The Watergate Scandal’s linguistic legacy: the suffix ‘-gate’
Read moreAllusionist 200. 200th episode celebratory quiz! transcript
Here it is, the 200th episode of the Allusionist! To celebrate, here is a playalong quiz where the questions have been set by you, the smart listeners, and if you want to play as you listen, you can keep track of your scores via the score sheet at theallusionist.org/200, if you don’t have to hand the back of an envelope and a pencil you stole from IKEA.
Read moreAllusionist 199. 199 ideas that I hadn't made into podcasts yet - transcript
This is the 199th episode of the show, and since before this show began, so for nearly a decade, I have been jotting down ideas in two documents - one for short ideas, one for long ideas. There are always more ideas than I have time and ability to make podcasts about, so now the documents are altogether 66 pages long and growing every day. So in this episode, you’re going to hear 199 ideas that I wanted to put into the podcast and haven’t yet.
Read moreAllusionist 198. Queer Arab Glossary
HZ: So how do you go about building a glossary when you have to do that yourself from scratch?
MARWAN KAABOUR: Yes, it's a good question. Like, why would a graphic designer with a steady job decide to open this can of worms?
Allusionist 187 Bonus 2023 transcript
It is the annual Bonus episode - because the people who appear on this show always say so much good stuff, it doesn’t all fit into their original episodes, so at the end of each year we get to enjoy all the extra bounty. Coming up, we’ve got a mythical disappearing island, geese, human dictionaries, the dubious history of the Body Mass Index, a Eurovision thing that has puzzled me for years, Victorian death department stores, and much more.
Read moreAllusionist Apple Fest transcript
HZ: Each apple varietal had a little card with background information about the varietal's provenance and tasting notes.
HZ: “Topaz. Refreshing, sharp, sweet, mellows with age.” I mean, that's... Something for me to aspire to, but I feel I'm going the other way.
HANNAH McGREGOR: I'm definitely getting sharper and more acidic with age.
HZ: I'm getting withered and bitter without having achieved true ripeness.
HANNAH McGREGOR: Sorry, could we just check in about what it means to achieve true ripeness?
Read moreAllusionist 174 Eurovision part 1 transcript
The Eurovision Song Contest has given us the international renown of Celine Dion, Måneskin, Dana International, Conchita Wurst and Riverdance; tear-off skirts, nul points, shiny shiny costumes, a band of babushke dancing around an onstage bread oven; not to mention fraught politics, within and between nations. And most importantly for our purposes: linguistic intrigue! So much linguistic intrigue.
Read moreAllusionist 155 The Tiffany Problem transcript
JO WALTON: What we the readers know about the name Tiffany is incorrect. Nevertheless, as a writer, you cannot use the name Tiffany.
Read moreAllusionist 141 Food Quiz transcript
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Did you know that, Samin, that my nickname for Helen is 'Pizza’?
SAMIN NOSRAT: What? Because of all the Z's?
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Because I once told Helen about this atrocious pamphlet that I read at the train station when I was in college. It was for some kind of like - I think it was called student advantage. Do you remember the student advantage card? There was a pamphlet for student advantage card, and they were trying to say like how useful it could be. And they're like, "Everybody knows students need a few extra bucks, whether it's to do laundry, buy some books, or just grab a slice of 'za!" And I had never heard that before, 'za, apostrophe Z A, and I was looking and I was like, "Are they trying to say pizza? They're abbreviating pizza? This is how cool kids say pizza. What is this?" And I felt so offended that they were trying to market, at me, a student, using this kind of language. And I told Helen about this, and then immediately after that she was doing a Reddit AMA and, and I think I went in there and I asked her if she was really hiding the fact that Helen Zaltzman was short for Helen Pizzaltzman.
HZ: Yes, my family shortened it when they moved to an Anglophone country.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Yeah, so now I just call her 'Pizza' for short. Naturally.
HZ: I just think an abbreviation where you understand less what the thing was is not a good one. I suppose you are saving a whole syllable which is half of the effort.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Plus you sound SO cool and SO with it, calling it just 'za.
HZ: And you must be very busy person not to be able to do the full 'pizza'.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: You're a student, you've got skateboarding to do.
Allusionist 133 Cake Is Mightier Than The Sword transcript
JUAN PALACIOS: So as a funny, but actually as a political comment, a political statement, they start naming the pastries with these names. Who would they attack? The police; the army; the church: the structures of power that they were trying to take down. Hence the names. It's funny but it was more than that. It's a political statement.
MADI LANG: It really characterizes the people. Because I don't think they thought they were going to start a revolution. They were just being kind of disrespectful in a very open, normal way, like, what if instead of calling it pizza they called it "the fuck you"?
Allusionist 131 Podlingual transcript
JAMES KIM: I wanted that experience for everybody to be in the character's shoes, and understand how it's like for somebody that you love to talk to you, but you can't understand a word that they're saying.
Read moreAllusionist 128 Bonus 2020 transcript
KATE LISTER: When you're looking back at old texts and they're talking about 'slut holes' that need clearing out, it makes us fall about laughing; but what they actually mean was like a hole that was just full of rubbish and crap in the street, that you'd put coal into and store there. And there's something that was called ‘slut wool’ as well. You know when you lift up the sofa or the bed and you call them dust bunnies now, all those balls of dust - that was ‘slut wool’ once upon a time.
Read moreAllusionist 122 Ghostwriter transcript
BUFFON: I was like, am I supposed to punch her?
MPUTUBWELE: Nelly knows this is the word for ghostwriter.
BUFFON: Everybody knows that word in France.
MPUTUBWELE: But it's one thing to know that word, and it's another to hear it said to you.
Allusionist 116: My Dad Excavated a Porno transcript
HZ: The Victorians really did a number on people. I feel like we're still unpicking Victorian attitudes.
KATE LISTER: Yes, we are. I mean, we're still very much the children of the Victorians, and they're a fascinating bunch, the Victorians. No generation, at no point in history, has sex been successfully repressed, ever. It just doesn't happen. But what you have is really strict social morality, conditioning and mores and constructs and power dynamics around sex that dictate what we are and what we're not supposed to be doing. And outward facing, they were so repressed and polite society and so offended by everything even remotely to do with sex, to the point of where they wouldn't say the word 'trousers' because they thought they were too rude. They were 'sit down upons'.
Read moreAllusionist 107. Apples - transcript
KATHRYN GRANDY: After the name was selected and initially growers and even some people from WSU didn't really like the name Cosmic Crisp.
HZ: Oh, why not?
KATHRYN GRANDY: They said it's like The Jetsons, too futuristic.
HZ: Is that bad?
KATHRYN GRANDY: You know, I love the name; and being futuristic and like The Jetsons I think is pretty cool. But the one thing I've learned being in marketing is everybody is an art director. Somebody wanted to named Cosmic Crisp ‘Sparkle’. And to me, that makes me think of dish soap.
