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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 187. Bonus 2023

December 24, 2023 The Allusionist

It's our annual end of year parade of all the extra good stuff this year's podguests talked about, including a mythical disappearing island, geese, human dictionaries, the dubious history of the Body Mass Index, Victorian death department stores, and much more.

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In episodes Tags etymology, vocabulary, history, Caetano Galindo, Susie Dent, Lindsay Rose Russell, Aubrey Gordon, Dean Vuletic, Evie King, Cariad Lloyd, Griefcast, Hy-Brasil, myths, legends, islands, Ireland, Victorians, Georgians, death, 19th century, funerals, mourning, grief, grieving, posthumous, dead bodies, bodies, fat, anti-fatness, anti-fat, bias, medical, BMI, Body Mass Index, body positivity, eugenics, families, family, estrangement, Brazilian, brasileiros, Portuguese, wood, brazilwood, trees, dictionaries, walking dictionary, sleeping dictionary, gender, geese, goose, weaving, renaming, denaming, cremation, aquamation, ashes, burial, composting, graves, clothes, shopping, Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, five stages of grief, Jay’s, Regent Street, London, jet, jewelry, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, street names, school names, John La Rose, Richmond, Virginia, Australia, K’Gari, Hobart, Macquarie Street, Tasmania, petitions, Toronto, Rob Ford, Michaelmas, Alfred Hitchcock, Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca, rebeca, cardigan, turtlenecks, lexicography, Adolphe Quetelet, Quetelet’s Index, Ancel Keys, Francis Galton, drapetomania, hysteria, Eurovision Song Contest, Eurovision, nul points, zero, French, Brazil, Brasil, gossamer, pavage, text, textile, clothing, bonus, bonus episode

Allusionist 173. Death

March 24, 2023 The Allusionist

"You can't redead the dead by you saying something shit," says Cariad Lloyd of Griefcast and author of You Are Not Alone; nevertheless when you're bereaved, people still are usually so nervous to say the wrong thing that they often don't say anything at all. And especially not the word 'dead'. Maybe what we need, says council funeral officer Evie King, author of Ashes To Admin, is a "jazzy snazzy term for death, the 'bottomless brunch' of death..."

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In episodes Tags etymology, Helen Zaltzman, words, language, linguistics, education, society & culture, arts, literature, lexicon, vocabulary, history, death, died, dead, grief, passed, bereavement, bereft, Cariad Lloyd, Evie King, funerals, posthumous, anticipatory grief, admin, paperwork, eulogy, platitudes, Sweden, Swedish, wills, bum-bailiff
Allusionist Patreon
Featured
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!
Allusionist 199: 199 ideas that I hadn't made into podcasts yet
Allusionist 199: 199 ideas that I hadn't made into podcasts yet
live tour of the UK!
live tour of the UK!
Creative Commons Licence
The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.