Hello listeners,
Thanks for sticking with us, considering that, as one of you has pointed out, Vanity Fair is encroaching on our turf. As is National Rail Enquiries! You can ask their question-bot anything, but she is far too judgemental in her responses. So we’re continuing regular service for now (unlike the East Coast Main Line, ber-boom), with Answer Me This! Episode 143:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
Today we speak of:
casual voyeurism
John Mayer vs. Stevie Ray Vaughan
AMT party vs. Elton John
spermaceti
moisturisers for men
English Heritage
John P. Charlton
Mr T in pieces
aloe vera
saucy postcards
Camille Pissarro
whaling
fake blue plaques
Boris Karloff’s bedroom
and
Buddhists’ favourite film (NB it’s not Multiplicity).
Plus: Olly reluctantly glows; Helen’s bitesize history revision is for far too big a mouth; and Harry Potter almost prevented Martin the Sound Man from achieving his doctorate. You think Voldemort’s a bastard? You do not want to get in the way of Martin with four years’ hard quantum physics in his hands. Thwarted on the very brink of escape, the man’s wrath could melt trees.
We also reminisce about the public humiliation which attended almost every step of Great British Questions Episode Two: Film, which you can see HERE. Meanwhile, over on the app, this week’s bonus noise concerns how we’d use our spare time if trapped in a Groundhog Day-style situation (clue: heroin, and serial killing).
Videos and apps notwithstanding, we still want your QUESTIONS. So please sate us with a voice message on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis or an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday for Episode 144, and on the preceding Tuesday for Episode Three of Great British Questions, in which we get all romantical. It’s ACTING, alright? Bleugh! The very idea.
Love, but only in a formal and platonic way,
Helen and Olly
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Answer Me This! Podcast 
August 1, 2010 at 5:27 am |
The head cutting off thing was from QI, as are a lot of things readers send in to you. It’d be worth your while watching series A-F so you can avoid/copy what they’ve already done.
They didn’t really hold their hair and chop off their heads, that was tongue-in-cheek conjecture from the Fry-meister.
Question:
Helen and Olly Answer Me This, Etymology seems to be a strength of yours, so can you tell me why a lack of sensation in a gent’s g’nads (“numb nuts”) became synonymous with stupidity?
August 1, 2010 at 9:02 am |
Hmmm… “g’nads”, you say. I guess on paper it would save ink….
August 4, 2010 at 12:34 am |
I’d actually watched that episode of QI so recently that I thought you were being snarky by repeating yourself (after telling yourself off for repeating yourself) before I realised it was actually QI that I’d heard it from before…
August 1, 2010 at 4:06 am |
Regarding the allegedly bitchy professor, I might have an alternative explanation. I remember some people in a university department when I was a postgraduate student talking about a degree of sexism in the use of titles. Men got called by their correct title (or upgraded to professor rather than just “Doctor” for lecturers, while women in the same positions would sometimes get the reverse “Doctor”/”Professor” switch or get called Mrs/Ms. Perhaps the professor in your story was annoyed because she was one of the few professors not getting called by the proper title; this seems a lot more understandable than writing to everyone to insist on use of her title out of the blue.
August 1, 2010 at 9:03 am |
Feel free to stick “)” in there somewhere… I hate unclosed parentheses.
August 4, 2010 at 10:54 am |
Argh! – Ever since posting that three days ago I can’t stop seeing this phenomenon! I’m in Australia, in which a federal election will be held in 17 days, and the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is constantly referred to as “Julia”, while the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, is always referred to as “Mr Abbott”, “Tony Abbott” or “Abbott”. I also heard similarly genderised ways of naming men and women in an American podcast and a British TV drama. (Also: Can you think of any UK PMs since “Maggie” that have been referred to (albeit colloquially) by their first name?)
July 29, 2010 at 11:39 pm |
I see what you did there…