The Allusionist

By Helen Zaltzman

Arts

What's The Allusionist about?

Linguistic adventures with Helen Zaltzman, TheAllusionist.org.

A proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.

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124. Nightmare

10.25.2020

This is the Alloooooooooosionist, in which we learn about the etymology of some scary words for Halloween, with the help of Paul Bae of The Black Tapes and The Big Loop podcasts, and Chelsey Weber-Smith of the podcast American Hysteria. ...

The Allusionist episodes:

10.25.2020 124. Nightmare This is the Alloooooooooosionist, in which we learn about the etymology of some scary words for Halloween, with the help of Paul Bae of The Black Tapes and The Big Loop podcasts, and Chelsey Weber-Smith of the podcast American Hysteria. ...
10.10.2020 123. Celebrity Celebrity used to mean a solemn occasion; X factor was algebraic; and fame was a huge terrifying Godzilla-like beast with many many tongues. Here to try define celebrity and fame are historian Greg Jenner of the podcast You’re Dead To ...
09.28.2020 122. Ghostwriter The word for ‘ghostwriter’ in French is a racist slur. How did THAT come about? And what word could French-speakers use instead? Ngofeen Mputubwele and Gregory Warner investigate. This piece originally aired on NPR’s Rough Translation; hear their new season ...
09.14.2020 121. No Title In 2014, a seemingly trivial and boring incident at the bank propelled me down a linguistic road via medieval werewolves, Ms Marvel and confusingly inscribed gravestones, to find out why the English language is riddled with all this gender. What’s ...
08.28.2020 Tranquillusionist: Home and Garden This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, quell anxiety and calm brain frenzies by replacing your interior monologue with words detached from significance. In this case: the list of HGTV original programming, and lawnmower adverts from before I ...
08.18.2020 The Away Team redux After yet another spell of the British press and politicians using very dehumanising and derogatory rhetoric about migrants, I felt it necessary to go back to the Away Team episode of the Allusionist, about the language of migration, with lecturer ...
07.30.2020 120. Shine Theory It’s great when you coin a phrase that really resonates with people, right? Until they start using it for businesses and ventures that are at odds with the meaning of it… Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, hosts of the podcast ...
07.14.2020 119. Blood Is Not Water The Yiddish word for ‘black’ is, in certain uses, a slur. So Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, Arun Viswanath and Jonah Boyarin teamed up to translate Black Lives Matter without it. Find out more about this episode, the subject matter and ...
07.03.2020 118. Survival: Bequest When the Europeans arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as guns, stoats and Christianity, they brought ideas of cisgender monogamous heterosexuality that were imposed upon the Māori people as if there had never been anything else. But one word, ...
06.15.2020 117. Many Ways At Once The Scots language didn’t have much of an LGBTQ+ lexicon. So writer and performer Dr Harry Josephine Giles decided to create one. Find out more about this episode, the subject matter and the interviewees, at theallusionist.org/manywaysatonce. Previous Allusionist episodes that ...
06.03.2020 116. My Dad Excavated A Porno The word ‘pornography’ arrived in English in the 1840s so upper class male archaeologists could talk about the sexual art they found in Pompeii without anyone who wasn’t an upper class male archaeologist knowing about it. Even though, at the ...
05.16.2020 115. Keep Calm and Twenty years ago, a 1939 poster printed by the British government with the words ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ turned up in a second-hand bookshop in Northern England. And lo! A decor trend was born: teatowels, T-shirts, mugs, phone cases, ...
04.13.2020 Tranquillusionist: Punchlines This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, in the interests of temporarily trying to stop that feeling where you think your brain is trying to claw its way out of your skull, read the punchlines to classic jokes. ...
04.04.2020 Tranquillusionist: Best In Show This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, for the purposes of calming a frazzled brain, read the winners of Best In Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. This episode resides at theallusionist.org/best-in-show; you can find all ...
03.22.2020 Tranquillusionist: Nmiigea This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, for the purposes of quelling anxiety and stress and sleeplessness, read the lyrics to ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon, with the words arranged in reverse alphabetical order. This episode resides at theallusionist.org/nmiigea; ...
03.17.2020 Tranquillusionist: Your Soothing Words We interrupt the Allusionist break to bring an emergency calming episode. I asked you listeners which words you find soothing. Here they are. Put this episode on a loop to help you sleep; play it to quell your inner monologue; ...
02.24.2020 114. Alarm Bells As the climate changes, so does the vocabulary around it - to amplify concern, to dampen concern, to serve corporate concerns… It is linguistically fraught! Journalist Amy Westervelt of the podcast Drilled, Alice Bell from the climate charity Possible, and ...
01.24.2020 113. Zaltzology Today’s episode is something a bit different to usual. A few months ago, I was a guest on the podcast Ologies, a terrific show where the very funny and delightful and curious Alie Ward interviews an ologist of some kind ...
12.24.2019 112. Quiz 2019 For your last Allusionist of 2019, here is a quiz all about words for you to play along with as you listen. Get a pen and paper to jot down your answers, or there’s an interactive answer form all ready ...
12.16.2019 Allusionist special: Podcast Podcast Here’s a special episode about the word that brought us all together… aaand a lot of you hate it. This piece was recorded in front of a live audience at PodCon in Seattle. Get your regular dose of the Allusionist ...
12.16.2019 111. Engraving part 2: Precious Words engraved into metal are intended to last, though you don’t know who in the future is going to be reading them - your grandchildren wearing your wedding ring, the stranger who found your long-lost multitool, yourself at a time ...
11.26.2019 110. Engraving part 1: Epitaph When Dave Nadelberg of Mortified used to visit his mother’s grave, he would look around at the nearby gravestones and see similar - or even the exact same - epitaphs for lots of different people. And it made him curious: ...
11.14.2019 109. East West On 9 November 1989, the demolition of the Berlin Wall began. Within a year, Germany was unified. East Germany dissolved and was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany, took on its currency and its rules - and its lexicon. ...
10.30.2019 108. Enjoy! In the last Food Season episode of the current batch, we get into the language of restaurant service - specifically those terms that give some of us fiery indigestion, like “Enjoy!” or “Are you still working on that?” Restaurant psychologist ...
10.09.2019 107. Apples Late 2019 will see the biggest apple launch of our lifetimes. 22 years in the making, ripening on millions of trees into picture-perfect redness, here comes the WA38, more snazzily known as the Cosmic Crisp. The name was the result ...
09.15.2019 106. Typo Demom Ever misspelled a word or committed a typo? It wasn’t your fault; you were demonically possessed. Ian Chillag from Everything is Alive podcast introduces us to Titivillus, the typo demon. Find out more about this episode at theallusionist.org/typo-demon. The Allusionist's ...
09.03.2019 105. F'ood When is cheese not cheese, or crab not crab? When it’s spelled cheez or krab or even ch’eese or cra’b… Novelty spellings for foods-that-aren’t-made-out-of-the-thing-they-sound-like-they’re-made-out-of go back a pretty long way - ‘cheez’ was THE cheese-like substance of the 1920s - ...
08.17.2019 104. Words into Food It’s Food Season at the Allusionist. Last episode we learned all about compiling recipes, turning food into words. This time, we meet someone who turns words into food - no, she doesn’t make Alphabetti Spaghetti. When Kate Young of the ...
08.05.2019 103. Food Into Words When recipe writing is done well, the skill and effort involved might not be evident. But explaining the different steps clearly so that people of varying culinary abilities and equipment can cook it, and indeed want to make it, and ...
07.14.2019 102. New Rules I don’t know exactly when or where, but at some point in the past few years, I stopped putting punctuation at the end of sentences. Why? The internet made me do it! Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch, cohost of Lingthusiasm podcast ...
06.26.2019 101. Two Or More Oysters, fragrances, canoeing, space stations, God, hats, and of course people - the word ‘bisexual’ has described a great deal of different things, with different meanings, in its fairly short existence. And that whole time, it has had a pretty ...
05.27.2019 100. The Hundredth To mark the 100th* episode of the Allusionist, here’s a celebratory parade of language-related facts: some of your favourites from the Allusionist back catalogue, some of my favourites from the Allusionist back catalogue, and a load of fresh facts making ...
05.12.2019 99. Polari When there were no safe spaces to be gay, Polari allowed gay men to identify and communicate with each other, and to keep things secret from outsiders. Professor Paul Baker, author of the Polari dictionary and the new book Fabulosa! ...
04.27.2019 98. Alter Ego Today: three pieces about alter egos, when your name - the words by which the world knows you - is replaced by another for particular purposes, such as competing in roller derby, writing popular but disreputable detective novels, or being ...
04.11.2019 97. The Future is Now? “There are two ways to say ‘The future is now’: you can say it optimistically, like, ‘The future is now! Isn't that cool?’ Or you could be like, ‘The future is now, and we're totally screwed.’” Rose Eveleth, of the ...
03.26.2019 96. Trust “Trust isn't a brand that you should use. It's a social glue that, when it breaks down, has really huge consequences to our lives.” Trust expert and author Rachel Botsman explains why we need to protect this word that has ...
03.11.2019 95. Verisimilitude When you’re watching a fantasy or science fiction show, and the characters are speaking a language that does not exist in this world but sounds like it could - that doesn’t happen by accident, or improvisation. A lot - a ...
02.22.2019 94. Harsh Realm On 15 November 1992, the New York Times printed a ‘Lexicon of Grunge’, a list of slang terms from the Seattle music scene. ‘Harsh realm’ = bummer. ‘Wack slacks’ = old ripped jeans. ‘Swingin’ on the flippity-flop’ = hanging out. ...
02.09.2019 93. Gossip ‘Idle’, ‘trivial’, ‘scurrilous’: the word ‘gossip’ is often accompanied by uncomplimentary adjectives. But don’t dismiss it; from childbirth to Hollywood to political analysis to whisper networks, gossip may be more useful and serious than you realise. Lainey Lui, founder of ...
01.24.2019 92. To Err Is Human If you wince when you hear someone say “a whole nother level”, “hone in on” or “right from the gecko”, here’s some bad news: you might have to get used to it. The English language is full of words and ...
12.18.2018 Extra special QUIZ! For a bit of fun to celebrate Radiotopia’s 2018 fundraiser, this episode is a wordy quiz for you to play along with as you listen. Get a pen and paper, or fill in your answers online at http://theallusionist.org/2018quiz. Also! I’ve ...
12.16.2018 91. Bonus 2018 Throughout the year, the people who appear on the Allusionist 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: ...
11.30.2018 90. Dear Santa Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker didn’t think too much of it when, every year, a few letters were delivered to their New York apartment addressed to Santa. But then one year, 400 letters arrived. And they decided they had to ...
11.30.2018 90. Dear Santa Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker didn’t think too much of it when, every year, a handful of letters were delivered to their New York apartment addressed to Santa. But then one year, 400 letters arrived. And they decided they had ...
11.17.2018 89. WPM This is a story of feats of speed and endurance, of record-breakers, of champions… Typing champions. Recorded live at the Hot Docs Podcast Festival in the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto on 4 November 2018, WPM is performed ...
11.04.2018 88. Name Changers Why did you change your name? And why did you choose the name you chose? Listeners answer these two questions. Hear their stories of gender identity, family fallouts, marriages, divorces, doxxing, cults, and…just not liking your given name very much. ...
10.22.2018 87. Name v. Law Iceland has quite exacting laws about what its citizens can be named, and only around 4,000 names are on the officially approved list. If you want a name that deviates from that list, you have to send an application to ...
10.08.2018 86. Name Therapy “It’s the word that you use the most often and the soonest to describe yourself, and yet nobody’s really ever talked about how it kind of makes me feel like this.” Until Duana Taha, who, after a lifetime of feelings ...
09.23.2018 85. Skin Story “I wanted a story that actually lives, and actually dies, and disappears.” In 2003, artist and author Shelley Jackson started the Skin Project: a story printed, word by word, as tattoos on volunteers. https://ineradicablestain.com/skindex.html Find more about this episode at ...
09.08.2018 84. Trammels Why would you write books or poems or plays with only one vowel? Or in palindromes? Or only using the example sentences in dictionaries? Sometimes you need to force yourself to jump a few hurdles (and perhaps the rest of ...

Older episodes

The Allusionist

What's The Allusionist about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Allusionist episodes:

124. Nightmare

123. Celebrity

122. Ghostwriter

121. No Title

Tranquillusionist: Home and Garden

The Away Team redux

120. Shine Theory

119. Blood Is Not Water

118. Survival: Bequest

117. Many Ways At Once

116. My Dad Excavated A Porno

115. Keep Calm and

Tranquillusionist: Punchlines

Tranquillusionist: Best In Show

Tranquillusionist: Nmiigea

Tranquillusionist: Your Soothing Words

114. Alarm Bells

113. Zaltzology

112. Quiz 2019

Allusionist special: Podcast Podcast

111. Engraving part 2: Precious

110. Engraving part 1: Epitaph

109. East West

108. Enjoy!

107. Apples

106. Typo Demom

105. F'ood

104. Words into Food

103. Food Into Words

102. New Rules

101. Two Or More

100. The Hundredth

99. Polari

98. Alter Ego

97. The Future is Now?

96. Trust

95. Verisimilitude

94. Harsh Realm

93. Gossip

92. To Err Is Human

Extra special QUIZ!

91. Bonus 2018

90. Dear Santa

90. Dear Santa

89. WPM

88. Name Changers

87. Name v. Law

86. Name Therapy

85. Skin Story

84. Trammels

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