219. Making Trouble

219. Making Trouble

From The Allusionist by Helen Zaltzman

October 26, 2025 · 46 min

About this episode

Helen Zaltzman discusses creativity and long-term careers with poet Molly Naylor in a special episode.

A change of scene for one episode: recently the brilliant poet and performer Molly Naylor interviewed me for her podcast Making Trouble, about creativity, and she kindly let me run a version of that episode here for you. We're talking about ideas, but also long-term creative careers, mortality, podcasting, external validation, and Molly offers some great prompts for either sparking ideas or making a dinner conversation a bit more lively. Find her work at mollynaylor.com, and listen to Making Trouble in the very place you listen to podcasts. Content note: this episode contains category A and B swears. Visit theallusionist.org/trouble for more information plus a transcript of the episode. And hit the Contact tab to send me a request for an etymological explanation, or a word problem you're having, or observations sparked by previous Allusionists. Support the show at theallusionist.org/donate and as well as keeping this independent podcast going, you also get behind-the-scenes info about every episode; livestreams with me, Martin and my ever-growing collection of dictionaries, and the charming and nurturing Allusioverse Discord community, where we chat about language and…

People in this episode

Host: Helen Zaltzman

Guest: Molly Naylor

Topics covered

  • creativity
  • long-term creative careers
  • mortality
  • podcasting
  • external validation
  • idea generation

Keywords

  • creativity
  • podcasting
  • Molly Naylor
  • long-term careers
  • external validation
  • idea prompts

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Making Trouble, theallusionist.org, Great British Bake Off, Game of Wool

Places: Canada

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