Phone a friend, email a friend/podcast; Tony in New York writes:
I listened with great interest to the segment from AMT322 about the use of Google on Phone-A-Friend for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and I realized I may be able to shed a bit of light on how things are done on the show now in the States.
You are correct that they don’t have phone-a-friend anymore, because it’s become far too easy to search the answers on the fly, but the other lifeline games you mentioned (Ask the Expert and the others) were, at best, one-off games in previous seasons.
I was on last season as a lifeline, and this season as a contestant (my episode airs in two weeks, so I’m still sworn to secrecy as to how I did), but the lifelines have been as follows:
Last season, there were four lifelines:
• Jump The Question, which allows you to move to the next question up the ladder without receiving the money associated with it;
• 50/50, which removes two of the four possible answers;
• Ask The Audience;
• and your “Plus-One” Lifeline, who had to be with you in the studio. This Plus-One comes in with the contestant in the morning, at which point everyone’s phones are immediately taken away upon entering the building. There’s no more phoning out, there’s no connection to the outside world during taping, and they mic the lifeline’s chair heavily, to discourage coughing-clues or other shenanigans.
This year, they’ve dropped the Jump The Question, leaving contestants with just 50/50, Ask The Audience, and Plus-One. This sucks. On the upside, though, they’ve stopped scrambling the relative difficulties of the questions, and are now laying the questions out in steadily increasing levels of difficulty.
Hope this helps.
It helps US, Tony, but did it help YOU? Once your episode has aired, please write back with the full inside scoop.
There are still a few days left to hear the live-true-stories-hosted-by-me BBC Radio 4 show Truth Be Told. There are muggers! Flippers! Bladders! That’s human life for you, eh?
Right now my human life is tediously mired in podcast-tech fuckuppery, so I’m listening to Reply All goofing off as a temporary escape. What are you listening to?
The other day I met the founder of the Frekvens podcast network, which sounded like pretty cool collective. If you speak Norwegian, Swedish or Danish, check out their shows at radiofrekvens.com. Then translate them into English for me, thanks.
I also had chatted at length on Podcast Junkies, with Martin the Sound Man farting around in the background. A bit too literally for my liking, TBH.
Heard AMT322 yet? NO? Why are you depriving yourself of missing baristas, hair transplants and Desperate Dan?
PS The Guardian just posted an interview with me about AMT and the Allusionist, which you can read here.
MISSING PERSON ALERT! If you are the elusive J formerly of Portland – or you know him (identifying features: tattooed; can make coffee; listens to AMT) – please, listen to Answer Me This! Episode 322 to hear a J-aimed plea, as well as:
selfie stick casualties
Morris merch
Desperate Dan
Aussie Man and Van vs A Nice Man With a Van
Disney Parks vs American National Parks
spa breaks
fear of holidays
phone a friend PopMaster
stag do fun
and
hair transplants.
Plus: if Olly’s head is looking a bit red, that’s just his hair deciding to grow back; Helen will need an activity break to recover from the stress of a spa relaxation break; and Martin the Sound Man recommends a nice relaxing tour of the castles of Wales.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iThings, Android and Windows devices – Olly rejects the original Dennis the Menace for a foreign imposter.
Do not make the mistake of rejecting today’s sponsor Squarespace.com. Use the code ANSWER to get 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year, which include a URL, loads of storage and 24/7 support. Nowt wrong with that.
We’ve had a fancy email from fancy fancy listener Toon:
In AMT319 you assumed none of your listeners were patrons at the Ritz. Well, I have stayed at the London Ritz as a kid. I have a rich uncle who took us out for a weekend in London, and booked a few rooms in the Ritz like other people book a B&B.
I must say the experience was rather underwhelming (to my child self, at least), and I was frankly embarrassed by the grovelling and somewhat 19th-century attitudes of the staff.
On the other hand, grovelling and 19th-century attitudes are what most Ritz patrons are paying for.
AMT321‘s discussion of networking has spurred Jab to write:
With regards to business cards.
After an event or meeting and back home (or hotel), simply put all the cards on a table close together and take a single photo with your phone.
I have a folder called ‘MEETINGS’ where they all go.
The benefits of this are that the people you met in the one place stay in the same photo and the date of the pic tells you when you met them. Plus you can bin the cards straight away.
Before I did this (which seems obvious now) I had a bunch of cards with little or no idea what circumstance or when I met the person. Like Olly’s 200+.
This does seem to be a sensible system, but it does remove all the fun of staying in on a Friday night to alphabeticise your business cards.
Feel free to go to the comments to share your own business card management system; I’d hate to deny you that pleasure.
Frozen mojitos are good but frozen margaritas are better.
Also, Desperados don’t have any tequila in, it’s just beer with squash in it (not knocking it, I love them).
Also, interestingly, slammers are not what you – or anyone – think they are. Tequila slammers are just tequila and 7 Up. What you’re talking about are just plain old tequila shots.
God, I never knew I held so much tequila pedantry.
Readers, if any of YOU are holding tequila pedantry, now’s the time to let it flow. Go on. We can all do some shots to take the edge off.
In the early days of AMT (episode 16!) a listener called Benjamin Partridge posed the question, “Is Bremen in Germany a weird place to want to go on holiday?” He found out the answer for himself in episode 20. In the intervening years, I’ve met Bremenjamin Partridge in real life, and now I learn he has started a funny new podcast, The Beef and Dairy Network, which will be your kind of thing if you enjoy Down the Line or Chris Morris’s early-career gadding about. Or beef and dairy.
True crime time: there’s a new podcast, Detective, in which a retired lieutenant recounts stories from his 23 years in the Homicide Division. Give it a whirl if you like hearing about police procedure and don’t mind some gore.
I’ve been enjoying Late Night Woman’s Hour, hosted by Lauren Laverne, and thought the episode discussing masculinity was particularly interesting, even if I did want to shout “Shut up!” at the radio whenever one of the speakers was talking. I’ll leave you to guess which one. (Not super-podcaster Richard Herring.)
Do you like The Moth or Mortified or Spark London or other shows where people get on stage and tell stories from their lives? I just hosted a pilot of one such show, Truth Be Told, and if you like it, do tweet and email BBC Radio 4 demanding a full series.
Tomorrow, there’ll be a new episodes of: i) The Media Podcast featuring Olly up at the Edinburgh Festival; ii) The Allusionist, featuring me sliding off my chair after staring at an edit screen for 16-hour days on end. Meanwhile, catch up on the most recent episode about word games (and Jenga!) at theallusionist.org/word-play.
Which is more agonising: having to help your parents with their computer, or being faced with your parents’ sex lives? Answer: BOTH AT ONCE, as suffered by a questioneer in AMT321. Hear their pain, and join us for a fresh dose of other people’s pain next Thursday.
What’s in your ears, dears?
Recommend shows in the comments.
Answer Me This! Episode 321‘s questioneers are concerned about networking, Taylor Swift’s ‘Bad Blood‘, and what they’ve found on their parents’ hard drives, as well as:
Mars 2112
confirmation names
butchers’ curtains
business cards
hiding XXX photos
the perils of Windows 10
the Mann school of networking vs the Zaltzman school of networking the ‘Bad Blood’ galaxy of stars
flies
Picabo Street
Andre Rieu
Polari
and
adult colouring books.
Plus: Olly needs to spend more private time with the Victoria’s Secret catalogue; rather than giving Helen your business card, just put it straight into the recycling bin; and Martin the Sound Man wants you to preserve your parents’ sexual memories, and does NOT want any froyo.
There’s additional Bad Blood Chat in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App. When Olly went for an MRI recently, did he wear a white rubber bikini like Taylor Swift does in the video? To find out, fire up the app on your iThings, Android and Windows devices.
If, like Martin, you’re about to build a new website, do it using Squarespace.com, who sponsor today’s episode. Use the code ANSWER to get 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year, which include a URL, loads of storage and 24/7 support.
We’ll return on 3rd September 2015 with AMT322. Until then, colour within the lines.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT321 Child-Friendly Rating: 47%. A couple of strong swears, and we don’t know which will be more appalling to your children: the conversation about parents’ saucy photos, or the conversation about networking. •••
Of course! Why not use your child to represent your own gripes? They’re only a HUMAN BEING, after all.
(By the way, were any of you given names because your parents were trying to make a political or sociological or some other kind of point? And how did that work out for you?)
Also, several of you wrote in to tell us what happens when you let children choose their own names: you get surgeons named Loki Skylizard. Apparently he was aged eight or nine when he opted for this, and kudos to him for sticking with it when it is perhaps not a name in which most people undergoing heart surgery will feel particularly confident.
However my mother prefers blancmange and my father Angel Delight, so answer me this: which is the superior pudding?
Firstly: you are from a family of pudding retronauts.
Secondly: I discovered that blancmange used to be made with poultry or fish, which sounds even more disgusting than butterscotch-flavoured Angel Delight (which made me puke four times at my friend Olivia McLearon’s house in 1990).
Thirdly: this can only be settled democratically, so please VOTE:
RegardingAMT320‘s discussion about naming babies, Jeremiah writes:
You made a comment referencing the character Six in the beloved 80’s sitcom Blossom, in the context of a discussion of names and their derivation. I happen to remember watching an episode of Blossom in which the origins of the name Six were explained. Blossom and Six are having an intimate conversation in which Blossom asks Six how she got her name. Six replies without missing a beat, “That was how many beers it took my dad to think of it.” Cue laugh-track.
According to Wikipedia, “A later explanation is that she was the sixth child in her family”. But apparently the behind-the-scenes truth is “One of the show’s writers came up with the name ‘Six’ because he knew a girl in school called ‘Seven’.”
Whatever it is, perhaps Susan from Riverside, California will feel some relief about her own situation:
In episode 320, you talk about babies who aren’t named right away. I am one of those babies.
I was born on Easter Sunday in 1962. I made my parents leave Mass early. I always thought I was a special girl, but it wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s when I found out the truth: my parents didn’t know what to call me!
When my mom told me this, she was laughing about it the whole time. She started talking about the hospital I was born in and then she said, “You know they called and asked me, are you ever going to name that child?”
She was still laughing, but she sounded kind of pissed that they would bother her about it. I got the sense that she felt she’d name her kid when she was good and ready to name her kid.
I asked her about it after I heard your podcast. She “thinks” the hospital called when I was about 3 weeks old. But when she said, “We knew your middle name was going to be Alexa” my heart just sank. My middle name is Alexia. She couldn’t get it right, so I don’t trust her on the whole 3 weeks scenario.
I was afraid to ask her if she actually knew my name! I have always wondered what they called me during the alleged 3 weeks that I was __________ Alexa, Alexis (whatever).
The real pisser is that I have an older sister who had a name, no problem, so it isn’t like my parents didn’t know what to do!
But it all turned out alright, didn’t it, Susan?
We also heard from Nick Barker, who gave his son the middle name ‘Chu’. Chu Barker. Say it to yourself. Faster. Chu Barker. Says Nick: “I figure, as it is his middle name, he can choose whether to use it or not. At the moment he likes it.”
Join Leigh in Melbourne, Australia for a journey through TIME and SPACE:
Your discussion in AMT320 about Martian-themed restaurants reminded me of a delightfully ghastly theme restaurant in a touristy region of Sydney earlier this decade. Depending on your perspective, the now sadly-closed Xerts Restaurant was either a tribute to all things Martian or a dissection of crimes against interior design.
Once you’d wandered into the restaurant, you were ushered into a “spaceship” (better described as a clunky lift) which beamed you up into the restaurant, where you were met with space pod tables and Martian-themed food. Don’t recall there being too much red food dye in the ingredients but it was definitely all very weird. I recall one particular highlight being a touchscreen ordering system at each table, which was inevitably smeared with greasy handprints from the kids who’d sat there just before you.
The Sydney Xerts venue is no longer with us and was subsequently converted into another alien experience: a Hooters restaurant.
‘Boobs’ does seem to be a theme that has, er, legs.
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