This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, in the interests of temporarily trying to stop that feeling where you think your brain is trying to claw its way out of your skull, read the punchlines to classic jokes. No setups; just the punchlines.
Read moreAllusionist 106. Typo Demon - transcript
IAN CHILLAG: Titivillus is the typo demon. I've certainly felt the effects of the demon Titivillus in my life. I've made typos. I had not, until I learned of Titivillus, known that I could blame those typos on a higher power or - is a demon or a lower power?
HZ: I think they originated when an archangel fell from heaven - Lucifer - ao I'd imagine if you're taking the conventional geography of heaven being high, then the demons would be low - but then a typing demon would probably be on the Earth's surface for maximum efficacy.
IAN CHILLAG: Well, Titivillus did - does, maybe - walk the Earth, and what he does is make scribes make errors. So a medieval scribe is doing their work, writing down what they have to in their text, probably a religious text; and Titivillus shows up and does whatever he does and suddenly there are typos in those texts.
HZ: And rather than ascribing that to medieval scribes having very tired hands due to the equipment that they use being exhausting to propel, and they were working in not the brightest light conditions, they were like, "No, it's demons."
IAN CHILLAG: Nope, it was Titivillus the typo demon.
HZ: We're talking about a demon that arrived on the scene of demonism in the 13th century.
IAN CHILLAG: Correct.
HZ: So when we say typos, we really mean handos.
IAN CHILLAG: Yeah yeah. The hando demon.
Read moreAllusionist 98. Alter Ego - transcript
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 97. The Future is Now? - transcript
ROSE EVELETH: I couldn't say this to most people, but you probably understand getting obsessed with a phrase, where you're like, "What is this thing that we say that is weird?" And the one that I've been obsessed with for a while is "The future is now".
HZ: This is Rose Eveleth. She makes the podcast Flash Forward, about how certain scenarios might play out in the future. Which may or may not be now.
ROSE EVELETH: I tend to use it most ironically, where like you see something dumb with technology and you're like "Oh, the future is now!" "Oh, an Internet-connected toaster - the future is now!"
HZ: “Social network for dogs!”
ROSE EVELETH: Exactly. Right. And other people I think use it much more straightforwardly, and much more non-ironically, which is like, "Oh, things are happening so quickly. The future is upon us. Things are changing really rapidly. The future is always happening right in front of us. Technology is amazing." There are two ways to say "the future is now": you can say it optimistically, you could be like, "the future is now! Isn't that cool?" Or you could be like, "the future is now, and we're totally screwed.”
I have a tweetdeck column that is just for that phrase "the future is now", just to watch what people are saying. "School buses with Wi-Fi. The future is now". The U.S. Forest Service,
Allusionist 94. Harsh Realm - transcript
MEGAN JASPER: I was the lucky recipient of a telephone call from the New York Times in the early 90s when they were writing a huge piece on Seattle, and they wanted to focus on the grunge lexicon. They wanted terms and phrases and words that we all used in the music scene; words and phrases that you would only know if you are part of the Seattle music scene.
HZ: On 15 November 1992, the New York Times printed an article entitled ‘Grunge - A Success Story’, about how grunge had become the latest big thing - ‘from subculture to mass culture’, as the article put it. In the preceding couple of years, the Seattle music scene had been co-opted by the mainstream, and by this point, record labels were putting stickers on album covers saying ‘Seattle’; just a couple of weeks before the NYT article, Marc Jacobs caused a stir in the fashion industry when he showed his grunge collection for Perry Ellis, after which he both won an award and was fired; Vogue printed a ‘Grunge & Glory’ fashion spread; and Kurt Cobain was photographed wearing a T-shirt printed with ‘grunge is dead’, in case you were wondering whether everyone was pleased with all these developments. And chasing the zeitgeist before it dipped below the horizon, there was the New York Times.
“When did grunge become grunge?’ the first paragraph went. “How did a five-letter word meaning dirt, filth, trash become synonymous with a musical genre, a fashion statement, a pop phenomenon?”
Immediately, you notice an error: ‘grunge’ is a six-letter word, not a five-letter word. But that’s just your warm-up error; don’t peak too early.
Read on, and there’s a sidebar entitled “Lexicon of Grunge: Breaking the Code”, “coming soon to a high school or mall near you”. And there followed a list of grunge slang terms.
bloated, big bag of bloatation – drunk
bound-and-hagged – staying home on Friday or Saturday night
harsh realm – bummer
plats – platform shoes
score – great
Not familiar with any of these terms? No. Nor was anybody.
MEGAN JASPER: What they didn't realize is that no such language really existed. And so I decided to have a little bit of fun with it.
Read moreAllusionist 83. Yes, As In - transcript
TIGER WEBB: The broad thing about having unusual name is that it's a pretty effective substitute for an actual personality. I never had to develop one, because you could just do anything and people assume you’re interesting, or that there is some sort of grandiosity behind it.
HZ: Very colourful character.
TIGER WEBB: I'm really very boring and quiet. And the fact that I'm called Tiger I think does a lot to mask that. "Oh wow. Tiger, yeah, interesting fellow." I'm not though. But feel free to think that
Allusionist 74. Take A Swear Pill - transcript
HZ: So why is swearing good for you?
EMMA BYRNE: It's good for us socially, in that it is this really useful telegraph of our emotions; it's a good way of avoiding physical conflict. It's also a really good way of bonding, of saying "I hear you. I feel the strength of your emotions," like saying "Fuck that shit" when someone comes to you with something that's obviously upset them. Sometimes it needs to be something stronger than just putting your arm around their shoulder going, "Oh there, there". It's also really useful individually, both for a cathartic side of things when you do something painful or frustrating, letting it out there.
HZ: Another reason swearing is good for you: it relieves pain.
EMMA BYRNE: That is really potent and surprisingly well documented. When you stick your hands, for example, in freezing cold water, you can stand it for about half as long again if you’re using a single swear word than if you're using a single neutral word. Not only that: when afterwards you're asked about how painful that experience felt, you report that cold water as feeling much milder than the water that you had your hand in while you were using some neutral word. So we know that it's really handy for dealing with pain that's being inflicted on you. We also know that it's quite useful, for example, among people who are suffering from long term conditions - so not pain that's been inflicted in a lab, the pain that is ongoing. So managing particularly the emotional aspects of long term pain, a good swear can be cathartic.
Read more