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. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you want me to talk about your product or thing on the show, sponsor an episode: contact Multitude at multitude.productions/ads. This episode is sponsored by: • Understance: comfortable, stylish, size-inclusive bras and undies. Shop the range and learn about your own branatomy at understance.com.• Squarespace, your one-stop shop for building and running your online empire/new home for your cryptic puzzle that takes months to solve. 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. • Bombas, whose mission is to make the comfiest clothing essentials, and match every item sold with an equal item donated. Go to bombas.com/allusionist to get 20% off your first purchase. Support the show: http://patreon.com/allusionist See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Zaltzman, feed royal jelly to language larvae.
This is the last episode for now of our wordplay series about word games and because why not have a nest of numbers?
It is also the second of the two episodes about the scripts national spelling bee.
This one is about what goes into making this word sport.
Listen to the previous episode where people talked about why they care about the bee and what participating in it did and does for them.
And members of the illusiverse got bee caps about each day I spent at the bee, which was an extraordinary experience.
So to read those, head over to theallusionist.org donate and in return for your donation you also get to hang out in the illusion verse discord.
You get behind the scenes information about the making of each episode.
You get regular live streams with relaxing readings from my ever expanding collection of reference books, and you're fonding the making of this independent nugget of media.
You also get special stuff when I do live shows and big news, I will be doing a bunch of live shows in the UK and hopefully Ireland in late August and early September.
Go to theallusionist.org events for tickets.
More dates will be posted as soon as the tickets are on sale.
Got several cities to add to the bill.
The new live show is called souvenirs and I think it's the best live show I've concocted so far, 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 illusionist is, because it's not me just recording interviews in front of an audience.
No, no, it is a show show with visuals and music and in this case, a really funny, uplifting, cool story about some very strong typeface related emotions.
So come theillusionist.org events.
Also, if you happen to work at an arts or literature or fringe or comedy or audio festival somewhere, and you want some illusionist onstage delights, get in touch.
Plus, this is episode 197 of the Illusionist.
Thus episode 200 looms.