What Helen Zaltzman Learned Producing 100 Episodes of ‘The Allusionist’
Back in October of 2014, PRX and Roman Mars launched a Kickstarter to help build our budding podcast network, Radiotopia. In just a few days, we raised $200,000 of a $250,000 goal. With an outpouring of support from over 21,000 backers, we hit that goal (and then some!) and were able to invite four new shows to the network — Criminal, The Heart, Mortified and a new show from veteran British podcaster Helen Zaltzman called The Allusionist.
The Allusionist’s 100th episode just dropped, so we checked in with Helen, who is currently touring Australia, to talk about the highs and lows of podcasting, and what she’s learned from making 100 episodes about language. (BTW, if you’re in Australia, go see The Allusionist Live in Sydney!)
And, as a very special bonus, we’ve compiled all 100 Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary (with definitions) for you to browse — you can also check out all 100 at the bottom of this post.
You were podcasting for many years before you created ‘The Allusionist,’ but what is something that producing this specific show has taught you?
Oh gosh, I have learned more than I have ever learned doing anything else. The first big lesson was a complete turnaround in my attitudes towards language. I was such a pedant growing up, always correcting my mother’s language — lucky for me she is a far more tolerant person than I deserve. But the more you understand about language, the more you realise pedantry is unsustainable. The English language changes a lot, according to how people use it, not according to rules — many of which are just Latin rules jammed on to English a couple of centuries ago that don’t work, because English is not Latin. And if you try to fix English in place, it starts spilling out in all other directions. Now my attitude is: if people understand each other, the language is doing its job well enough.
Language is also a barometer of social change. For instance, I think at the moment we’re seeing some very significant shifts happening around gender, and being considerate of people’s identities regarding pronouns and things. What I didn’t predict before starting the show is the history of language is much less interesting to me than how and why people are using it in the present.
I wanted to make this show because the English language is endlessly fascinating: it’s a hotchpotch of all sorts of influences; it has a huge lexicon; it’s very adaptable and flexible; and there are many different versions of it, used all over the world.
But the painful flip side I’ve been more and more aware of is how, by being a global language, English has supplanted so many other languages — sometimes by happenstance, sometimes by force. And a great deal can be lost when languages diminish or die, a lot of local culture and history and social structure, and it’s very hard to get that back.
You’ve traveled a lot and performed a ton of live shows in the past few years. What have been some of your favorite stops?
In late 2017 my husband and I were staying in a coastal town about halfway down the coast of Argentina. We’d gone there because my husband heard it was a great place to spot whales and penguins. However, there were no whales or penguins around, and the town was pretty depressing, and we were staying in this weird hotel that we couldn’t leave unless one of the staff unlocked the front door, which I found unnecessarily sinister.
We were miserable, so checked out a couple of days early and on a whim went to this tiny town 50 miles away called Gaiman, which is one of the Welsh settlements in the Patagonia region. In the 19th century, Welsh people migrated to rural Argentina, and there are still a few thousand Welsh speakers there. Gaiman has signs with Welsh dragons on; the streets are named after people whose names are half Spanish, half Welsh — Miguel Jones, Juan Evans; there are Welsh tea rooms serving classic Welsh baked goods; and the walls are covered in pictures of Welsh castles. We went to the village hall and sat in on a concert where the locals were singing exquisitely in Welsh. I’m used to hearing and seeing Welsh in Wales, but it’s not a language that is used much outside of Wales — except there in Patagonia, 7,500 miles away. It was spectacular and curious to witness.
Afterwards, we went to the local pub and talked with Luned, one of the organisers of the concert and a retired teacher who, for the past twenty years, had coordinated a project to preserve the Welsh language and culture in Patagonia. The next day we dropped into the town museum and chatted with the proprietor, Fabio, who happens to be Luned’s son; he’d already been interviewed by a French film crew that morning, so even though this is a small remote town, a lot of people are interested in it!
Anyway, this turned into a very interesting Allusionist episode about how Welsh was nearly wiped out and how it underwent a long, difficult journey to survive.
And if there had been penguins in the depressing town, I wouldn’t have made the piece at all.
What episode are you most proud of?
Probably the Name Changers episode; I loved hearing listeners tell the stories of why they changed their names. Afterwards, I received a lot of messages saying thanks for not treating trans people like aliens. I don’t deserve thanks for that; it ought to be the norm. But I was really glad they were happy about it.
The episode about why the word ‘pride’ was chosen for LGBTQ Pride — I’m pleased that one is in the world, too.
The WPM episode is a piece I wrote for the touring show I performed in 2018. My husband did the music for it, and I like that somehow we turned some fragments of information about speed typing champions into a kind of talking-song that’s a real earworm.
Now that you’re at episode 100, what’s something you wish you could have told yourself at episode 1?
“You might think this is an audio job, but it’s more a writing job. So, write better. Make the scripts more fun and silly and interesting and informative.”
I hate writing, so it’s highly unfortunate I created a writing job for myself. I didn’t actually realise until the podcast was a year old. Dammit!
Thinking ahead to the next 100 episodes, what are some hopes, dreams, or aspirations you have for yourself? For podcasting in general?
For podcasting in general — well, I don’t want to sound like a relic of an ancient era, but I did love how for the first decade or so, podcasting was quite rough around the edges, and nobodies like me with no budget could make shows in our living rooms, and find listeners, and make some money. I hope that podcasting retains some of that wild feeling and openness — to new people, new ideas, new voices. There are so many kinds of things we haven’t heard yet. And it’s important for podcasts to stay open for listeners, too: I was a broke podcaster for many many years, and being able to access all this great audio for free was a huge deal for me; and now I can afford to, I love to donate money to the shows I listen to, so they get paid for their work but can still make it available to everybody.
For myself: I’d like to make it through the next 100 episodes without physical or mental collapse, because it’s been uncomfortably close at times. Also I’ve been too busy making the show to finish writing The Allusionist book sample I started about three years ago, so I’d like to get that done. If I keep up this pace, I should have finished writing the actual book by the end of this century.
On mic and on stage, I want to do things in my performances that other people wouldn’t think to do. And hey, let’s reach for the stars: how about a weird little TV show of The Allusionist? Without me on screen though, just my voiceover. Wait, I’m essentially describing a podcast, aren’t I?
If you haven’t subscribed to The Allusionist yet, may I humbly suggest you go do that? You can hear the 100th episode, out now, and then go back and listen to them all.
