“I’ve always been very interested in the origins of words,” said Helen Zaltzman, who credits her interest to studying Latin, French and Old English in school. “I’ve always been interested, but since leaving university, I haven’t really had the excuse to spend time on it.” Her podcast, The Allusionist, lets her do just that, taking listeners on a deep dive into language. While the subject matter could sound dry, in Zaltzman’s hands, it’s not. The show is filled with good humor and a great deal of levity to make one of the funniest and educational podcasts around.

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Why you should listen

Zaltzman is also one of hosts of the wildly popular and long-running podcast Answer Me This!, which has been answering questions from listeners since 2007. “A lot of the questions are about where did a phrase come from, or why is a thing called a thing, or is this word connected to that one. We don’t answer loads of those questions, though, because we don’t want the podcast to be just about words, but I knew there was an appetite for it,” said Zaltzman. “Then one day I realized it would be nice to make that show, but I couldn’t make another show, because I would die of poverty.”

Enter Roman Mars, the man behind the 99% Invisible podcast, who reached out to Zaltzman to help fund the show that would eventually become The Allusionist. “He averted my death from poverty, which was very good of him,” said Zaltzman. “As far as I’m concerned, it was a canonizable thing to do.”

Due to her interest in language, Zaltzman decided to try exploring the English language and lexicon in a podcast, which resulted in a great deal of trial and error before arriving at the show’s current formula of language experts, listener questions, and words of the day. “I didn’t know what it would be until I really started it,” said Zaltzman, who is thrilled to be able to spend her days thinking about words. “It’s such a joy to be able to spend time on that subject.”

After years of working with her Answer Me This! co-host Olly Mann and soundman Martin Austwick (who is also Zaltzman’s husband), Zaltzman was a bit daunted to head out on her own. “It was really weird,” she said. “Partly because I’m used to being in conversation, so I didn’t really know how to host a show by myself. The Allusionist is the first thing I’ve worked on that isn’t at all collaborative. I had to learn to make every editorial decision by myself. I’m still learning, still very much learning.”

She does have a few tricks, though, for finding interesting topics for the show: “It’s really just finding something that I don’t know the answer to before I start. It’s got to be curious and interesting to me and, hopefully, I can convey that to the listener.”

“There are hundreds of thousands of words in the English language and the combinations of those words and humans using them is almost infinite,” said Zaltzman, explaining why she’s not worried about running out of subject matter. Still, she frequently has callers ask about words or phrases and once she starts to explore them, they don’t turn up anything worth reporting. “If it’s just obscure, it’s not very interesting,” said Zaltzman. “Slang is very frustrating. A lot of people ask about it, but because slang is usually spoken a long time before it’s written down, you can’t really tell where it came from. If you read about the origins of ‘OK’, there are a lot of theories about where it came from, but none of them are very satisfactory. I don’t like to be beaten by word history, so I try to ignore a lot of slang.”

While Zaltzman may dislike discussing slang, one of her most popular episodes involved the origins of the so-called “C-word” and included a conversation about several NSFW street names in England. “It’s everyone’s favorite,” laughed Zaltzman. “Some people really hate swearing, but the people who don’t hate it are quite excited to hear a lot of it in a short space of time.”

Zaltzman has another theory about why that continues to be one of her most popular episodes: “Most of my listeners are in the States and Americans just have a thing for English accents, which means some people are just listening to hear me swear in my accent.”

While Americans may titter about the profane language, Zaltzman was genuinely interested in the question of why the C-word is so much worse than comparable words. “I don’t think I found the answer, I think I just created more questions,” said Zaltzman. “I really wanted to know. I will never give up the quest.”

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Another of Zaltzman’s linguistic bugbears is puns: “They’re awful. They’re so lazy,” said Zaltzman, who had her brother, comedian and host of The Bugle, Andy Zaltzman, on the show to discuss the jokes that are the bane of her linguistic existence. “His podcast is just a barrage of wordplay, and I grew up with it from him and my dad, as well, who would recycle puns for 20 years,” said Zaltzman explaining her antipathy. “They are just not often that clever. On the other hand, I use puns a lot. The title of the show is a pun. I am guilty. It just means I hate myself.”

While Zaltzman has worked out the kinks in her show, she still considers it a work in progress. “I’m prepared that in a year’s time I’ll look back and think, oh what a novice,” said Zaltzman. “Maybe check back in a year, or 10 years, and the show will be finding its feet.” Zaltzman may believe that, but do yourself a favor and don’t wait that long to listen to The Allusionist.

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