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 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 moreAllusonist 158 Creature Quiz transcript
Allusionist 142 Zero transcript
HZ: Zero, out of all the numbers and mathematical symbols, seems unique in being a combination of typographical marker and philosophical vortex. What makes it so special?
KYNE: It's a really interesting number because it's one of the newer numbers really. And there was lots of debate about whether it should count - no pun intended - as a number at all. What is a number in the first place? Can you give a definition without using the word number, like even a synonym, like quantity or amount?
HZ: Damn you, I was going to go 'quantity'!
KYNE: Right? I was like thinking about this earlier, so I wrote down my best definition. This is my best try: "A number is an abstract mathematical object used to describe things." So I know that definition uses the word 'mathematical', which I mean, in fairness is another tricky word to wrangle a definition out of. It's pretty clunky, I know, but...
HZ: You set that rule. You made it difficult you for yourself.
KYNE: I really encourage whoever's listening, try to ask yourself: how do you define a number?
Allusionist 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 121 No Title transcript
About to go onstage to perform No Title for the first time, at SF Sketchfest 2019 at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco. Photo by Martin Austwick.
The bank clerk scrolls down and down this list of titles and honorifics, this enormous list of different ways to present ourselves, and I just want an option that doesn’t reflect my marital status, because why did all the available male titles not reflect marital status whereas female ones did? And come to think of it, why do titles reflect gender anyway? Why does anything reflect gender? What is the point of gender?
I was asking a question I am not intelligent enough to answer. And I wasn’t expecting this moment, in the bank, on a seemingly trivial and pointless mission, to be my introduction to gender studies and queer theory, but you don’t necessarily get to choose the learning moments of your life.
And in case you’re sitting there thinking, “Well. If if it’s SO important to you to have a title that does not reflect your marital status or your gender, why don’t you just become a rabbi?” Well, my family lapsed HARD. None of us is becoming a rabbi. We’d never make it. They can see the bacon in our eyes.
Read moreAllusionist 99. Polari - transcript
HZ: In 1982, Princess Anne, the second child of the Queen of England, Olympic Equestrian, is competing at the Badminton Horse Trials.
PAUL BAKER: She's jumping over all these obstacles and oops, she slips and falls in the water off an obstacle. And all of the photographers rush forward to take a photograph, and she tells them to "naff off". Or "naff orf".
HZ: She's not allowed to drop an F-bomb really, she's a royal.
PAUL BAKER: No, but 'naff' was a Polari word.
HZ: Polari. Just a couple of decades before, it would have been unthinkable that someone like Princess Anne would have used a Polari word, or that she would even have known one.
Read moreAllusionist 81. Shark Week - transcript
HZ: There used to be a term ‘goatmilker’, it was a bird that was believed to suck milk from goats at night, but it was also slang for sex workers, and therefore slang for vulvas.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Wow.
HZ: Licentious men were known as ‘goatmilkers’, because they were frequenting these sex workers in the 17th century when this word was around.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Again, not enough poetry in that for me.
HZ: Too vulgar for you?
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Yes, for my delicate sensibilities.
Allusionist 10: Election Lexicon - transcript
This episode comes out the day before the 2015 General Election in the UK, so please join me for a jaunt through the etymology of some of the words that are the linguistic flies buzzing around the carcase of democracy.
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