This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, in the interests of temporarily trying to stop that feeling where you think your brain is trying to claw its way out of your skull, read the punchlines to classic jokes. No setups; just the punchlines.

This was a particularly silly one. I was just going to read out the punchlines in no particular order, but then little narratives started to form. If we want to get fancy about it, the works I was thinking of while concocting this were:

Slacker by Richard Linklater, for the way that the film glances in on a character’s story, then floats off to the next one, deliberately inconclusive.
The Clock by Christian Marclay: a 24-hour-long montage of clips from TV and film featuring timepieces. It almost feels like it has a plot; watching it, I felt continually on the brink of a narrative development, although of course there is no narrative.
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by TS Eliot; a few of the lines kept ringing around my head, I think because of the way the poem is at turns lofty then Earthbound, pretentious then funny.
This episode of the Allusionist about Oulipo.

Nonetheless, this is simply five and a half minutes of punchlines and music.

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The Tranquillusionists have recently been recommended in Vox, the Financial Times and the Observer! Find them all at theallusionist.org/tranquillusionist.

The beautiful music in this episode was specially composed by Martin Austwick. Martin has made several albums, which you can hear at palebirdmusic.com and if you search for Pale Bird on Spotify.

The Allusionist proper will be back from break in May. If you’re looking for podcasts to take your mind off things, I have two more: Veronica Mars Investigations and Answer Me This, both unrelated to any current events, if you want a temporary escape.

Since my previous dispatch, I have been distracting myself by making banana curry (trust me, it’s nice!) and livetweeting the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which you can catch up with over at twitter.com/VMIpod, and sprouting some peas I planted in some gnocchi packaging that I had to fish out of the bin. I’m far more invested in the growth rate of the peas than I ought to be, but I’ll take companionship where I find it.

Let me know how you’re doing; I’m @allusionistshow on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

- HZ

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For the show's financial survival (hopefully), over the next few weeks I'm having to switch on programmatic advertisements. This means, for the first time in the show's nearly 12-year existence, you may be subjected to ads that are not voiced, scripted and individually approved by me.
If you would prefer to listen to the show without ads in it, patreonise the show at the Gravy, Wedge or Check tiers, which include the perk of an ad-free RSS feed.