Ten years ago, on the fourth ever 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 and -y. Linguists Nicole Holliday and Kelly Elizabeth Wright discuss these uses of the word originating in the ballroom culture of New York City in the 1990s, and what it means to turn such a strong swear into praise.
Read morefeed bullshit
Hello! If you can’t access the show, that’s because something is going on behind the scenes with the feed. Should be fixed soon!
In case useful to you, the RSS address is: https://rss.art19.com/the-allusionist
Allusionist 208: 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. Thus, of course, content note: this episode contains many category A swears, plus some sexual references.
Read moreseveral bits of news! (nothing bad)
Hi, here I am on vacation in Norway, peeking out of a hole in the middle of a large sculpture made out of shiny multifaceted metal to reflect the trees and mountains around it.
Hello! It's me, your real imaginary friend, Helen Zaltzman.
Someone wrote to me recently saying, “I haven't seen a new episode, are you OK?” I'm OK, thank you! I took a break for some work things such as the return of my other podcast Answer Me This, and also to have a vacation. Hadn't had one of those for a bit. It was very nice. Strongly recommend vacation.
But the show will be back on the 9th May with a season about… four letter words! That's right: some of your favourite category A swears - and some not swears. If you have some favourite four letter words you want me to investigate, let me know.
There will be some behind the scenes podfeed shenanigans happening before then.So if you don't see more Allusionist appearing in your pod feed by 10th of May, then you're going to have to search for it in your podcast app and resubscribe because your subscription will have been kicked off by the behind the scenes shenanigans. And always the show is up to date at theallusionist.org.
Other news: live Allusionist shows are coming to Toronto on the 1st of June and Montréal on the 9th of June. We will be performing our very entertaining live show Souvenirs, which features some ancient swearing history that messes up our technology nearly a thousand years later, as well as the incredible story of a friendship torn asunder by a typeface. Plus, I'll be selling my hand-drawn tea towels, and anyone who comes along gets a free bookmark illustrated by me also.
Get your tickets now at theallusionist.org/events and I'll be back in your ears on May the 9th. Farewell! - HZ
queer playlist
Hello! Here’s a playlist of episodes of the show that are good to listen to for Pride month, but also at any time, because they are some of the most interesting and complex language matters that I’ve covered in the show:
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.
Polari was a secret language that was used mostly by gay men in London. And now lives on in the non-secret lexicon - you might not realise that you know some Polari words!
Two Or More is about the bumpy life of the word ‘bisexual’, describing things from oysters to space stations to God to hats and then people, where things get really complicated.
Parents is about how some of the vocabulary of pregnancy and parenting might not fit when you’re trans, and how to make the language gender-additive.
Rainbow Washing examines the trends in corporate performative allyship, and considers how to sort the real queer support from the harm-disguise.
Similarly, Queerbaiting follows a term from entrapment to marketing to the failures of onscreen representation.
Name Changers features listeners telling the stories of why they changed their names - often a big feature of a gender journey.
There’s so much more to say about the word Queer, where it has been and where it is going now.
Survival: Bequest is about the Māori word ‘takatapui’, a bit of linguistic evidence that prior to the European colonisation that imposed cisgender monogamous heterosexuality, Māori culture had included myriad sexual orientations, gender fluidity and polyamory.
Survival: Today Tomorrow part 2 is about how new queer words are coined for the Icelandic language.
No Title is about making language gender-free. And there are unbeatable arguments to fell anyone who denies singular ‘they’, should you need those in your arsenal.
Joins is about how the available vocabulary for body parts can be a liability when you’re trans and/or non binary.
Aro Ace is about how newish words like ‘aromantic’ and ‘asexual’ enable people to voice their identities, and to find each other.
Pride, about why the word ‘Pride’ was chosen to be the banner word for demonstrations and celebrations of LGBTQIA rights and culture.
And if you just need to shut off your internal monologue for a bit, you can replace it with a relaxingly scored list of gay animals.
Allusionist 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.
Read moreAllusionist 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 sibling, the universal blank, headache poetry and bawdy riddles. And more!
Read moreA Christmas Carollusionist
Over four livestreams, 19-22 December 2024 starting each day at 12:30pm PT/3:30pm ET/20:30 UTC/check your timezone, I’m reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, with musical and visual accompaniment by Martin Austwick. Join us, all are welcome! It’ll be fun if you want, or lulling you to sleep if you don’t want. It’ll be festive if you want, or a tale of jerks learning a hard lesson if you don’t. The sidebar chat will be a great time; that, we can count on.
All the videos are at youtube.com/allusionistshow, specifically in the Allusionist Reads playlist. And if you can’t make the livestreams, they’ll be available not-live afterwards there too. Plus they are embedded downpost for your convenience.
Also, now's the optimal time to listen to the various Festivelusionists, about such things as Winterval and the many names for Santa, and real life Christmas elves, and the most frequently occurring words in Christmas songs (includes my evergreen ditty about meat sweats), but especially the one about why Christmas got so Dickensy. They are gathered in this playlist: theallusionist.org/festivelusionist.
Ho ho ho bah humbug,
HZ
The Allusionist reads A Christmas Carol, stave 1: Marley’s Ghost.
Scrooge is going about his daytime business of work, more work, and making other people's lives worse. Then that night he is visited by the ghost of his late business partner Jacob Marley, and guess what: business ghosts are not fun ghosts.
The Allusionist reads A Christmas Carol, stave 2: The Ghost of Christmas Past.
Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Christmas Past and is taken on a whistlestop tour of festivities from his boyhood and earlier adulthood, so he gets to see himself becoming ever more of a prick.
The Allusionist reads A Christmas Carol, stave 3: The Ghost of Christmas Present.
Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Christmas Present and is shown a whole lot of festive partayyyyyyyyyy, to which he himself is not, er, party. Also: the poor lil mite Tiny Tim. He'll be ok, right? Right??
The Allusionist reads A Christmas Carol, stave 4: The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, and stave 5: Christmas Day.
In Stave 4, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and gives him some pretty scary life spoilers! Unless... Scrooge becomes a changed man? Tune into Stave 5 to find out!!
Allusionist 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 discovered some very unexpected things about what their animal companions are thinking and feeling thanks to the buttons, and how they changed the ways they communicate with other humans too. And animal behaviour expert Zazie Todd gives us some tips for interpreting cats’ and dogs’ body language.
Read moreFestivelusionists
'Tis the season for the festive Allusionists!
This year, I’ll also be reading A Christmas Carol over four sessions on YouTube; details are at theallusionist.org/events, and you can also hit ‘Notify me’ on each video at youtube.com/@AllusionistShow/streams.
Here’s your playlist of episodes from the back catalogue, which are all also available in your podcast app, of course:
Winterval
It’s a portmanteau that became shorthand for the War On Christmas™, with a side of ‘political correctness gone mad’. But this is very unfair to Winterval.
Xmas Man
That mythical beardy man who supposedly gives children presents at Christmas - what’s he all about, and why does he have so many different names? Also, why were Victorian Christmas cards so scary and meaty?
How the Dickens Stole Christmas
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? Plus: a trip to Dickensian London, recreated in an expo centre in California.
Dear Santa
Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker didn’t think too much of it when, every year, a few letters for Santa were delivered to their New York apartment addressed to Santa. But then one year, 400 letters arrived. And they decided they had to answer them.
It’s a very sweet story, but they’re still doing it and now have a non-profit — if you want to be a Santa for a kid in need, you can donate or get involved at miracleon22ndstreet.com
A Festive Hit for 2020
The usual canon of holly jolly Christmas songs didn’t really fit the mood of 2020. So Jenny Owen Youngs, Martin Austwick and I wrote one that does. And it’s a banger!