Pavement/sidewalk; football/soccer; bum bag/fanny pack: we know that the English language is different in the UK and the USA. But why? Linguist Lynne Murphy points out the geographical, cultural and social influences that separate the common language. Find out more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/across-the-pond . The Allusionist’s online home is http://theallusionist.org . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . Support...
Apr 07, 2018•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today we’re going inside to open up the unofficial dictionary of San Quentin state prison, compiled by Earlonne Woods of Ear Hustle podcast. Content note: this episode contains some Adult Terms. Find out more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/ear-hustling . The Allusionist’s online home is http://theallusionist.org . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . You can see the Allusionist live in Australia – http://...
Mar 23, 2018•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast CONTENT WARNING: there is swearing in this episode. But the happy news is: swearing is good for you! Dr Emma Byrne, author of Swearing Is Good For You, explains how swearing can be beneficial to your physical health and emotional wellbeing, while Matt Fidler of Very Bad Words podcast gives some tips to ensure you swear properly to optimise the positive effects. Find out more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/swear-pill . The show’s online home is http://theallusionist.org . S...
Mar 09, 2018•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Up in the sky: look! It’s an adjective! It’s a noun! It’s…Adjectivenoun! Your friendly neighbourhood superheroes might have thrilling and varied powers and spandex garments, but the way their names are concocted have followed only a handful of formulae in the past 80 years, since Superman sent superheroes soaring. (Yes, alliteration is one such naming formula.) Glen Weldon of Pop Culture Happy Hour traces the supername’s development from ...
Feb 24, 2018•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Hey.” “Going to the supermarket, want me to get you anything?” “Puppies or ice cream?” “What’s your glasses prescription?” “I wanna ***** your *********.” If you’ve used a dating app, maybe you’ve received one of the above messages from a stranger, or sent them. Striking up an interaction with someone is a tricky business. Why Oh Why and Longest Shortest Time host Andrea Silenzi opens up her phone to analyse the kinds...
Feb 09, 2018•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s a year since Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. And in that year, he’s caused a lot of changes in the job of constitutional law professor Elizabeth Joh of TrumpConLaw podcast – in particular, one verb is now off limits. Plus: Paul Anthony Jones, aka etymologist extraordinaire Haggard Hawks, describes how politicians’ names work their way into our vocabularies. Find out more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/trump . ...
Jan 26, 2018•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s the annual bonus episode. Throughout the year, the people who appear on the show tell me a lot of interesting stuff, not all of which is relevant to the episode they initially appeared in, so I stash it away in preparation for this moment. This year, hear about the history of roller skates, zazzification, giant origami, the heat death of the universe and more. Find information about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/bonus2017 . Come to see the live Allusionist show at SF Sketc...
Dec 23, 2017•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Charles Dickens wrote about the plight of the impoverished and destitute members of British society. So how come his name is a synonym for rosy-cheeked, full-stomached, fattened-goose, hearty merry “God bless us every one” Christmas? Avery Trufelman and Katie Mingle of 99% Invisible report from the streets of Victorian London at the annual Dickens Christmas Fair in Daly City, California, while historian Greg Jenner explains the origins of the festive traditions for which Dickens gets the credit,...
Dec 09, 2017•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Somebody has really ticked you off. You’re all steamed up inside and you want to vent that rage using words, but you don’t want to confront them directly because you’re either too polite or too cowardly. So do you: A. Subtweet them. B. With your finger, scrawl an insulting message into the dirt on their car. C. Get a small sheet of lead, scratch into it a message cursing your enemies, roll it up and throw it into your nearest sacred spring? Oh, I forgot to mention that it&rsquo...
Nov 25, 2017•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast You’re holding a letter. What’s inside? A weather report from 5,000 miles away? Some devastating family history? A single word? A heartfelt dispatch from your past self that’s about to change the course of your life? Find out more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/open-me-2 . The show’s online home is http://theallusionist.org . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . Support the show: http://patreon.com/...
Nov 10, 2017•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast From Me To You’s Alison Hitchcock and Brian Greenley didn’t know each other well. But when Brian was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, Alison offered to write him letters. 100 letters later, their lives were changed. Ear Hustle is a podcast made inside San Quentin by and about the men incarcerated there, in collaboration with Nigel Poor. In prison, a letter is a precious thing. Find out more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/open-me-1 . The show’s online home is http...
Oct 27, 2017•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast Roman Mars returns for our annual dose of eponyms – words that derive from people’s names. This year: explosive revelations about the origins of the word ‘guy’. Find out more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/guy . CONTENT NOTE: the episode contains a description of 17th century torture and execution. The show’s online home is http://theallusionist.org . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . Suppo...
Oct 14, 2017•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast You’ve encountered technobabble when Doc Brown is shouting about flux capacitors in Back To The Future, or when Isaac Asimov writes about positronic brains. Astrophysicist Katie Mack and NASA JPL technologist Manan Arya discuss how science fact relates to science fiction. This episode is a collaboration with Eric Molinsky of Imaginary Worlds; listen to his episode about technobabble, featuring ACTUAL HOLLYWOOD TECHNOBABBLERS, at http://imaginaryworldspodcast.org . The show’s online h...
Sep 30, 2017•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Accent is identity. It’s a way of encoding and signaling – almost completely at an unconscious level for most people – who they feel like they are, who they want to be seen as, what group they feel like they belong to.” The podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz investigates how accents have evolved in the UK and USA. Hear Twenty Thousand Hertz at http://20k.org and find out more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/evolution-of-accents . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow an...
Sep 14, 2017•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Crossword-solving is often a solitary activity – over breakfast; on the train; on the loo… But a few times a year, crossword puzzle enthusiasts gather in their hundreds to compete to be the fastest, most accurate crossword-solver. This episode comes to you from a church basement on the Upper East Side of New York City, wherein takes place America’s second largest crossword puzzle tournament: Lollapuzzoola. For more about this episode, visit http://theallusionist.org/lollapuzzo...
Sep 02, 2017•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast “It’s sort of frozen body language; that’s what handwriting analysis is about.” Since it caught on a couple of hundred years ago, graphology – analysing handwriting to deduce characteristics of the writer – has struggled to be taken seriously as a practice. But undoubtedly, there are things about ourselves that we can’t help but reveal in our handwriting. Graphologist Adam Brand explains the ‘pseudoscience/useful art’. For more about this episode, visit http://theallusionist.org/graphology . Sta...
Aug 17, 2017•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast They look like numbers. They sound like numbers. You kinda know they are numbers. But they’re not actually numbers. Linguistic anthropologist Stephen Chrisomalis explains what’s going on with indefinite hyperbolic numerals like ‘zillion’, ‘squillion’ and ‘kajillion’. For more about this episode, visit http://theallusionist.org/zillions . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . Support the show: ...
Aug 05, 2017•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Translation, A Love Story: Translator listens to The Allusionist. Translator hears about the podcast The Memory Palace. Translator listens to The Memory Palace. Translator immediately becomes smitten with The Memory Palace. Translator translates The Memory Palace from English to Brazilian Portuguese, and turns it into a book – O Palácio da Memória – which will be published in Brazil two weeks hence. But, like any love story, it’s not quite that simple. Literary tr...
Jun 30, 2017•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s August 2007. Lauren Marks is a 27-year-old actor and a PhD student, spending the month directing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She’s in a bar, standing onstage, performing a karaoke duet of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’…and then a blood vessel in her brain bursts. When she wakes up in hospital, days later, she has no internal monologue, and a vocabulary of only forty words. Find out more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/eclipse , and m...
Jun 16, 2017•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s a small matter I trip over regularly in the Allusionist: Dates. Not the fruit. Specicially, the terms BC and AD, Before Christ and Anno Domini (‘the year of the Lord’ (‘the Lord’ also being Christ)). How did Jesus Christ get to be all up in our system of counting the years? There’s more about the episode at http://theallusionist.org/abdc . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . Support the sh...
Jun 01, 2017•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast As discussed in episode 51, Under the Covers part II, the vocabulary for sex and associated body parts is tricky to navigate in many ways – but even more so if you are trans or gender non-binary. CONTENT NOTE: this episode contains strong language and frank discussions of sex and bodies. There’s more about the episode at http://theallusionist.org/joins . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . Support the show: http://patreon.com/...
May 19, 2017•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder wants people to stop saying ‘namaste’ after a yoga session. There’s more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/namaste . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . Support the show: http://patreon.com/allusionist See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
May 05, 2017•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Sometimes you want to make the dictionary sexy but it’s just not a sexy thing,” says Kory Stamper, lexicographer for the Merriam-Webster dictionaries. Sorry if this is disillusioning news for you. The dictionary is not a sexy thing, but as Kory explains, it is a fascinating, complicated, exacting thing. There’s more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/authority . Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . Sup...
Apr 14, 2017•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Recognizing someone’s humanity is crucial. Calling someone a migrant, calling someone an asylum seeker, calling them a refugee: these are official categories. But in many ways, depending on how they use them, they can change and become more negative.” So says propaganda and migration specialist Emma Briant, as she explains the dangers of conflating and misusing terms like ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’, while British/Asian/but-kinda-not author Nikesh Shu...
Apr 01, 2017•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sometimes words can become your worst enemy. Clinical psychologist Jane Gregory tells how to defuse their power. There’s more about this episode at http://theallusionist.org/behave-rerun . The main part of this episode is a rerun, but there’s new material as well – get ready for a thrill-ride into medieval accounting technology. Stay in touch at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow and http://facebook.com/allusionistshow . Support the show: http://patreon.com/allusionist See omny...
Mar 17, 2017•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast The term ‘sanctuary cities’ has been in the news a lot in the past few weeks, as places in the USA declare themselves to be havens for undocumented immigrants. Though ‘sanctuary’ has a history of meaning safety for the persecuted, it has an even longer history of meaning something quite different: refuge for criminals. Rosalind Brown, a canon at Durham Cathedral, and historian John Jenkins explain how and why, for 1000 years, churches in England offered shelter ...
Mar 07, 2017•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Does the available vocabulary for sex leave something to be desired? Namely desire? (And also the ability to use it without laughing/dying of embarrassment?) Aiding in the search for a better sex lexicon – sexicon – are Kaitlin Prest of The Heart, and romance novelist Mhairi McFarlane. CONTENT NOTE: this episode contains Sexual Language from the start. For more information about this episode, visit http://theallusionist.org/covers-ii . Find the show at http://twitter.com/allusionists...
Feb 21, 2017•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Escape into the loving embrace of a romance novel – although don’t think you’ll be able to escape gender politics while you’re in there. Bea and Leah Koch, proprietors of America’s sole romance-only bookstore The Ripped Bodice, consider the genre; and publisher Lisa Milton scrolls through the 109-year history of the imprint that epitomises romance novels, Mills & Boon. For more information about this episode, visit http://theallusionist.org/covers-i . Find me at...
Feb 08, 2017•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why is gaslighting ‘gaslighting’? What do bodily fluids have to do with personality traits? Why does ‘cataract’ mean a waterfall and an eye condition? And do doctors really say ‘Stat!’ or is that just in ER? To round off 2016, here’s the bonus edition of The Allusionist, featuring listeners’ etymology requests and extra material from guests who’ve appeared on the show this year. For links and more information about the episode, visit http://t...
Dec 30, 2016•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s a word that has become shorthand for ‘the war on Christmas’ with a side of ‘political correctness gone mad’: Winterval. It began in November 1998. Newspapers furiously accused Birmingham City Council of renaming Christmas when it ran festive events under the name ‘Winterval’. The council’s then-head of events Mike Chubb explains the true meaning of Winterval. For more information about this episode, visit http://theallusionist.org/winterval . Find me at http://twitter.com/allusionistshow...
Dec 06, 2016•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
