ELIZABETH KEREKERE: I'm so convinced that transphobia, biphobia, homophobia are such an integral part of colonisation, I reject that as a colonial construct, I reject it as racist.
As they took our land - tried to take all of our land, tried to take all of our language and suppress our culture, they also took our expressions of sexuality and gender. And that is important to us in a core part of our culture, especially because the way that the institutional racism, the intergenerational trauma that is the legacy of colonisation has impacted on us and the levels of discrimination against people with diverse genders, sexualities and sex characteristics, that we see that all of this, all of this was a massive attempt to cover up what was already there and pretend it never happened.
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 92. To Err Is Human - transcript
SUSIE DENT: There never has been a golden age when everything was as it should be ever. Even though we tend to think that English is now at its most dumbed down, always; I think every generation has thought that.
Read moreAllusionist 81. Shark Week - transcript
HZ: There used to be a term ‘goatmilker’, it was a bird that was believed to suck milk from goats at night, but it was also slang for sex workers, and therefore slang for vulvas.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Wow.
HZ: Licentious men were known as ‘goatmilkers’, because they were frequenting these sex workers in the 17th century when this word was around.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Again, not enough poetry in that for me.
HZ: Too vulgar for you?
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Yes, for my delicate sensibilities.
