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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 9: The Space Between

April 22, 2015 The Allusionist
Space Between Boggle board.jpeg

I know this is a show about words, but forget the words for a moment; look at the spaces between the words. 

Without the spaces, the words would be nigh incomprehensible. And yet, they're a relatively recent linguistic innovation.

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In episodes Tags language, words, Anglo-Saxon, Old English, Latin, Irish, Ireland, scribes, monks, medieval, Normans, spaces, punctuation, layout, nombril, disgruntled, gruntled, runes, runic, Ogham, Kate Wiles, history, writing, text, manuscripts, Old Irish, Romans, Christianity, email, URLs, hashtags, internet, Aristophanes, spelling, letters, phonemes, Chinese, oral tradition, spoken language, reading, pauses, lower case, upper case, majuscule, capital letters, carving, inscriptions, Anchorman, quills
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Allusionist 6: The Writing on the Wall

March 11, 2015 The Allusionist

iTUNES • RSS • MP3

Those words on museum walls that you can't be bothered to read? They're more important than you think... Exhibition-maker Rachel Souhami explains why. Visit theallusionist.org/museums to find out more about this episode. Tweet @allusionistshow,

Those words on museum walls that you can't be bothered to read? They're more important than you think...

Exhibition-maker Rachel Souhami tells us why.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL:

  • Read more about artist Fred Wilson and his 'Mining the Museum' exhibition and other works at the Maryland Historical Society.

  • Here's more about that very old museum in Ur.

  • Read a lengthy precis of the history of museums, if that's your bag.

  • Here's the etymology of the word 'museum'.

  • A few years ago, I went on a museums crawl in Vienna and saw such marvels as priapic armour, pickled conjoined foetuses, and meat animations. What's the weirdest museum you've been to?

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD OF THE DAY:
caprine

Say hi at facebook.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/allusionistshow, and come back in a fortnight for the next episode.

- HZ

CREDITS

  • Presented and produced by Helen Zaltzman, ie me.

  • Rachel Souhami designs and curates exhibitions, produces Museums Showoff, and tweets @rachelsouhami.

MUSIC:

  • 'Allusionist Theme' - Martin Austwick

  • 'Wonderful World' - Sam Cooke

  • 'The Writing's On The Wall' - OK Go

  • 'Live As If Someone Is Always Watching You' - Smog

In episodes Tags museums, exhibitions, text, exhibits, curators, curation, education, conservation, Rachel Souhami, walls, caprine, history, historical, Ur, archaeology, Leonard Woolley, artefacts, thesaurus, Roget, text hierarchy, Squarespace, science, scientific literacy, Mesopotamia, institutional critique
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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.