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The Allusionist

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A PODCAST ABOUT LANGUAGE
BY HELEN ZALTZMAN

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The Allusionist

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Allusionist 219. Making Trouble transcript

October 26, 2025 The Allusionist
a Boggle grid spelling out the word trouble

MOLLY NAYLOR: I don't like to compliment my guests or talk about how brilliant they are.

HZ: That's fine. That means I don't have to rebuff your compliments in that kind of, “Oh no, praise! I feed on it, but also, I don't know how to handle it!” We won't have to do that.

MOLLY NAYLOR: Yeah, I hate to receive it. And if I didn't receive it, I would die.

HZ: Who are we? We're uninflated balloons. Not just uninflated, balloons that had been previously inflated and had deflated.

MOLLY NAYLOR: Left over at the kids party. Shrivelled. That's what we are. Great.

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In transcript Tags arts, Molly Naylor, Making Trouble, creativity, compliments, praise, Twitter, ideas, Plato, Socrates, imagination, writing, despair, ageing, mortality, podcasting, validation, external validation, existential, meltdown, success, wrack
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The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.