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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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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 199. 199 ideas that I hadn't made into podcasts yet - transcript

August 30, 2024 The Allusionist

This is the 199th episode of the show, and since before this show began, so for nearly a decade, I have been jotting down ideas in two documents - one for short ideas, one for long ideas. There are always more ideas than I have time and ability to make podcasts about, so now the documents are altogether 66 pages long and growing every day. So in this episode, you’re going to hear 199 ideas that I wanted to put into the podcast and haven’t yet.

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.