Answer Me This! Podcast

Last week, ovaries were ruffled and coos were unleashed when Archie piped up on the phoneline to become AMT’s youngest ever questioneer. But not even high-pitched infantile cuteness could disguise the fact that he had failed to adhere to correct question-posing form, so young Archie was summarily bitch-slapped back to the sandpit. What sort of impact might such admonition have on a young psyche? Father-of-Archie Dean from Suffolk has filled us in:

I have listened to podcast 99 with pride and heard my little lad Archie’s question being thrown out by Olly! Just thought you might like to know that he took your words on board and tried to “go back from where he came from”. To give the lad his due he was almost up to his knees before the wife noticed. My wife is obviously a little upset at this turn of events and is talking about divorce; however Archie did find my best watch which I thought was lost forever in her lady parts, so a positive outcome after all!

Which got me thinking…Answer me this: why do people like potholing?

Having never committed myself to anything more adventurous than unclogging the drain, I find myself unable to answer that question; but if any of you readers are keen speologists, please comment below to enlighten us about the pleasures of potholing. Everyone else can vote on the following:

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** Click here for EPISODE 96 **

We have some feedback from Episode 96, firstly courtesy of Meg from Carlisle in response to Laurence from York’s question about external news reports:

When I’m not being an Answer Me This! Listener (and sometimes when I am), I am a hot young journo very much like Lois Lane. While I actually work for a newspaper, I often encounter TV reporters when I’m out on the road. So, to answer the fellow with the sweaty-pitted teacher:

1. TV news is a visual format and as such needs to be interesting, or at least varied, to look at. You’d soon notice if it was just some people in a room.
2. TV news needs to be different from its radio/newspaper/internet-based brethren, otherwise what’s the point?
3. Believe it or not, those guys usually aren’t being told what to say. In my experience, TV journalists just turn up on the scene and do what we all do – ask a few questions and try and work out what’s going on. I’ve seen a News 24 girl report to camera completely off the cuff, without any notes, seconds after admitting she had no idea what she was about to say.

A thrilling insight into the fast-paced world of tv news! And now a thrilling insight into the world of programming languages, thanks to James in Cornwall:

This, #!, is a shebang. It is a bit dull really, but it is used in a few programming languages on Unix.

Yup, I think that’s just the answer James from Glasgow was expecting us to give…

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** Click here for EPISODE 93 **

Before tomorrow’s new episode wipes the slate clean, let us tie up some loose ends from Episode 93. Firstly, David in Carlisle:

This week I felt that the derivation of ‘the dog’s bollocks’ was self-explanatory and not explored fully or correctly; it surely refers to the fact that dogs have an intense and continual interest in their own bollocks and if they’re good enough to be licked then they must be something special to be subject to such attention, hence the dog’s bollocks in reference to something really good.

Not a bad extraction, but to be honest the Zaltzman family dog shows a greater interest in mouldy tennis-balls than anything else, and that has yet to enter the vernacular. Onward to something cosmic from Sabrina:

Once I opened a fortune cookie after my meal, and it said “That wasn’t chicken”. Now, I would have simply laughed and joked about it if I had had a meal of anything other than chicken, but lo and behold! I had just had a chicken. The one and only fortune I have ever remembered.

Dangit, those cookies know too much!

Next, some encouragement from Simon from Wimbledon:

This is a response to Olly’s question about whether he would be able to ski. If my 60-year-old geography teacher can, you can.

A good adage for life, methinks. Now finally, a retro bit of feedback from new listener Jude:

A listener from episode 51 asked whether McDonalds milkshakes were made from chicken fat. I have an answer although it’s almost just as disturbing.

Hope that gives you all something to ponder when slurping up that great McDonalds food now and hereafter.

Strangely, that doesn’t even seem surprising.

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** Click here for EPISODE 92 **

Yet more vampire-theorising on the back of Episode 88, this time courtesy of Nick:

I’m probably way late to the party on this, but I thought I might venture an opinion I read as part of my Old Norse studies.

People, observe that although late to the aforementioned party, Nick is already looking like a better intellectual bet than us. Plus, our records show that he has form.

There was a thing in Neurology about a massive outbreak of rabies in eastern Europe coinciding with the first mentions of vampire mythology – obviously, it’s transmitted by being bitten, and it makes the victim sexually and violently aggressive, often attempting to bite and fuck other people too. You also acquire an aversion to bright lights and odours (the sun, mirrors, garlic) as well as becoming hydrophobic (which might explain the holy water thing). Also, it affects the…is it the hypothalamus? The bit that control sleep, anyway; that meant that rabies victims are often up at night.

Fascinating stuff! And it’s evidently high time the EU put some regulations in place forcing vampires to be quarantined for six months before they’re allowed into the UK.

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We had a high old time in Episode 92 wondering why ghosts say ‘whooooo’; now David, mostly in Carlisle has written in with an intriguing theory:

I think the answer might be linked with dead bodies and the noises made by escaping gases and what was thought in days gone by as the spirit/soul leaving the body. I’m sure I have read this in historical accounts, especially in times of plague etc where mass graves were not unknown.

To get police officers over the initial shock of coming into contact with dead bodies they would make sure they had a stint in the morgue on their first day. He told me that many police officers (Quincey title sequence-esque) would faint at their first sight of a dead body/autopsy. On his first day he was asked to carry a body with another officer down a spiral staircase to a basement morgue at his station and, quickly getting over the initial shock of what he had been asked to do, he get on with the job. With his hands underneath the body’s arms they manoeuvred it down the staircase. Meanwhile, knowing what he was doing, my Dad’s sergeant was outside and as a practical joke threw stones at the outside roof of the staircase. The resulting noise surprised my Dad and he dropped the body, the resulting impact making a noise akin to the WOOOOO!! of a ghost. My Dad nearly fainted thinking the dead body was coming back to life, while his fellow officers creased up in laughter. Suffice it to say he never forgot his first day in the force and got over the experience to have a very successful career.

So in essence, the corpse was like a big whoopee-cushion? Good to know one can still pull some jolly pranks even after death.

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** Click here for EPISODE 91 **

Uh oh, we’ve been Found Out! Reena from Gran Canaria but living in Salford clocked that most of the time we know dick-all about diddly, so has kindly stepped in to shed light upon Laurence from York’s question in Episode 90 about ringing ears:

As an Acoustics student, I knew you guys didn’t know the answer for this question. Martin was close, but not enough…

What happens is that the ear changes its threshold of hearing to protect itself, so it needs more energy to arrive to the timpanic membrane in order to hear. When you conditions change the ear needs some time to recover…and sometimes it doesn’t recover at all. The effects are additive and that’s why DJs are deaf when they’re old.

That, and the cumulative effect of playing so-called Dance Anthems for their working lives.

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After our allusion in Episode 90 to an addictive but seemingly pointless Japanese ball-bearing-based arcade game, several of you have been in touch to enlighten us about its mechanics and objectives. Firstly, a simple synopsis from Mike from Coventry:

Buy ball bearings
win ball bearings
weigh ball bearings
get pointless gift based on the weight of won ball bearings
go to pawn shop owned and normally next door to gambling place who exchange pointless gift for money.
It’s all something to do with gambling laws in Japan.

Keza from Nagoya elaborates:

I might be able to go some small way towards explaining the madness, as I’ve been living in Japan for a year or so and am exposed daily to this sort of nonsense. It’s called Pachinko, and it’s massive. They have department-store sized floors of pachinko in even tiny towns, full of Japanese salarymen pouring endless ball-bearings into endless rows of incessant noise-making machines.

Anyway, the reason that you an only win ball-bearings is that gambling for money is illegal in Japan. You can, though, exchange a few thousand ball-bearings for disproportionately small plastic objects and teddy bears in some parlours. The trick is that there is usually a small, distinct shop in close proximity to the pachinko parlour that just happens to buy said items for extremely large sums of money. Aha!

Mostly, though, people genuinely just seem to be playing to earn more ball bearings and be able to play for longer.

We read that pachinko addiction is a growing problem in Japan, although apparently not for Leo from West Sussex:

I recently came back from a week in Japan in February and I went to one of those very places you were just talking about! It’s absolutely insane, there are row upon row of these really boring pachinko machines which are sometimes inanely themed with hideously manga-fied Star Wars characters! After the working hours are finished they are packed with really bored-looking people poking buttons. We had a go at them, and I lost miserably, or at least I think I did, my Japanese is shit.

Pah! It sounds like my grandparents’ home-made bagatelle board, only with added manga. We’d rather stay in with a lovely jigsaw…

*UPDATE*: Kevin in Osaka adds:

There is one minor point that your authoritative source got wrong though – that when you’ve finished your session, you exchange all you accumulated metal balls for cash, or for sweets if you were not so successful. One of my former students at Kyoto University figured out the machines so well that he used to do pachinko instead of a part-time job, and made enough to support himself with a regular Saturday session.

Man cannot live on sweets alone, surely?

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