One of my favorite podcasts is The Allusionist. With the tagline of ‘Small Adventures in Language’, it features humorously told linguistic stories.
The latest episode takes a look at lonely hearts ads (personal ads for us Americans) dating back as far as 1695. It’s surprising how little has changed.
The creators of this episode have issued the following warning:
WARNING: Some of the content is a little saucy, but not, like, swimming in sauce.
Listen or download here.
Note: WLTM (the name of the episode) is just newspaper shorthand for ‘Would Like to Meet’. I was hoping for a slightly more exciting meaning.
Date By Number 
WLTM could be so many fun things. “Would lick thine mandible?”
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Haha! Also Whale-Loving Trained Monkey or Wart-Like Tumour Malignancy, though those make zero sense for personal ads.
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Very interesting! And very cool podcast! I wonder, do we believe that getting married is a need for survival? Makes me think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs… The middle of the triangle is “love/belonging”, so I suppose it is a need for survival, but how much of that need is being intefered(?) by social comment?
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That’s a pretty deep question for a light podcast! I think love and belonging will always be important, but marriage is already becoming less important.
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