212. Four Letter Words: Park
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Get in, winner: we're going on a field trip. We're spending the day in five of Vancouver's city parks with Justin McElroy, Municipal Affairs Reporter for the CBC and ranker of Vancouver's 243 parks at VancouverParkGuide.ca. Together we ponder: what IS a park? You think you know, then along comes a slab of concrete called a park to test your taxonomy.
Visit theallusionist.org/park for photos of the parks and more information about them, plus a transcript of the episode.
Events are happening! Get info at theallusionist.org/events about the meetup on 13 August in one of Vancouver's beach parks, the listening party for the live Radio 4 broadcast of our piece Souvenirs, and for Four Letter Word season, a watchalong of the films Dick and Dicks: The Musical. Want to join that? Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get behind-the-scenes glimpses about every episode, livestreams with me and my collection of dictionaries, and the charming and supportive Allusioverse Discord community, where we're watching the current seasons of Great British Sewing Bee and Bake Off: The Professionals.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. The music is by Martin Austwick. Download his songs at palebirdmusic.com and listen to his podcasts Song By Song and Neutrino Watch.
Find the Allusionist at youtube.com/allusionistshow, instagram.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, @allusionistshow.bsky.social… If I’m there, I’m there as @allusionistshow.
Our ad partner is Multitude. If you want me to talk compellingly about your product, sponsor an episode: contact Multitude at multitude.productions/ads. This episode is sponsored by:
• Understance, a growing Vancouver BC company making thoughtfully designed, pretty and comfy bras, undies and sleepwear. They’re having a sale on June 26-July 1 so get over there and stock up at understance.com or at their stores in Vancouver, Burnaby, Calgary and Toronto.
• Squarespace, your one-stop shop for building and running your online forever home. Go to squarespace.com/allusionist for a free 2-week trial, and get 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain with the code allusionist.
• Quince, luxurious clothing and homewares at prices 50-80% lower than comparable brands. Go to Quince.com/allusionist for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, rubbed languages back in the middle of the night to reassure it that there isn't a monster hiding under the bed. |
| 0:13.0 | The monster is actually hiding in the sock drawer. |
| 0:17.0 | We're deep into four-letter words season, which so far has covered the F word, C-word, numerous four-letter |
| 0:24.6 | words that don't even require censoring, and the scandal suffix gate. Today's four-letter word is the noun |
| 0:31.3 | park, which English got from old French around 700 years ago, and back then it meant an enclosed piece of land for hunting. |
| 0:39.3 | Now though, a park can be so many things. |
| 0:42.3 | It can be prefixed with words like car, retail, amusement, business, skate, theme, technology, water, and of course national. |
| 0:51.3 | But the International Union for Conservation of Nature has made an official definition of national parks. |
| 0:57.7 | Although not all things called the national park fit that definition, and not all things that fit the definition are national parks. |
| 1:03.2 | Still, it's a lot less unstrapeforward than the type of park we're talking about today, the city park. |
| 1:09.6 | Oh, remember all the difficulty we have had in past episodes with defining what is a salad. |
| 1:15.0 | I don't even want to get into what is a pie or what is a cake. |
| 1:18.2 | Whenever you think you've got a working definition, along comes Boston cream pie to ruin it. |
| 1:23.1 | So today we consider the taxonomy of park, the semantics of park, what is park? |
| 1:30.2 | You'll find some photos of today's excursions at the illusionist.org slash park. |
| 1:35.7 | Before we go to the park, or several parks, or some parks that may officially be parks, but spiritually are they parks? |
| 1:42.7 | I just want to tell you about some cool stuff coming up. |
| 1:45.6 | The first is in one of Vancouver's parks. We're going to have a meetup at Spanish Bank's |
| 1:50.8 | beach on 13th of August from 6pm till sunset. You're all welcome. More information is at |
| 1:56.7 | the illusionist.org slash events about that and about the following house band martin |
| 2:01.9 | austwick and i made a radio version of our live piece souvenirs about two friends turning to |
| 2:07.9 | enemies and fighting for the rest of their lives about a typeface is very funny and petty and |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Helen Zaltzman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Helen Zaltzman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.