Podcast review: The Allusionist, Helen Zaltzman (2020)

This podcast has actually been going longer than indicated above, and started a number of years back. The website has transcripts for the truly committed nerd, plus details for if you want to contact Zaltzman.

Like ‘Shittown’, I was put onto ‘The Allusionist’ by Facebook friends after I put out a call in a post looking for recommendations since I’d bought a new car and had the ability to use Apple CarPlay – which allows you to link your mobile phone to your automobile, and listen from it while driving – so was in a position to delve into sources of mobile entertainment divorced from the dreaded talkback regions of commercial radio. I’d gravitated to 2Day FM at the end of the previous year as I migrated away from a pure-ABC feed and when 2Day Fm played music it was fine but when the hosts chatted about stuff it drove me mad.

‘The Allusionist’, on the other hand, is intriguing although its host is a little too left of centre for my taste. As noted above, her show is ideal for geeky people for whom details about choice items from the English lexicon is an ideal for of fun. Each episode concentrates on one or two words and there’s plenty of social commentary – perfect for progressives – as politics naturally infects language. We live in language, to be sure, and use it in order to achieve our goals and to get the things we want to possess, for example money or companionship, belonging, or a feeling of entitlement. Innate to the species, it is a tool, like the opposable thumb, that is incorporated into our very beings.

Zaltzman invites different experts onto her show and it’s well produced, with the sound quality set to a high standard to make listening easy. The variety of people she conscripts in her search for a superior mode of meaning is impressive, and you feel, at the end of each episode, as though you’ve spent your time profitably.

I checked Twitter to see if a hashtag had been made with the name of this program, but what was there was old and out of date. I imagine that a truly viral program might be able to conjure up enough enthusiasm among listeners to make a hashtag, but evidently the level of excitement the show inspired in me isn’t shared by many. I must be a geek 😀