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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 121. No Title

September 14, 2020 The Allusionist
The Allusionist No Title poster colours.jpg

In 2014, a seemingly trivial and boring incident at the bank propelled me down a linguistic road via medieval werewolves, Ms Marvel and confusingly inscribed gravestones, to find out why the English language is riddled with all this gender. What’s it FOR? How did it GET there? Will it go AWAY now please? It is, at the very least, taking up brainspace and not paying any rent.

This is a recording of a live performance at the Blueberry Hill Duck Room in St Louis, Missouri on 23 November 2019, and there were visuals happening, so I’ll drop in sometimes to explain them, and I’ve also put a transcript and pictures in this post.

There are swears in this. There are also arguments that will be very useful to you if you ever come up against a denier of singular they. You will definitely win.

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In live recording, episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, Helen Zaltzman, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, live show, live recording, performance, No Title, gender, sex, identity, pronouns, titles, singular they, they, non-conforming, fluid, rank, hierarchy, marriage, social status, status, aristocracy, doctor, doctorate, Latin, Ms, Mrs, Master, Mister, Mr, Dr, Mx, ip, gender neutral, gender free, gender neutral pronouns, gender free pronouns, Ms Magazine, Ms Marvel, Sheila Michaels, feminism, feminists, tombstones, graves, gravestones, Downton Abbey, William and the Werewolf, medieval, Italian, Italy, signora, signorina, Frau, Fräulein, mademoiselle, madame, Académie Française, Mondamoiseau, Z, Mre, Russian, Russia, manners, politeness, etiquette, seamtress, seamster, manhole, you, ey, Martin Austwick

Allusionist 110. Engraving part 1: Epitaph

November 26, 2019 The Allusionist
A110 logo Engraving part 1.jpg

When Dave Nadelberg of Mortified used to visit his mother’s grave, he would look around at the nearby gravestones and see similar - or even the exact same - epitaphs for lots of different people. And it made him curious: who were these people, really? What were their personalities, what happened in their lives? And didn’t they deserve something more meaningful, more personal, than these bland and repetitive epitaphs? So when Dave’s father died a few years later, Dave was determined to choose better words to represent him in perpetuity. 

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In episodes Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, Helen Zaltzman, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, David Nadelberg, Dave Nadelberg, Mortified, death, deceased, bereavement, grief, graves, gravestones, tombstones, grave markers, cemeteries, cemetery, graveyard, burial, memorial, epigraph, epitaph, fonts, Papyrus, Radiotopian guest appearance, engraving

TED talk

February 12, 2018 The Allusionist
TED screenshot.png

Last April, I did a talk on the main stage at TED. Here it is. It’s about the dot on the letter i, and my favourite typo of all time.

In additional materials Tags TED, i, diacritics, typos, mistakes, graves, gravestones, medieval, scribes, writing
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.