189. Mouthful of Fortune
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2024
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At Lunar New Year, certain foods are particularly lucky to eat. Why? Because in Chinese, their names are puns on fortunate things. Damn, maybe noodles are all it takes to get me into puns after all...
Get the transcript of this episode, and find links to Miranda Brown's work and more information about the topics therein, at theallusionist.org/fortune.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist in which I Helen Zoltzmann rip-off languages rubber mask only to find an identical mask underneath. |
| 0:11.0 | Today's episode is about puns and if you listened to the first ever |
| 0:16.1 | episode of this show you will know that I am generally anti-pun. But the puns in this episode are puns I enjoy. Am I relenting as I advance in age? |
| 0:27.7 | On with the show. Do you aware of like why you ate certain things at New Year and like how you felt about it? |
| 0:46.0 | Well I mean I was probably like a teenager or early teenager I think at most 13 year old are |
| 0:51.6 | absolute delights to be around and I was no exception. |
| 0:54.7 | Oh, yeah. |
| 0:55.9 | Yeah. |
| 0:56.9 | So my mom would actually generally, you know, very modern in her outlook, so, you know, know feminism I was get rid of feudal society but when it came to new years and certain superstitions is what I called them |
| 1:10.0 | she was absolutely adamant we had to follow the rules around New Year's and so we had to eat our lucky foods. |
| 1:16.0 | Even if some of those foods she forbade us from eating during the rest of the year and I would say, well, |
| 1:21.0 | why do I have to eat spring rolls? You know, you say they're too greasy and I'm going to get |
| 1:23.8 | pimples and she said just eat it listen to me it's good you know make us rich you know and I'm like but I don't see the connection |
| 1:31.6 | between stuffing my face of spring rolls and getting rich and she says because it sounds like looks and sounds like you know gold and you need to just pay attention and just do it. It can't hurt, you know, I mean, you think you know everything and how the world works, but there are many things that we don't understand. |
| 1:46.4 | And then if you haven't got rich by the next new year, do you take it up with the director of Spring Roles? |
| 1:51.4 | No, I mean, I think you just keep eating him. |
| 1:55.0 | That's all right. |
| 1:57.0 | I mean, this is not falsifiable. |
| 1:59.0 | This is just one of those things you just do. |
| 2:01.0 | I mean, the question is, how seriously do people take it. I mean some people |
| 2:03.8 | might take it seriously other people think it's for fun or it might be I think more of a |
| 2:08.0 | psychological thing where you set your goals for the year. For her it was always like eat more of anything that rises so you'll be tall |
... |
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