This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, say a series of words to relax your mind, replace a hectic interior monologue, maybe lull you to sleep, hopefully quell the mental uproar just for a little while.

Today: nicknames for woodlice AKA rolypoly bugs AKA slaters AKA all these other things; and a list of cheeses from Great Britain and Ireland.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

A literary mystery came to me via a meme.

"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."

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.

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

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

"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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Ten years ago, on the fourth ever episode of the show, I investigated why the C-word is considered a worse swear than the others. Since then - well really just in the last three years or so - there has been a huge development: the word has hit the mainstream as a compliment, in the forms of serving it and -y. Linguists Nicole Holliday and Kelly Elizabeth Wright discuss these uses of the word originating in the ballroom culture of New York City in the 1990s, and what it means to turn such a strong swear into praise.

Welcome to four letter word season!

We're kicking off with one of the most versatile words: it can be a noun, verb, punctuation, expostulation, full sentence on its own; it can be an intensifier, an insult and a compliment... and a Category A swear. Thus, of course, content note: this episode contains many category A swears, plus some sexual references.

Happy tenth birthday to this show! To celebrate, here's every randomly selected word from the dictionary from the first decade of the show. 

It's the annual parade of Bonus Bits - things this year's guests said that I couldn't fit into their episodes, and/or weren't about language, but now is their time to shine.

We've got tricorn hats, changing your dog's name, Boston cream pie, parmesan vs vomit, the placebo effect's negative sibling, the universal blank, headache poetry and bawdy riddles. And more!

In Lexicat part 1, we met the author Mary Robinette Kowal and her cat Elsie, and learned about how they communicate via a set of buttons programmed with words. In part 2, two talking dogs, Bastian and Parker - and their humans, Joelle Andres and Sascha Crasnow - join us too, and explain how they discovered some very unexpected things about what their animal companions are thinking and feeling thanks to the buttons, and how they changed the ways they communicate with other humans too. And animal behaviour expert Zazie Todd gives us some tips for interpreting cats’ and dogs’ body language.