Allusionist 120 Shine Theory transcript

July 30, 2020 The Allusionist

AMINATOU SOW: Hi. We are Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow, and we are the authors of the book Big Friendship, as well as the hosts of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend.

HZ: And at some point between 2009, when they met and befriended each other, and 2013, when Ann used it in an article in New York Magazine, Aminatou and Ann coined the term Shine Theory.

ANN FRIEDMAN: I think this is just something that, you know, you probably said to me first, “I don't shine if you don't shine.” And then it became a thing we said frequently to each other and to other friends.

AMINATOU SOW: I will confess that it is the lyric from the Killers album that I just enjoyed a lot.

Allusionist 119. Blood Is Not Water transcript

July 14, 2020 The Allusionist

ANTHONY RUSSELL: I want to have a vocabulary in order to be able to talk about things that directly affect me as an as an African-American, and as a black Jew, and as a Jew, I should have I should be able to talk about things that affect my life.

Allusionist 118 Survival: Bequest transcript

July 4, 2020 The Allusionist

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 117 Many Ways At Once transcript

June 16, 2020 The Allusionist

HARRY JOSEPHINE GILES: Our behaviour and our desires will always exceed any terminology that anyone can come up with. And so rather than trying to find the right terms - and this for me is like what working in, what trying to come up with an LGBT Scots glossary does: it's a chance to imagine. It's a chance not to come up with the right way of saying things, but to say: what if we thought about it this way? What if we thought about it that way? What assumptions are built into the languages that we use?

Allusionist 116: My Dad Excavated a Porno transcript

June 3, 2020 The Allusionist

HZ: The Victorians really did a number on people. I feel like we're still unpicking Victorian attitudes.

KATE LISTER: Yes, we are. I mean, we're still very much the children of the Victorians, and they're a fascinating bunch, the Victorians. No generation, at no point in history, has sex been successfully repressed, ever. It just doesn't happen. But what you have is really strict social morality, conditioning and mores and constructs and power dynamics around sex that dictate what we are and what we're not supposed to be doing. And outward facing, they were so repressed and polite society and so offended by everything even remotely to do with sex, to the point of where they wouldn't say the word 'trousers' because they thought they were too rude. They were 'sit down upons'.

Allusionist 115. Keep Calm and transcript

May 16, 2020 The Allusionist

HZ: Does being told to keep calm work?
JANE GREGORY: I can think of so many ways why it doesn't work.

Tranquillusionist: Punchlines transcript

April 13, 2020 The Allusionist

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, in the interests of temporarily trying to stop that feeling where you think your brain is trying to claw its way out of your skull, read the punchlines to classic jokes. No setups; just the punchlines.

Tranquillusionist: Best In Show transcript

April 5, 2020 The Allusionist

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, for the purposes of calming a frazzled brain, read the winners of the Best in Show at the Westminster Dog Show.

Tranquillusionist: Nmgiiea transcript

March 23, 2020 The Allusionist

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, for the purposes of quelling anxiety and stress and sleeplessness, read the lyrics to ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon, with the words arranged in reverse alphabetical order.

Tranquillusionist: Your Soothing Words transcript

March 20, 2020 The Allusionist

This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, read out the words that you've told me you find the most soothing.

Allusionist 114. Alarm Bells transcript

February 24, 2020 The Allusionist

ROBIN WEBSTER: I am as guilty as any, having worked as a sort of techie professional in this for a long time of writing those sentences that go "By 2050, the trajectory of the curve will be movement this and carbon capture and storage," these paragraphs that just mean nothing to nobody. And they are about things which are far away in time, far away in place. We were using these words like ‘sustainability’ and ‘trajectory’ and ‘parts per million’. And I was like, what on earth is this language? It doesn't say anything.
HZ: ‘Parts per million’: that's the stuff to get people up and ready for action.
ROBIN WEBSTER: 450 parts per million, let's go!

Allusionist 113. Zaltzology transcript

January 24, 2020 The Allusionist

ALIE WARD: Carrie Studard wants to know: “Are there any synonyms for the most hated word, ‘moist’?”

HZ: Moist. Do you hate the word ‘moist’?

ALIE WARD: At this point, it's an underdog. You know what I mean? Like, can moist live? Can it just do its business? I don't hate it.

HZ: It's fine.

ALIE WARD: I don't hate it. I tend to think of dew or grass more than I think of...

HZ: Well, that's a lovely form of moisture. I suppose the people who hate it are maybe thinking of bodily crevices. And that's their prejudice showing.

ALIE WARD: Yes, it is.

HZ: Yeah. Because other words like ‘damp’ - I mean, if you're moist from the rain, like a raincoat. Damp. Is that better? Is that worse? A bodily crevice could also be damp.

ALIE WARD: Sure. I feel like moist has a certain heat to it that damp lacks.

HZ: A steaminess rather than chilliness. It's good that we're figuring these things out.

Allusionist special: Podcast Podcast transcript

December 16, 2019 The Allusionist

I’m here to talk about a word that a lot of people hate: podcast.

Allusionist 111. Engraving part 2: Precious transcript

December 16, 2019 The Allusionist

MAX ULLMANN: I like how this is typical of all antique jewellery, in a way, it's just completely symmetrical and totally imperfect. In a world of perceived perfection, this is far more interesting. You know, you can really see that somebody is done that by hand. You know, the A is lower than the Z and the E, the horizontal arms of the E, are too short by modern standards. It’s certainly not perfect. There's bits and pieces of the letters missing, but you can really put yourself in the position of the person doing it, who obviously was not able to achieve this kind of perceived perfection because they're human.

Allusionist 110. Engraving part 1: Epitaph - transcript

November 27, 2019 The Allusionist

DAVID NADELBERG: There's Ronald. Ronald didn't get any epitaph.
HZ: No. Maybe no one liked him.
DAVID NADELBERG: Or, maybe they just couldn't agree.
HZ: Or maybe there's too much to say.

Featured

Allusionist 233. Phobia

'Phobia' gets used for anything from a mild aversion to a debilitating anxiety response to various forms of bigotry. Deboki Chakravarti and Sam Jones of the podcast Tiny Matters join to consider the term from its comedic origins with one of the founding fathers of the USA, via rabies and Greek deities, to its role in their lives today.

CONTENT NOTE: we’re not trying to stoke anyone’s phobias, but we do discuss some common phobia-inducers, including snakes, germs and small holes, and there’s a brief mention of tarantulas. There’s also talk about OCD and rabies.

Allusionist 232. Vega

What do you call yourself if you're a part-time vegetarian? What petty linguistic things would you change? And what do you do if people gripe at you if you say that you are bi or pan? To answer these questions from the Allusionist mailbag are esteemed alumsionists: Hrishikesh Hirway and Samin Nosrat of Home Cooking podcast; academic and author Alex Ketchum; lexicographer Kory Stamper; and linguist Lauren Gawne of Lingthusiasm podcast.

Tranquillusionist: cheesy cheesybobs

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, say a series of words to relax your mind, replace a hectic interior monologue, maybe lull you to sleep, hopefully quell the mental uproar just for a little while.

Today: nicknames for woodlice AKA rolypoly bugs AKA slaters AKA all these other things; and a list of cheeses from Great Britain and Ireland.

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Allusionist 231. Lingthusionist

“Linguistics and language is such a good mechanism for being curious,” says Lauren Gawne, linguistics prof, author of the book Gesture, and cohost of the podcast Lingthusiasm. I'm in vacation mode (although not on actual vacation alas), so today's episode is a fun chat with our nice pal about making language podcasts, the firey digestive punishments for linguistics researchers, working in reality television, and cute tame nouns versus scary intimidating verbs.

Allusionist 230. Draculae part 4: Transformation

Throughout the Draculae miniseries, about the Swedish and Icelandic translations of Dracula that played fast and loose with the original text, I've been wondering a couple of questions: why are cover versions of songs and remakes of films so normal and acceptable, whereas cover versions in book form cause such a stir? And do these Scandinavian Draculae count as fan fiction? And if not, why not? Fansplaining.com's Elizabeth Minkel explains what fan fiction can mean.

Allusionist 229. Draculae part 3: Hunting Down the Count

Many mysteries accompany the revelations that Powers of Darkness, the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula, are not direct translations of Bram Stoker's original, but stories that significantly differ in character names, plot and runtime. Like: did Bram Stoker write it himself, to publish some raunchy content that British censors would forbid? Was Powers of Darkness based on his early drafts? And did he really not copyright Dracula in the USA was that a deliberate ruse? Welllll... brace yourself for ole thrill-destroyer Zaltzman to pop your balloons of excitement.

queer playlist

Allusionist 228. Draculae part 2: Surprises in the Vaults

Happy World Dracula Day to all who celebrate!

This is the second episode of the Draculae miniseries, about a literary mystery which came to me via a meme: “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.”

In Draculae part 2, Ásgeir Jónsson explains how he got that Icelandic adaptation of Dracula back into print, to little fanfare - but then Dutch scholar Hans Corneel de Roos set about making an English translation. Following that: like me, Will Trimble also got meme-struck, and that propelled him to get a translation of the Swedish version that begat the Icelandic one.

Before listening to this, check out the first episode of the Draculae miniseries explaining the three versions of Dracula: Dracula published by Bram Stoker in 1897; the Icelandic version Makt Myrkranna by newspaper editor Valdimar Ásmundsson, serialised in his newspaper Fyallkonan in 1900-1901; and the Swedish version Mörkrets makter by an author known only as A—e, and serialised in a couple of Swedish newspapers 1899-1900.

Allusionist 227. Draculae part 1: Enter the Castle

A literary mystery came to me via a meme.

Allusionist 226. Suburbia

"The word ‘suburbia’ sort of evokes a very fixed idea of a place that is identikit, that all suburbs are the same, that within the suburb everything is the same, that all people are the same, all experiences are the same," says social historian and author John Grindrod. "I think it has this kind of flattening-out facility, that word, that isn't true."

Allusionist 225. Hues

You know what's an absolutely pesky kind of word to define in a dictionary? Colour names. A passel of lexicographers spent years - decades, even - trying different ways to describe colours in words for Webster's Third International Dictionary. It was such a huge, complicated effort that it took twelve years for former Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper to write a book about it.