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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 219. Making Trouble transcript

October 26, 2025 The Allusionist
a Boggle grid spelling out the word trouble

MOLLY NAYLOR: I don't like to compliment my guests or talk about how brilliant they are.

HZ: That's fine. That means I don't have to rebuff your compliments in that kind of, “Oh no, praise! I feed on it, but also, I don't know how to handle it!” We won't have to do that.

MOLLY NAYLOR: Yeah, I hate to receive it. And if I didn't receive it, I would die.

HZ: Who are we? We're uninflated balloons. Not just uninflated, balloons that had been previously inflated and had deflated.

MOLLY NAYLOR: Left over at the kids party. Shrivelled. That's what we are. Great.

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In transcript Tags arts, Molly Naylor, Making Trouble, creativity, compliments, praise, Twitter, ideas, Plato, Socrates, imagination, writing, despair, ageing, mortality, podcasting, validation, external validation, existential, meltdown, success, wrack

Allusionist 144 Aro Ace transcript

October 26, 2021 The Allusionist

HZ: How did it feel when you found the vocabulary to explain yourself?

LEWIS BROWN: Oh, it was so good. I think it's maybe a bit of a cliche to say, but it was like I'd found a puzzle piece. And I was like, "Oh! That makes sense. Right. Yeah. You know, that checks out." It really helps, I think, to have to have a term for it. Before I had words like aromantic and asexual, I don't know, I just had a bad feeling. When I assumed that I did feel attracted to other people and I was kind of thinking, do I just have some trauma or something? Am I just a selfish person? And these are a cruel things to be thinking about yourself. And then I was like, oh, wait, no, no I don't. I can think of all the ways in which I'm a pretty giving person. I care about the people that I care about quite a lot. Just not necessarily in the way that everyone thinks is the most important way.

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In transcript Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, Helen Zaltzman, history, asexual, aromantic, ace, aro, AVEN, AUREA, Lewis Brown, LGBTQIAA, queer, sex, romance, relationships, sexuality, aspec, emotions, online, forums, communities, bisexual, aromanticism, gray sexual, demisexual, perioriented, varioriented, Plato, Ancient Greece, Greek, cake, dragons, obelus

Allusionist 101. Two or More - transcript

June 24, 2019 The Allusionist
A101 logo Two or More.jpg

MARK WILKINSON: If you talk about something a certain way for enough time over a sustained period of time then it will likely affect the way people perceive that issue, right? So if something is framed in a certain way over a sustained period of time, you always hear the same words for something, then eventually it frames the way you think about it.

HZ: In this case, he’s been studying the use and framing of the word ‘bisexual’.

MARK WILKINSON: I think bisexual - the word bisexual, and the people as well - the word has had a really rough go of it. 

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In transcript Tags words, language, linguistics, education, comedy, entertainment, society & culture, arts, literature, Helen Zaltzman, etymology, lexicon, vocabulary, bisexual, bisexual erasure, pansexual, fluid, sexuality, romance, love, sex, sexes, gender, gender binary, binary, LGBTQIA, bisexual+, plus, plurisexual, omnisexual, sexual orientation, identity, gender identity, nonbinary, NB, enby, genderqueer, unisex, androgynous, androgyny, hermaphroditic, Lord Byron, music, musical instruments, perfume, fragrances, hats, products, clothing, clothes, semantic shifts, fashion, intersex, Wolfenden Report, HIV, AIDS, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 19th century, Germany, heternormativity, uranian, urning, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Alfred Kinsey, Kinsey Scale, God, The Times, Times newspaper, newspapers, press, media, news, reviews, past tense, Plato, Symposium, Uranus, Aphrodite Urania, womanizer, relationships, semantic shift, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, queer, queer history
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Featured
Festivelusionists
Allusionist 221. Scribe
Allusionist 221. Scribe
Allusionist 220. Disobedience
Allusionist 220. Disobedience
Allusionist 219. Making Trouble
Allusionist 219. Making Trouble
Allusionist 218. Banned Books
Allusionist 218. Banned Books
Allusionist 217. Bread and Roses, and Coffee
Allusionist 217. Bread and Roses, and Coffee
Allusionist 216. Four Letter Words: Terisk
Allusionist 216. Four Letter Words: Terisk
Allusionist 215. Two-Letter Words
Allusionist 215. Two-Letter Words
Allusionist 214. Four Letter Words: Bane Bain Bath
Allusionist 214. Four Letter Words: Bane Bain Bath
Souvenirs on BBC Radio 4
Souvenirs on BBC Radio 4
Allusionist 213. Four Letter Words: Dino
Allusionist 213. Four Letter Words: Dino
Allusionist 212. Four Letter Words: Park
Allusionist 212. Four Letter Words: Park
Allusionist 211. Four Letter Words: -gate
Allusionist 211. Four Letter Words: -gate
Allusionist 210. Four Letter Words: 4x4x4 Quiz
Allusionist 210. Four Letter Words: 4x4x4 Quiz
queer playlist
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The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.