"The fact is that none of the world's writing systems apart from codes are meant to be obscure. And this is crucial. Normal writing systems that we can't read just because we haven't deciphered them doesn't mean that they indecipherable; it means that we haven't done it."
Read moreAllusionist 42: The Key part I - Rosetta
There are many reasons why languages become extinct, but to pick an extreme example: a couple of thousand years hence, after the apocalypse, the only present-day language still being spoken then is, say, Portuguese. But there’s all this written material from the lost cultures that you, the post-apocalyptic survivor, want to decrypt. Technology is totally different by then - except optical magnification, which remains fundamentally similar to how it has been since humans began using it millennia before. In the ancient ruins of Fort Mason, San Francisco, you find a Rosetta Disk, successfully engineered to remain undamaged by fire and water and air and time. Around the edges of the disk, there’s writing large enough for you to read; but you see there are more small markings on it. You put the disk under a microscope. You see text you recognise in Portuguese - huh, that text next to it is similar in size and shape, you start spotting a word that appears with similar frequency as in the Portuguese, thus you deduce what that one means, and then another, you start seeing linguistic patterns and gain some insight into what characters and writing system are being used. And if you stick with the task long enough, you figure out that language.
This isn’t some futuristic dream. It has already happened. Most famously with the Rosetta Project’s namesake, the Rosetta Stone.
Read moreAllusionist 41: Getting Toasty - transcript
HZ: Where are you speaking to me from right now?
AMY: The geographic South Pole.
HZ: If it weren’t dark outside, Amy Lowitz could look out the window and see the actual South Pole marker.
AL: I’m here at the South Pole, working for the University of Chicago on the South Pole telescope as a winter telescope operator.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Moran ... I’m on one year leave to operate the South Pole telescope down here at the South Pole and Antarctica with Amy Lowitz.
HZ: And when did you last see daylight?
AL: [laugh]
CM: April,-ish? I think at least 3-4 months of total darkness, or close to it.
HZ: And a few weeks after the sunlight disappears for the last time before the totally dark months of Antarctic winter, something odd starts to occur. People start to forget - what was it? ...Words! And they drift off without finishing their...uh...
ALLISON: It happens! It happens.
HZ: ...Sentences!
Read moreAllusionist 40: Olympics - transcript
HELEN ZALTZMAN: Welcome back to the EtymOlympics, where the meaning of sport is the sport.
MATTHEW CROSBY: And of course, sport itself, from the French ‘desporter’, used to mean an amusing and fun pastime.
HZ: That’s right, Matthew. Something to remember, football fans. Supposed to be fun.
MC: That meaning was 700 years ago though. A lot has changed in 700 years. Look how much easier it is nowadays to get a soy latte.
HZ: And there's a very excited crowd out there
MC: I can only describe the atmosphere as electric.
HZ: That's because sports commentators can only describe atmospheres as electric.
MC: It's the only adjective I ever learnt.
Allusionist 39: Generation What? - transcript
MIRANDA SAWYER: You’re not that special, you are part of your generation, that affects your taste, it affects how you approach things.
HZ: So there’s a certain amount of identity forged by the time in which you are.
MS: Absolutely. And it’s to do with television shows, fashion, what happened to you when you’re a teenager, the general atmosphere around you - when you see programmes about the history of punk, they’re always talking about the three-day week and rubbish in the streets, and it was quite awful. You can’t help things like that shaping you. They just do.
HZ: So if, say, you were born between 1925 and 1942, you’d be part of the Silent Generation, as the McCarthy era taught you to lie low. Landed on this earth between 1843 and 1859? Progressive Generation - growing up during the American Civil War, you’d react against that when you came of age and prioritise progress and reform over the pursuit of power. According to the circumstances surrounding them, generations have been profiled all the way back to 1433, the Arthurian Generation.
Much of the identification of the generational cycles has been spearheaded over the past three decades by Neil Howe and his late collaborator William Strauss. They even have their names on a theory, Strauss-Howe generational theory. But generational theory itself goes back farther. Thomas Jefferson effectively espoused it in a letter to James Madison in 1789, contemplating how the United States could reboot its constitution every 19 years to allow for the changing requirements of each new generation. And then, in the nineteenth century, generational theory really took off amongst philosophers and sociologists.
HZ: The idea of the generations solidifies when they have labels. But those labels are an odd collection. There’s no aesthetic or thematic connection between, say, 'Silent Generation' and 'Baby Boomer' and 'Generation X' and 'Millennials' - and the attempt to follow Generation X with Generation Y didn't really take off, instead 'Millennial' was the name that stuck.
Read moreAllusionist 38: Small Talk - transcript
ISY: Hi!
HZ: How are you?
ISY: I’m wearing trousers that are kind of digging into my bum in a weird way. They’re a cross between leggings and jeans -
HZ: - jeggings -
ISY: Yeah. And they’re partly falling down and partly digging in, which is quite a strange combination.
HZ: Well great, now I’m all too aware of the state of her bumcrack. But if I didn’t want to know how she is, why did I even ask?
Because that’s what we do, isn’t it? That is how conversations so often begin. And nearly every time, this is how it goes:
How are you?
Fine thanks, and you?
Oh, fine.
It's not informative, so why bother? It's an exchange that indicates a conversation is being initiated. It's small talk: safe, trivial - small.
Read moreAllusionist 37: Brand It - transcript
There are a few things to consider when naming a podcast:
- Is someone using the name already? That’s important: do your research; at the very least, go to the iTunes store and check.
- Is the name such a common word or phrase that your show will not appear in the first thousand pages of Google results?
- Is the name a riff on a pre-existing title, like That American Life, so no matter how successful your show gets, it will never completely be your own, and always a bit of a parasite on someone else's thing?
- Is it a riff on ‘pod’ or ‘cast’? That was already stale when I was starting my first podcast nearly ten years ago. Resist the pod puns!
Allusionist 36: Big Lit - transcript
The term ‘classic’ turned up in English around the start of the 17th century, when it meant ‘of the highest class’ - same meaning as the Latin ‘classicus’ from which it came. It swiftly became the label for ancient Greek and Latin literature, and by the mid-19th century, that sense had been extended to any works with that sort of quality - though when it comes to the classics of English literature, I’m vague about what that quality is. “Written by dead white men”, going by the selection of classic literature that I had to read at school and university. “Big books that make me feel guilty and stupid for not having read them?” “Source material for TV dramatisations involving bonnets?” Seriously, what does ‘classic’ mean now?
Read moreAllusionist 35: Word of the Day - transcript
RH: People like words that sound silly. Compound words that have a lot of elements to them, like ‘catawampus’ - people are always going to love ‘catawampus’, and I think it’s just how it sounds, those Lewis Carroll-esque words that are just fun to say. We recently did ‘waffle stompers’, it’s just one of those words that has that je ne sais quoi, so silly you know you’re going to get a rise out of people. In a good way. Waffle stompers are hiking boots. Why would you ever say ‘hiking boots’ again?
JS: We had a lot of cat words.
RH: I don’t know if it was a lot, but we’re not afraid to pander occasionally.
JS: The internet loves cats…
Allusionist 34: Continental - transcript
If a continent is a continuous land, are all islands continents? Even tiny ones like Guernsey? No offence to Guernsey, but I don’t think Guernsey would call itself a continent for fear of being laughed out of the Channel.
Read moreAllusionist 33: Please - transcript
Growing up in England reading American books and watching American films and TV, I deduced that 'pants', 'biscuit', 'chips' and 'fanny' don’t mean the same in the US as they did at home. But I thought I was on familiar ground with the word ‘please’. Technically ‘please’ does mean the same thing in both places, but I had absolutely no idea it is deployed quite differently on our respective sides of the Atlantic.
Until the piñata of my ignorance was smashed open by linguist Lynne Murphy, who has been researching ‘please’.
LYNNE MURPHY: Several people have observed that the British say ‘please’ twice as much as Americans do. But they generally hadn’t looked at if there was a reason for that, other than assuming the British are more polite - more particularly, the English are more polite than Americans. So we wanted to go in and look at when British and American people are using ‘please’, and see if it’s just that Americans don’t bother so much, or are they using the word for different jobs?
Read moreAllusionist 32: Soho - transcript
HZ: There are several Sohos around the world: as well as that New York one, there’s one in Tampa, Florida, short for South Howard Avenue; the entertainment district in Hong Kong is another acraname, from South of Hollywood Road.
I think if you break down these acranames into their original components, they’re weak, aren’t they? Not particularly distinctive words or places. I put it to you that they are backranames - local features are backwards-engineered to fit a snappy name, already familiar from the first known Soho, here in London.
TONY SHRIMPLIN: It’s like all roads lead to Rome: all roads lead to Soho. It has this very special place. It’s the centre and heart of London. It’s a microcosm of the world, concentrated into ¾ of a square mile.
Read moreAllusionist 31: Post-Love - transcript
WOMAN 1: I once had a guy break up with me by saying, “I no longer feel comfortable accepting your love."
MAN 2: I once told a woman I was dating that I needed to break up with her because she “wasn’t broken enough.” I feel like a real shithead about it.
Read moreAllusionist 30: US Election Lexicon - transcript
I’m pretty sure the 2016 US election has been going on for seven years already, but apparently it’s still nowhere near over. So we’re going to go for a brisk walk-and-talk through the corridors of the dictionary to find out a little about some political vocabulary.
Read moreAllusionist 29: WLTM part II - transcript
HZ: Every dating site has its own algorithm which matches you with others based on the information you enter into your profile. But language is a vast, nuanced palette, and an algorithm can’t necessarily grasp what you mean with total accuracy - and you might not have supplied total accuracy either.
AW: We all answer in an aspirational way, we don’t answer honestly; it’s really hard to be honest. So you wind up with a blob of language that gets associated with somebody else’s blob of language, and a lot of it is fiction. I’m not saying people are intentionally lying; but you wind up trying to match a version of the person, rather than the person themself. So you’re invariably going to wind up with bad matches.
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