Your Custom Text Here
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 more
This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, soothe your brain by saying a load of words that don’t really mean very much, to give you an emotional break by temporarily supplanting your interior monologue with something you can benignly ignore. This isn’t like the usual episodes of the Allusionist, there’ll be no learning, no journey, you don’t have to feel or think anything. And you’ll find previous editions of the Tranquillusionist at theallusionist.org/tranquillusionist, featuring champion dogs, gay animals, punchlines with no setups and more.
Today’s theme was requested by Lachlan, so long ago that Lachlan will have perhaps forgotten, but at some point in the past they wanted a Tranquillusionist featuring the characters from films that don't have names - so in the credits they’re listed as "man in shop", "lady with pram", "angry customer 2".
Read more
Exclamation; sign of agreement OR disapproval; gendered, but circumstantially gender-neutral; term of endearment: 'dude' can do it all! But its connotations of a laid-back, cool, masculine person are only a few decades old; before that, it meant...an uptight city-dwelling tourist?? Dude, seriously!
Read more
If you were in Brazil during the military dictatorship of 1964-1985, tried to bake a cake from a recipe in the newspaper, and were served with a sorry mess that tasted disgustingly salty, it wasn't your fault. What you thought was a recipe was actually a message from the newspaper that they were being censored.
Designer and researcher Crystian Cruz opens up the TOP SECRET files, to share the fake weather reports, single nipples vs a pair, soap opera characters getting bumped off, and the problems with kung fu.
Read more
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!
Read more
Up in the sky: look! It's an adjective! It's a noun! It's...Adjectivenoun!
Your friendly neighbourhood superheroes might have thrilling and varied powers and spandex garments, but the way their names are concocted have followed only a handful of formulae in the past 80 years, since Superman sent superheroes soaring.
(Yes, alliteration is one such naming formula.)
Glen Weldon of Pop Culture Happy Hour traces the supername's development from Adjective+Gender through Colour+Noun to Normal Name and Lone Noun.
Read more
