HZ: Zero, out of all the numbers and mathematical symbols, seems unique in being a combination of typographical marker and philosophical vortex. What makes it so special?
KYNE: It's a really interesting number because it's one of the newer numbers really. And there was lots of debate about whether it should count - no pun intended - as a number at all. What is a number in the first place? Can you give a definition without using the word number, like even a synonym, like quantity or amount?
HZ: Damn you, I was going to go 'quantity'!
KYNE: Right? I was like thinking about this earlier, so I wrote down my best definition. This is my best try: "A number is an abstract mathematical object used to describe things." So I know that definition uses the word 'mathematical', which I mean, in fairness is another tricky word to wrangle a definition out of. It's pretty clunky, I know, but...
HZ: You set that rule. You made it difficult you for yourself.
KYNE: I really encourage whoever's listening, try to ask yourself: how do you define a number?
Allusionist 141 Food Quiz transcript
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Did you know that, Samin, that my nickname for Helen is 'Pizza’?
SAMIN NOSRAT: What? Because of all the Z's?
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Because I once told Helen about this atrocious pamphlet that I read at the train station when I was in college. It was for some kind of like - I think it was called student advantage. Do you remember the student advantage card? There was a pamphlet for student advantage card, and they were trying to say like how useful it could be. And they're like, "Everybody knows students need a few extra bucks, whether it's to do laundry, buy some books, or just grab a slice of 'za!" And I had never heard that before, 'za, apostrophe Z A, and I was looking and I was like, "Are they trying to say pizza? They're abbreviating pizza? This is how cool kids say pizza. What is this?" And I felt so offended that they were trying to market, at me, a student, using this kind of language. And I told Helen about this, and then immediately after that she was doing a Reddit AMA and, and I think I went in there and I asked her if she was really hiding the fact that Helen Zaltzman was short for Helen Pizzaltzman.
HZ: Yes, my family shortened it when they moved to an Anglophone country.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Yeah, so now I just call her 'Pizza' for short. Naturally.
HZ: I just think an abbreviation where you understand less what the thing was is not a good one. I suppose you are saving a whole syllable which is half of the effort.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Plus you sound SO cool and SO with it, calling it just 'za.
HZ: And you must be very busy person not to be able to do the full 'pizza'.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: You're a student, you've got skateboarding to do.
Allusionist 140 Num8er5 transcript
STEPHEN CHRISOMALIS: It's very hard, I think, to imagine that we didn't have to do this at all. We could have just not done it.
Read moreTranquillusionist: 282 Salads transcript
Today, I will be reading from the book 282 Ways of Making a Salad.
Read moreAllusionist 139 Ladybird Ladybug transcript
Little coconut, tortoise beetle, golden turtle, spoon insect, patch-sewer, umbrella insect, flowery big sister, celestial path insect, red mother, Ali's mother, coral beetle, good luck bug, ladyclock, child of the sun, little midwife, Saint Lucia's little piglet, God's little cow, god's little lamb, god's chicken, devil’s chicken, god's horse, Flying Mary…
Read moreAllusionist 138 Mind My Mind transcript
HZ: The term therapy tends to appear in many other contexts, say in ‘retail therapy,’ and I'm just wondering whether that rebounds onto the reputation of psychological and emotional therapy.
LILY SLOANE: Yeah. I mean, many things in life are therapeutic. Sometimes listening can be therapeutic for people. Sometimes going for a walk in the park is therapeutic. Sometimes buying stuff you don't need is therapeutic. But it's not therapy.
HZ: So it's just important to keep the adjective and the noun separated.
LILY SLOANE: And I think the word psychotherapy can be a bit of a turnoff for people seeking therapy. So I'll just say 'therapy' and then they don't know what I'm talking about.
Allusionist 137 Dude transcript
Till about the 1950s, ‘dude’ still had this connotation of someone out of place, a tourist trying to dress like a local and failing. And in that sense, it was gender neutral for a bit. Then, somehow, it became cool.
Read moreAllusionist 136 Misogynoir transcript
HZ: What to you was the purpose of coming up with a term for misogynoir?
MOYA BAILEY: It's hard to address something if you can't actually name what it is.
Allusionist 135 SOS transcript
PAUL TYREMAN: Three dots, three dashes, three dots. It's fairly easy to remember, it's easy to key, and it's difficult to confuse with other things.
CHRISTIAN OSTERSEHLTE: Maritime communication, especially in distress case, has to be distinctive, clear, and not subject to misunderstanding.
HZ: The main misunderstanding with SOS is that it stands for ‘Save Our Souls’ or ‘Save Our Ship’ or ‘Send Out Succour’. As if when your ship was sinking, your emergency message would be ‘send out succour’, cmon.
PAUL TYREMAN: It wasn't introduced because it meant anything.
Read moreAllusionist Eclipse+ transcript
LAUREN MARKS: Which is an acquired language disorder that comes after you have already honed all your language skills. It just leaves your language impoverished, depending on what type you have. It makes words inaccessible to you.
HZ: At that time, though, Lauren didn’t know that she used to have a full vocabulary and now didn’t, she used to be able to read and now couldn’t, she used to have an internal monologue and now didn’t. And ignorance really was bliss.
LAUREN MARKS: I couldn't have been any more peaceful and satisfied.
HZ: She didn’t have an inner voice telling her to panic - she didn’t have the vocabulary to panic. So she didn’t panic.
LAUREN MARKS: Knowing what you don't know is a really big issue with a brain injury. Language is the organ of perception. So if there is an injury to your perception, your perception can be real off. So in my case, with my aphasia, I didn't know how damaged my language was. I really had no idea. I thought that it was just fine.
Read moreAllusionist 134 Lacuna transcript
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.
Read moreAllusionist 133 Cake Is Mightier Than The Sword transcript
JUAN PALACIOS: So as a funny, but actually as a political comment, a political statement, they start naming the pastries with these names. Who would they attack? The police; the army; the church: the structures of power that they were trying to take down. Hence the names. It's funny but it was more than that. It's a political statement.
MADI LANG: It really characterizes the people. Because I don't think they thought they were going to start a revolution. They were just being kind of disrespectful in a very open, normal way, like, what if instead of calling it pizza they called it "the fuck you"?
Allusionist 132 Additions and Losses transcript
HZ: How do you respond to people using words to you such as 'inspiration' or 'brave'?
CHRISTA COUTURE: Well, if I'm doing something actually inspirational, sure. There's so many times with disability that we're called brave or inspirational for just standing around. I was waiting for the bus and listening to music with my headphones - already a signal that I want to be left alone - but a guy came up to me and asked me take them off and said, "I just want to say" - and I was like, “yeah?” - "I just want to say, I think what you're doing is really inspirational." And I was like, I am literally just standing here listening to music. And do you think that this is a feat for me, to to be in the world? It reveals to me or it tells me so much about what that person thinks about having a disability. They think so little of it, they are impressed that I would leave the house.
Read moreAllusionist 131 Podlingual transcript
JAMES KIM: I wanted that experience for everybody to be in the character's shoes, and understand how it's like for somebody that you love to talk to you, but you can't understand a word that they're saying.
Read moreAllusionist 130 Valentine transcript
ST VALENTINE: I’m actually also the patron saint of beekeepers, epilepsy and plagues, but you don’t see beekeeper-shaped boxes of chocolates in the supermarkets in February, do you?
Read more