Archive for October, 2014

Thursday Listening Party

October 9, 2014

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On the Thursdays we don’t release a new AMT, we crank up the spoken word audio and have a Thursday Listening Party.
Click here to attend all previous gatherings.

I am giddy with excitement about AMT300! I hope you like it as much as/even more than I do. I guess we’ll all find out next week.

Until then, alternative entertainments.

From home:

Earlier this year, I spoke at the Boring Conference. Martin’s talk about eggs was on the playlist at a previous Thursday Listening Party; now, here’s mine, about the disgusting and depressing contents of cookery books:

Something else which alternately delights and horrifies me is being a freelancer. I’ve been one for nearly ten years, and I still haven’t figured out how to even up the boom-or-bust cycle. So for this month’s Sound Women podcast, I gathered together with some excellent freelancers to discover their secrets (one of them used to work as an official Mrs Potato Head!), and to consolegratulate each other:

If you want, you can also hear me in the new history podcast Z List Dead List, and you can read me banging on (again!) about podcasting in this interview with Podcaster News.

From elsewhere:

To accompany his question about the demise of hitchhiking in AMT299, questioneer Toby in Cheshire alerted us to this episode of Four Thought from Radio 4, in defence of hitchhiking. It’s refreshing to hear someone speaking positively about the MOBILE MURDER NETWORK.

On the subject of journeys, I’m working my way through the winners of the 2014 Third Coast Audio Festival, and thanks to Linda Lutton’s Chicago to Mexico – By Bus, I’m having flashbacks to a 36-hour coach journey I endured in 2002 – a mere blink of an eye compared to hers!

The new podcast in everyone’s ears this week is Serial, the long-form investigation of a murder case by This American Life producers Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder. I chained the first three episodes and now I NEED MORE.

And finally: early this morning I received an email from Olly saying, “It’s 5:43am. Just watched all of this.”

Fill your boots.

Tune in to our various other gigs:

After four delightful years, my gig on <a href="BBC 5 Live’s Saturday Edition” target=”_blank”>BBC 5 Live’s Saturday Edition just came to an end. Listen to the podcast of the final episode here.
Olly’s on LBC every weekday 1am-4am. Keep pinching yourself to stay awake and join him.
Martin the Sound Man makes numerous other podcasts, including Brain Train about clever things, The Global Lab about cities and stuff, and The Sound of the Ladies music podcast.
AMT episodes 1-170 and the special AMT albums are all available for a piddling little price at answermethisstore.com, and if you buy any of them you’re bankrolling the podcast, for which we are extremely grateful.
Catch up on AMT299 and the episodes preceding it.

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EPISODE 299 – I’m available to be murdered

October 2, 2014

Hi listeners! Are you looking to get rid of any household items, or are you looking for something that Freecycle cannot supply? We ask because it seems in Answer Me This! Episode 299, the show has become the audio equivalent of Loot. It’s been a long time coming.

Subscribe to AMT! on iTunes listen to the MP3 through your computer soundcloud-icon our podcast feed on Libsyn Share with Facebook

On today’s agenda:

hitchhiking vs Megabus
Points of View‘s mailbag vs AMT’s inbox
exercise vs the Olly Mann diet
1lb vs 454g
Rohypnol
personal trainers
soft landings in playgrounds
The Loneliest Road In America
papal pocket money
accommodating the Dalai Lama
adult spring riders/rockers/animals/vehicles
Alfred Molina
and
Creggslist.

Plus: Olly has a HUGE…collection of tea towels; Helen doesn’t want to ride in your helicopter, unless it’s too embarrassing to say no; and can anyone explain what Martin the Sound Man meant by ‘Godwin Filter’? We pretended we knew what he was talking about, but really were shrugging inside.

In case you’ve been anxious for the past two months to find out how Helen is faring in her mission to learn to love The Great British Bake Off, you can end that anxiety by listening to today’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices old and new, Android or Windows playthings.

If you’re anxious about how to build a super-nice website, relax! Visit Squarespace.com, have a fiddle with their easy web-building tools, and while you’re at it get 10% off their services for a whole year by using the code Answer.

It can’t have escaped your notice that if today is Episode 299, the next episode is AMT300!!!!111!!!ZOMG!!!!! We wouldn’t have got past one episode without your questions, so please keep sending them in: call the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And do let us know what is the best thing you’ve learned from Answer Me This! over the years (interpret ‘best’ and ‘learned’ as you will) in a comment here or over on facebook.com/answermethis or twitter.com/HelenAndOlly.

We will return on 16th October with AMT300 (aka #AMT300)! Be sure to join us!

Helen & Olly

••• AMT299 Child-Friendly Rating: 64%. Quite a few cusswords but little vulgar content until the very end, when Olly shoots his load. •••

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B*minster

October 2, 2014

CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT298

Apologies to Malc from Beaminster, and all the Beaminster buddies:

Just listened to episode 298, which although excellent as usual did have me shout obscenities at one point regarding the article about Henry vacuum cleaners.

Olly mentioned the history of the little happy robots and gave a shout out to my hometown, unfortunately as everyone who has never been there does HE WRONGLY PRONOUNCED IT.

The small Dorset market town in question is pronounced Bem-minster and not Bee-minster as Olly said.

It drives the locals mad, as no-one except the local news ever gets it right (including Mel Smith who mis-named it in a Not the Nine O’Clock News sketch).

Although a small dwelling of only about 3,000 people, it is famous as not only the birthplace of the Henry but has the home of Clipper Teas, national treasure Martin Clunes (who lives there), author Lynne Reid Banks (The L-Shaped Room, The Indian in The Cupboard) birthplace of Thomas Hine (of Hine cognac fame) and as Emminster in the Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

Carry on.

The curse of British place names strikes again. Let’s all memorise this list to try to avoid future slip-ups.

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Roomba: Rise of the Machines

October 1, 2014

CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT298

Choco has been in touch:

Just thought I would email you after listening to AMT 298 and hearing your suggestion that Roombas could have cute little faces on them to make them more appealing. My good friend Nic has stuck little googly eyes onto his Roomba, which does indeed look very cute.

roomba

However, it does not disguise the fact that the Roomba is EVIL. Whenever I stay at his flat, anytime Nic goes out, literally within 30 seconds of him leaving the flat and me remaining inside, the Roomba will “wake up”, leave its docking station and zoom directly towards me. When I run away it will follow me around, attempting to eat my toes, unless I get up onto the sofa, at which point it will trundle around a corner and wait for me to get up again and walk past it.

Once Nic went out while I was in the shower, and when I got out and opened the bathroom door the Roomba was directly outside waiting for me! When Nic gets back and checks it, it always turns out that Roomba is not even programmed to run on that day or at the particular time it woke up.

OK, so Roombas might be convenient if you don’t want to vacuum your flat manually, but at least regular hoovers aren’t sentient and vicious…

Two options, Choco:
1. Your ‘friend’ Nic is having a great time fucking with you;
2. You are living in the film Hardware. Escape while you still can!

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go(o)dparent

October 1, 2014

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CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT298

We godparentless asked you to provide godparenting advice to questioneer Cathy in AMT298, and we knew that such upstanding citizens as godparents would of course supply. Bruno sent us this touching email:

I was asked to be godfather to a baby girl when I was twenty, about the same age as Cathy is now. I certainly didn’t have a reputation as someone worthy of being a spiritual guide (and I daresay that reputation hasn’t improved much in the intervening thirteen years), but I was chosen because I suppose the parents liked me, and perhaps they thought that it would bring something out in me that hadn’t found a chance for expression otherwise.

I can say with certainty that it’s been one of the most positive experiences of my adult life. It’s incredibly easy, really – you just drop into someone’s life, give them thoughtfully chosen gifts and encouragement and then shoot off again before the grind of any real parental duties set in.

But I feel that I have gained at least as much from this as my goddaughter has, because (as a single guy) I have had a proximal experience to real fatherhood, a sort of dummy run including mistakes, let-downs and all, by which I have learned a great deal how I would approach the real thing. Being godfather has given and continues to give me great – even close to spiritual – satisfaction. So I feel Cathy should reflect that being a godparent is a gift as well as a responsibility.

Also, of course, by presenting the godchild with your own choice of books/films/etc you are able to mould an impressionable mind into one that agrees with your own sensibility (to tutor them, as Withnail once said, in the ways of righteousness) which is also very gratifying. I’m extremely pleased that my goddaughter, now thirteen, is well versed in the films of Studio Ghibli and the novels of Neil Gaiman a full ten years before I came across them. And has completed Portal 2.

As to the gift for the christening – who cares. Just show up. If the parents aren’t insane they won’t give a monkeys who gives what at a christening.

Luckily, Bruno, Tom from Derby has sent in a sterling idea for a christening gift:

We got our niece and goddaughter an engraved silver frame (to blah blah, from blah blah, on your christening, and then the date).

It felt like the correct sort of amount to spend as well as the correct amount of gravitas and useful longevity. Her mum has put a picture of us inside it which sits in her room.

Winning gift all round!

The only trouble was we felt it had to be matched when our other niece was christened despite not being her godparents. We got her a silver engraved keepsake box.

Classy, Tom. But what will you do if your goddaughter receives further siblings? The third will receive what – a silver toothpick, or a silver fish-slice? And if the family becomes very big, you’ll end up giving the later children silver nasal hair trimmers and those sticking plasters containing antibacterial silver.

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