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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.
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Erwin Schrödinger is one of the "fathers of quantum mechanics". He also sexually abused children. Trinity College Dublin recently denamed a lecture theatre that had been named after him - but his name is still on an equation that won the Nobel Prize for physics. And a cat.
Writer and historian Subhadra Das recounts how and why you rename a university building, and retired physicist Martin Austwick considers that renaming an eponymous equation or theory might be more difficult than unscrewing a sign from a wall.
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Those words on museum walls that you can't be bothered to read? They're more important than you think... Exhibition-maker Rachel Souhami explains why. Visit theallusionist.org/museums to find out more about this episode. Tweet @allusionistshow,
Read more about artist Fred Wilson and his 'Mining the Museum' exhibition and other works at the Maryland Historical Society.
Read a lengthy precis of the history of museums, if that's your bag.
Here's the etymology of the word 'museum'.
A few years ago, I went on a museums crawl in Vienna and saw such marvels as priapic armour, pickled conjoined foetuses, and meat animations. What's the weirdest museum you've been to?
Say hi at facebook.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/allusionistshow, and come back in a fortnight for the next episode.
Presented and produced by Helen Zaltzman, ie me.
Rachel Souhami designs and curates exhibitions, produces Museums Showoff, and tweets @rachelsouhami.
'Allusionist Theme' - Martin Austwick
'Wonderful World' - Sam Cooke
'The Writing's On The Wall' - OK Go
'Live As If Someone Is Always Watching You' - Smog
