The Allusionist

By Helen Zaltzman

Society & Culture 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.

4.8

2,487 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

133. Cake is Mighter than t...

03.27.2021

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 Allusionist episodes:

03.27.2021 133. Cake is Mighter than the Sword 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, ...
03.12.2021 132. Additions and Losses "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 ...
02.25.2021 131. Podlingual 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 ...
02.14.2021 130. Valentine 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 ...
01.31.2021 129. Sorry 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. ...
12.24.2020 128. Bonus 2020 Some choice cuts from the Allusionist vault of interesting things that guests said that there wasn’t room for in the original episodes
12.14.2020 127. A Festive Hit for 2020 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 ...
11.28.2020 126. Survival: Custodians of the Languages In Australia, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of languages. Until English arrived.
11.10.2020 125. Swearalong Quiz Fill your lungs and get ready to shout out some profane answers: it’s the Swearlusionist Swearalong Quiz!
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.
09.28.2020 122. Ghostwriter The word for ‘ghostwriter’ in French is a racist slur. How did THAT come about? And what can French-speakers say instead?
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 the language of migration
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.
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 a lexicon of LGBTQ+ terminology. So writer and performer Dr Harry Josephine Giles decided to create one.
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.
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, 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.
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.
03.17.2020 Tranquillusionist: Your Soothing Words A relaxing list of the words you listeners find soothing
02.24.2020 114. Alarm Bells The vocabulary around climate is fraught. Here's how to navigate it, and how to communicate about climate in a way that does result in useful action.
01.24.2020 113. Zaltzology Ologies podcast host Alie Ward and I cover etymologies of words including ‘buxom’, ‘mediocre’, ‘coccyx’, ‘lacuna’, bust some etymological myths, discuss some broader attitudes towards language, and wonder why so many people hate the word ‘moist’.
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.
12.16.2019 Allusionist special: Podcast Podcast Here’s a special episode about the word that brought us all together… and a lot of you hate it.
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
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.
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, and right now they're on the rise.
08.17.2019 104. Words into Food When Kate Young spots a foodstuff or a feast in a novel, she finds ways to cook it in reality, whether it’s delicious (Babette’s Feast), evil (Edmund’s Turkish delight in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe) or poisonous (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
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 ...
06.06.2019 56+12. Joins & Pride To celebrate Pride Month, I’m playing two of the Allusionist episodes that have stuck with me the most during the show’s existence.
05.27.2019 100. The Hundredth To mark the 100th episode of the Allusionist, here’s a celebratory parade of language-related facts
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; gossip may be more useful and serious than you realise. Lainey Lui, founder of laineygossip.com, and Buzzfeed News’ senior culture writer (and doctor 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 ...

Older episodes

The Allusionist

What's The Allusionist about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Allusionist episodes:

133. Cake is Mighter than the Sword

132. Additions and Losses

131. Podlingual

130. Valentine

129. Sorry

128. Bonus 2020

127. A Festive Hit for 2020

126. Survival: Custodians of the Languages

125. Swearalong Quiz

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

56+12. Joins & Pride

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

Other shows like The Allusionist: