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 9. The Space Between - transcript

April 22, 2015 The Allusionist

The Allusionist is a show about words, but today’s episode isn’t looking at words themselves, but what’s on either side of them: that is, nothingness.

If it weren’t for the absence of words, the words themselves would be rather incomprehensible - how do you know where one word ends and the next begins without the space between?

Since the spaces serve such a crucial function in language, I was pretty astonished to discover they are a lot younger than language itself.