Episodes
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Allusiovaults: Yes, As In
Since we've been talking about names for the past couple of episodes, here's one of my favourites from the Allusiovaults: Yes, As In, featuring people who have names that are more usually found as common nouns and adjectives. Got thoughts and feelings about your own name? Share them with me via...
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235. Trevor
"I just thought: I wonder if I could get guys called Trevor to reclaim the name?" says Trevor Cunningham. "So I went on LinkedIn and I just looked for Trevors, and I started contacting them." And, having found way more Trevors than he had ever met in his life, Trevor set up AskTrev.com, a site...
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234. No Names
Alexinomia is the aversion to saying people's names. Psychologist Thomas Ditye explains what it means to have this condition - in some cases not even saying your spouse's name during 25 years of marriage - and the research he and colleague Lisa Welleschik are doing to learn more about it. Find...
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233. Phobia
'Phobia' gets used for anything from a mild aversion to a debilitating anxiety response to various forms of bigotry. Deboki Chakravarti and Sam Jones of the podcast Tiny Matters join to consider the term from its comedic origins with one of the founding fathers of the USA, via rabies and Greek...
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232. Vega
What do you call yourself if you're a part-time vegetarian? What petty linguistic things would you change? And what do you do if people gripe at you if you say that you are bi or pan? To answer these questions from the Allusionist mailbag are esteemed alumsionists: Hrishikesh Hirway and Samin...
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Tranquillusionist: cheesy cheesybobs
This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, say a series of words to relax your mind, replace a hectic interior monologue, maybe lull you to sleep, hopefully quell the mental uproar just for a little while. Today: nicknames for woodlice AKA rolypoly bugs AKA slaters AKA all these...
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231. Lingthusionist
“Linguistics and language is such a good mechanism for being curious,” says Lauren Gawne, linguistics prof, author of the book Gesture: A Slim Guide, and cohost of the podcast Lingthusiasm. I'm in vacation mode (although not on actual vacation alas), so today's episode is a fun chat with our nice...
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230. Draculae part 4: Transformation
Throughout the Draculae miniseries, about the Swedish and Icelandic translations of Dracula that played fast and loose with the original text, I've been wondering a couple of questions: why are cover versions of songs and remakes of films so normal and acceptable, whereas cover versions in book...
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229. Draculae part 3: Hunting Down the Count
Many mysteries accompany the revelations that Powers of Darkness, the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula, are not direct translations of Bram Stoker's original, but stories that significantly differ in character names, plot and runtime. Like: did Bram Stoker write it himself, to publish…
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228. Draculae part 2: Surprises in the Vaults
Happy World Dracula Day to all who celebrate! Visit theallusionist.org/draculae2 for more information about the topics in this episode plus a transcript. This is the second episode of the Draculae miniseries, about a literary mystery which came to me via a meme: “Someone translated Dracula into...
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227. Draculae part 1: Enter the Castle
A literary mystery came to me via a meme: “Someone translated Dracula into Icelandic, and it took over 100 years for anyone to point out he just made a fanfic rewrite of what he wanted the story to be.” In this first instalment of a short series about three versions of Dracula, we familiarise...
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226. Suburbia
"The word ‘suburbia’ sort of evokes a very fixed idea of a place that is identikit, that all suburbs are the same, that within the suburb everything is the same, that all people are the same, all experiences are the same," says social historian and author John Grindrod, "I think it has this kind…
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225. Hues
You know what's an absolutely pesky kind of word to define in a dictionary? Colour names. A passel of lexicographers spent years - decades, even - trying different ways to describe colours in words for Webster's Third International Dictionary. It was such a huge, complicated effort that it took...
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224. Cosmic Hairball
Pack your oxygen tank, we're going to space. There’s a lot of etymology up there. Visit theallusionist.org/cosmic-hairball for more information about the topics in this episode plus a transcript of the episode. The singing and score is by Martin Austwick. Download his own songs that aren't about...
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223. Bonus 2025
It's the annual parade of Bonus Bits! Every year, the show's guests say too many interesting things and/or stuff that isn't languagey enough, so I save it up and release it in a delightful melange of facts and thoughts, about language and also not about language. That melange is today, and it...
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222. A Christmas Carol
Today, we read the novelisation of The Muppet Christmas Carol, also known as the 1843 festive lit hit A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Read by me, Helen Zaltzman; music, sound effects and additional vocals are by Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com. Content warning: 200-year-old attitudes...
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221. Scribe
"I have never felt so naked. That's how exposed I felt at the idea that my handwriting was going to be seen by the world," says Tim Brookes, founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project and author of the new book about handwriting By Hand: Can the Art of Writing Be Saved? Writing the book (yes, by...
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220. Disobedience
“The more we look into social structures, the more many of us realize we don't fit into them," says So Mayer, author of the new book Bad Language, "So each phrase or set of vocabulary is another piece of that dismantlement.” We discuss finding vocabulary for oneself, coming out as a speech act,...
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219. Making Trouble
A change of scene for one episode: recently the brilliant poet and performer Molly Naylor interviewed me for her podcast Making Trouble, about creativity, and she kindly let me run a version of that episode here for you. We're talking about ideas, but also long-term creative careers, mortality,...
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218. Banned Books
It's Banned Books Week. Honorary youth chair Iris Mogul and Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, talk about what it is, why it matters so much, and how you can get involved. Visit theallusionist.org/bannedbooks for more information and many links about today's topics, plus…
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217. Bread and Roses, and Coffee
In their heyday of the 1970s and 1980s, there were more than 200 - possibly more than 400 - feminist restaurants and coffee shops in the USA and Canada. These places were aiming to change ways of working, and upend the hierarchies of restaurants; to provide food that was ethically sourced and...
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216. Four Letter Words: Terisk
Watching the film Legally Blonde one day with the subtitles on, numerous perfectly innocuous words were partially asterisked out, because of a technological problem I can't name here lest this episode be blocked from your podfeed, thus becoming an example of the problem itself. Who's to blame? A...
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215. Two-Letter Words
Listener Erica commented: "Perhaps an idea for a bonus ep of Four Letter Word season would be one on two-letter words: there’s an established list that Scrabble nerds end up memorizing, and it’s full of weirdness." In fact, there are TWO established lists, NASPA, the North American Scrabble…
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214. Four Letter Words: Bane Bain Bath
For today’s instalment of Four Letter Word season, we’re hopping from ‘bane’ to ‘bain’ to ‘bath’, via poison gardens, doll’s eyes, alchemists, placentas and waterborne curses. Visit theallusionist.org/bane for more information about today's topics, plus a transcript of the episode. Support the…
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213. Four Letter Words: Dino
The latest four letter word of Four Letter Word season is dino. 'Dinosaur' is derived from Greek 'terrible lizard', and they could have called it 'whopping great lizard' or 'sublime lizard' or 'hey cool lizard', but no. TERRIBLE. Professor Hannah McGregor of Material Girls podcast and author of…
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212. Four Letter Words: Park
Get in, winner: we're going on a field trip. We're spending the day in five of Vancouver's city parks with Justin McElroy, Municipal Affairs Reporter for the CBC and ranker of Vancouver's 243 parks at VancouverParkGuide.ca. Together we ponder: what IS a park? You think you know, then along comes…
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211. Four Letter Words: -gate
The other day was the 53rd anniversary of the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, which not only caused a lot of political uproar, it had a big linguistic legacy: the suffix -gate to mean a scandal. Today, as part of Four Letter Word season, we have a list of -gates - royal, sporting, political…
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210. Four Letter Words: 4x4x4 Quiz
Four Letter Word season continues with a quiz (which is a four-letter word itself) about four letter words. Test your etymological knowledge, and hear about the original nepo baby, John Venn's invention that wasn't the venn diagram, brat, gunk, rube, the time(s) Led Zeppelin changed their name…
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209. Four Letter Words: Serving C-bomb
Ten years ago, on the fourth episode of the show, I investigated why the C-word is considered a worse swear than the others. Since then - well really just in the last three years or so - there has been a huge development: the word has hit the mainstream as a compliment, in the forms of serving it...
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208. Four Letter Words: Ffff
Welcome to Four Letter Word season! We're kicking off with one of the most versatile words: it can be a noun, verb, punctuation, expostulation, full sentence on its own; it can be an intensifier, an insult and a compliment... and a Category A swear, which is why I've had to sanitise it for the...
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207. Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Happy tenth birthday to this show! To celebrate, here's every randomly selected word from the dictionary from the first decade of the show. Visit theallusionist.org/randomlyselectedwords to read the transcript and get other Tranquillusionist episodes. The podcast is taking a break until early May...
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206. Bonus 2024
It's the annual parade of Bonus Bits - things this year's guests said that I couldn't fit into their episodes, and/or weren't about language, but now is their time to shine. We've got tricorn hats, changing your dog's name, Boston cream pie, parmesan vs vomit, the placebo effect's negative…
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205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog
In Lexicat part 1, we met the author Mary Robinette Kowal and her cat Elsie, and learned about how they communicate via a set of buttons programmed with words. In part 2, two talking dogs, Bastian and Parker - and their humans, Joelle Andres and Sascha Crasnow - join us too, and explain how they...
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204. Lexicat, part 1
Elsie the cat has a set of 120 buttons programmed with words. She uses them to lie, swear, apologise, express grief and frustration and love to her human, the author Mary Robinette Kowal, who talks about what's involved in learning to communicate via language buttons with companion animals. And...
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203. Flyting
In 15th and 16th century Scotland, in the highest courts of the land, you'd find esteemed poets hurling insults at each other. This was flyting, a sort of medieval equivalent of battle rap, and it was so popular at the time that the King himself wrote instructions for how to do it well. Writer…
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202. Singlish Singlish
There's so much more to say about Singlish after last episode that we're saying some more of it this episode. Poet and academic Gwee Li Sui, author of Spiaking Singlish: A Companion to how Singaporeans Communicate, describes the resistance he received in Singapore when he published Singlish...
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201. Singlish
"If you grow up being told that one of your first languages, Singlish, is actually a bad version of an already existing language, you kind of get this sense that “I'm just bad at language,” says Bibek Gurung, a former linguist who grew up in Singapore speaking Singlish with his family and…
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Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations
This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, give your brain a break by temporarily supplanting your interior monologue with words that don't make you feel feelings. Note: this is NOT a normal episode of the Allusionist, where you might learn something about language and your brain...
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200. 200th episode celebratory quiz!
I can scarce believe that I've made 200 episodes of this show, but here we are! To celebrate, here is a quiz about language where all the questions were set by YOU, the beautiful brainy listeners. Play along with me - there's a score sheet you can use over at theallusionist.org/200, plus the...
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199. 199 ideas that I hadn't made into podcasts yet
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...
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198. Queer Arab Glossary
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...
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197. Word Play 7: Word Sport
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...
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196. Word Play 6: Beeing
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...
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195. Word Play 5: 100 Pages of Solvitude
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,...
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194. Word Play 4: Good Grids
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...
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193. Word Play 3: Lemon Demon
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...
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192. Word Play part 2
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...
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191. Hypochondria
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...
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190. Craters
"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...
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Tranquillusionist: Person In Scene
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...