The Allusionist

Happy tenth birthday to this show! To celebrate, here's every randomly selected word from ... more

It's the annual parade of Bonus Bits - things this year's guests said that I couldn't fit ... more

In Lexicat part 1, we met the author Mary Robinette Kowal and her cat Elsie, and learned a... more

Elsie the cat has a set of 120 buttons programmed with words. She uses them to lie, swear,... more

In 15th and 16th century Scotland, in the highest courts of the land, you'd find esteemed ... more

There's so much more to say about Singlish after last episode that we're saying some more ... more

"If you grow up being told that one of your first languages, Singlish, is actually a bad v... more

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, give your brain a break by temp... more

I can scarce believe that I've made 200 episodes of this show, but here we are! To celebra... more

Next episode is the 200th, therefore this is the 199th. I raid the 66 pages of ideas for e... more

Since 2019, Marwan Kaabour has been collecting Arabic slang words used by and about queer ... more

At the Scripps National Spelling Bee, behind the spectacle of kids vying to be champion sp... more

I went to the 2024 Scripps National Spelling Bee, to marvel at kids spelling words I had m... more

Cain's Jawbone, a murder mystery cryptic puzzle novella in the form of 100 pages presented... more

Exciting things have been happening with crossword puzzles in the US: more constructors, m... more

AJ Jacobs makes The Puzzler podcast, wrote The Puzzler book, and sometimes turns his whole... more

This episode, and the next couple of episodes, are about word games! Today, Joshua Blackbu... more

The word 'hypochondria' has travelled from meaning physical ailments in a particular regio... more

"It's quite a big undertaking going through every named feature in the whole solar system ... more

This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, soothe your brain by saying a l... more

At Lunar New Year, certain foods are particularly lucky to eat. Why? Because in Chinese, t... more

Lipreading has been in the news this month, thanks to gossip-stoking mouth movements at th... more

It's our annual end of year parade of all the extra good stuff this year's podguests talke... more

We’ve got knitting! We’ve got eponyms!! We’ve got knitting eponyms!!! Which come with a wh... more

We’re returning to the theme of renaming, for two food-related renamings: the first one th... more

The word 'misophonia' describes a condition that statistically, 20 per cent of you have: a... more

All aboard, we're off to the 2023 Apple Festival at the University of British Columbia, to... more

When Spanish missionaries arrived in what is now called Florida, there were 100,000-200,00... more