This is the 199th episode of the show, and since before this show began, so for nearly a decade, I have been jotting down ideas in two documents - one for short ideas, one for long ideas. There are always more ideas than I have time and ability to make podcasts about, so now the documents are altogether 66 pages long and growing every day. So in this episode, you’re going to hear 199 ideas that I wanted to put into the podcast and haven’t yet.
Read moreAllusionist 102. New Rules - transcript
HZ: How are we supposed to learn these rules? Because it's very subtle.
GRETCHEN McCULLOCH: It is very subtle. And I think we learn them from interacting with each other primarily.
HZ: I know that I was never taught through formal channels to emphasise something by repeating letters - omfggggg! - or by putting a full stop or exclamation mark after every 👏 word 👏 in 👏 the 👏 sentence, or by attaching a gif of a panda upending a desk.
GRETCHEN McCULLOCH: We have been doing emphasis in writing for a lot longer than the internet has even been a glimmer in someone's imagination.
Read moreAllusionist 9. The Space Between - transcript
The Allusionist is a show about words, but today’s episode isn’t looking at words themselves, but what’s on either side of them: that is, nothingness.
If it weren’t for the absence of words, the words themselves would be rather incomprehensible - how do you know where one word ends and the next begins without the space between?
Since the spaces serve such a crucial function in language, I was pretty astonished to discover they are a lot younger than language itself.
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