JO WALTON: What we the readers know about the name Tiffany is incorrect. Nevertheless, as a writer, you cannot use the name Tiffany.
Read moreAllusionist 154 Objectivity transcript
HZ: When in your journalism career did the problems of objectivity become evident to you?
LEWIS RAVEN WALLACE: Probably like the first day.
Allusionist 153 In Character transcript
we think of all the important transformative game-changing global technologies in communication, like telegraphs, typewriters and computers: none of it was really designed with Chinese in mind. They were all for alphabetic, precisely English language.
HZ: It seems a bit unfair for China to be left behind by writing technologies, given that China had the movable type printing press centuries before Europe.
JING TSU: A fact they will continue to flaunt! That is the question; that's why the catching up was doubled with this memory of “How did we get to this point? We were leading, how do we now end up chasing someone else's writing system from behind?”
Allusionist 152 Asperger transcript
EDITH SHEFFER: I do think it's important that Asperger's syndrome be removed as a distinct label. I don't think it's helpful medically and then ethically. Eponymous diagnoses are bestowed as an honour, to commend someone for one's life work and also to commend someone for discovering a condition. And arguably Asperger merits neither.
Read moreAllusionist 151 The Bee's Knees transcript
“There's a town in Quebec called Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, which apparently has the Guinness World Record for most exclamation marks in a town name. Which is two.”
Read moreAllusionist 150 The Egg's Warning transcript
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: So let's explain what a Kinder Surprise egg is in the first place.
HZ: Yeah. It's slightly bigger than a hen's egg.
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: It's a foil wrapped chocolate egg, and it has an outer chocolate layer.
HZ: I'm peeling off the foil, which is white and orange. And then we have the chocolate egg in two parts. I’m trying to split it without too much incident. And then inside that is a yellow capsule. And then inside the capsule:
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: It's a self-assembly toy.
HZ: It's a self-assembly toy. Let's not get distracted by that, because that's not even the true prize, is it?
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: No, exactly. And you'll find at least two pieces of paper. Now, one of them is a sort of a picture showing how to assemble the toy.
HZ: That's right. And then the other one, which I don't know if I've ever even paid attention to before...
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: It's got the warning message, and it is in a literally dozens of languages on this tiny piece of paper.
Allusionist 149 Complex PTSD transcript
STEPHANIE FOO: I was diagnosed with complex PTSD in 2018. And I had never heard of complex PTSD before. I Googled it; it sounded very serious and very scary.
HZ: And was it very serious and very scary?
STEPHANIE FOO: I mean, yes! I think it is very serious and very scary. I
Allusionist 148 Bonus 2021 transcript
TAMSIN MAJERUS: Male killing is caused by bacteria that live in the female ladybird, and they get into her ovaries and, and into the eggs that she produces and somehow, and we don't really know how, they kill off the embryos that are destined to become male. So when she lays her clutch of eggs, normally we expect half of those will end up being female ladybirds, the other half will be male ladybirds; but a female ladybird that has a male killer will often have a clutch of eggs where only about half of them hatch and the whole for hatch go on to become feat. So the males were killed right at the very beginning of their lifetime. it works surprisingly because the female larvae and something, which is slightly disgusting as they emerge from the egg, they need to eat something very quickly or they'll starve to death.They've got male eggs right there that aren't hatching into larvae. They eat those eggs. So they eat their dead brothers, nasty little bit of cannibalism, but -
HZ: Well, it’s pragmatic cannibalism.
TAMSIN MAJERUS: Yeah, exactly.
Read moreAllusionist 147 Survival: Today, Tomorrow part 2 transcript
HZ: In 2019, the law changed so that as well as the previously available last name suffixes -son and -dóttir, there was now also a genderfree one, -bur.
ÞORBJÖRG ÞORVALDSDÓTTIR: Samtökin ’78, the national queer organization, worked with Trans Iceland and Intersex Iceland in forming that legislation that added this suffix to the last names. This specific change to the naming laws that we have - because we do have restrictions on what you can name your children and how you can be named yourself - this happened through a different kind of legislation. So it wasn't really a legislation that was meant to change the name laws. It was just the fact that we added a third gender registration.
HZ: In 2019 the Icelandic government, the Alþingi, unanimously voted to add a third option for legal gender: X, neither male nor female.
ÞORBJÖRG ÞORVALDSDÓTTIR: Then of course the naming laws had to be updated to suit that need. So that's why -son and -dóttir didn't work anymore, and there had to be added -bur, or the option to just leave son or daughter or child out.
Read moreAllusionist 146 Survival: Today, Tomorrow part 1 transcript
HZ: The Icelandic word for ‘mansplaining’ translates as ‘ramsplaining’. Like the original, it’s a portmanteau, but there’s also a bonus pun in there.
ÁGÚSTA ÞORBERGSDÓTTIR: That's hrútar, ram, and explaining.
JÓHANNES BJARNI SIGTRYGGSSON: The word for explanation is utskyring. So you add in front of it H and R.
ÁGÚSTA ÞORBERGSDÓTTIR: H R, that’s Mr Explaining.
JÓHANNES BJARNI SIGTRYGGSSON: It becomes hrutskyring.
ÁGÚSTA ÞORBERGSDÓTTIR: Hrutskyring, Mr Explaining, herra utskyring.
JÓHANNES BJARNI SIGTRYGGSSON: Hrútar also means a ram, a male sheep, so in many ways it's a very funny word.
Allusionist 145 Parents transcript
FREDDY McCONNELL: A lot of the time when you hear about trans and non binary inclusion in pregnancy care, the idea is that all of this inclusive stuff is additive. It's not meant to replace language that works for the vast majority of people who are pregnant, which are cis women; it's just this is the language you use if and when you do encounter someone who's trans.
Read moreAllusionist 144 Aro Ace transcript
HZ: How did it feel when you found the vocabulary to explain yourself?
LEWIS BROWN: Oh, it was so good. I think it's maybe a bit of a cliche to say, but it was like I'd found a puzzle piece. And I was like, "Oh! That makes sense. Right. Yeah. You know, that checks out." It really helps, I think, to have to have a term for it. Before I had words like aromantic and asexual, I don't know, I just had a bad feeling. When I assumed that I did feel attracted to other people and I was kind of thinking, do I just have some trauma or something? Am I just a selfish person? And these are a cruel things to be thinking about yourself. And then I was like, oh, wait, no, no I don't. I can think of all the ways in which I'm a pretty giving person. I care about the people that I care about quite a lot. Just not necessarily in the way that everyone thinks is the most important way.
Read moreAllusionist 143 Hedge Rider transcript
Sometimes it would be useful if a podcast had footnotes, wouldn’t it, so that if you came here just for etymology, you didn’t get derailed by a tale of someone frightening off a ghost with semen.
Read moreAllusionist 142 Zero transcript
HZ: Zero, out of all the numbers and mathematical symbols, seems unique in being a combination of typographical marker and philosophical vortex. What makes it so special?
KYNE: It's a really interesting number because it's one of the newer numbers really. And there was lots of debate about whether it should count - no pun intended - as a number at all. What is a number in the first place? Can you give a definition without using the word number, like even a synonym, like quantity or amount?
HZ: Damn you, I was going to go 'quantity'!
KYNE: Right? I was like thinking about this earlier, so I wrote down my best definition. This is my best try: "A number is an abstract mathematical object used to describe things." So I know that definition uses the word 'mathematical', which I mean, in fairness is another tricky word to wrangle a definition out of. It's pretty clunky, I know, but...
HZ: You set that rule. You made it difficult you for yourself.
KYNE: I really encourage whoever's listening, try to ask yourself: how do you define a number?
Allusionist 140 Num8er5 transcript
STEPHEN CHRISOMALIS: It's very hard, I think, to imagine that we didn't have to do this at all. We could have just not done it.
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