I am 29-year-old male living in Reno Nevada. I am married, and my wife and I have a very comfortable DINK (dual income no kids) lifestyle.
We have lived in Reno for the past three years, so far we have had no luck making adult friends. Is there a modern solution to this issue similar to Tinder or other dating apps? Not interested in anything sexual outside of our relationship, just some fellow DINKS to drink with.
Readers in Reno – and let’s open this out to Carson City, and the greater Tahoe area – let us know if you want to be friend-matchmade with Juma and his wife.
But we receive this question from people all over the place, so go to the comments to answer me this: IS there an app or online service for people to meet like-minded individuals with whom to become non-sexy friends? What is the Web 2.0 version of the church social or neighbourhood watch meeting?
Following the discussion of paper round ageism in AMT302, Marina from London writes:
I am 26 and have never had a paper round, however I have just been for lunch with my boyfriend and his mum and her friend. The friend is in his eighties, and does a paper round every morning.
He was telling us about his paper round at lunch, and how the most popular paper on his round is The Telegraph. I asked him if he walked or cycled, and he replied, he drives! He drives about 30 miles every morning, delivering papers to lots of different villages, which takes him about an hour and a half.
He told us that he doesn’t get paid for doing this, some of his customers don’t even tip him, but the shop he delivers the papers for does cover his petrol. He says that the petrol expenses are enough to cover all his petrol, not just the paper round, and that’s the only reason he does it.
His payment is petrol! Very smart, especially if he’s charging them for the spare barrel he keeps in his car boot.
Here’s more paperboy correspondence from Ian in Cambridge:
You probably have way too many emails about this because there’s nothing nerds like more than someone being wrong on the Internet, but Paperboy wasn’t the first video game developed in the United States. It was the first game developed in the United States for the Nintendo Entertainment System, but there had been a number of video games developed in the USA long before the NES was invented.
Depending on how you define “video game”, the first one developed in the United States was either Tennis For Two (created in 1958 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory), Spacewar (Developed in 1962 at MIT) or the games of the first commercial home console, the Magnavox Odyssey (developed in 1972 by Ralph Baer). The first game for the Odyssey was Table Tennis.
This is way more information than you needed or asked for, but at least now it’s over.
This may be the most polite AND informative correction we have ever received. Thank you, Ian.
We love it when you listeners give us a peek behind the tight T-shirt curtain of your varied and interesting jobs, and following AMT301,
A Respectable Probate Attorney has been in touch – and not about probate:
As a probate attorney I would prefer to remain anonymous, but I’m happy to clarify that NO there is not a cup size requirement to be hired by Hooters.
However, there was an ass size requirement in 1999. On my first day of work I was asked what size shorts I wanted to wear; and when I asked for a size medium the manager gave me a size XXS. The short sizes available to servers were XS, XXS, and XXXS. One of the waitresses was able to get formal permission from Hooters Headquarters to wear a size small. The reason being that she was in college to become a certified public accountant and needed to dress more conservatively (less cheek showing).
To back what Olly said, Hooters servers do have to be charming. We were expected to wear our makeup and hair “like we were going to senior prom.” I would say it’s all harmless flirtation; we were never expected to dance or entertain for tips. If someone made advances, he’d be tossed out.
It’s also worth mentioning that in 1999 there was no policy that bathroom masturbators had to leave. The manager caught one of my customers in the bathroom and I still had to politely wait until he finished his meal to give him the bill. I’m glad to hear the policy has changed since.
So there we go! Perfectly standard workplace policies. Hooters really is all about the chicken wings, and NOTHING ELSE.
•Pitch is a newish podcast about the minutiae of music and other noises, and it’s very good indeed. Hear Pitch at hearpitch.org.
•Last month I mentionedRobin Ince‘s excellent series Heal Thyself, and he has since presented the similarly top-notch Radio 4 documentary Tears of a Clown, about the link between comedy and mental health.
•And for all of you whose Serial fever is growing worse by the episode – and to help you through next week because they’re taking Thanksgiving off – your equivalent of nicotine gum is Slate’s Serial Spoiler Specials, the AV Club’s new Serial Serial, these weekly conversations with Rabia Chaudry who brought the case to Sarah Koenig in the first place, the parodies… To be honest, I’m enjoying the fervid commentary around the show more than the show itself.
For more true crime stories, do check out the ever-absorbing Criminal (my new Radiotopia sibling!), and I’ve been told I must listen to Sword and Scale, so I’m off to do that right now. What else would you recommend I hear, dears?
ARE YOU READY for your AUDIO TROLLEY DASH? On your marks: you’ve got precisely 43 minutes and 46 seconds to listen to Answer Me This! Episode 302. GO GO GO GO GO!!!
Topics thrown into the trolley of our discourse include:
paperboys Paperboy
David Bowie’s palms
TLC’s ‘busters’
decaffeinated Bob Geldof
sushi grass
the courtship of Cheryl & Ashley Cole
BB cream
trolley dashes
hamster funerals
sushi vs sashimi
hyperemesis gravidarum vs ginger biscuits Twin Peaks vs Supermarket Sweep Fire Walk With Me fanfic
Mario Mario
rice
and
the problem with Dale Winton.
Plus: Olly regrets doing this podcast instead of YouTube beauty tutorials; hypocrite Helen is shamed by her inability to pronounce American names correctly; and Martin the Sound Man would rather be sick than drink peppermint cordial to cure the sicks.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets), Olly relishes funny fail videos along the following guidelines: being hit in the balls IS a funny fail, car crashes are NOT funny fails.
Thanks very much to Squarespace.com for supporting this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘answer’. So use the code ‘answer’. Why wouldn’t you? Don’t you want to treat yourself nicely? Of course you do!
We’ll be back with AMT303 on 27th November 2014; stay strong,
Helen & Olly
••• AMT302 Child-Friendly Rating: 76%. Just a couple of second-tier swears. Small amount of light bawdy content. Pet death may be cause for concern. •••
My sister is about to have a baby, which means I am about to become an aunt! In fact, I recently realised I will be the baby’s only aunt, which means I feel like I should get it right. I know Helen is an aunt, and I suspect a fun one, or at least I know she likes to lie to her ‘niecephews’.
So answer me this: what do I need to do to be an excellent aunt?
1. Deploy exciting-looking gift-wrapping (the gift within is of secondary importance).
2. Try not to look bored when the kid is telling you an anecdote that doesn’t go anywhere.
3. Teach them to make paper aeroplanes.
4. Don’t bury their grandmother without telling anyone.
That last point is information someone should have given my only aunt. Hindsight is a powerful thing…
Readers, any tips for excellent aunt or uncle performance? Add in the comments.
Rifling through your copy of the Guardian’s Do Something magazine last Saturday, you may have spotted some familiar mugs. Yes, that’s us, doing the AMT thing in the AMT home studio. Yes, Martin the Sound man does have a lot of guitars.
If you want to read about how to make a podcast the AMT-way, the article is available online HERE. As is my accompanying list of podcasts to stock up on.
PS If you’re interested in starting a podcast, or want to talk about what to do with one you already make, or you want to meet and mingle with other podcasters, come along to my free quarterly Podcast Clinic: 24th November, Brixton Ritzy, details here.
PPSAnother article just appeared about the stuff I make that isn’t audio.
PPPS Every single time I read Do Something magazine, brain radio torments me by playing the Britney Spears song of the same name. Not her finest hour – hardly surprising, since that hour occurred at peak-Federline.
Here’s a little thing for all you rabid fans of Serial: parodies! The Mailchimp plug at the beginning is my favourite.
Now, if you’re interested in the science of food, hightail to this recent Food Programme interview with Harold McGee, author of the seminal food science tome On Food and Cooking which fired the molecular gastronomy neurones in Heston Blumenthal’s brain. And what inspired McGee to write the thing? Blazing Saddles. O…kay.
Finally: if you pick up a copy of the Guardian this Saturday (8th November 2014), peruse the Do Something supplement, wherein you’ll find the AMT guide to starting a podcast plus photos of us looking like twats in our home studio. (I assume. I haven’t seen the pictures yet, but we usually look like twats every time somebody points a camera at us, so it’s a safe bet.)
Gimme more stuff to listen to: recommend shows in the comments, please!
Plus: Olly is on equal celebrity footing with Jason Donovan; Helen would LOVE it if you could chip in for the Radiotopia Kickstarter (read why here); and Martin the Sound Man brings physics into coin design, because anything and everything can be made less fun with physics.
Along with every episode, there’s a Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, so get it for your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets. And if you want to get 10% off our benevolent sponsors Squarespace.com for a year, deploy the code ‘answer’.
Draw close, AMTpals, for Anonymous in Whitehall needs our assistance:
I am a mid-level functionary in Her Majesty’s Government who is about to go on a ‘sabbatical’ to recover from various mental health issues.
Although I’ve been open about this with my closest friends, I can’t face the endless questions from my family and people at work about why I am suddenly going to disappear for six months. Being a faceless bureaucrat I am rubbish at creativity, so have failed to come up with a believable cover story that won’t need much work (or elaborate photoshopping of holiday photos) to maintain once I return.
So answer me this: how can I explain disappearing for six months without tying myself in a Gordian knot of lies?
Anonymous, you already answered your own question: ‘sabbatical’. What more do you need? That’s an academic-sounding term for ‘six months of sitting around in your pants watching Netflix’*. When you say ‘sabbatical’, nobody is going to then assume you spent that time doing something exciting, otherwise you would have told them about that exciting thing. (Even though Netflix IS exciting. It’s like a plane’s seatback entertainment system IN YOUR OWN HOME!)
If you really require an alternative, then there’s the old standby ‘gardening leave’. Which is shorthand for ‘Don’t ask’. Also, Anonymous, I wonder whether you might be worrying unduly that your absence will be remarkable: even without the mental health issues to deal with, many government employees need to GTFO every so often.
Readers, if you have relevant experience that can help Anonymous, please share in the comments.
I have a nineteen-year-old friend who says she has never read before in her life. I am an avid reader (currently reading three books plus listening to Manchester’s biography of Churchill on audiobook) and this baffles me.
However, she has recently expressed an interest in starting to read and I want to give a recommendation which won’t be so tough as to put her off reading, but isn’t going to get her into the habit of reading shit books.
She likes the horror movie genre and my friend suggested Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, but looking into it, it’s a bit too “psychopath masturbating to films of himself murdering families” for me to comfortably recommend it to a pretty girl I’m interested in.
So answer me this: do you have any ideas?
Readers, I’m turning this questions over to you. Recommend the ideal book for this woman, that will not only fan the flames of ardour for reading, but for Jordan himself! Because while Jordan is a reading zealot eager to convert the uninitiated, we can all see what he’s really up to…
Answer Me This! Podcast 