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The Allusionist

An entertainment show about how language works and why we should care.

Sounds,41 episodes

Episodes

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Singlish
About Singlish, and the complicated language situation in Singapore
17 Oct 2024,28 mins,
Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations
Constellations that got demoted into ex-constellations
01 Oct 2024,25 mins
200th Episode Celebratory Quiz
A quiz about language where all the questions were set by beautiful brainy listeners
16 Sep 2024,39 mins
199 ideas I hadn't made into podcasts yet
199 ideas that I have not yet made into podcasts (except for this one)
02 Sep 2024,28 mins
Queer Arab Glossary
Designer and artist Marwan Kababour collects Arabic-language queer slang
15 Aug 2024,32 mins,
Word Sport
At the Scripps National Spelling Bee it's a lot of work to make words into this word sport
11 Jul 2024,36 mins
Beeing
I went to the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee
13 Jun 2024,55 mins
100 Pages of Solvitude
Comedian John Finnemore spent six months solving a 100-page puzzle. Then he wrote his own.
30 May 2024,28 mins
Good Grids
Exciting things have been happening with crossword puzzles in the US
14 May 2024,30 mins,
Lemon Demon
AJ Jacobs makes word puzzles, and sometimes turns his whole life into a puzzle.
24 Apr 2024,45 mins,
Word Play 2
Makers of word games explain how they turn language into creative play
09 Apr 2024,35 mins
Hypochondria
Hypochondria's meaning went from physical ailments to ones that are only in your mind
26 Mar 2024,43 mins
Craters
PhD student Annie Lennox discovered a crater on Mercury and got the chance to name it
12 Mar 2024,30 mins
Tranquillusionist: Person In Scene
Soothe your brain with a meaningless list of characters without names in movie credits
28 Feb 2024,61 mins,
Mouthful of Fortune
At Lunar New Year, certain foods are particularly lucky to eat. Why? Because puns.
13 Feb 2024,22 mins
Lipread
How lipreading works, and why lipreading gossip stories are so successful and worthless
02 Feb 2024,38 mins,
The Eggs Warning
"Warning: read and keep," says the piece of paper inside Kinder Eggs, in 34 languages
12 Jan 2024,27 mins
Bonus 2023
It's our annual parade of all the extra good stuff this year's podguests talked about
04 Jan 2024,55 mins
Ravels
Why your cardigan is called 'cardigan'
15 Dec 2023,28 mins
How the Dickens Stole Christmas
How come Charles Dickens's name is synonymous with Christmas?
30 Nov 2023,27 mins,
Gems and Patties
Two food-related renamings: one that mostly happened, another that mostly did not
24 Nov 2023,30 mins
Misophonia
Misophonia is a condition that 20% of you have: an extreme reaction to certain sounds.
07 Nov 2023,50 mins
Timucua
Decoding and translating 400-year-old texts to understand the lost Timucua language
19 Oct 2023,30 mins
Siblings of Chaos
Dictionary Corner resident Susie Dent has been studying words to make us feel happy.
05 Oct 2023,30 mins
Cairns
Behind every Great Man of Lexicography was usually a team of women making his dictionary.
21 Sep 2023,30 mins
Project ENABLE
Sterling Martin was studying worms, when suddenly he found himself making a dictionary.
07 Sep 2023,30 mins
In Character
Chinese is one of the oldest still-spoken languages in the world.
04 Sep 2023,30 mins
Verisimilitude
A lot - a LOT! - of work goes into inventing languages for fictional worlds.
04 Sep 2023,30 mins
Blood is not Water
The Yiddish word for ‘black’ is a slur. How to translate Black Lives Matter without it?
04 Sep 2023,30 mins,
Two or More
In its fairly short existence, the word 'bisexual' has had a pretty bumpy ride.
04 Sep 2023,30 mins