Next episode is the 200th, therefore this is the 199th. I raid the 66-page documents of ideas for episodes, that I have been keeping for nearly a decade, and present to you 199 ideas that I have not yet made into podcasts (except for this one).
Read moreAllusionist 140. Num8er5
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.
Read moreAllusionist 116. My Dad Excavated A Porno
The word āpornographyā arrived in English in the 1840s so upper class male archaeologists could talk about the sexual art they found in Pompeii without anyone who wasnāt an upper class male archaeologist knowing about it. Even though, at the same time, Victorian England was awash with what weād now term pornography.
Dr Kate Lister of Whores of Yore and pornography historian Brian Watson of histsex.com explain the history of the word, and how the Victorian Brits dealt with material that gave them stirrings in their trousers. Sorry, āsit-down-uponsā. āInexpressiblesā! If they couldnāt even express trousers, itās little wonder they struggled to cope with pornography.
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