197. Word Play 7: Word Sport
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2024
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the Scripps National Spelling Bee, behind the spectacle of kids vying to be champion spellers, a whole lot of work goes on to make words into this word sport. Offering a peek into the apiary are the Bee's executive director Corrie Loeffler, and Ben Zimmer and Jane Solomon from the Bee's word panel.
Find out more about this episode, get the transcript, hear the other Beelusionist episode about the Spelling Bee, and listen to the rest of the Word Play series, at theallusionist.org/wordsport. And visit spellingbee.com for all the information about this year's tournament.
The Allusionist is going on tour in the UK (and hopefully Ireland) in August and September! Some tickets are already on sale, with more dates to come: keep an eye on theallusionist.org/events.
Members of the Allusioverse get perks at the live shows; they also got daily Beecaps from my time at Bee Week, so if you want to read those, head to theallusionist.org/donate. Plus, you get regular livestreams with me and my collection of reference books, inside scoops into the making of this show, watchalong parties, and the company of your fellow Allusionauts in our delightful Discord community. AND you’ll also be keeping this independent podcast going.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, with Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist, in which I, Helen Zultsman, feed Royal Jelly to Language Larvae. |
| 0:10.0 | This is the last episode for now of our wordplay series about word games. |
| 0:14.8 | And because why not have a nest of numbers? It is also the second of the two episodes |
| 0:19.3 | about the script's National Spelling Bee. This one is about what goes into making this word sport. |
| 0:25.0 | Listen to the previous episode where people talked about why they care about the bee and what |
| 0:29.6 | participating in it did and does for them and members of the allusion verse got bee caps about each day I spent at the bee |
| 0:37.8 | Which was an extraordinary experience |
| 0:40.3 | So to read those head over to the allusionist.org |
| 0:43.8 | donate and in return for your donation you also get to hang out in the |
| 0:47.8 | illusion verse discord you get behind the scenes information about the |
| 0:51.5 | making of each episode. |
| 0:53.2 | You get regular live streams with relaxing readings from my ever expanding collection of reference books, |
| 0:59.2 | and you're funding the making of this independent nugget of media. You also get special stuff when I do |
| 1:04.8 | live shows and big news and will be doing a bunch of live shows in the UK and hopefully Ireland |
| 1:11.4 | in late August and early September go to the |
| 1:14.4 | illusionist.org slash events for tickets. More dates will be posted as soon as the |
| 1:19.6 | tickets are on sale. Got several cities to add to the bill. |
| 1:23.0 | The new live show is called souvenirs and I think it's the best live show I've concocted |
| 1:27.8 | so far. |
| 1:28.8 | And previous ones that you can hear on your pod feed include no title and WPM if you want an idea of what kind of a thing a live |
| 1:36.4 | illusionist is because it's not me just recording interviews in front of an audience. |
| 1:40.4 | No, no, it is a show show with visuals and music and in this case a really funny |
... |
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