Allusionist 221. Scribe transcript

November 24, 2025 The Allusionist

TIM BROOKES: I've interviewed dozens of people whose experience of being taught to write was, at best, tedious and perplexing, and at worst brutal.

So literally about six weeks ago, maybe, I asked myself the question: when did I first enjoy the act of writing? And I don't mean enjoy writing as in enjoy writing a piece of journalism or enjoy writing a short story - I mean the actual physical act of writing. And in my case, the answer is July.

HZ: July 2025?

TIM BROOKES: Exactly.

HZ: Gosh. So you were already deep into writing this very book, several books into your writing career.

TIM BROOKES: That's right. And in fact, when I then went and asked people that question, many of them just stared at me because it had never occurred to them that it was something you enjoy.

Allusionist 220. Disobedience transcript

November 9, 2025 The Allusionist

SO MAYER: Being perceived, being heard: we often think about the painful aspect of that as being misheard, being criticised, being deliberately misunderstood, being shouted down. And I've experienced all those things, of course I have. But the possibility of actually being heard is equally as painful. Because it also asks what would be the result of that, that if someone said, "Okay. I've taken on what your book is saying. What now? Back to you." And that's what a good therapist does: "I've heard you. Now what are you gonna do about it?" And then going: oh, supposedly through my educational privilege, I've been taught to take power from using language. And here I am using language and I don't feel powerful. I feel afraid and I feel ashamed, and I feel like someone's gonna hit me in the mouth.

Allusionist 218. Banned Books transcript

October 8, 2025 The Allusionist

SAM HELMICK: Censorship is a hammer looking for a nail, my friends. And someday, you will be that nail too, unless we all decide that we're going to unite against book bans today.

Allusionist 195. Word play part 5: 100 Pages of Solvitude transcript

May 28, 2024 The Allusionist

HZ: What would make you happier: if nobody solves it or if lots of people solve it?

JOHN FINNEMORE: Oh, lots of people, without question. I hope it's not trivial, but any puzzle has failed if nobody solves it.

Allusionist 181 Cairns transcript

September 13, 2023 The Allusionist

LINDSAY ROSE RUSSELL: I don't think James Murray felt like he was alone in making the Oxford English Dictionary. I think he was keenly aware of himself as a part of a very large and many tentacled team. In a lecture he gave in 1900, he talked about every lexicographer as adding their stone to the cairn. You know, cairns like the little things when you go hiking that are piles of stones that tell you you're still on the right path. So I think Murray understood his own work as contributing to a larger lexicographical project where he was not a lone dictionary maker in the effort of dictionary making more grandly. But, I don't know; in history, I think it's easier to tell the story of a singular man. Because of course it's easier to tell the story of a singular man, as opposed to the story of thousands of people working on a single dictionary and doing all different kinds of things.

Allusionist 167 Bonus 2022 transcript

December 16, 2022 The Allusionist

TIM CLARE: Hippocampus, meaning ‘horse’ because it looks like a a sea horse, right? …Oh, don't look at them! They look absolutely terrifying!
HZ: I I've never seen a hippocampus, so I don't know.
TIM CLARE: There is a real David Cronenberg-like element to them.

Allusionist 162 Self-Help transcript

October 7, 2022 The Allusionist

JOLENTA GREENBERG: One of the main things a lot of these books like to do is remind you how bad you are at the beginning. Just like a pickup artist, there will be a chapter or two sort of negging you, or being like, “You know you're lazy about this.” A lot of books make you admit - some even make you write down all the areas like you're failing in or not putting 100% into, and so you literally will have a list sometimes of reasons why you suck. And then they're like, “And now I have the answers!” And it's like, “But you made me make up these problems in the first place.” So they like to dig you in a hole and then be like, “I can dig you out, too.”

Allusionist 161 Sentiment transcript

September 23, 2022 The Allusionist

SANDHYA DIRKS: When we talk about empathy: the idea that you can get outside of yourself, that we can imagine someone else's experience is so audacious, because human beings are not that freaking imaginative. I mean, like a unicorn is just a horse with a horn! We did not go that far to get to our most magical creature. We just like grafted two things on top of each other.

Allusionist 134 Lacuna transcript

April 9, 2021 The Allusionist

CRYSTIAN CRUZ: Some of the content was censored at the very beginning, but some was censored at the very end of the process. So they were just about to print out the new edition and then they had to stop the machines and say, “No, that's content was not approved, so we have to replace it at the very last moment.” So that guy would have to come up with some recipes.

HZ: That’s a lot of pressure on a linotype printer - not just having to deal with very late changes to the paper, but mentally having to bake a cake too.

CRYSTIAN CRUZ: And then the thing is, they didn't work at all, because the guy had just made it up.

Allusionist 104. Words Into Food - transcript

August 18, 2019 The Allusionist

KATE YOUNG: I can travel through what these characters are eating and what they're doing, and travel to places, to countries I've never been, but also to fantastical worlds that I've never been to and versions of this world that feel very different to my own or are 200 years older than this or one hundred years in the future or any of those things

Allusionist 103. Food Into Words - transcript

August 6, 2019 The Allusionist

FELICITY CLOAKE: It's very nerveracking because people spend money on ingredients, they may be cooking it for a special occasion, they try to impress a date or whatever - there's a lot that can go wrong with food and it's quite a weighty responsibility to be responsible someone's dinner or their birthday cake or whatever; it is a big deal.

RACHEL GREENHAUS: If it's a cookbook for family use, you're going to write it differently than if it's a cookbook for expert bakers and figuring out how to get the recipe that's right for that.

MIMI AYE: It's very different from cooking in real life, I think. Which is weird because you're trying to tell people how to cook the dish.

RACHEL GREENHAUS: It would be really easy to show you, but it's hard to describe in language.

MIMI AYE: Yeah, it's a complete nightmare.

Allusionist 98. Alter Ego - transcript

April 27, 2019 The Allusionist

Today: three pieces about alter egos, when your name - the words by which the world knows you - is replaced by another for particular purposes.

How did John Doe come to be the name for a man, alive or dead, identity unknown or concealed in a legal matter? Strap in for a whirlwind ride into some frankly batshit centuries-old English law.
At their first bout of the 2019 season, the London Roller Girls talk about how they chose their roller derby names - or why they chose to get rid of one.
The 1930s and 40s were a golden age for detective fiction, which was also very popular and lucrative. Yet writing it was disreputable enough for authors to hide behind pseudonyms.

Allusionist 95. Verisimilitude - transcript

March 6, 2019 The Allusionist

HZ: Approximately how many languages have you invented at this point?
DAVID PETERSON: I think I've invented over 50 languages at this point. Not all of them are very large in terms of vocabulary size, and not all of them are very good. I had created about 17 before I ever started working on Game of Thrones.

HZ: The languages you hear in Game of Thrones: Dothraki -

[CLIP] Khal Drogo: “Moon of my life, are you hurt?”

HZ - the various dialects of Valyrian:

CLIP: Daenerys: “Valyrian is my mother tongue.”

HZ: - those aren’t the actors making up some gibberish. Those are functional languages, with large vocabularies and complex grammars and etymologies.

Allusionist 82 A Novel Remedy transcript

August 13, 2018 The Allusionist

When you’re not feeling well, which books do you turn to to make yourself feel better?

I asked this question on the Allusionist Facebook and Twitter, and hundreds of you responded, but a few answers came up again and again:
Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, JRR Tolkien.
Makes sense. Science fiction, fantasy: what’s more escapist?
Jane Austen. PG Wodehouse.
Also escapist, thanks to period setting - and, rich people problems not health problems.
Things you read when you were a child: Moomins, What Katy Did, Anne of Green Gables…
Taking you back to a time in your life that perhaps felt safer, or simpler...
...Harry Potter.
Boarding school shenanigans! Wizard problems not real life problems!
And, Agatha Christie.
Poison! Gunshots! Stabbing! Hang on, why would stories about murder make us feel better?

Well, they’re kind of supposed to make you feel better.

Allusionist 69. How the Dickens stole Christmas - transcript

December 9, 2017 The Allusionist

GREG JENNER: ‘Dickensian’ is quite a tricky word, actually. I think we don’t always necessarily know what we mean when we say it. As a word it conjures up poverty, perhaps; a sense of squalor; a sense of people trapped in this brutal society where there is no safety net, no fall-back plan; where children and women can suddenly be cast into a life of poverty or crime or violence. But 'Dickensian' also should summon up some of the beautiful things as well, some of the wonderful things he harnesses. When we look at A Christmas Carol, the way he depicts the street scenes, singing to each other, the sense of community, the shop windows filled to the brim with delicious goods and treats to eat on Christmas day and toys, this is also a bountiful visual iconography. Dickens conjured up both quite alarming and also quite enrapturing, entrancing visions of what a city and a community could be. So 'Dickensian' tends to be quite negative, but it should apply to all the different worlds that Dickens created, and some of those were rather pleasant and lovely, and some of those were rather cruel and dark.

KATIE MINGLE: What's the deal with Christmas?
AVERY TRUFELMAN: Dickens?
KATIE MINGLE: Yeah.

HZ: Yeah! A lot of authors have written about Christmas, but don’t have festive fairs devoted to them. Why is Dickens the one who gets to be the adjective? Why is he given credit for Christmas?

GREG JENNER: Charles Dickens's Christmases are not brand new in 1843. You know one of the things people often say is Dickens invented Christmas, which is absolute nonsense, of course he didn't.