207. Randomly Selected Words from the Dictionary

January 17, 2025·42 min·3 clips

Helen Zaltzman marks 10 years of The Allusionist by revealing a hiatus and compiling every random dictionary word from the show's history.

A decade is the marker. The cold open looks back at a show that has made it through podcast money hype, industry contraction, and the strain of keeping going for the long haul. Not bought, not gone. Helen Zaltzman uses the anniversary to announce a break, an early May 2025 return, a BBC Radio 4 piece called Souvenirs, new Answer Me This episodes, and dictionary livestreams. The tone is brisk and unsentimental. Instead of turning ten years into a victory lap, the segment sticks with practical continuity, side projects, and listeners who might send old topics back into circulation. Then the dictionary gets the wheel. Randomly selected words give the show its familiar pleasure: labels, old meanings, bodily weirdness, French pleasure, and one foolish reckless person. Velleity means almost-action, a wish too weak to become movement. That lands neatly beside the anniversary pause and the promise of coming back soon. Jouissance gets the pleasure slot. The words around it are stranger and damper, including an archaic discharge from a wound and runtable as a term for a reckless fool. The ads and promos do not feel entirely separate from the episode. The Rosetta Stone read turns a new-year resolution away from grim self-improvement and toward adding a language, with ASL as last year's example. Squarespace becomes a naming game, with its domain generator sorting possibilities for an entertainment podcast about language into neutral, playful, professional, friendly, informative, and quirky. The Curiosity Weekly promo closes by stretching the language thread into science: whale conversations over long distances, marmosets calling names, babies learning language before birth, AI jokes, cheese, side effects, and cat grief. It feels less like a regular excerpt than a small anniversary drawer pulled open, with announcements, odd words, and promo copy all rattling around together.

As heard by us

A 10-year marker that keeps strange dictionary words feeling alive.

The Illusionist turns its decade-aversary into a neat tour of odd dictionary words. Helen Zaltzman ties the episode to the show’s 10-year mark, and the main pleasure comes from the words themselves - velayity, jouissance, runtable - plus definitions that stay plain and specific.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A 10-year anniversary language episode with dry jokes and a batch of gloriously odd words.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Allusionist