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.
Read moreAllusionist 217. Bread and Roses, and Coffee
In their heyday of the 1970s and 1980s, there were more than 200 - possibly more than 400 - feminist restaurants and coffee shops in the USA and Canada. These places were aiming to change ways of working, and upend the hierarchies of restaurants; to provide food that was ethically sourced and affordable to customers, while providing staff with a decent wage; to signal to particular kinds of people that a space was specifically for them. They didn't always succeed, and often they didn't last for more than a couple of years. But they sure did try things.
Dr Alex Ketchum from McGill University, author of the book Ingredients for Revolution, a History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses and cofounder of the Queer Food Conference, explains the ups and downs of how these places used words.
Read moreAllusionist 216. Four Letter Words: Terisk
Watching the film Legally Blonde one day with the subtitles on, numerous perfectly innocuous words were partially asterisked out, because of a technological problem I can't name here lest this episode be blocked from search results, thus becoming an example of the problem itself.
Who's to blame? A 900-year-old man from Lincolnshire. Although he didn't ask for this either.
Read moreAllusionist 215. Two-Letter Words
Listener Erica commented: "Perhaps an idea for a bonus ep of Four Letter Word season would be one on two-letter words: there’s an established list that Scrabble nerds end up memorizing, and it’s full of weirdness." In fact, there are TWO established lists, NASPA, the North American Scrabble Players Association, which has currently 107 two-letter words, and Collins Scrabble Words, formerly known as SOWPODS, used by the rest of the world and contains at present 127 two-letter words.
And this episode, we're going to hear all those two-letter words. If you don't agree with their Scrabbular validity, don't blame me! Some of the inclusions were a surprise, frankly!
Read moreAllusionist 214. Four Letter Words: Bane Bain Bath
For today’s instalment of Four Letter Word season, we’re hopping from ‘bane’ to ‘bain’ to ‘bath’, via poison gardens, doll’s eyes, alchemists, placentas and waterborne curses.
Read moreSouvenirs on BBC Radio 4
Huge news! House band Martin Austwick and I made a radio version of our live piece Souvenirs, and it’s being broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 22 July at 16:00 UK time, and rerun at 00:15 BST Monday 28 July - here’s the link for listening live. It’ll also be available online via the BBC website and BBC Sounds, for a bit of time after.
UPDATE: it’s currently not available outside of the UK, so for now, people anywhere can hear it via Falling Tree’s archive. Ignore Soundcloud’s request to sign in, you can listen without doing so.
Souvenirs is a sort of essay/musical/tragicomedy about the Doves Press and its founders’ friendship collapsing and all manner of bitterness ensuing over their in-house typeface. Later in the year I’ll put something on the podfeed with more information about it. For now, I’d love for you to listen to Souvenirs, which I think is one of the most emotional pieces I’ve written. Some of those emotions are ones I recognise in myself and wish I could banish.
Look mum, I’m in the Radio Times! [Falls back down to Earth] With my name spelled wrong:
Allusionist 213. Four Letter Words: Dino
The latest four letter word of Four Letter Word season is dino. 'Dinosaur' is derived from Greek 'terrible lizard', and they could have called it 'whopping great lizard' or 'sublime lizard' or 'hey cool lizard', but no. TERRIBLE.
Professor Hannah McGregor of Material Girls podcast and author of the book Clever Girl: Jurassic Park explains humans' relationship with language for dinosaurs, and why 'terrible' might be a perfect choice.
Read moreAllusionist 212. Four Letter Words: Park
Get in, winner: we're going on a field trip.
Read moreAllusionist 211. Four Letter Words: -gate
The other day was the 53rd anniversary of the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, which not only caused a lot of political uproar, it had a big linguistic legacy: the suffix -gate to mean a scandal.
Today, as part of Four Letter Word season, we have a list of -gates - royal, sporting, political, food, showbiz - it's a non-exhaustive list because there are so many, and new ones are being spawned all the time. Content warning for all sorts of bad human behaviour.
Read moreAllusionist 210. Four Letter Words: 4x4x4 Quiz
Four Letter Word season continues with a quiz (which is a four-letter word itself) about four letter words. Listen and play along to test your etymological knowledge, and hear about the original nepo baby, John Venn's invention that wasn't the venn diagram, brat, gunk, rube, the time(s) Led Zeppelin changed their name, and plenty more.
Click here to use the interactive score sheet.
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