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What do the hippocampus, homophones, Little Women, worrying and egg hacks have in common? They all star in the 2022 parade of Allusionist bonus bits! This year's guests provide some extra fascinating facts, thoughts and feelings: in order of reappearance, Jing Tsu, Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, Tim Clare, Stephanie Foo, Lewis Raven Wallace, Charlotte Lydia Riley, Hannah McGregor, Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg.
Content note: there's an allusion to bawdy talk, one category A swear, discussions of mental health, and a brief reference to parental violence.
EXTRA MATERIALS:
Judy Singer herself explains what she intended ‘neurodiversity’ to mean.
And, she says: “Eventually the dust of battle settles, and the movement either becomes mainstream or gradually declines into a fringe cult. All life is an experiment, and every one of us has a part in it.”
Note from the coiner of ‘neurodivergent’: “I coined neurodivergent… because people were using ‘neurodiverse’ and ‘neurodiversity’ to just mean autistic, & possibly LDs. But there’s more, like way more, ways a person can have a different yet fucking perfect dammit brain.”
Amygdala was “first used in French in the 14th century and is used in the field of anatomy to define any almond-shaped structure.”
The coiner of the term ‘life hack’ looks back.
Nikesh Shukla and Emma Briant talked about the ways journalists use/misuse terms for people moving around the world in the Away Team episode.
Tis the season for the Festivelusionist playlist, which contains excellent episodes about the much misunderstood portmanteau Winterval, why Charles Dickens got to be the poster boy author of Christmas, what happened when a couple in Manhattan received a deluge of letters addressed to Santa, why Father Christmas/Santa has so many different names, and what happened when Jenny Owen Youngs and I wrote a festive hit for the covid era.
Sign up to be a patron at patreon.com/allusionist and not only are you supporting independent podcast, you get fortnightly patron-exclusive video livestreams and a Discord community full of language chat, food ideas, crafting and, tonight, a watchalong of The Muppet Christmas Carol!
YOUR RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
washin, noun, aeronautics: an increase in the angle of incidence of an aeroplane wing towards the tip.
CREDITS:
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. The original Allusionist music is by Martin Austwick. Download his songs at palebirdmusic.com and listen to his podcasts Song By Song and Neutrino Watch.
In order of appearance, you heard from:
Jing Tsu appeared in the In Character episode. She is professor of modern China studies at Yale University, and the author of the new book Kingdom of Characters, the Language Revolution that Made China. Read it to learn a load more about simplifying Chinese, typography, telegraphy, Romanization, computerization, political squabbles, and many plucky individuals trying to get things done against long odds. Jing Tsu appeared in the In Character episode.
Morénike Giwa Onaiwu talked about the vocabulary around autism in the Asperger episode. She is an activist, academic, writer and editor of books including the collection Sincerely, Your Autistic Child. She is part of the Dove Orchids consultancy team, which is working to improve jobs, education and representation for autistic people. Her website is MorenikeGO.com.
Tim Clare talked about anxiety and cowardice in the Coward episode. He is a writer, performer and poet. His latest book is Coward: Why We Get Anxious & What We Can Do About It. Find his work, including his writing podcast Death By A Thousand Cuts, and two free courses to help you in your creative writing, at timclarepoet.co.uk.
Stephanie Foo appeared in the episode about Complex PTSD. She is a journalist and radio producer, and the author of the book What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma.
Lewis Raven Wallace was in the Objectivity episode. He is a journalist and audiomaker and the author of the book The View From Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity. Find his work, including an audio series about objectivity, at lewispants.com.
Charlotte Lydia Riley talked about the Malayan Emergency in the Emergency episode. She is a historian and lecturer in 20th century British history at the University of Southampton.
Hannah McGregor discussed sentimentality as literary trope in the Sentiment episode. She is an academic and podcaster - hear her shows Witch, Please and Secret Feminist Agenda. Her new book is A Sentimental Education, “a meditation on what it means to care deeply and to know that caring is both necessary and utterly insufficient.”
Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg talked about what they’ve learned from self-help books in the Self-Help episode. They are the hosts of the podcasts By the Book and Romance Road Test, among others, and they wrote the book How To Be Fine: What We Learned from Living by the Rules of 50 Self-Help Books.
Phew, and that’s it for the Allusionist in 2022! Stay in touch at youtube.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/helenzaltzman and instagram.com/allusionistshow. I’ll be back mid-January 2023 with a new episode
- HZ.
Our ad partner is Multitude. To sponsor an episode of the show in 2023, contact them at multitude.productions/ads. This episode of the Allusionist is sponsored by:
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