Hans Asperger would have been merely "a footnote in the history of autism", so why did he get to be the eponym in Asperger's syndrome? Because along with the usual problems medical eponyms pose, and his work not really earning him the honour, he collaborated with Nazis and sent children to a hospital where they would be experimented on and even killed. Activist, writer and academic Morénike Giwa Onaiwu discusses the stigma around terms like Asperger’s syndrome and autism, and historian Edith She...
Apr 03, 2022•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hans Asperger would have been merely "a footnote in the history of autism", so why did he get to be the eponym in Asperger's syndrome? Because along with the usual problems medical eponyms pose, and his work not really earning him the honour, he collaborated with Nazis and sent children to a hospital where they would be experimented on and even killed. Activist, writer and academic Morénike Giwa Onaiwu discusses the stigma around terms like Asperger’s syndrome and autism, and historian Edith She...
Apr 03, 2022•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Bad hats, cat's pyjamas, banting, goops, creatures, and playing possum - what WERE people going on about during the Golden Age of detective fiction? Caroline Crampton of Shedunnit podcast and I get sleuthing into the slang of the mystery novels of the 1920s and 1930s. Find out more information about the topics in this episode at theallusionist.org/beesknees , plus a transcript and the full dictionary entry for the randomly selected word. Versions of this episode were originally released by Carol...
Mar 18, 2022•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast "Warning: read and keep," says the piece of paper inside Kinder Surprise Eggs, in 34 languages; yet most people do neither thing. But sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris did read and keep it, and study what the egg is trying to tell us: about Kinder Egg toy safety, yes, but also about multilingualism, about an object that says 'yes!' but the warning says 'no!', about the signs of human idiosyncracy that show themselves even in a mandatory corporate message. Find out more information about the topics i...
Mar 05, 2022•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Complex PTSD is different to PTSD, but there's not that much understanding of it as its own condition - which was not much help to Stephanie Foo when she was diagnosed with it in 2018. We talk about facing trauma rather than burying it, self-care and self-soothing, endurance being an underrated word, and why people can quit sniping about triggers. Stephanie’s new book is What My Bones Know : A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma . Content note: Stephanie refers fleetingly to the parental viole...
Feb 19, 2022•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast I've been saving them up all year, and now it's time for the annual selection box of Bonus Bits! Things this year's guests said that couldn't fit into their episode, or weren't related to language, but ARE related to being a bonus bit. We've got percussive pan protests; the mating habits, and male-killing habits, of ladybirds; Icelandic aunts/uncles/cousins/wait which member of the extended family are you referring to?; Morse code machines; and a surprisingly heated topic, the semantics of salad...
Dec 23, 2021•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast "It's really good if we can get the changes through here - that can be an inspiration for other other countries or other places in the world," says Þorbjörg Þorvaldsdóttir, chair of Samtökin ’78 , the national queer organization of Iceland. In 2019, Iceland passed the Gender Autonomy Act, which added an option for people to register their official gender as X; with it, the country's strictly binary-gendered naming laws were suddenly transformed. Other changes, like a new genderfree pronoun, are ...
Dec 07, 2021•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Icelandic language has remained so stable over the centuries, speakers can read manuscripts from 900 years ago without too much trouble. And when they need a new word for more recent concepts, there are committees to coin one, so that the modern Icelandic lexicon includes such things as the internet, helicopters and mansplaining. Defending the language from the encroachment of English, however, is rather more challenging. Find out more about the topics covered in this episode, and a transcri...
Nov 24, 2021•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast When you're trans and pregnant, some of the vocabulary of pregnancy, birth and parenting might not fit you. In fact, some of it might not even work for people of ANY gender. Trans parents Freddy McConnell and CJ talk about gender-additive language, inclusive for women and other genders, and about how in English law, the word 'mother' becomes semantically very complicated indeed. Find out more about the topics covered in this episode at theallusionist.org/parents . Sign up to be a patron at patre...
Nov 07, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The word 'asexual' has been used by humans describing themselves for several decades; 'aromantic' is newer. Both words enable people to voice identities that were unacknowledged for centuries, to find each other and build communities together, and to provide counternarratives to what the allosexuals are pushing. Lewis Brown, a writer and poet, speaks on behalf of AUREA, the Aromantic spectrum Union for Recognition, Education and Advocacy, about the history and use of 'asexual' and 'aromantic'. H...
Oct 26, 2021•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today it's the etymologies you requested! And a few you didn't! We've got witches, wizards, warlocks; conjurers and cloves; wood shavings, nice gone nasty, and a whole lot more. Plus, a bold method of scaring away a ghost, if you must. Find out more about the topics covered in this episode at theallusionist.org/hedgerider . Sign up to be a patron at patreon.com/allusionist and as well as supporting the show, you get behind the scenes glimpses and bonus etymologies. The music is by Martin Austwic...
Oct 13, 2021•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Did any number cause as much trouble as zero? It stranded ships; it scrambles the brains of mathematicians, calendar users and computers; it even got itself banned in Florence. Math(s) communicator and drag queen Kyne explains the Terminator of numbers. Find out more about this episode at theallusionist.org/zero . And submit requests for words you'd like me to investigate in the next episode at theallusionist.org/requests . Sign up to be a patron at patreon.com/allusionist and as well as support...
Sep 25, 2021•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Quiz time! Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway of Home Cooking podcast join to deliver questions about food etymology, as well as what are the two words that make a dance track, and whether 'za' is an acceptable abbreviation for 'pizza'. Play along and keep track of your score using the interactive scoresheet at theallusionist.org/foodquiz . For the rest of September 2021, you can stream the London Podfest performance of the new Allusionist live show, full of eponyms, music and planets. Link is a...
Sep 10, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast We use verbal numbers and we use numerals - why do we need both? Why do we have the ones we have? What happened to Roman numerals? And what's loserish about the fiftieth Super Bowl? Stephen Chrisomalis, professor of anthropology and linguistics and author of the book Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition and History , returns to the Allusionist to explain our current numbers, and why we shouldn't get too arrogant about them. There's more about this episode, and a transcript, at theallusionist.org/numb...
Aug 30, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, read all the salads from the 1950 recipe book 282 Ways of Making a Salad, with Favourite Recipes by British and American Personalities and Stars by Bebe Daniels and Jill Algood, with the purpose of giving your internal monologue a break by replacing it with some absolutely inconsequential words. Note: this is NOT the usual Allusionist. You will not learn anything about language at all, in fact the ideal outcome of the Tranquillusionists ...
Aug 14, 2021•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast They're not ladies and they're not birds; they're not even technically bugs! But that's not the most surprising thing about ladybirds/ladybugs and their brilliant variety of names. Tamsin Majerus AKA Dr Ladybird explains why ladybirds are so great; and Johanna Mayer and Elah Feder of the podcast Science Diction , about words and the science stories behind them, consider what's in a (ladybird) name. This episode is one half of a collaboration with Science Diction, so go to their feed to listen to...
Jul 12, 2021•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Crazy, insane, nuts, mad, bonkers, psycho, schizo, OCD - casual vocabulary is strewn with mental health terms, but perhaps shouldn't be? Psychotherapist and podcaster Lily Sloane talks about what we're really saying when we use such words. Content note: in the second half of the show there is some mention of eating disorders. So if that’s not what you need to hear about today, tap out at the ad break. There's more about this episode, and a transcript, at theallusionist.org/mind-my-mind . The mus...
Jun 27, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Exclamation; sign of agreement OR disapproval; gendered, but circumstantially gender-neutral; term of endearment: 'dude' can do it all! But its connotations of a laid-back, cool, masculine person are only a few decades old; before that, it meant...an uptight city-dwelling tourist?? Dude, seriously! There's more about this episode, and a transcript, at theallusionist.org/dude . Callie Wright's podcast is Queersplaining , which you can find in the kinds of places you obtain this podcast, and at qu...
Jun 10, 2021•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast “It's hard to address something if you can't actually name what it is,” says Moya Bailey, who coined a term that enables people to discuss a specific combination of racism and sexism: misogynoir. Find Moya Bailey's work at moyabailey.com . Her new book is Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women's Digital Resistance. There's more about this episode, and a transcript, at theallusionist.org/misogynoir . The music is by Martin Austwick. Hear Martin’s own songs at palebirdmusic.co...
May 28, 2021•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast SOS is a really versatile distress call. You can shout it; you can tap it out in Morse code; you can honk it on a horn; you can signal it with flashes of light; you can spell it out on the beach with debris from your wrecked ship. Explaining where SOS came from and what it means are maritime archivist Christian Ostersehlte from the German Maritime Museum, and Paul Tyreman from PK Porthcurno, the Museum of Global Telecommunications. Find more information about the topics in this episode at theall...
May 14, 2021•20 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 about forty words. This is a rerun of an all time fave Allusionist, but with a few e...
Apr 23, 2021•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you were in Brazil during the military dictatorship of 1964-1985, tried to bake a cake from a recipe in the newspaper, and were served with a sorry mess that tasted disgustingly salty, it wasn't your fault. What you thought was a recipe was actually a message from the newspaper that they were being censored. Designer and researcher Crystian Cruz opens up the TOP SECRET files, to share the fake weather reports, single nipples vs a pair, soap opera characters getting bumped off, and the p...
Apr 10, 2021•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast What to do to stick it to the powers that be? Send your message through something they really care about: cake. In Buenos Aires, local tour guides Madi Lang and Juan Palacios introduce me to priest's balls and little cannons, the pastries laced with the sweet taste of 1880s trade union protests. There are a few swears and saucy references in this episode. Find more information about the topics in this episode at theallusionist.org/cake-sword . The music is by Martin Austwick. Hear Martin&r...
Mar 27, 2021•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast "Sometimes I've heard people talk about losing a child and people say it's like losing a limb. And as someone who's lost both things, I just want to say, the realities are very different." Musician and writer Christa Couture has experienced way too much of people trying to convey sympathy and instead expressing their discomfort about disability and death. Content note: we talk about ableism, cancer and bereavement. Part of the conversation is about the deaths of two of Christa's babies, so...
Mar 12, 2021•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In their podcasts Mija and Moonface , Lory Martinez and James Kim create autobiographical fiction in multiple languages. There are a few swears in this episode. Find out more about this episode at theallusionist.org/podlingual and hear the whole conversation, and the others in the series, on Scripps College's podcast feed. The music is by Martin Austwick. Hear Martin’s own songs at palebirdmusic.com or search for Pale Bird on Bandcamp and Spotify, and he’s @martinau...
Feb 25, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast St Valentine's name may nowadays be all over the romance-related merch for 14 February, but he was also the patron saint of beekeepers, epilepsy and plagues. Let's get to know this multi-hyphenate saint a bit better. Find out more about topics covered in this episode at theallusionist.org/valentine . All the information in this episode is real, even though it sounds like it's not. The music is by Martin Austwick. Hear Martin’s own songs at palebirdmusic.com or search for Pale Bird on Bandc...
Feb 14, 2021•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Apologies are such important verbal transactions. So why are so many of them soooo bad? Susan McCarthy and Marjorie Ingall from SorryWatch and Laura Beaudin of fauxpolo.gy pinpoint what to look out for, to sort the apologies from the fauxpologies. There’s more about this episode at theallusionist.org/sorry . The music is by Martin Austwick. Hear Martin’s own songs at palebirdmusic.com or search for Pale Bird on Bandcamp and Spotify, and he’s @martinaustwick on Twitter and Insta...
Jan 31, 2021•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast To round off the year, here are some choice cuts from the Allusionist vault of interesting things that guests said that there wasn’t room for in the original episodes. Brace yourself for a vivid name for dust bunnies, the scary side of glamour, another reason to be grateful for bears, and Schrödinger’s Fart. There’s more about this episode at theallusionist.org/bonus2020 . The show will be back with new episodes in late January 2021. The Allusionist's online home is theall...
Dec 24, 2020•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast The usual canon of Christmas songs may not really fit people's moods in this year 2020, when I'm not sure a lot of us are feeling all that holly jolly. So I drafted in singer and songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs and we wrote a festive song that is suitable for 2020. Content note: there are swears. Several of them. Jenny Owen Youngs makes music - find it at jennyowenyoungs.com - and podcasts - Buffering the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars Investigations . She’s @jennyowenyoungs on Twitter and ...
Dec 14, 2020•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast In Australia, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of languages. Until English arrived. Rudi Bremer and Karina Lester talk about the destruction and revival of indigenous Australian languages. Content note: this episode refers to violence and genocide. Find more information about the topics in this episode at theallusionist.org/custodians , and listen to the other episodes in the Survival series: Second Home about Welsh in Patagonia; Oot in the Open , about the suppression and revival of Scot...
Nov 28, 2020•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
