Allusionist 131. Podlingual

February 25, 2021 The Allusionist

In their podcasts Mija and Moonface, Lory Martinez and James Kim create autobiographical fiction in multiple languages.

Allusionist 130. Valentine

February 14, 2021 The Allusionist

St Valentine's name may nowadays be all over the romance-related merch for 14 February, but he was also the patron saint of beekeepers, epilepsy and plagues. Let's get to know this multi-hyphenate saint a bit better.

Allusionist 129. Sorry

January 30, 2021 The Allusionist

Apologies are such important verbal transactions. So why are so many of them soooo bad? Susan McCarthy and Marjorie Ingalls from SorryWatch and Laura Beaudin of fauxpolo.gy pinpoint what to look out for, to sort the apologies from the fauxpologies.

Allusionist 128. Bonus 2020

December 24, 2020 The Allusionist

To round off the year, here are some choice cuts from the Allusionist vault of interesting things that guests said that there wasn’t room for in the original episodes. Brace yourself for a vivid name for dust bunnies, the scary side of glamour, another reason to be grateful for bears, and Schrödinger’s Fart.

Allusionist 127. A Festive Hit for 2020

December 14, 2020 The Allusionist

The usual canon of Christmas songs may not really fit people's moods in this year 2020, when I'm not sure a lot of us are feeling all that holly jolly. So I drafted in singer and songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs and we wrote a festive song that is suitable for 2020.

Content note: there are swears. Several of them.

Allusionist 126. Survival: Custodians of the Languages

November 29, 2020 The Allusionist

In Australia, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of languages. Until English arrived.

Allusionist 125. Swearalong Quiz

November 10, 2020 The Allusionist

Fill your lungs and get ready to shout out some profane answers: it’s the Swearlusionist Swearalong Quiz! Every answer is a swear word. Swearing, as we know, is good for your health, plus helps vent stress, and you’ll learn many etymological facts along the way, so this is a very wholesome and educational quiz.

CONTENT NOTE: this episode contains swears. Surprise!

Allusionist 124. Nightmare

October 25, 2020 The Allusionist

This is the Alloooooooooosionist, in which we learn about the etymology of some scary words for Halloween, with the help of Paul Bae of The Black Tapes and The Big Loop podcasts, and Chelsey Weber-Smith of the podcast American Hysteria. Beware of demons! Satan! The bogeyman! Lemurs!

Wait - lemurs??

Allusionist 123. Celebrity

October 10, 2020 The Allusionist

Celebrity used to mean a solemn occasion; X factor was algebraic; and fame was a huge terrifying Godzilla-like beast with many many tongues.

Here to try define celebrity and fame are historian Greg Jenner of the podcast You’re Dead To Me, Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger of Who? Weekly podcast, and writer, podcaster and videomaker Hank Green.

Allusionist 122. Ghostwriter

September 28, 2020 The Allusionist

The word for ‘ghostwriter’ in French is a racist slur. How did THAT come about? And what word could French-speakers say instead?

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Allusionist 231. Lingthusionist

“Linguistics and language is such a good mechanism for being curious,” says Lauren Gawne, linguistics prof, author of the book Gesture, and cohost of the podcast Lingthusiasm. I'm in vacation mode (although not on actual vacation alas), so today's episode is a fun chat with our nice pal about making language podcasts, the firey digestive punishments for linguistics researchers, working in reality television, and cute tame nouns versus scary intimidating verbs.

Allusionist 230. Draculae part 4: Transformation

Throughout the Draculae miniseries, about the Swedish and Icelandic translations of Dracula that played fast and loose with the original text, I've been wondering a couple of questions: why are cover versions of songs and remakes of films so normal and acceptable, whereas cover versions in book form cause such a stir? And do these Scandinavian Draculae count as fan fiction? And if not, why not? Fansplaining.com's Elizabeth Minkel explains what fan fiction can mean.

Allusionist 229. Draculae part 3: Hunting Down the Count

Many mysteries accompany the revelations that Powers of Darkness, the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula, are not direct translations of Bram Stoker's original, but stories that significantly differ in character names, plot and runtime. Like: did Bram Stoker write it himself, to publish some raunchy content that British censors would forbid? Was Powers of Darkness based on his early drafts? And did he really not copyright Dracula in the USA was that a deliberate ruse? Welllll... brace yourself for ole thrill-destroyer Zaltzman to pop your balloons of excitement.

queer playlist

Allusionist 228. Draculae part 2: Surprises in the Vaults

Happy World Dracula Day to all who celebrate!

This is the second episode of the Draculae miniseries, about a literary mystery which came to me via a meme: “Someone translated Dracula into Icelandic, and it took over 100 years for anyone to point out he just made a fanfic rewrite of what he wanted the story to be.”

In Draculae part 2, Ásgeir Jónsson explains how he got that Icelandic adaptation of Dracula back into print, to little fanfare - but then Dutch scholar Hans Corneel de Roos set about making an English translation. Following that: like me, Will Trimble also got meme-struck, and that propelled him to get a translation of the Swedish version that begat the Icelandic one.

Before listening to this, check out the first episode of the Draculae miniseries explaining the three versions of Dracula: Dracula published by Bram Stoker in 1897; the Icelandic version Makt Myrkranna by newspaper editor Valdimar Ásmundsson, serialised in his newspaper Fyallkonan in 1900-1901; and the Swedish version Mörkrets makter by an author known only as A—e, and serialised in a couple of Swedish newspapers 1899-1900.

Allusionist 227. Draculae part 1: Enter the Castle

A literary mystery came to me via a meme.

Allusionist 226. Suburbia

"The word ‘suburbia’ sort of evokes a very fixed idea of a place that is identikit, that all suburbs are the same, that within the suburb everything is the same, that all people are the same, all experiences are the same," says social historian and author John Grindrod. "I think it has this kind of flattening-out facility, that word, that isn't true."

Allusionist 225. Hues

You know what's an absolutely pesky kind of word to define in a dictionary? Colour names. A passel of lexicographers spent years - decades, even - trying different ways to describe colours in words for Webster's Third International Dictionary. It was such a huge, complicated effort that it took twelve years for former Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper to write a book about it.

Allusionist 224. Cosmic Hairball

Pack your oxygen tank, we're going up to space. There’s a lot of etymology up there.

Allusionist 223. Bonus 2025

Allusionist 222. A Christmas Carol

Today, we read the novelisation of The Muppet Christmas Carol, also known as the 1843 festive lit hit A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Allusionist 221. Scribe

"I have never felt so naked. That's how exposed I felt at the idea that my handwriting was going to be seen by the world," says Tim Brookes, founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project and author of the new book about handwriting By Hand: Can the Art of Writing Be Saved? Writing the book (yes, by hand!) celebrates the act of handwriting, even overcoming the shame arising from his own.

Allusionist 220. Disobedience

“The more we look into social structures, the more many of us realize we don't fit into them," says So Mayer, author of the new book Bad Language, "So each phrase or set of vocabulary is another piece of that dismantlement.” We discuss finding vocabulary for oneself, coming out as a speech act, growing up under Section 28, busting through oppression and shame, and joyous listening.

Allusionist 219. Making Trouble

A change of scene for one episode: recently the brilliant poet and performer Molly Naylor interviewed me for her podcast Making Trouble, about creativity, and she kindly let me run a version of that episode here for you. We're talking about ideas, but also long-term creative careers, mortality, podcasting, external validation, and Molly offers some great prompts for either sparking ideas or making a dinner conversation a bit more lively.

Allusionist 218. Banned Books

It's Banned Books Week. Honorary youth chair Iris Mogul and Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, talk about what it is, why it matters so much, and how you can get involved.