This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

Helen Zoltzmann's The Illusionist is a show about language and words.

That's kind of like saying that this show is about architecture and design.

The description doesn't quite capture the way we use those lenses to view the world at large.

My favorite words are eponyms. If you don't know what an eponym is, you are about to find out.

Because I love eponyms so much, each year Helen produces an episode of The Illusionist

about eponyms, which feature me talking a little bit. And we put two of those episodes together

for you to enjoy. One quick note, Helen is from the UK where they often refer to ballpoint pens

as byros. You would have picked that up through contacts, but I just wanted to eliminate that

half second of confusion that you might have if you're not from there. All right, without

further ado, here's Helen Zoltzmann's The Illusionist.

A while ago, Roman tweeted the following, I would totally listen to an ongoing radio series

comprised solely of the stories behind eponyms. Firstly, I thought, what's an eponym?

Eponym, now a word or name derived from the name of a person, or a person after whom a discovery,

invention, place, etc. is named. Secondly, I wondered what it was about eponyms that got Roman

sub-exointed. An eponym, just almost by definition, has some kind of story, even if it isn't the

origin story. It has something where it got the eponym attached to it, which is a good enough story

to be retold. And so for that reason, I just kind of love them and it sort of starts a good conversation,

I think. That's what I love about eponyms. I've always liked silhouette because I think it's a

little bit of a slur if I have this right. The idea, like, really elaborate painting portraiture

was in fashion. Silhouette was the head of the French treasury, was cutting back into their

version of austerity. And that's right at the time when outline drawings were becoming in fashion,

...