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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 205. Lexicat, part 2 transcript

December 7, 2024 The Allusionist

MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Elsie does lie. I had just given her the "sleepy" button and I was in the kitchen. I was making lunch, and she goes to the button board and she says, "bedroom, sleepy, lie down." I'm like, "What a great contextual use. Yes, absolutely. Let's go take a little nap," and walk into the bedroom. And my cat doesn't come in, and I come back - and she's eating my cheese sandwich. And she has, multiple times, tried to send me out of the room in order to get my food. So when I'm making lunch and she starts talking to me and it's something like, “Go check the litter box” or something like that, food goes into the microwave and then I investigate whatever's happening. 
HZ: How did that make you feel? You're like, “I can never trust her again?”
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: I don't know. I was like, oh, right. Cat.  

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In transcript Tags Lexicat, animals, cats, dogs, companion animals, pets, communication, species, buttons, Mary Robinette Kowal, Elsie, Zazie Todd, animal behaviour, AIC, Augmentative Interspecies Communication, emotions, animal psychology, psychology, socialisation, canine, feline, pet directed speech, learning, semantics, syntax, Bastian, Parker, Sascha Crasnow, Joelle Andres, Parkinson’s Disease, dementia, two hand choice, choice, body language, wagging, tails, lies, deceit, yarborough
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Allusionist 204. Lexicat, part 1 transcript

November 24, 2024 The Allusionist

HZ: It's a lot of deductive reasoning happening with how she's using language. Fascinating.
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL: Yeah, it really is - which is why, when I get comments on videos where it's like, “Oh, this cat is just walking across buttons randomly,” I'm like, no, I have a dog that does that. I daily have moments where I'm like, okay, no, this is really a thing that's happening.

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In transcript Tags Lexicat, animals, cats, dogs, companion animals, pets, communication, species, buttons, Mary Robinette Kowal, Elsie, Zazie Todd, animal behaviour, Christina Hunger, AIC, Augmentative Interspecies Communication, swearing, emotions, animal psychology, psychology, Washoe, Kanzi, socialisation, nicknames, canine, feline, swears, litterbox, cursing, pet directed speech, pitch, tone, anxiety, learning, mewing, meows, research, semantics, nomology, verbing nouns
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Allusionist 203. Flyting transcript

November 9, 2024 The Allusionist

ISHBEL McFARLANE: “You crap so much that you sunk a ship you were on.” 
HZ: I’m gonna use that. 

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In transcript Tags society, culture, words, language, arts, history, Ishbel McFarlane, Joanna Kopaczyk, Scots, Scotland, Scottish, flyting, fleetan, poets, poetry, medieval, court, royal, monarchs, kings, James IV, James VI, writers, entertainment, combat, performance, insults, slurs, swears, obscenity, comedy, literature, printing press, legal, law, witches, witchcraft, trials, lawsuits, roast, vulgarity, abuse, scat, makars, historical pragmatics, rhyme, alliteration, taboos, offensive, offence, owls, contests, competitions, politeness, impoliteness, profanity, speech acts, communication, rude, slander, music hall, Virgil, Aeneid, grampus, shit, shite, fuck
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Allusionist 192 Word Play part 2 transcript

April 9, 2024 The Allusionist

HZ: People assume to my face that a podcast about language won't be fun, and they're like, “Why would you do something that sounds so boring and dry and like a punishment?” What kind of reactions do you get when people learn that you make games about language?
KATHRYN HYMES: It's so interesting - for some people there's a similar reaction, but for a set of people, it's like you have given them the thing that they have most wanted in the world and maybe didn't realise or articulate or hope that such a thing could be made. And it's somewhat shocking that there's enough of those people and that the internet is able to connect it, you know, connect us to them that we end up finding each other.

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In transcript, Word Play Tags society, culture, words, language, games, play, playing, fun, word play, Joshua Blackburn, Thorny Games, Kathryn Hymes, Hakan Seyalıoğlu, story, storytelling, communal, community, Dialect, Sign, Nicaraguan Sign Language, sign language, Nicaragua, aphasia, Xenolanguage, aliens, first contact, communication, Dungeons and Dragons, DnD, D&D, lunula, word games
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Allusionist 135 SOS transcript

May 13, 2021 The Allusionist
A135 SOS logo small.jpeg

PAUL TYREMAN: Three dots, three dashes, three dots. It's fairly easy to remember, it's easy to key, and it's difficult to confuse with other things.

CHRISTIAN OSTERSEHLTE: Maritime communication, especially in distress case, has to be distinctive, clear, and not subject to misunderstanding.

HZ: The main misunderstanding with SOS is that it stands for ‘Save Our Souls’ or ‘Save Our Ship’ or ‘Send Out Succour’. As if when your ship was sinking, your emergency message would be ‘send out succour’, cmon.

PAUL TYREMAN: It wasn't introduced because it meant anything.

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In transcript Tags Christian Ostersehlte, Paul Tyreman, SOS, CQD, CQ, mayday, codes, calls, distress, emergency, ships, shipping, maritime, boats, vessels, sea travel, sea, sailors, signals, communication, telegraphy, radio, wireless, technology, history, Titanic, acronyms, backronyms, false etymology, Germany, UK, Britain, Italy, Marconi, flags, Samuel Morse, Morse code
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Allusionist 114. Alarm Bells transcript

February 24, 2020 The Allusionist
A114 logo Alarm Bells.jpg

ROBIN WEBSTER: I am as guilty as any, having worked as a sort of techie professional in this for a long time of writing those sentences that go "By 2050, the trajectory of the curve will be movement this and carbon capture and storage," these paragraphs that just mean nothing to nobody. And they are about things which are far away in time, far away in place. We were using these words like ‘sustainability’ and ‘trajectory’ and ‘parts per million’. And I was like, what on earth is this language? It doesn't say anything.
HZ: ‘Parts per million’: that's the stuff to get people up and ready for action.
ROBIN WEBSTER: 450 parts per million, let's go!

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In transcript Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, Helen Zaltzman, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Alice Bell, Amy Westervelt, Robin Webster, climate, environment, climate change, climate crisis, climate emergency, fossil fuel, fuel, coal, natural gas, oil, energy, renewables, renewable energy, scicomm, green, clean, clean energy, PR, propaganda, industry, oil industry, natural resources, eco, ecology, Frank Luntz, fossils, manipulation, sustainable, sustainability, conversation, emotions, technology, blame, shame, guilt, greenwashing, Jay Westerveld, greenhouse effect, alarms, action, communication, science, scientists, evidence, alarmist, activists, global heating, global warming, warmists, Joseph Fourier, Nils Ekholm, John Henry Poynting, euphemisms, metaphor, flight shame, journalists, journalism, climate silence, fear, courage, flying, flight, hope, astroturfing, AstroTurf, ChemGrass, sceptics, climate sceptic, climate denier, radical, revolution, tech
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Allusionist 56+12. Joins & Pride - transcript

June 7, 2019 The Allusionist
A100-5 Joins Pride logo.jpg

To celebrate Pride Month, I’m playing two of the Allusionist episodes that have stuck with me the most during the show’s existence.

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In transcript Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, Helen Zaltzman, etymology, lexicon, history, pride, Gay Pride, gay, homosexuality, LGBT, Stonewall, demonstrations, oppression, Aristotle, civil rights, Quakers, Christopher Street, Stonewall Riots, New York City, Mayor Lindsay, trans, gender, LBGTQI, bodies, body, body parts, sex, dysphoria, communication, queer, proem, genitalia, genitals
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Allusionist 80. Warm Front - transcript

June 15, 2018 The Allusionist
A80+Warm+Front+logo.jpg

NATE BYRNE: One of the things I find really strange when it comes to the weather is that we're all experts and all idiots at the same time.
HZ: You’re supposed to be the expert though.
NATE BYRNE: Right. Yeah! But I mean, we all live in it every day and we all feel like we understand the weather really well and we hear weather reports every single day. Now, if you are practicing a skill every day, on average you're generally excellent at it; that’s a real strength of yours. But it turns out that meteorologists typically haven't been very good at telling people what it is they're trying to tell them. So showers, just for example, means the rain's going to start and stop and start and stop; it doesn't tell you anything about the volume. Rain means it's just going to be continuous, and again doesn't tell you anything about the volume; but we have built, somehow, cultural expectations and understandings that go with those words that the scientists don't actually mean when they're using those words and it makes a really tricky job.

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In transcript Tags words, language, communication, science, weather, meteorology, meteor, meteorologist, science communication, scicomm, clouds, rain, storms, cyclones, weather forecasts, television, TV, Australia, jargon, terminology, emotion, facts, wind, climate, showers, sun, sultry, knots, Beaufort Scale, numbers, sky, Nate Byrne, ABC
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Allusionist 38: Small Talk - transcript

June 28, 2016 The Allusionist

ISY: Hi!
HZ: How are you?
ISY: I’m wearing trousers that are kind of digging into my bum in a weird way. They’re a cross between leggings and jeans -
HZ: - jeggings -
ISY: Yeah. And they’re partly falling down and partly digging in, which is quite a strange combination.

HZ: Well great, now I’m all too aware of the state of her bumcrack. But if I didn’t want to know how she is, why did I even ask?
Because that’s what we do, isn’t it? That is how conversations so often begin. And nearly every time, this is how it goes:

How are you?
Fine thanks, and you?
Oh, fine.

It's not informative, so why bother? It's an exchange that indicates a conversation is being initiated. It's small talk: safe, trivial - small.

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In transcript Tags words, language, conversation, small talk, chat, talking, people, communication
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Allusionist 13: Mixed Emojions - transcript

June 17, 2015 The Allusionist

Emoji - the 'e' means picture, 'moji', letter in Japanese - seem like a very modern phenomenon, dependent on the proliferation of mobile phones. But they have precedent in language far more ancient than our own. A picture per concept is pretty much what the ancient Sumerians were using to communicate some 5,500 years ago when they came up with the cuneiform writing system.

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In transcript Tags words, language, communication, emoji, Emojli, Kate Wiles, symbols, cuneiform, Tom Scott, Matt Gray
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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
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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.