233. Phobia
'Phobia' gets used for anything from a mild aversion to a debilitating anxiety response to various forms of bigotry. Deboki Chakravarti and...
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The Allusionist
Linguistic adventures with Helen Zaltzman, TheAllusionist.org. A proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.
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20 of 255 episodes
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 grip...
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, ma...
231. Lingthusionist
“Linguistics and language is such a good mechanism for being curious,” says Lauren Gawne , linguistics prof, author of the book Gesture: A S...
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 tex...
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 translatio...
228. Draculae part 2: Surprises in the Vaults
Happy World Dracula Day to all who celebrate! Visit theallusionist.org/draculae2 for more information about the topics in this episode plus...
227. Draculae part 1: Enter the Castle
A literary mystery came to me via a meme: “Someone translated Dracula into Icelandic, and it took over 100 years for anyone to point out he...
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 ev...
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,...
224. Cosmic Hairball
Pack your oxygen tank, we're going to space. There’s a lot of etymology up there. Visit theallusionist.org/cosmic-hairball for more informat...
223. Bonus 2025
It's the annual parade of Bonus Bits! Every year, the show's guests say too many interesting things and/or stuff that isn't languagey enough...
222. A Christmas Carol
Today, we read the novelisation of The Muppet Christmas Carol, also known as the 1843 festive lit hit A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens....
221. Scribe
"I have never felt so naked. That's how exposed I felt at the idea that my handwriting was going to be seen by the world," says Tim Brookes,...
220. Disobedience
“The more we look into social structures, the more many of us realize we don't fit into them," says So Mayer, author of the new book Bad Lan...
219. Making Trouble
A change of scene for one episode: recently the brilliant poet and performer Molly Naylor interviewed me for her podcast Making Trouble, abo...
218. Banned Books
It's Banned Books Week. Honorary youth chair Iris Mogul and Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, talk about what it i...
217. Bread and Roses, and Coffee
In their heyday of the 1970s and 1980s, there were more than 200 - possibly more than 400 - feminist restaurants and coffee shops in the USA...
216. Four Letter Words: Terisk
Watching the film Legally Blonde one day with the subtitles on, numerous perfectly innocuous words were partially asterisked out, because of...
215. Two-Letter Words
Listener Erica commented: "Perhaps an idea for a bonus ep of Four Letter Word season would be one on two-letter words: there’s an establishe...