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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 132. Additions and Losses

March 12, 2021 The Allusionist
A132 Additions and Losses logo.jpg

"Sometimes I've heard people talk about losing a child and people say it's like losing a limb. And as someone who's lost both things, I just want to say, the realities are very different." Musician and writer Christa Couture has experienced way too much of people trying to convey sympathy and instead expressing their discomfort about disability and death.

Content note: we talk about ableism, cancer and bereavement. Part of the conversation is about the deaths of two of Christa's babies, so stop listening at the 20-minute mark if you need not to hear about that subject right now.

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In episodes Tags etymology, Christa Couture, disability, disabled, person first, identity first, grief, death, children, cancer, amputation, platitudes, bereavement, bodies, parenthood, handicap, prosthesis, prosthetic, vatic

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

Allusionist 15: Step Away

July 29, 2015 The Allusionist
Step Away Boggle board.png

'Step-', as in stepparents or stepchildren, originated in grief. Family structures have evolved, but are stepmothers now so tainted by fairytale associations with the word 'wicked' that we need new terminology?

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'Step-', as in stepparents or stepchildren, originated in grief. Family structures have evolved, but are stepmothers now so tainted by fairytale associations with the word 'wicked' that we need new terminology? Lore's Aaron Mahnke stops by to describe the lovelessness, literary tropes and life expectancy around 'step-'.

ADDITIONAL READING:

  • Diagnose yourself with novercaphobia, if you must.

  • But according to Neil Gaiman, in early versions of many of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales, the evil stepmothers were actually evil bilogical mothers...

  • Here's information about the study Aaron mentioned about 'The Cinderella Effect' upon stepchild mortality; there are some curious findings.

  • Read about the ancient prototypes for Cinderella, and then some analysis of some of the newer spins on the tale.

  • Or perhaps you'd prefer an annotated version of Hansel and Gretel, plus a load of different illustrators' takes on it.

  • Have you seen the film Wicked Stepmother? No, nor have I. It is distinguished by being Bette Davis's final film, and seems to average around two stars out of five from what I've read about it.

  • The transcript of this episode is here.

On Tuesday 4th August 2015 at 8pm UK time, 3pm ET, 12pm PT, I'll be doing a live discussion about this episode at spoken.am. Please come along to tell me what you think, divulge about your own steprelatives, and to ask me anything about the show.

Go to spoken.am to request your invite* and I'll see you there, yes? (Or you can catch up afterwards, if you must.)

UPDATE: Now that we are living in the post-live chat era, you can catch up at spoken.am/allusionist/step-away

*My school English teacher used to HATE people using 'invite' as a noun. I feel both guilty and slyly delighted to have done so just now.

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
emolument

CREDITS:

  • Aaron Mahnke hosts Lore podcast, about scary stories and folklore. Visit lorepodcast.com, and find more of Aaron's work including his books at aaronmahnke.com.

  • Big sloppy thanks are served to all the listeners who answered my plea and kindly contributed their thoughts about step-terms.

  • This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. All the music is by Martin Austwick. Hear and/or download more - WITH LYRICS! - at thesoundoftheladies.bandcamp.com.

  • Say hello to me at facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/helenzaltzman.

Back in a fortnight. Don't let anyone turn you into a pumpkin in the meantime.

- HZ

In episodes Tags Cinderella, literature, Lore, stories, evil, stepfathers, folklore, pilot, history, grief, Romans, stepmothers, novercaphobia, fiction, Hansel and Gretel, children, etymology, fairy tales, Germany, words, death, families, relationships, language, linguistics, bereavement, marriage, Grimm, parents, stepchildren, orphans, widows, Aaron Mahnke, widowers, Disney, women, step-, step, fathers, mothers, childhood, family
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Creative Commons Licence
The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.