IRIS ICHISHITA: There's so many different ways to try and understand this text. And there are so many different pieces of evidence that point us in these different directions. Is it fan fiction? Is it pirated fiction? Is it pastiche? Is it creative licence, creative liberty? Is it an alternate version? Could it have been Bram Stoker's original version, his director's cut? What are these texts in relationship to each other?
HZ: Well, they are first cousins, I'd say?
IRIS ICHISHITA: Yeah, yeah. If not shadowy twins.
HZ: Maybe it's more like identity theft.
Allusionist 228. Draculae part 2: Surprises in the Vaults transcript
ÁSGEIR JÓNSSON: It is very different from the Dracula that we know. First of all, it is a more political thing. Dracula is discussing socialism and anarchism. And he seems to be preparing a revolution, which in many ways is similar ideas that you would later see with Fascism and Nazism, where he basically says that the powerful should dominate the weaker. And secondly, it is much more graphic. You have a much greater number of female vampires, and you have a much more graphic scenes of sex and violence that Count Dracula is actually taking part in.
Read moreAllusionist 227. Draculae part 1: Enter the Castle transcript
A literary mystery about the novel Dracula came to me via a meme, just as Dracula came to Whitby in a box of soil in a ship. The meme said something like, “Someone translated Dracula into Icelandic, and it took over 100 years for anyone to point out he just made a fanfic rewrite of what he wanted the story to be.”
Read moreAllusionist 222. A Christmas Carol transcript
warning for GHOSTS
Read moreAllusionist 218. Banned Books transcript
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.
Read moreAllusionist 203. Flyting transcript
ISHBEL McFARLANE: “You crap so much that you sunk a ship you were on.”
HZ: I’m gonna use that.
Allusionist 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 173 Death transcript
EVIE KING: I mean, if I was to google synonyms of ‘dead’ - let's try that. Synonyms, ‘dead’. See what comes up. ‘Deceased.’
HZ: ‘Deceased’ is just Latin for death.
EVIE KING: ‘Late’, ‘lost’, ‘lamented’...
HZ: ‘Lamented’!
EVIE KING: ‘Expired’ - expired! Like a cheese. ‘Departed’. ‘Gone’. ‘No more. ‘Fallen. ‘Slain’. Now you're starting to infer causes of death. ‘Slaughtered’, ‘killed’ - see, it escalates quickly. There’s not much, there's not much is there?
HZ: Which is odd considering how much death there is everywhere for everyone.
EVIE KING: Yeah, you get more, more synonyms for very boring words, don't you, very workaday words. I think basically maybe it comes down to the fact that dead is dead and we all know what that means, universally dead is dead, and there's no getting away from it, there's no escaping it and there's no getting around it. So we just have to face that word and use it. And if we don't feel like saying dead, we'll just go “passed away”.
HZ: Maybe that's the thing: maybe we don't need new vocabulary yet until we've learnt to get comfortable with ‘dead’.
EVIE KING: And then we can start really jazzing it up. Creating fun terms! Like, you know, when you get things like ‘bottomless brunch’ - that kind of thing for ‘dead’. I think we all know we've arrived when we've got a jazzy snazzy word for ‘dead’.
HZ: Something to look forward to.
Read moreAllusionist 172 A Brief History of Brazilian Portuguese transcript
CAETANO GALINDO: Brazilians are very confused and confusing and confounding about this relationship with the Portuguese language, because it defines us. We are the place that speaks Portuguese in the middle of a whole bunch of Spanish-speaking countries, and pretty much all of us speak it. And pretty much all of us speak only this one language. It's really something that defines us, and really something that we cannot try to deny or erase or… I don't know. But at the same time, you have this certainty that this was an imposed reality, that this is not what we could have.
Read moreAllusionist 169 The Box transcript
SUBHADRA DAS: A guy from the UCL estates team, screwdriver, took the plaque off the wall.
HZ: That's it?
SUBHADRA DAS: That's how you dename a building. It's not difficult.
Allusionist 168 Debuts transcript
HZ: The work that RFSU does has included, over the past three decades, coming up with new terms, to fill gaps in the vocabulary or provide more options for talking about sex and bodies.
KALLE ROCKLINGER: Sometimes it's to highlight or make something visible that's not been really talked about. Sometimes it's to change norms in society in some ways, and sometimes it's been sort of a really strategic choice for us in our political work to refuse a certain term or way of describing things, to tell another story, so to speak.
Read moreAllusionist 167 Bonus 2022 transcript
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 166 Fiona part 2 transcript
HARRY JOSIE GILES: I don't think that anyone should come away from this conversation not wanting to use the name Fiona. I think this is a beautiful and rich history. It might not be quite the history that you imagined, but I think it's a beautiful history.
Read moreAllusionist 165 Fiona part 1 transcript
HARRY JOSIE GILES: Fiona is a name I think now that still has a slightly romantic, slightly historical Scottish feel. I think everyone thinks it's an old Scottish name, but it's not an old Scottish name!
Read moreAllusionist 163 Rhino Borked Guy transcript
"Better to elect a rhino than an ass.”
Read more