HZ: ‘Vampyre’ with a Y was pretty interchangeable with ‘vampire’ with an I when it first landed in English. Actually, I think the first appearance in English was with a Y. We probably got it from French or German, but it was based on - it’s a little unclear, but it was based on Hungarian, possibly, or Slavic languages. And it was because, at the time, they were doing a lot of coverage of the Serbian vampire epidemic of 1725 to 1732.
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS: Oh, of course.
HZ: Apparently there were a lot of Eastern European vampire epidemics.
KRISTIN RUSSO: What is a vampire epidemic?
HZ: I assume an epidemic of vampires. Imagine Covid, but for vampirism. And no vaccine. No masking is going to save you.
Allusonist 158 Creature Quiz transcript
Tranquillusionist: Australia's Big Things transcript
Some of them are sculptures. Some of them are essentially a three-dimensional billboard. Some are buildings. Some are playground features. Some are just…there to be a big thing.
Read moreAllusionist 157 Queerbaiting transcript
LEIGH PFEFFER: I think people are a little too quick to ascribe the term ‘queerbaiting’ to anytime they see something that doesn't necessarily sit right with them on instinct. There's a tendency at this point to kind of use it as a synonym for bad representation. I think that there's a disconnect and a mismatch between what younger viewers nowadays are kind of expecting in queer representation versus what pop culture is providing. People are getting used to more representation. They want to see better representation. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how do we get better representation? What do we call it when we have specific tropes that might lead to harmful stereotypes, instead of lumping everything under this term ‘queerbaiting’ - because if we muddy a term like that, it loses its meaning. We need to be intentional with the language we're using when we're discussing queer representation in media, because we're at a fragile point. We have to have the right language to criticise it.
Read moreAllusionist 156 Rainbow Washing transcript
HZ: The British supermarket M&S made an LGBT sandwich, which is lettuce, guacamole bacon, and tomato.
MITRA KABOLI: That sounds good, actually. I would eat that.
HZ: They stopped at that point of the initialisms; they didn't go into the -QIA, which is supposed to be what, queso? What foodstuffs begin with an I?
MITRA KABOLI: Ummmm...
HZ: It gets difficult. I can see why they stopped.
MITRA KABOLI: ‘I’...
HZ: For the 'A' - they've got guacamole, so they used up the avocado already. Maybe apple? It's starting to get disgusting the further along the initialism you get.
MITRA KABOLI: There has to be a law where you must continue to make the sandwich, and as the acronym grows with letters, you must find something to put in there.
Read moreAllusionist 155 The Tiffany Problem transcript
JO WALTON: What we the readers know about the name Tiffany is incorrect. Nevertheless, as a writer, you cannot use the name Tiffany.
Read moreAllusionist 154 Objectivity transcript
HZ: When in your journalism career did the problems of objectivity become evident to you?
LEWIS RAVEN WALLACE: Probably like the first day.
Allusionist 153 In Character transcript
we think of all the important transformative game-changing global technologies in communication, like telegraphs, typewriters and computers: none of it was really designed with Chinese in mind. They were all for alphabetic, precisely English language.
HZ: It seems a bit unfair for China to be left behind by writing technologies, given that China had the movable type printing press centuries before Europe.
JING TSU: A fact they will continue to flaunt! That is the question; that's why the catching up was doubled with this memory of “How did we get to this point? We were leading, how do we now end up chasing someone else's writing system from behind?”
Allusionist 152 Asperger transcript
EDITH SHEFFER: I do think it's important that Asperger's syndrome be removed as a distinct label. I don't think it's helpful medically and then ethically. Eponymous diagnoses are bestowed as an honour, to commend someone for one's life work and also to commend someone for discovering a condition. And arguably Asperger merits neither.
Read moreAllusionist 151 The Bee's Knees transcript
“There's a town in Quebec called Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, which apparently has the Guinness World Record for most exclamation marks in a town name. Which is two.”
Read moreAllusionist 150 The Egg's Warning transcript
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: So let's explain what a Kinder Surprise egg is in the first place.
HZ: Yeah. It's slightly bigger than a hen's egg.
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: It's a foil wrapped chocolate egg, and it has an outer chocolate layer.
HZ: I'm peeling off the foil, which is white and orange. And then we have the chocolate egg in two parts. I’m trying to split it without too much incident. And then inside that is a yellow capsule. And then inside the capsule:
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: It's a self-assembly toy.
HZ: It's a self-assembly toy. Let's not get distracted by that, because that's not even the true prize, is it?
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: No, exactly. And you'll find at least two pieces of paper. Now, one of them is a sort of a picture showing how to assemble the toy.
HZ: That's right. And then the other one, which I don't know if I've ever even paid attention to before...
KEITH KAHN-HARRIS: It's got the warning message, and it is in a literally dozens of languages on this tiny piece of paper.
Allusionist 149 Complex PTSD transcript
STEPHANIE FOO: I was diagnosed with complex PTSD in 2018. And I had never heard of complex PTSD before. I Googled it; it sounded very serious and very scary.
HZ: And was it very serious and very scary?
STEPHANIE FOO: I mean, yes! I think it is very serious and very scary. I
Allusionist 148 Bonus 2021 transcript
TAMSIN MAJERUS: Male killing is caused by bacteria that live in the female ladybird, and they get into her ovaries and, and into the eggs that she produces and somehow, and we don't really know how, they kill off the embryos that are destined to become male. So when she lays her clutch of eggs, normally we expect half of those will end up being female ladybirds, the other half will be male ladybirds; but a female ladybird that has a male killer will often have a clutch of eggs where only about half of them hatch and the whole for hatch go on to become feat. So the males were killed right at the very beginning of their lifetime. it works surprisingly because the female larvae and something, which is slightly disgusting as they emerge from the egg, they need to eat something very quickly or they'll starve to death.They've got male eggs right there that aren't hatching into larvae. They eat those eggs. So they eat their dead brothers, nasty little bit of cannibalism, but -
HZ: Well, it’s pragmatic cannibalism.
TAMSIN MAJERUS: Yeah, exactly.
Read moreAllusionist 147 Survival: Today, Tomorrow part 2 transcript
HZ: In 2019, the law changed so that as well as the previously available last name suffixes -son and -dóttir, there was now also a genderfree one, -bur.
ÞORBJÖRG ÞORVALDSDÓTTIR: Samtökin ’78, the national queer organization, worked with Trans Iceland and Intersex Iceland in forming that legislation that added this suffix to the last names. This specific change to the naming laws that we have - because we do have restrictions on what you can name your children and how you can be named yourself - this happened through a different kind of legislation. So it wasn't really a legislation that was meant to change the name laws. It was just the fact that we added a third gender registration.
HZ: In 2019 the Icelandic government, the Alþingi, unanimously voted to add a third option for legal gender: X, neither male nor female.
ÞORBJÖRG ÞORVALDSDÓTTIR: Then of course the naming laws had to be updated to suit that need. So that's why -son and -dóttir didn't work anymore, and there had to be added -bur, or the option to just leave son or daughter or child out.
Read moreAllusionist 146 Survival: Today, Tomorrow part 1 transcript
HZ: The Icelandic word for ‘mansplaining’ translates as ‘ramsplaining’. Like the original, it’s a portmanteau, but there’s also a bonus pun in there.
ÁGÚSTA ÞORBERGSDÓTTIR: That's hrútar, ram, and explaining.
JÓHANNES BJARNI SIGTRYGGSSON: The word for explanation is utskyring. So you add in front of it H and R.
ÁGÚSTA ÞORBERGSDÓTTIR: H R, that’s Mr Explaining.
JÓHANNES BJARNI SIGTRYGGSSON: It becomes hrutskyring.
ÁGÚSTA ÞORBERGSDÓTTIR: Hrutskyring, Mr Explaining, herra utskyring.
JÓHANNES BJARNI SIGTRYGGSSON: Hrútar also means a ram, a male sheep, so in many ways it's a very funny word.
