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Thursday Listening Party

July 10, 2014

On the Thursdays which don’t involve new episodes of AMT, join us for the Thursday Listening Party.
Because the dull roar of football spectators is…dull.

Let’s start with some ANNOUNCEMENTS!

Announcement the First: You know that Olly-hosted Media Podcast I’ve harped on about during the last couple of Thursday Listening Parties? The campaign to kickstart it for a year ends TOMORROW, so reallocate your potato salad budget and click here to fund Olly’s dream hosting job. (Also listen out for me on this week’s show, guest hosted by Miranda Sawyer, which will be out imminently.)

Announcement the Second: We’re all going on our summer holidays, no more podcasts for a week or two – indeed two, because the next episode of AMT will come out on Thursday 24th July rather than 17th. Before you get pissed off, just look at how happy holidays make Martin the Sound Man:

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How to break the silence in our absence:

• I want you to have nice things, dears, so I direct you to the episode of Bullseye featuring Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone. Then treat yourself to a Judy Greer and Richard Ayoade chaser.

• I’ll bet there are a few of you who are keen to hear from Zaltzman family associate John Oliver, so here’s a thorough interview with him on Fresh Air.

• Add a bit of science to your summer with podcasts from the Royal Society Summer Exhibition.

• As you may have deduced from all these Thursday Listening Parties, I am always keen on a podcast in which people recount their true stories, so this week I’m guzzling Here Be Monsters.

• And of course, there’s the AMT Sports Day album for all the sportytalk you need before/during/after the big Shirts vs Skins game.

Our various other gigs:

• Catch up on AMT293 and the episodes preceding it.
• 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.
• Olly’s on LBC every weekday 1am-4am. Who needs sleep?
• I host the monthly Sound Women podcast and am on Let’s Talk About Tech from BBC 5 Live.
• Martin the Sound Man makes numerous other podcasts, including Brain Train, The Global Lab and The Sound of the Ladies.

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Room with a Viewer

July 9, 2014

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••• CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT293 •••

Here’s another ‘Does this make me a prostitute?’* dilemma from a lady called Terry:

I went to look at a house as I have recently broken up with my now ex-boyfriend and I need to move out of our currently shared house.

I have found a perfect place, huge bedroom, en suite bathroom, private balcony looking over the river, close to my current work and the three girls that currently occupy this 5-bed house are all really lovely people.

The best part is no rent!!

Yes, you heard me right, no rent. In return for all this amazing lifestyle, I would have to take a shower once a week with an audience, an online audience at least of around 300 paying customers. I would also have to put on a sorta show.

Porn has never bothered me I enjoy the idea of being watched but… Answer me this: does this make me a sorta prostitute?

Please help!! What if someone I know sees me? I have a couple of quite unique tattoos and I’m worried that through the steam and bubbles I will be noticed by someone I know…

Here are some questions to ask yourself, Terry:
• Is this a Carling ad?
• Is this My Little Eye?
• Is this We Live In Public?
• Is this something the other three girls are doing, or is this a special set-up for you?
• I know rents are expensive at the moment, but if 300 customers are paying to watch you in the shower every week, wouldn’t it be more profitable for you to pay to live somewhere and run your own webcam-showering racket?

Readers, what do you reckon? Go to the comments to shower Terry with advice.

Also, since we’re on this topic: five years on, I wonder whether this questioneer decided to go for it.

*Which, if you have to ask, and it’s not a profession you wish to pursue, it’s probably best not.

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Tyler’s toaster triumph

July 9, 2014

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It gives us such a glow to learn that our advice has changed a listener’s life. Given our usual schtick, this happens extremely rarely. But thanks to us, AMT292‘s lovable toast-moron Tyler from Manchester has triumphed over (self-inflicted) adversity:

Thank you for reading out my letter about my toaster trouble and for correctly identifying that I am a bit of a mooncalf when it comes to toasting bread.

I just wanted to thank you for alerting me to the fact that toasters come in different sizes – I had always blithely assumed that they all had the same standard-sized slots, and had never shopped around for toasters with the room to accommodate a slice of Warburtons, crusts and all.

I have now done so, and am the proud owner of a large red one, with ample bread-browning docking areas. In honour of you guys, I have christened it Olly. I hope you don’t feel left out, Helen, but this toaster is definitely masculine. Which might make you wonder why I called it Olly. The simple answer is that calling a toaster Martin the Soundman is just a bit too nutty.

Of course, naming a toaster ‘Olly’ is not nutty at all. Keep on keeping on, Tyler.

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EPISODE 293 – horny warlords

July 3, 2014

Hello listeners,

When you’re trying to make new friends, what’s the best icebreaker? One of today’s questioneers thinks talking about death is the way to go. See if you agree in Answer Me This! Episode 293:

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

We also consider less morbid topics, such as:

Viagra calorie content
I Love Lucy
Wayne Rooney’s new hair vs Kyle Beckerman’s old hair
Vancouver vs Pinner
chocolate vs chocolate flavoured chocolate-esque solids
fire hazard fiances
Jason Biggs
jetlagged hamsters
Crystal Creams
Russian Roulette
giving references
borrowing a cup of sugar
and
fucking a pork pie.

Plus: Olly explains the difference between Jewish front gardens and gentile front gardens; Helen will be hibernating all summer (correct term: ‘aestivating‘); and Martin the Sound Man has a restaurant ratings system that will render Michelin stars obsolete.

Since this episode kicks off (yes I went there) with football, one of our least favourite topics, we address another in today’s Bit of Crap on the App: zombies. We could scarcely feel more ambivalent, but since so many of you love them, do your special zombie walk over to the app store in order to listen on your iDevice, Android or Windows toy.

If your brain hasn’t been eaten, please send us QUESTIONS: call the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And be our imaginary friend at facebook.com/answermethis and twitter.com/HelenAndOlly.

TTFN!

Helen & Olly

••• AMT293 Child-Friendly Rating: Squeaky-clean first third, then a question about Viagra. This is alright, until around 19 minutes into the episode the conversation turns to American Pie, whence it degenerates horribly. The rest of the episode is fine aside from a few swears, but realistically you’ll already have had to switch over to Fun Kids, so overall we have to rate this episode as 27%. •••

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dating as do-gooding

July 2, 2014

••• CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT292 •••

Here’s a question from an anonymous 22-year-old lady from Boston:

I am a bisexual young lady who has just moved to Boston. As is unremarkable for someone of my generation and sexual appetite, I have an online dating profile on OKCupid.

To put it bluntly, I fulfil societal standards of beauty. I modelled for some years. I get asked out on this website multiple times a day – and usually decline because of disinterest (more often then not because a lot of men here fetishise my race).

Here’s the kicker. I am a dedicated to animal welfare and also the promotion of sex education – in a land where the Republicans have slapped their sexually suppressed balls all over the school system.

Answer me this: should I start accepting dates from people I’d usually be disinterested in if the man/woman sends me a screenshot of a donation to the ASPCA/Planned Parenthood? e.g. ’50 bucks to support birth control for poor women, and let’s go for drinks!’

I am a broke graduate without much money to support these organisations myself, but I can help in other ways than volunteering, right? Does this count as prostitution?

What do you reckon, readers? Would our anonymous hottie exchanging her company for charitable donations be smart altruistic leverage of the current situation, or would the people paying for the dates merely think they’re getting an escort for an unusually good price? Express your opinions in the comments (£10 to Marie Curie Cancer Care per comment).

At the very least, if she does do this, the questioneer would be guaranteed to be featured in an article on Jezebel. They can’t get enough of dating experiment stories.

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football tossers

July 2, 2014

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Here’s a question of SPOOOOOORT from Arj from Canterbury:

I’ve been watching a lot of the World Cup recently, and I don’t really get the point of the coin toss at the start of the match to decide which end the winner chooses to shoot from. Is there some tactical advantage to be gained from choosing one goal over another? In cricket, at least, the coin toss makes sense: bowl or bat. But in football, all that really changes is the direction you’re running in…

Maybe that’s not all, Arj. Maybe it’s so you can’t blame the pitch for anything that went wrong and put you at a disadvantage, because we all know how footballers love to whinge about the slightest thing. Maybe the sun is blinding at one end. Maybe you don’t want to start/finish the game with all the opposing team’s fans standing behind the goal flipping you off. Maybe the pitch is on a 15 degree gradient. Maybe half the pitch is cursed because it is laid on top of an old burial ground.

Help Arj out, readers: explain this in the comments. I know I could look it up, but I…can’t be arsed because it’s football.

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Toaster mystery SOLVED

July 1, 2014

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Domo-Toaster

It’s the news you’ve all been waiting for! OK, some of you have been waiting for. Not like you wait for an exciting parcel to arrive, or for you tea to be ready; more how you might wait for a dental appointment, just to get it out of the way, or you wait for someone to hurry up in the loo because SERIOUSLY WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN DOING IN THERE FOR 40 MINUTES?

Yep, that’s how to feel about feedback about the toaster latching mechanism as considered in AMT292. Sean from Waiheke Island, New Zealand appears to be qualified to explain it:

In a previous life I spent several years traipsing around toaster factories in China, inspecting their wares and production methods, helping them improve their quality and designs, and buying them, quite literally, by the truckload for the eager British public.
In this capacity, I can advise you with some confidence, that the reason a toaster won’t latch when it’s not plugged in is because the mechanism is held in the down position by an electro-magnet. And as the term suggests, electromagnets need the “electro” component in order to work.

Basically, there’s a small electronic timer (a chip on a circuit board) which powers the electromagnet for the period set by the “browning control”. While the electromagnet is powered on, it holds on to a small metal plate attached to the lever and the bread carriage. When the time’s up, the power to the electromagnet is cut, the magnetism stops, and the whole mechanism is released, with springs bringing the bread carriage back to the up position.

In the “olden” days, all of this was done much more mechanically using latches and bimetallic strips, which was a great system, but with varied results. But because it was purely mechanical, you could latch the bread carriage down without the power being switched on. The fancy new electromagnetic timers are cheaper and more reliable, and the reason why the toaster needs power before the mechanism can be latched in the down position.

So there you go… mystery solved.

Thanks, Detective Sean! And for all of you still wondering whyyyyy this is necessary, here’s a cautionary tale to illustrate the vital role the toaster-latch plays in our lives. Josh from New York writes:

When I was in high school, my parents had an older toaster with a latching mechanism that allowed you to push in the bread even when the toaster was not plugged in.

One fateful Fourth of July, I was in the mood for some toast. I put some bread in the toaster, pushed the bread down, and waited five minutes before realizing toast was not being made because the toaster was not plugged in. (Yes, like your original questioner, I was apparently too stupid to make toast.) Without pushing the bread back up, I reached to plug in the toaster. As soon as the plug was in the socket, the toaster short circuited and lit on fire.

I was burned badly enough that I had to go to the emergency room, where I waited two hours so a doctor could tell me he did not believe my story and insisted that I had probably been playing with fireworks for American Independence Day. And on top of that, I NEVER GOT MY TOAST.

In short, if you’re as bad at making toast as I am – and the original question asker apparently is – you should probably just eat your bread cold.

There we go. Those electromagnets are just looking after us, knowing that we’re too stupid to be trusted. I’m going to delegate all my life admin to electromagnets.

PS Star Wars fans, I have found THE toaster for you. HERE. No need to thank me.
PPS If your tastes fall more on the Olly Mann end of the spectrum, I also have the toaster for you.

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raccoon poop problem

June 30, 2014

Ready for the catch

••• CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT292 •••

In AMT292 we left Pat from Canada pissing around her garden to keep raccoons away. But Sara from California but living in the Ozarks has another solution:

I have a solution for Pat’s raccoon poop problem and that is to get a large dog. Or perhaps a small one, but ours is large. Raccoons used to use the chimney of my parents’ backyard fireplace as a toilet. I can even remember my dad building a wooden pyramid to cover it in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the raccoon menace. As soon as we got a dog, the raccoons disappeared. The chimney is the current dog’s barking-at-cats stand.

It’s not a flawless solution: even if you eliminate the raccoon poop, you’ll still be left with a load of dog poop. And what if the dog doesn’t deter the raccoons at all? Look how well these two are getting along!

larry-anna1

If that happens, Pat, here’s a guide to caring for your new pet raccoons. In brief: don’t let them eat too many sweets; don’t smack them; and don’t let them chew through your electrical cords. Now we know.

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Thursday Listening Party

June 26, 2014

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Every other week, when there’s no new AMT, join us for the Thursday Listening Party.
It’s the Pyramid Stage at the Spoken Word Glastonbury.

Two weeks remain to fund Olly’s new hosting gig on the Media Podcast, so if you’re feeling generous with your cash, kick in to their Kickstarter, and if you’re feeling generous with your time, listen to the show at themediapodcast.com.

Since it’s that sporty time of year with all the footsport and the Wimblesport, treat yourself to the AMT Sports Day, which you can read about here (prosthetic foreskins! Nude athletes! David Attenborough!) and buy here. From it, here’s the most classy song about tennis ever written:

Oscillating my eardrums:

In recent weeks several different people recommended I listen to the Deadline Podcast, so I’m listening to it. I’m listening to it right now! It’s on iTunes and SoundCloud, and in it, the Telegraph’s obituarists discuss the lives of the freshly dead. I realise I have mentioned deathy podcasts at the last two Thursday Listening Parties. Don’t read too much into this.

Take a look at the ‘Most prevalent tags’ graphic in the sidebar of this website, and you’ll see ‘food’ is twice as big as the rest. It’s not much surprise therefore that we’re devotees of Radio 4’s The Food Programme. 18 months ago I went on a waistline-terrorising road trip around the southeastern US, so I particularly enjoyed the recent episode featuring Sean Brock talking about food revivals in South Carolina, although I enjoy even more the fact that in the feed there’s an episode simply called ‘Knives’.

Usually when I write these Thursday Listening Party posts, I’ve been appearing on and listening to several different shows; but I don’t have many to report this time as it’s been a quiet fortnight for me on both counts. I went on a silent retreat to spend time in meditation and self-actualising contemplat- OK FINE I didn’t, I binge-watched both series of Orange is the New Black. Now that important task is out of the way, what should I be listening to? Please recommend some podcasts in the comments!

To keep your ears ever busy until AMT293 next Thursday, here are some other podcasts we like.

Housekeeping:

• Catch up on AMT292 and the episodes preceding it.
• 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, so thank you very much indeed.
• Olly’s on LBC every weekday 1am-4am. Tune in to keep the nightmares at bay (unless you have nightmares about talk radio, in which case tune in to exacerbate them).
• I host the monthly Sound Women podcast and am on Let’s Talk About Tech from BBC 5 Live.
• Martin the Sound Man makes numerous other podcasts, including Brain Train, The Global Lab and The Sound of the Ladies.

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EPISODE 292 – phallic noses

June 19, 2014

Listeners, who is the bigger idiot: the questioneer who is too big an idiot to make toast, or the podcasters who talk about that big idiot for nearly ten minutes?

The only way to decide is to listen to Answer Me This! Episode 292:

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

In which we discuss:

Alexander Armstrong
McDonald’s weddings
Pop Tarts
Christmas booze
30 years since Gremlins
metal thieves vs Barbara Hepworth
graphic design vs alternative medicine
tiny toaster troubles
sass
Greyhound Buses
Olly’s next rotten criminal scheme
raccoons
and
The Raccoons.

In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we delve deeper into the grotesque and terrifying world of novelty toasters. Join us if you dare on your iDevice, Android or Windows toy.

If you’ve invented your own amazing multi-functional toaster (“Guys! It can heat soup at the same time as cutting the toast into perfectly equal croutons!”) then build yourself a snazzy online store through our benevolent sponsors Squarespace.com, deploying the code Answer for 10% off their services for a whole year.

When you’re not too preoccupied with (re)inventing kitchen gadgetry, send us QUESTIONS: call the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And be our imaginary friend at facebook.com/answermethis and twitter.com/HelenAndOlly.

We shall return on Thursday 3rd July with AMT293 – but we’ll also be appearing on this Radio Academy panel about podcasting on 25th June; and as we mentioned, we’re also available at our side project podcasts The Media Podcast, Sound Women and Brain Train. Furthermore, to accompany all the SPOOOOOORT that seems to be happening at the moment, you can hear us talking as sportily as we are able on the AMT Sports Day album, available now at answermethisstore.com.

That’s it! We’re off to make some toast. We could be gone for some time.

Helen & Olly

••• AMT292 Child-Friendly Rating: 40%. Swears. Cartoon phallic noses. Kicks off with feedback about parental sex, the very notion of which can be traumatic for your progeny. •••

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podcast panels and panhandling

June 19, 2014

••• CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP ON AMT291 •••

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ATTENTION! Points of information follow:

1. Next Wednesday, 25th June, we’ll be discussing podcasting on a Radio Academy panel at the Apple store on Regent Street, along with Football Rambler Pete Donaldson and Bugle producer ‘Fuck you’ Chris Skinner. If you’re interested in podcasting, do come along! The event is free, but you need to register for a place. All information can be found here. Sure, you’ll miss Bosnia & Herzegovina vs Iran, but you’d be home in time for Honduras vs Switzerland.

2. I’m starting a new free podcasting advisory service, and the first fixture is TODAY. Details here.

3. I posted last week about Olly’s new gig on The Media Podcast. There’s a Kickstarter campaign to keep the show going for a year. It is Olly’s dream job, so make him happy by chipping in here.

Finished! NOW GET BACK TO WORK.

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toe thumbs

June 18, 2014

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The last time a listener sent us a toe picture, I felt a bit sick. I’m not queasy but I am intrigued by this from Lorelei from Brooklyn, NY:

My thumbs look like big toes.

I had no idea there was something amiss until I was 14, when my friends loudly pointed out the freakishness. I’m the only one in my family with them, and I’ve met only one other person with little thumbs.

After years of hating them, I’ve come to accept them. However, recently my stepsister (rudely) mentioned that she’s always found my thumbs creepy and was glad we aren’t related by blood. Apparently, she was horrified at the possibility of her future kids having them. This had never occurred to me! If I do have children, how likely is it that they will have my thumbs? And how many people have these squat little nubbins? Surely I’m not alone!

Toe thumbs!

Toe thumbs!

Lorelei, you’re definitely not alone; Megan Fox has them; these people on Facebook have them; readers, raise your hands proudly if YOU have them too! Indeed, there are enough people with Brachydactyly type D (BDD) that there are several nicknames for the condition, eg ‘club thumb’, ‘Dutch thumb’ (?), ‘potter’s thumb’, ‘hammer thumb’, ‘murderer’s thumb’… OK, the nicknames could be more complimentary, but they’re still nicer than your stepsister.

Geneticists, are Lorelei’s future offspring likely to have murderers’ magic thumbs? Should she be searching for knitting patterns for mittens with short thumbs?

Here’s a little more toe thumb reading matter for you, Lorelei.

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