Richard Herring, the man with more podcasts than all of the other podcasters combined, has recently added another: The Twelve Shows of Herring, as he performs all of his solo shows in sequence over the next few weekends. ‘Someone Likes Yoghurt’ is coming up this weekend; I remember laughing till my face hurt when I saw it in Edinburgh ten years ago.
Also twelve parts, but not much of a laugh, is the recently completed series about Charles Manson’s Hollywood on You Must Remember This. It’s exhaustively researched and pulls together all sorts of links with different cultural players; so, though the gore is unavoidable given the subject matter, it’s a learned take rather than sensationalistic. Hunker down for an audiobook-length task – I raced through four episodes whilst making a complicated birthday cake.
To soothe yourself afterwards, how about a dose of Jarvis Cocker’s Wireless Nights? I’ve had these stacked up for ages and am only just now catching up. But look how soothed I am!
If you’ve not yet heard AMT320, rectify immediately in order to learn about registering your baby, 80s classic Overboard, and sensible dominatrix-relationship management. Peeking over the hill, ready to leap into your ears by the end of this week: new episodes of Guardian Tech Weekly, and The Allusionist. Martin is covering Ben Folds on the new Sound of the Ladies Podcast; and on the latest episode of Passion Pods, I’m discussing my feckless mess of a career. If any of you are having a bad A Level Results Day, perhaps this will be comfort that, a whole other lifetime hence, it won’t matter a jot.
What’s in your ears, dears?
Recommend shows in the comments.
Plus: Olly remembers his dad’s Martian business plan*, that is still up for grabs if any of you want to do it; Helen has ‘Baby On Board!’ windscreen signs in the crosshairs; and Martin the Sound Man’s parents named him Martin hoping he’d take after one of the nice Martins, rather than Amis or Scorsese.
*If you do decide to give this a whirl – or you have a less doomed idea for a business – build the website using today’s sponsor Squarespace.com. Tinker around during the free two-week trial, then you can have 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘ANSWER‘. You get a URL and loads of storage thrown in. AND Squarespace manages to make your site look nice on desktop, mobile and tablet, which is far more than most site hosts do (ahem ahem this one).
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices) is a question from Kate about those metal bars that run around the bottom of bars. Bonus appearance from the town that plays Northern Exposure.
We’ll return on 20th August 2015 with AMT321. Be there. Or our hearts will yearn for you.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT320 Child-Friendly Rating: 34%. It opens with feedback regarding AMT319‘s dominatrix question, which, though heartwarming, may be riper than you feel your children should cope with. Some swears thereafter, but we suspect you’ll already have saved this for post-watershed listening. •••
PS Feast your eyes on LEAVENWORTH! The happiest place on earth (or at the very least, Washington State).
Let there be light upon this question from Lizzie from London:
Regarding the glitter discussion in AMT319, Sarah from Chicago writes:
Helen compared it to a virus at one point, and in the theatre world (my profession) we have to deal with it a lot. So much that when you happen to find glitter all over everything, with no idea where it came from (costume, makeup, set, etc), it’s known as Glerpes. Glitter+herpes.
And now you know the name of the affliction your questioneer has.
Let there be light upon this question from Lizzie from London:
I just got home and went into our bedroom to find my boyfriend sitting in the dark. I opened the blinds. He wasn’t sleeping, ill, watching a film or being Buffalo Bill (thankfully).
He claimed I was imposing my ideas on him. I said it was a universal truth that light is good in this world. We share the room and I was going to be in and out of it.
Help! (me win the argument)
Martin the Sound Man suggests that you illuminate the room for your own use, and make your boyfriend wear a blindfold. I suggest you VOTE:
Go to the comments because I really want to read your answers to this question from Johan:
I work at the Swedish equivalent to UK’s Royal Mail. As a terminal worker at one of the biggest post terminals in the country my job is really boring and sometimes stressful. I sort packages big and small and unload lorries filled to the brim with packages, but it is allowed to have headphones at work and your podcast keeps me from dying of boredom.
So answer me this: what is the most boring job you have had?
That is a GOOD question, Johan. Now, as a freelancer with a very messy career path, I’ve had a LOT of jobs – so many that I can only remember about 30% of them. Which is probably for the best.
I’ve had jobs that plunged me into greater despair and discomfort, but for pure brain-chewing boringness, I nominate the job I once had compiling the index for a book about the Queen’s stamp collection. It was not only dullllllllll, but fiendish – I had to make sure there were different entries for, say, King George V the person and King George V the stamp, subdivided by country…Oh god, sorry; merely typing that sentence reopened the vortex of tedium, and this time YOU’RE ALL COMING DOWN WITH ME.
John from Cambridge writes with a double dad dilemma:
My boyfriend and I are at the stage in our (same-sex) relationship where we can discuss adopting children to raise and provide a loving family for.
However, I find it hard in my own head to think of names that we can call ourselves to our children – using our first names seems both too relaxed and too formal at the same time, but the idea of having both of us called ‘Dad’ is a logistical nightmare when our kids want to get the attention of only one of us. Having one of us called ‘father’ and the other as ‘dad’ seems odd too.
So answer me this: what names can we call ourselves to our kids that allow us both to call ourselves ‘dad’ whilst differentiating ourselves from each other?
Readers, have you found a neat solution to this in your own lives? Summon up your helpfulness and go to the comments to assist John.
Catch Olly on the Guardian’s Tech Weekly and LBC. Martin has a new episode of The Global Lab about knowing what rhinos look like before you could watch a David Attenborough documentary about rhinos. And in the new Allusionist, I find out about why stepmothers are so evil, with the assistance of Aaron Mahnke from Lore (a podcast which will be right up many of your streets, I’ll wager).
Catch up on AMT319, in which questioneers have problems with mustard, flags and a dominatrix.
Plus: Olly is obedient to nobody and nothing, except cookbooks; getting-out-of-doing-the-housework schemes suck Helen right into a sub-dom situation; and we can all hope to see the return of the Martin the Sound Man On Ice show.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices) renowned theatre- and Disney-adorer Olly rejects Disney on Ice for not being theatrical enough; but we may come up with an ice show that does satisfy him.
••• AMT319 Child-Friendly Rating: 28%. Some swears.
Martin refers to Marilyn Manson, whose very name corrupts the youth. If you switch it off half an hour in, you will spare your innocent children the final question about a relationship with a dominatrix, which entails discussion of BDSM, sex and Adult Situations. •••
Costume designer Anie’s proof of Ice Cinderella’s dress colour.
My daughter’s school picked some of the students to sit the Mensa IQ test. The first we heard of this was when she received a letter saying she has a score of 159 and in the top 1% and she’s welcome to join. My daughter, who’s thirteen, is privately very pleased with herself but has no desire to tell anyone, likewise the wife and I have told no one apart from you right now in this email.
She enjoys school, is doing very well and has her path to university set in her sights and beyond. Now the three of us think it’s probably best to keep things low key and it’s just one tiny string to the bow, but answer me this: is there any time the Mensa bomb should be dropped eg gaining a place in 6th form or university? We suspect it could be a negative in the job market in future.
None of us have ever been Mensa members, so I defer to you readers:
i. When can you get the most mileage out of Mensa membership? I’m assuming when picking up people on Tinder.
ii. If you are a member, have you experienced negative side-effects? Eg the Sun describing you as a ‘boffin’ in an article about you?
iii. If you are an employer, would you think, “Ooh, a Mensa member? Top drawer!” or would you point and laugh at the boffin?
Let’s tidy away all our AMT318 business before AMT319 emerges tomorrow. Upon the matter of the origins of ‘Bluetooth’, Erik writes:
I just wanted to point out that the Blue in Harald Blåtand is nothing at all to do with blueberries. In the ancient Nordic dialects of the Germanic language there was no specific word for ‘black’, and in fact all dark colours were referred to as ‘blue’. King Harald had a black tooth which was presumably dead. I leave to you to guess what his breath was like.
While we’re imagining smells, let’s hear from Lisa:
So… Juliet’s balcony… I can in fact tell you something rather interesting. I went to Stratford-upon-Avon Grammar School for Girls (yes, as in Stratford-upon-Avon, the very home of William Shakespeare) and our school was located in a very very old manor house.
In this very very old manor house, the dear bard himself was betrothed in the chapel (which was my Geography room). Even better? ‘The balcony on the outside of the manor is the very balcony that inspired Shakespeare to write the famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juilet.’ Google that shizz if you don’t believe me.
But trust me, this is not as cool as it sounds. Our school grounds were always invaded by Japanese and American tourists who wanted to visit.
That still sounds cooler than my school, but sluicing time on the bowel ward sounds cooler than my school.
We love to hear how our questioneers have fared in the wake of our counsel. Here’s a brace of emails from questioneers of episodes long past, some happy, some sad. Let’s start happy, with Eleanor from the Isle of Man from AMT305:
You kindly answered my question in January as to whether I should steal my dad’s dough scraper that he clearly had no intention of using. So imagine my excitement this morning when opening my birthday presents from my husband and children to discover they got me not only a dough scraper, but also an Answer Me This apron! Problem solved!
Aaah! Feast your eyes on that birthday joy, then bathe in the sorrow of AMT247‘s Emily:
A few years ago I messaged you about being caught by my boyfriend as I was smoking in the bath and how I tried to play it off as in fact me masturbating.
So, the development is that after 3 years together he has left me, as in ‘stood in the doorway with his bags packed when I got home from work’ left me. I didn’t see it coming and this is really shit.
My question is this: how, when you chose the city you inhabit, the flat you live in, the pets you have and the routine that fills your life for your partner, can you stop being constantly reminded of them once they have left you? Note: I now have a grad scheme job, friends here and am tied into a rental contract (foolishly just in my name) so can’t move away.
Comiserations, Emily. But at least now you can do whatever you want in the bath, without stoking his insecurities.
Readers, have you any ideas for Emily to reboot her life? Rearrange the furniture, take a different route into work, hang out with friends in places you haven’t been before? Not sure what you can do about the pets, but perhaps you could teach them to bark in a different key or swim around the little plastic castle in the opposite direction.
Here’s a conundrum from an anonymous man upon which, readers, I’d appreciate your input in the comments. He writes:
I went on holiday to Amsterdam last year with my now ex. I am now in a new relationship, and have booked a holiday to Amsterdam. So far it’s okay, my current girlfriend has no issues returning to the city for a ‘romantic city break’ despite knowing that the last time I went was with significant ex and (it did take me a long while to get over it blah blah).
However, Helen and Olly, answer me this: should I tell my new girlfriend that the hotel we’ve booked is the same as the one I went to with my ex?
I want to be honest, but at the same time I don’t want it to seem I am just reliving the past etc etc…
For the record, the reason for booking the same hotel is its good location, good price, good mix of guests and they do a really good breakfast…
Mm-hmm, and I’m sure it’s the ONLY hotel in Amsterdam capable of supplying those things.
You say ‘I don’t want it to seem I am just reliving the past’, so WHY ARE YOU RELIVING THE PAST? Or at the very least, rewriting it with a different woman playing the part of ‘girlfriend in Amsterdam’? There are plenty of romantic cities you could visit that you had not been to within the last year with somebody else. But you chose this one. The real question is “Why?” but I suspect you are unwilling to know that answer.
Alright, fine: your question was whether to tell your girlfriend. I don’t think you’ll need to. When she sees you trying to hug the hotel room wall and blubbering about how much you’ve missed it, she’ll probably figure it out.
Answer Me This! Podcast 