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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 142. Zero

September 25, 2021 The Allusionist

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.

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, history, Kyne, zero, nought, nothing, math, maths, mathematics, arithmetic, numbers, numerals, negative, counting, Mayans, India, Brahma Gupta, Italy, Italian, Fibonacci, eponyms, Hindu-Arabic numerals, Arabic, Sanskrit, Florence, calendars, typographical, placeholder, illegal math, imaginary numbers, Aristotle, voids, fraud, debt, Renaissance, printing press, errors, hippuric

Allusionist 141. Food Quiz

September 10, 2021 The Allusionist

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 further down this post.

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In episodes, quiz Tags words, history, etymology, language, entertainment, education, linguistics, lexicon, vocabulary, quiz, Samin Nosrat, Hrishikesh Hirway, Home Cooking, meringue, pets, farts, boobs, laxatives, drinks, food, eating, drinking, dining, cooking, meat, slang, lunch, nonmete, Mars, horses, French toast, vagina, calamari, aperitif, garlic, carpaccio, walnut, mousse, Snickers, top banana, vanilla, karoshi, squid, Ancient Greek, pens, avocados, tomato, Farsi, Iran, Italy, French, France, Italian, fennel, pizza, za, nicknames, strawberry, dessert, scum, comedy, vaudeville, quizlusionist

Allusionist 140. Num8er5

August 30, 2021 The Allusionist
A140 numbers logo.jpeg

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.

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, history, Stephen Chrisomalis, numbers, numerals, numbering, verbal numbers, numerical, number systems, alphabet, alphabetic numerals, capitals, upper case, Arabic numerals, Roman numerals, Ancient Greeks, Ancient Romans, globalisation, imperialism, colonisation, acrophonic, graphic, googol, pi, K, Super Bowl, loser, hats, gastrolith, mathematics, maths, math

Tranquillusionist: 282 Salads

August 14, 2021 The Allusionist

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.

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In episodes, Tranquillusionist Tags words, language, serene, serenity, ASMR, calm, calmness, meditation, sleep, mood, emergency, Tranquillusionist, salads, celebrities

Allusionist 139. Ladybird Ladybug

July 12, 2021 The Allusionist
A139 Ladybird Ladybug logo.jpeg

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.

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, history, Tamsin Majerus, Johanna Mayer, Elah Feder, Science Diction, WNYC, ladybirds, ladybugs, insects, bugs, Virgin Mary, Mary Mother of God, cows, names, creatures, entomology, farming, crops, pests, pest control, deities, gods, saints, malaria, wine, coccinellidae, beetles, coleoptera, woodlice, roly polys, pillbug, collective nouns, loveliness

Allusionist 138. Mind My Mind

June 27, 2021 The Allusionist
A138 Mind My Mind logo.jpg

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.

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, history, Lily Sloane, therapy, psychotherapy, mental health, ableism, psychopathy, Psycho, OCD, ambivalence, antisocial, egosyntonic, egodystonic, disorders, schizophrenia, schizoid, sociopath, Carl Jung, Psyche, Eros, Cupid, Aphrodite, myths, Greek myths, Greek gods, Hedone, hedonism, the shadow, fartlek

Allusionist 137. Dude

June 10, 2021 The Allusionist
A137 Dude logo.jpeg

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!

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, Callie Wright, Queersplaining, dude, Yankee Doodle, macaronis, history, slang, terms of endearment, insults, USA, David Bowie, songs, lyrics, movies, films, Easy Rider, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, gender neutral, non binary, gender, guys, Pacheco, zoot suit, Mexican Americans, African Americans, AAVE, surfing, saros

Allusionist 136. Misogynoir

May 28, 2021 The Allusionist
A136 misogynoir logo.jpeg

“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.

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In episodes Tags Moya Bailey, misogynoir, misogyny, racism, race, Black women, portmanteau, neologisms, Diane Abbott, Alexandra Wilson, Meghan Markle, systemic bias, inequality, healthcare, doctors, medical, Flexner, discrimination, exuviae, words, language, linguistics, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary

Allusionist: Eclipse+

April 22, 2021 The Allusionist

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 forty words.

This is a rerun of an all time fave Allusionist, but with a few extra little bits added. Content note: this episode is about a medical crisis (everyone survives, though!), and has some Category A swears in it.

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In episodes Tags language, words, vocabulary, Lauren Marks, brain, brains, neurology, aneurysm, stroke, aphasia, dysphasia, inner voice, interior monologue, speech therapy, medical, head, surgery, disability, silence, intrigant
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Allusionist 134. Lacuna

April 9, 2021 The Allusionist
A134 Lacuna logo.png

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 problems with kung fu.

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Brazil, South America, Crystian Cruz, censorship, censors, dictatorship, military, press, media, newspapers, magazines, cake, recipes, food, soap operas, books, nipples, printing, journalism, news, films, movies, kung fu, poems, poetry, metachrosis
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Allusionist Patreon
Featured
feed bullshit
Allusionist 208: Ffff
Allusionist 208: Ffff
WhatsApp Image 2025-04-27 at 23.06.37.jpeg
several bits of news! (nothing bad)
queer playlist
Allusionist 207: Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Allusionist 207: Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary
Allusionist 206. Bonus 2024
Allusionist 206. Bonus 2024
A Christmas Carollusionist
A Christmas Carollusionist
Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog
Allusionist 205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog
Festivelusionists
Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1
Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1
Allusionist 203. Flyting
Allusionist 203. Flyting
Allusionist 202: Singlish Singlish
Allusionist 202: Singlish Singlish
Allusionist 201: Singlish
Allusionist 201: Singlish
Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations
Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations
Allusionist 200: 200th episode celebratory quiz!
Allusionist 200: 200th episode celebratory quiz!
Creative Commons Licence
The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.