 2023•36 min
There's an abiding myth that the landmark dictionaries are the work of one man, in a dusty paper-filled garrett tirelessly working away singlehandedly. But really it took a village: behind every Big Daddy of Lexicography was usually a team of women, keeping the garrett clean, organising the piles of papers, reading through all the citations, doing research, writing definitions, editing, subediting...essentially being lexicographers, without the credit or the pay. Academic Lindsay Rose Russell, a...
Sep 13, 2023•36 min
Sterling Martin was in grad school, studying C. elegans worms, when COVID19 hit and suddenly he found himself in lexicography, as part of a team creating a Navajo-English dictionary of science terms. Browse the dictionary at EnableNavajo.org, and donate to help the project add more educational materials at navajobiology.square.site. Find out more about this episode and the topics therein, and obtain the transcript, at theallusionist.org/projectenable. Become a member of the Allusioverse at theal...
Aug 25, 2023•29 min
It's the annual etymology quizlusionist! I’m on a family holiday for the first time since 1988, so enlisted my brother Andy Zaltzman of the Bugle podcast to test his/your wits on singing goats, explosives, mythological Greek sweeteners, attics, left-handedness and whales. Can you beat Andy’s score? Play along using the interactive scoresheet at theallusionist.org/andyquiz. Become a member of the Allusioverse at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you ...
Aug 12, 2023•31 min
Have you ever wondered why the planets in our solar system are all named after Roman deities, except two of them? One of those exceptions is Earth. The other is Uranus. Content note: there are mentions of Ancient Greek and Roman deities and their terrible sexual behaviours and violent vengeance. Also category B and C swears. Find more information about this episode and a transcript at theallusionist.org/uranus. This episode was written, performed and produced by Helen Zaltzman and Martin Austwic...
Jun 24, 2023•27 min
This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, say a load of words which aren’t really about anything, so that your brain gets a little gentle diversion from thinking and/or feeling. Today: a list of gay animals. Find a transcript at theallusionist.org/gay-animals. Several other Tranquillusionists and nearly 200 Allusionist episodes that are actually about something - are at theallusionist.org. Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podc...
Jun 09, 2023•23 min
“The starting point is, and the research questions are all framed by: 'We know it's terrible to be fat, but how terrible is it?' Not: 'What would it take to give effective healthcare to fat people?'” says Aubrey Gordon, writer of the new book You Just need to Lose Weight and 19 Other Myths About Fat People , star of the documentary Your Fat Friend , and podcaster of Maintenance Phase . And it's not just healthcare where the alignment of 'fat' with 'unhealthy' - and 'thinner' with 'healthier' - b...
May 25, 2023•46 min
It should just be an accurate descriptor of my body, but the word 'fat' has shaped so much more of my life, and our society. "There is this whole set of baggage that we are all culturally bringing to this word all the time," says Aubrey Gordon, writer of the new book You Just need to Lose Weight and 19 Other Myths About Fat People , star of the documentary Your Fat Friend , and podcaster of Maintenance Phase . In the next episode, Aubrey and I will discuss how the word 'fat' is often aligned wit...
May 12, 2023•30 min
Oh, you thought the Eurovision Song Contest was about songs ? Or a fun international TV event that brings people together in lots of different countries? Or watching extremely vigorous dance numbers? OK, it is , but it's also about some pretty thorny language-related politics. Historian Dean Vuletic, author of Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest , discusses Eurovision's many linguistic controversies, and the ways the contest has been exploited politically - and caused political kick-o...
Apr 21, 2023•33 min
There aren't many multilingual, multinational television shows that have been running for nearly seven decades. But what makes the Eurovision Song Contest so special to me is not the music, or the dancing, or the costumes that range from spangletastic to tear-off: no, it's the people butting heads about language. Historian Dean Vuletic, author of Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest , recounts the many changes in Eurovision's language rules, and its language hopes and dreams. This is t...
Apr 07, 2023•33 min
"You can't redead the dead by you saying something shit," says Cariad Lloyd of Griefcast and author of You Are Not Alone ; nevertheless when you're bereaved, people still are usually so nervous to say the wrong thing that they often don't say anything at all. And especially not the word 'dead'. Maybe what we need, says council funeral officer Evie King, author of Ashes To Admin , is a "jazzy snazzy term for death, the 'bottomless brunch' of death..." Content warning: this episode is about death*...
Mar 24, 2023•49 min
