This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, have been stashing away special Allusiobits all year, when the people who appeared on the show said interesting things that I couldn’t fit into their episode because there wasn’t room or it was not about language - waiting, just waiting, for this, the annual Bonus episode! This year we’ve got something called the ‘universal blank’, which actually does not refer to my emotions; we’ve got tricorn hats, poets with migraines, and why Boston cream pie isn’t a pie. And so much more.
Read moreAllusionist 191 Hypochondria - transcript
CAROLINE CRAMPTON: A lot of the theoretical material that I'd read about hypochondria very much positioned it in this binary situation that either someone has, quote, real illness, i.e. illness that you can detect with a scan or a blood test or some other diagnostic tool, or "It's all in their head and it's made up," and those are the only two ways it can be. But, just personally, I feel like I'm pretty much constantly experiencing some combination of the two. And I think the idea that there is unwarranted fear: I don't think there is any such thing as unwarranted fear, to be honest.
Read moreAllusionist 132 Additions and Losses transcript
HZ: How do you respond to people using words to you such as 'inspiration' or 'brave'?
CHRISTA COUTURE: Well, if I'm doing something actually inspirational, sure. There's so many times with disability that we're called brave or inspirational for just standing around. I was waiting for the bus and listening to music with my headphones - already a signal that I want to be left alone - but a guy came up to me and asked me take them off and said, "I just want to say" - and I was like, “yeah?” - "I just want to say, I think what you're doing is really inspirational." And I was like, I am literally just standing here listening to music. And do you think that this is a feat for me, to to be in the world? It reveals to me or it tells me so much about what that person thinks about having a disability. They think so little of it, they are impressed that I would leave the house.
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