Answer Me This! Podcast

** Click here to listen to EPISODE 50 **

Following Episode 50 and questioneer Oli asking, “If Nintendo is a Japanese company then why is its star character (Mario) supposed to be Italian?”, several of you have written in to offer solutions to this mystery.

Luke from Birmingham suggests: “I believe that they made him Italian to match his look (hat and ‘tache). The reason they gave him the hat and the moustache was because they were easier to animate than hair and a mouth back in those days.”

Sounds plausible enough. But what of this hypothesis from JC of japanmanship.blogspot.com: “The story, which may be apocryphal, is that when Mr. Arakawa was setting up Nintendo of America they had this warehouse and when the time came to give Jumpman from Donkey Kong a name they were being hassled by their landlord, an Italian American named Mario. The plumbing angle is a mystery though.”

Hmm. The plot thickens… So let’s add a real-life Italian’s opinion to the mix, courtesy of Rachele from Naples: “I always assumed Mario and Luigi were Italian-American rather than just Italian. I don’t know why, but that’s the vibe I got…also surely the stereotypical plumber nowadays is Polish?”

Well, now we don’t know what to believe! So let’s divert ourselves with an answer to the unanswered question from Episode 49, “Why do they sterilise the needles for lethal injections?” Take it away, Billy from Featherstone:

“The answer is that sterilising the needles makes sure that the person administering the injection doesn’t catch anything if they were to accidentally catch themselves.”

Thanks, Billy from Featherstone! It’s always a pleasure when you lot do our work for us… Also regarding Episode 49, a number of you have written in voicing your anguish at being denied Martin the Sound Man‘s response to Dovy’s cribbed-off-the-internet question: “Why is it that when someone tells you that there are over a billion stars in the universe, you believe them, but if they tell you there is wet paint somewhere, you have to touch it to make sure?”

This is what you were missing: humans are naturally curious, and if there’s a way to find out the answer to a question for themselves, they’ll do it (ie sticking their hand onto a freshly-painted fence) rather than relying upon other people. However in the case of stars, people have no practical way of testing this for themselves, so just have to take it as read.

I suppose that seems plausible, Martin, but if as you say people tend to find out the answers to questions for themselves, what the heck would we talk about in this podcast, eh?

Subscribe with iTunes • Listen to previous episodes • Question Archive
FAQ • Facebook Fanclub • Merchandise Superstore • YouTube Channel

This entry was posted on March 25, 2008 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Answer Us Back! Your time to opine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.