The Allusionist

224. Cosmic Hairball

09 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Pack your oxygen tank, we're going up to space.Visit theallusionist.org/cosmichairball for more information about the topics in this episode plus a tr...

223. Bonus 2025

20 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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, so I sav...

222. A Christmas Carol

07 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we read the novelisation of The Muppet Christmas Carol, also known as the 1843 festive lit hit A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Read by me...

221. Scribe

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"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, founder o...

220. Disobedience

09 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“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 Language, "...

219. Making Trouble

26 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A change of scene for one episode: recently the brilliant poet and performer Molly Naylor interviewed me for her podcast Making Trouble, about creativ...

218. Banned Books

07 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's Banned Books Week. Honorary youth chair Iris Mogul and Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, talk about what it is, why it ...

217. Bread and Roses, and Coffee

24 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 and Canad...

216. Four Letter Words: Terisk

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Watching the film Legally Blonde one day with the subtitles on, numerous perfectly innocuous words were partially asterisked out, because of a technol...

215. Two-Letter Words

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 established list t...

214. Four Letter Words: Bane Bain Bath

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For today’s instalment of Four Letter Word season, we’re hopping from ‘bane’ to ‘bain’ to ‘bath’, via poison gardens, doll’s eyes, a...

213. Four Letter Words: Dino

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The latest four letter word of Four Letter Word season is dino. 'Dinosaur' is derived from Greek 'terrible lizard', and they could have called it 'who...

212. Four Letter Words: Park

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Get in, winner: we're going on a field trip. We're spending the day in five of Vancouver's city parks with Justin McElroy, Municipal Affairs Reporter ...

211. Four Letter Words: -gate

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The other day was the 53rd anniversary of the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, which not only caused a lot of political uproar, it had a big linguisti...

210. Four Letter Words: 4x4x4 Quiz

07 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Four Letter Word season continues with a quiz (which is a four-letter word itself) about four letter words. Test your etymological knowledge, and hear...

209. Four Letter Words: Serving C-bomb

25 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ten years ago, on the fourth episode of the show, I investigated why the C-word is considered a worse swear than the others. Since then - well really ...

208. Four Letter Words: Ffff

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to Four Letter Word season!We're kicking off with one of the most versatile words: it can be a noun, verb, punctuation, expostulation, full se...

207. Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Happy tenth birthday to this show! To celebrate, here's every randomly selected word from the dictionary from the first decade of the show.  Visit th...

206. Bonus 2024

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's the annual parade of Bonus Bits - things this year's guests said that I couldn't fit into their episodes, and/or weren't about language, but now ...

205. Lexicat, part 2: now with added Dog

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Lexicat part 1, we met the author Mary Robinette Kowal and her cat Elsie, and learned about how they communicate via a set of buttons programmed wi...

204. Lexicat, part 1

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Elsie the cat has a set of 120 buttons programmed with words. She uses them to lie, swear, apologise, express grief and frustration and love to her hu...

203. Flyting

09 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 15th and 16th century Scotland, in the highest courts of the land, you'd find esteemed poets hurling insults at each other. This was flyting, a sor...

202. Singlish Singlish

29 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There's so much more to say about Singlish after last episode that we're saying some more of it this episode. Poet and academic Gwee Li Sui, author of...

201. Singlish

12 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"If you grow up being told that one of your first languages, Singlish, is actually a bad version of an already existing language, you kind of get this...

Tranquillusionist: Ex-Constellations

28 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, give your brain a break by temporarily supplanting your interior monologue with words that ...

200. 200th episode celebratory quiz!

13 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I can scarce believe that I've made 200 episodes of this show, but here we are! To celebrate, here is a quiz about language where all the questions we...

199. 199 ideas that I hadn't made into podcasts yet

30 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Next episode is the 200th, therefore this is the 199th. I raid the 66 pages of ideas for episodes I have been keeping for nearly a decade, and present...

198. Queer Arab Glossary

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Since 2019, Marwan Kaabour has been collecting Arabic slang words used by and about queer people, first for the online community Takweer, and now the ...

197. Word Play 7: Word Sport

30 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At the Scripps National Spelling Bee, behind the spectacle of kids vying to be champion spellers, a whole lot of work goes on to make words into this ...

196. Word Play 6: Beeing

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I went to the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee, to marvel at kids spelling words I had mostly never even heard of. But when you’re at Bee Week, th...

195. Word Play 5: 100 Pages of Solvitude

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cain's Jawbone, a murder mystery cryptic puzzle novella in the form of 100 pages presented in the wrong order, has many millions of possible solutions...

194. Word Play 4: Good Grids

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Exciting things have been happening with crossword puzzles in the US: more constructors, more outlets to get puzzles published, clues and answers that...

193. Word Play 3: Lemon Demon

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

AJ Jacobs makes The Puzzler podcast, wrote The Puzzler book, and sometimes turns his whole life into a puzzle. He comes bearing word games, explanatio...

192. Word Play part 2

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This episode, and the next couple of episodes, are about word games! Today, Joshua Blackburn recounts how his sons' uninspiring English homework led t...

191. Hypochondria

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The word 'hypochondria' has travelled from meaning physical ailments in a particular region of your body, to ones that are only in your mind. It has b...

190. Craters

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"It's quite a big undertaking going through every named feature in the whole solar system and trying to find out who that person was." When PhD studen...

Tranquillusionist: Person In Scene

26 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, soothe your brain by saying a load of words that don’t really mean very much, to give you...

189. Mouthful of Fortune

10 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At Lunar New Year, certain foods are particularly lucky to eat. Why? Because in Chinese, their names are puns on fortunate things. Damn, maybe noodles...

188. Lipread

28 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lipreading has been in the news this month, thanks to gossip-stoking mouth movements at the Golden Globes that the amateur lipreaders of The Internet ...

187. Bonus 2023

24 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's our annual end of year parade of all the extra good stuff this year's podguests talked about, including a mythical disappearing island, geese, hu...

186. Ravels

12 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve got knitting! We’ve got eponyms!! We’ve got knitting eponyms!!! Which come with a whole load of battles, f-boys, duels, baseball, espionag...

185. Gems and Patties

20 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We’re returning to the theme of renaming, for two food-related renamings: the first one that mostly happened, the second that mostly did not - but i...

184. Misophonia

06 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The word 'misophonia' describes a condition that statistically, 20 per cent of you have: an extreme reaction to certain sounds. "For me, it was a reli...

Apple Fest!

22 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

All aboard, we're off to the 2023 Apple Festival at the University of British Columbia, to taste some apples and, most importantly, enjoy some apple n...

183. Timucua

09 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Spanish missionaries arrived in what is now called Florida, there were 100,000-200,000 Timucua people in the region. Just two centuries later, th...

182. Siblings of Chaos

24 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lexicographer, author and Dictionary Corner resident Susie Dent has been studying words to make us feel happy. She brings etymologies concerning cows,...

181. Cairns

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There's an abiding myth that the landmark dictionaries are the work of one man, in a dusty paper-filled garrett tirelessly working away singlehandedly...

180. Project ENABLE

25 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sterling Martin was in grad school, studying C. elegans worms, when COVID19 hit and suddenly he found himself in lexicography, as part of a team creat...

179. Andy Quiz

12 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's the annual etymology quizlusionist! I’m on a family holiday for the first time since 1988, so enlisted my brother Andy Zaltzman of the Bugle po...

178. Uranus

24 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever wondered why the planets in our solar system are all named after Roman deities, except two of them? One of those exceptions is Earth. T...

Tranquillusionist: Gay Animals

09 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, say a load of words which aren’t really about anything, so that your brain gets a little ...

177. Fat part 2

25 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

“The starting point is, and the research questions are all framed by: 'We know it's terrible to be fat, but how terrible is it?' Not: 'What would it...

176. Fat part 1

12 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It should just be an accurate descriptor of my body, but the word 'fat' has shaped so much more of my life, and our society. "There is this whole set ...

175. Eurovision part 2

21 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Oh, you thought the Eurovision Song Contest was about songs? Or a fun international TV event that brings people together in lots of different countrie...

174. Eurovision part 1

07 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There aren't many multilingual, multinational television shows that have been running for nearly seven decades. But what makes the Eurovision Song Con...

173. Death

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"You can't redead the dead by you saying something shit," says Cariad Lloyd of Griefcast and author of You Are Not Alone; nevertheless when you're ber...

172. A Brief History of Brazilian Portuguese

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"The myths, or the received wisdom, about Portuguese language in Brazil is that, of course we know we speak a very different version of the language, ...

171. Supplantation

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Last episode, I mentioned that in London, Ontario, in 2019 a 9-year-old named Lyla Wheeler had launched a petition to rename her street, currently cal...

170. Actively Passive

10 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past few years, numerous products and places with the word 'plantation' in their names have rebranded. As for the word 'plantation' itself, a...

169. The Box

27 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Erwin Schrödinger is one of the "fathers of quantum mechanics". He also sexually abused children. Trinity College Dublin recently denamed a lecture t...

168. Debuts

13 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There’s been a recurring theme on the show over the years, of filling gaps in language, removing stigma and bias, finding better ways to express our...

167. Bonus 2022

17 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What do the hippocampus, homophones, Little Women, worrying and egg hacks have in common? They all star in the 2022 parade of Allusionist bonus bits! ...

166. Fiona part 2

05 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“I don't think that anyone should come away from this conversation not wanting to use the name Fiona. I think this is a beautiful and rich history. ...

165. Fiona part 1

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A lot of people assume that Fiona is a very old Scottish name, but the first known Scottish Fiona is from the 1890s: Fiona Macleod, the enormously pop...

164. Emergency

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When is a war not a war? When the British Empire called it an 'emergency' so they didn't have to abide by wartime rules or lose their insurance payout...

163. Rhino Borked Guy

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Provoked by current events, we've got three political eponyms for turmoiled times. Get ready for explosives, presidential pigs, Supreme Court scrappin...

162. Self-Help

08 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Self-help is a multibillion dollar genre of books, and Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg of By the Book podcast have lived by the advice of more t...

161. Sentiment

24 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Empathy and kindness can be noble concepts in themselves, but as terms are thrown around enough to have become buzzwords, and in the process lose some...

160. Coward

09 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

“Anxiety is the parrot sidekick that rides on my shoulder and occasionally squawks warnings in my ear,” says Tim Clare, poet and podcaster and aut...

159. Bufflusionist

20 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Grab your stake and crucifix pendant, we're going vampire-hunting! Well, vampire-etymology-hunting. The podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer, which re...

158. Creature Quiz

05 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There's lots of fun etymology of creatures and a lot of fun etymology derived from creatures, and now it is gathered into this fun playalong quiz abou...

Tranquillusionist: Australia's Big Things

19 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, say a load of deliberately boring words to distract your interior monologue from whatever d...

157. Queerbaiting

25 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The term 'queerbaiting' has evolved from meaning entrapment to marketing ploy to drawing "queer audiences into a piece of media that has no intention ...

156. Rainbow Washing

11 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From whitewash (the paint) we got whitewashing (the covering up of misdeeds) and from there greenwashing, redwashing, bluewashing, purplewashing, pink...

155. The Tiffany Problem

27 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The name Tiffany has been around for some 800 years. But you can't name a character in a historical novel 'Tiffany', because people don't believe the ...

154. Objectivity

14 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Couple of easy straightforward questions for us to chew on: 1. What is ‘objectivity’ supposed to mean? And 2. does it exist? Lewis Raven Wallace, ...

153. In Character

18 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Chinese is one of the oldest still-spoken languages in the world. But when technologies arrived like telegraphy and computing, designed with the Roman...

152. Asperger

03 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hans Asperger would have been merely "a footnote in the history of autism", so why did he get to be the eponym in Asperger's syndrome? Because along w...

152. Asperger - music-free version

03 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hans Asperger would have been merely "a footnote in the history of autism", so why did he get to be the eponym in Asperger's syndrome? Because along w...

151. The Bee's Knees

18 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Bad hats, cat's pyjamas, banting, goops, creatures, and playing possum - what WERE people going on about during the Golden Age of detective fiction? C...

150. The Egg's Warning

05 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

"Warning: read and keep," says the piece of paper inside Kinder Surprise Eggs, in 34 languages; yet most people do neither thing. But sociologist Keit...

149. Complex PTSD

19 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Complex PTSD is different to PTSD, but there's not that much understanding of it as its own condition - which was not much help to Stephanie Foo when ...

148. Bonus 2021

23 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

I've been saving them up all year, and now it's time for the annual selection box of Bonus Bits! Things this year's guests said that couldn't fit into...

147. Survival: Today, Tomorrow part 2

07 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

"It's really good if we can get the changes through here - that can be an inspiration for other other countries or other places in the world," says Þ...

146. Survival: Today, Tomorrow part 1

24 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Icelandic language has remained so stable over the centuries, speakers can read manuscripts from 900 years ago without too much trouble. And when ...

145. Parents

07 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When you're trans and pregnant, some of the vocabulary of pregnancy, birth and parenting might not fit you. In fact, some of it might not even work fo...

144. Aro Ace

26 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The word 'asexual' has been used by humans describing themselves for several decades; 'aromantic' is newer. Both words enable people to voice identiti...

143. Hedge Rider

13 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today it's the etymologies you requested! And a few you didn't! We've got witches, wizards, warlocks; conjurers and cloves; wood shavings, nice gone n...

142. Zero

25 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Did any number cause as much trouble as zero? It stranded ships; it scrambles the brains of mathematicians, calendar users and computers; it even got ...

141. Food Quiz

10 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Quiz time! Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway of Home Cooking podcast join to deliver questions about food etymology, as well as what are the two word...

140. Num8er5

30 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We use verbal numbers and we use numerals - why do we need both? Why do we have the ones we have? What happened to Roman numerals? And what's loserish...

Tranquillusionist: 282 Salads

14 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, read all the salads from the 1950 recipe book 282 Ways of Making a Salad, with Favourite Re...

139 Ladybird Ladybug

12 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

They're not ladies and they're not birds; they're not even technically bugs! But that's not the most surprising thing about ladybirds/ladybugs and the...

138. Mind My Mind

27 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Crazy, insane, nuts, mad, bonkers, psycho, schizo, OCD - casual vocabulary is strewn with mental health terms, but perhaps shouldn't be? Psychotherapi...

137. Dude

10 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Exclamation; sign of agreement OR disapproval; gendered, but circumstantially gender-neutral; term of endearment: 'dude' can do it all! But its connot...

136. Misogynoir

28 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

“It's hard to address something if you can't actually name what it is,” says Moya Bailey, who coined a term that enables people to discuss a speci...

135. SOS

14 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

SOS is a really versatile distress call. You can shout it; you can tap it out in Morse code; you can honk it on a horn; you can signal it with flashes...

Eclipse+

23 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It’s August 2007. Lauren Marks is a 27-year-old actor and a PhD student, spending the month directing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She’...

134. Lacuna

10 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If you were in Brazil during the military dictatorship of 1964-1985, tried to bake a cake from a recipe in the newspaper, and were served with a sorry...

133. Cake is Mighter than the Sword

27 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What to do to stick it to the powers that be? Send your message through something they really care about: cake. In Buenos Aires, local tour guides Mad...