Souvenirs on BBC Radio 4

July 21, 2025 The Allusionist

A white chalk drawing on black paper of London's Hammersmith Bridge, under heavy clouds illuminated by the moon. The river Thames running beneath has letters strewn in it, some spelling out the word 'Souvenirs'

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 211. Four Letter Words: -gate

June 23, 2025 The Allusionist

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.

Allusionist 174. Eurovision part 1

April 7, 2023 The Allusionist

There aren't many multilingual, multinational television shows that have been running for nearly seven decades. But what makes the Eurovision Song Contest so special to me is not the music, or the dancing, or the costumes that range from spangletastic to tear-off: no, it's the people butting heads about language. Historian Dean Vuletic, author of Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest, recounts the many changes in Eurovision's language rules, and its language hopes and dreams.

Allusionist 159. Bufflusionist

August 19, 2022 The Allusionist

Grab your stake and crucifix pendant, we're going vampire-hunting! Well, vampire-etymology-hunting. The podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer, which recaps the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode by episode, invited me to answer their listeners' questions of language that the show had provoked. Together with BVTS hosts Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs, I tackle the etymology of coven, vampire/vampyre, wigging out, the name Buffy and Bovril; as well as google as a verb, conlang on TV, and why Latin is so often the language of spells and spookiness.

Allusionist 135. SOS

May 13, 2021 The Allusionist

SOS is a really versatile distress call. You can shout it; you can tap it out in Morse code; you can honk it on a horn; you can signal it with flashes of light; you can spell it out on the beach with debris from your wrecked ship.

Allusionist special: Podcast Podcast

December 16, 2019 The Allusionist

Here’s a special episode about the word that brought us all together… aaand a lot of you hate it.

Allusionist 109. East West

November 13, 2019 The Allusionist

On 9 November 1989, the demolition of the Berlin Wall began. Within a year, Germany was unified. East Germany dissolved and was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany, took on its currency and its rules - and its lexicon. What was that vocabulary, and where did it go?

Allusionist 5: Latin Lives!

February 25, 2015 The Allusionist

iTUNES • RSS • MP3

Every week since September 1989, a radio station in Finland has broadcast a weekly news bulletin...in Latin. WHY? Let's find out! Visit theallusionist.org/latin to find out more about this episode. Tweet @allusionistshow, and convene at facebook.

For years, I've been wondering why a radio station in Finland broadcasts a weekly news bulletin in Latin.

And now, I have found out.

Antti Ijäs from Nuntii Latini - now the Finnish Broadcasting Company's longest-running programme - explains how he invents new Latin words for modern concepts, and why the show is important even though, outside of the Vatican, not many people speak Latin any more. Listen now via iTunes, your favoured podcast directory, or RSS.

FOR EXTRA CREDIT:

Examine the vocabularies for Nuntii Latini.
Explore Vicipaedia, the Latin Wikipedia.
Sign up for your free monthly Latin puzzle book, Hebdomada Aenigmatum.
Learn a whole load of interesting stuff from the Reading, Writing, Romans blog
Try to understand the Papal tweets.
Have you seen Plebs? It's worth it for the theme tune alone, but I’m particularly amazed that a sitcom has been commissioned that is not only full of jokes aimed at the ever-rarer breed that is Latin students, but targeted specifically at those who had The Cambridge Latin Course textbooks.
Let's not forget the Latin grammar jokes in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
skelf

Say hi at facebook.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/allusionistshow, and come back in a fortnight for the next episode.

Valete!

- HZ

CREDITS

Presented and produced by Helen Zaltzman.
Antti Ijäs has a blog about etymology, which makes me wish I understood Finnish.
Here is Nuntii Latini's website (OK fine, here's an English translation) and the weekly bulletin is available as a podcast from iTunes.

MUSIC:

'Allusionist Theme' - Martin Austwick
'Latin Lingo' - Cypress Hill
Theme from Carry On Cleo
Theme from I, Claudius
'You Will Be Back Someday' - Kevin Tihista's Red Terror