Glad to tell you that following on from last episode’s toaster problem, another listener writes that they have actually MET some of the toasters, proving that all of you AMT listeners are connected. And have been everywhere and seen everything. Answer Me This! Episode 385 also contains:
Gloria Hunniford
Tetris lamps
the price of lava lamps these days
Shirley Temple’s teeth
stars on flags feat. Roman Mars
Pukka Pies vs Pukka Pads vs Pukka Teas
the etymology of ‘doolally’ and ‘pundit’
oil on raisins
bumhole bleaching
aristocratic cold toast
and
rickrolling as measurement of time.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows – is an extra question from Lindon from Huddersfield about what you’re supposed to do with that cracker in the box that looks like a loaf of bread. Well, what cheese you’re supposed to pair with it. If you want to wear it as a hat or skip it like a stone, that’s up to you. Don’t let the serving suggestion illustrations push you around!
Hear our other work!
• Helen makes The Allusionist, an entertainment show about language, and Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping every episode of Veronica Mars from the beginning. Season two just begun.
• Olly hosts many podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com, including The Week Unwrapped, The Media Podcast and The Modern Mann.
• Martin makes music which you can hear palebirdmusic.com, on the Pale Bird podcast, and on Spotify etc. You can also join him in contemplating the work of every song by Tom Waits Tom Waits in Song By Song.
This episode is sponsored by:
• The Great Courses Plus, the streaming library of courses on topics from yoga to mystery fiction to formal logic to dog training. AMT listeners get a free month at thegreatcoursesplus.com/answer.
• Squarespace. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Buy AMT episodes 1-200, our five special albums, and our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015 at answermethisstore.com.
Jelly in your pipes,
Jelly in your pipes,
Wibbly wobbly wibbly wobbly
Jelly in your pipes!
Seriously, people, don’t pour jelly into your pipes. It will prove a trifle problematic.
Other matters considered in Answer Me This! Episode 348:
the sorting hat spider
the Harry Potter crab
the Michael Crichtonsaurus
The Great British Bake Off/Pottery Throwdown/Jelly-Off
charcoal vs teeth
the Liberty Bell vs Big Ben (WHICH IS A BELL (and you’re a bell if you point this out, matey))
your neighbour vs kangaroos
kangaroos vs breast implants
Caesar salads
passports: i) front cover of; ii) losing at airports
and
a slightly hairy elephant.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – there’s a counter-claim as to the inventor of the Caesar salad, and Olly purloins a posh example of the dish.
Occupy your ears with our other audio projects: Olly hosts The Week Unwrapped and has returned with a new season of The Modern Mann; Helen’s Allusionist has more eponyms for your consumption; and Martin’s Song By Song currently features Helen’s brother Andy Zaltzman and his wife Miranda, making her podcasting debut.
You can also hear all the AMT special albums and episodes 1-200 if you shop at answermethisstore.com. Don’t forget: to receive one retro episode every month in your feed, subscribe to AMT on your podcatcher of choice!
Thanks to our friends at Squarespace.com for sponsoring this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year if you use the discount code ‘answer‘.
Friends! This is your annual reminder to pipe the Answer Me This! Christmas into your home, for festive advice and history and fun facts (and to drown out the sounds of Christmas rows). There’s a bit more seasonal content in AMT328 and 329 – and in this episode of The Allusionist, in which I learn that Christmas cards used to have bacon stuck to the front, and that Santa was almost called Captain Christmas.
Recently I’ve been racing through Woman of the Hour and Another Round, but because I’m currently mired in the immense annual task of compiling the AMT Best Of – out on Christmas Eve! – I haven’t had much time to listen to many other things over the past few weeks, hence the recent absence of Thursday Listening Parties. But please go to the comments to share the shows that have been delighting your eardrums lately.
We’ve received a LOT of questions about Monopoly over the years, so I think many of you will want to hear the 99% Invisible episode about it, the least enjoyable board game ever invented.
What’s in your ears, dears? Recommend shows in the comments.
In AMT323, we learnt about Venetian gondolas, preparing snails for eating, and Olly’s ranking of the various versions of Coca Cola. Go to answermethispodcast.com/episode323 to catch up, slowpoke.
Olly has been gallivanting in Vegas for Guardian Tech Weekly, and I’ve been gallivanting at home to make the latest Allusionist. I’ll wager that it’ll be the only linguistics podcast containing werewolves AND Step Up 4 that you’ll hear. Find it at theallusionist.org/dance. Oh, and Martin the Sound Man’s new podcast, Song By Song, launches this weekend! Put on some clean undies and get ready for a Tom Waits earparty.
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.
Olly has just laid a hot fresh episode of the Guardian’s Tech Weekly, in which he debates the future of your ear-tertainment what with Apple Music and Beats 1 entering the fray. Hear it here, and don’t forget to check back tomorrow for more Mann on The Media Podcast and his LBC show.
Almost certainly less raucous, but still fun and funny, is Radio 4’s News Quiz: I’ll be on it tomorrow night, 6.30pm.
In the new episode of the Allusionist, I reluctantly learn about emoji, and discover a world of misbehaving medieval nuns. Hear it at theallusionist.org/emoji.
Catch up with AMT316 to hear about dirty knickers, banana thrift and the undead Mike Oldfield, and rejoin us next Thursday for AMT317.
What have you been listening to, dear audiophiles? Tell me in the comments!
In the latest episode of The Media Podcast, Olly’s coming from the Edinburgh TV festival – with June Sarpong! Listen here, or here:
This month’s Sound Women podcast is all about SPOOOOOOOORT, which as you know is my favourite topic…
COUGH COUGH COUGH. OK, you know that really one of my favourite topics is My So-Called Life, and since this Monday was the 20th anniversary of the show, hear me banging on about why I love it on this episode of Little Atoms from earlier this year.
Noises from elsewhere:
• Another TV show for which, over the years, you may have noted my fondness is Twin Peaks, so I’m intrigued by this new podcast Fire Talk With Me, contemplating the show episode by episode. Good luck to them when they hit that three-episode arc starring James Hurley in the second half of series two, amirite?
• When I was at SXSW last year I saw the documentary An Unreal Dream: The Michael Morton Story, about a man who was exonerated after serving 25 years in prison for murdering his wife. He was a local man, so many people in the audience had been following his case since the 80s and throughout the film were booing the corrupt lawyers and cheering the good guys. Then at the end, when Michael Morton came out on stage along with the lawywer who spent a decade proving his innocence, the audience went APESHIT with joy – screaming, crying, it was truly amazing to watch. The facts of the case are pretty horrific, though; here is Michael Morton talking about them on Outlook from the BBC World Service.
• At the more cheerful end of the spectrum, here’s a sweet episode of 99% Invisible about Ikea Hacking. I’m fond of an Ikea hack myself – in fact the urge runs in the family. Back in the 80s, my grandad used to do such hacks as turning an Argos flatpack black ash bookcase into a desk (he went through an inexplicable black ash phase; such were the times, I guess). A few years ago, before Ikea Hacker was even born, I was working on a daytime TV show and was asked to pitch ideas for a home improvement segment that they could do easily in the studio. I suggested getting a designer to rejig cheap, easily available flatpacks in a slot called ‘Flatpack Revivified’ or ‘Flatpack Chimera’. It didn’t happen, because OBVIOUSLY NO SLOTS ON DAYTIME TV SHOWS ARE CALLED THINGS LIKE ‘FLATPACK CHIMERA’.
But regarding the act itself, grandad and I were clearly way ahead of our time.
By the way, if you’re a big fan of 99PI host Roman Mars, check him out on 100 Words Or Less talking about creating his podcast empire and being a straight-edger.
• Aaaand finally: Radio 4 is repeating the very charming and funny Susan Calman Is Convicted. Get on board.
Learn to make your own noises:
On 20th September you can learn all you need to start podcasting at the Essentials of Podcasting Guardian Masterclass: hardware, software, editing, production, formatting, publicity, building an audience, making a show that isn’t shit, etc etc from the likes of Bugle producer Chris Skinner, Guardian podcast producer Jason Phipps, software inventor Drew White, and meeee. Book your place here.
Which shows have been delighting you lately? Recommend some in the comments.
Today, one poor tired questioneer asks how to stop being kept awake by their mum’s sex noise. Any advice for them? Apart from cranking up Answer Me This! Episode 291 for forty-three minutes of respite?
We speak of:
hat world records
rodeo clowns
bank robbery
converting to Judaism
baht vs Bitcoin Craig David’s Toffee Crisps vs Busta Rhymes’ Courvoisier
Papal holidays
presidential golf Castel Gandolfo
Chequers
webuyanycar.com
the pronunciation of ‘niche’
shaking like a Polaroid picture
and
$.
Plus: Olly will SEE YOU IN HELL if you use Shazam during the pub quiz music round; Helen has a terrible confession to make about Pitbull; and Martin the Sound Man is panicking about what to talk about if he is ever invited on a lads’ holiday with the Pope. We smell an odd couple sitcom…
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we contemplate the wellbeing of the boys brought together as McBusted, and of Jason Orange’s tearducts. Hear it and not-weep on your iDevices, Android or Windows gadgets.
It only remains for us to thank Squarespace.com for supporting this episode. They’re also supporting your own website-building enterprises by offering you 10% off their services for a whole year if you use the code Answer. Gawd bless’em.
And gawd bless you, listeners! We shall return on Thursday 19th June with AMT292, barring terrifying and unforseeable acts of gawd.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT291 Child-Friendly Rating: 54%. A few F-bombs. A clip about the clap. Question about parent’s sex life, the very notion of which may traumatise your child. •••
What have you been listening to lately, dear reader? Share your recommendations in the comments.
A few more things that recently caught my attention:
Martin and I were on holiday driving around a desert sparsely populated with small towns, and when you’re in a desert sparsely populated with small towns, the most suitable soundtrack is of course Welcome to Night Vale.
Also on the subject of driving around in deserts is this extraordinary story of reclusive billionaires, legal wrangling and Mormons on Love + Radio.
If you’re a fan of the Jimi Hendrix cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’, allow me to direct you to this great account of how the record came about, including a hilarious clip of founding Rolling Stone Brian Jones contributing a piano part, before being relegated to the vibraslap.
Housekeeping:
• Catch up on AMT288 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 consider yourself a philanthropist. • The BBC have decided to make our Radio 4 documentary, Podcasting: The First Ten Years, available indefinitely here to stream. If you simply must download it, go here. •Olly’s on LBC every weekday 1am-4am. If you’re an insomniac, a night worker, or in a time zone where those hours are compatible with waking life, tune in. • On Saturday evenings I’m on BBC 5 Live’s Saturday Edition, available subsequently as the podcast Let’s Talk About Tech. • I also host the monthly Sound Women podcast. • Martin the Sound Man makes numerous other podcasts, including Brain Train, The Global Lab and The Sound of the Ladies.
Requests are welcome at the Thursday Listening Party. No need to dance sexily next to the DJ booth hoping to be noticed, just recommend shows in the comments.
•Roman Mars Kickstarts an extraordinary pile of dosh to fund 99% Invisible (which is worth every penny). •Richard Herring talks about Stephen Fry using his podcast to drop the bombshell about his suicide attempt. •Theresa Thorn of One Bad Mother talks dirty (diapers). •Welcome to Night Vale fans show their devotion by expanding the weird world of the podcast. •Keith and the Girl fans show their devotion through HORRIFIC FLESH WOUNDS. Warning: seriously gross.
Requests are welcome at the Thursday Listening Party. No need to dance sexily next to the DJ booth hoping to be noticed, just recommend shows in the comments.
MESSAGE FROM THE MOTHERSHIP:
If you downloaded AMT285 very soon after it was released, you may have ended up with a version that is rather longer or considerably shorter than the correct AMT285-length of 42 minutes 45 seconds. If so, please delete it and obtain the proper one, as linked to below. Thanks! HZ
In response to AMT284, the first few minutes of Answer Me This! Episode 285 are SO exciting, you should listen RIGHT NOW:
But do carry on listening beyond the first few minutes, to hear about:
‘Torn‘ by Natalie Imbruglia vs ‘Torn‘ by Ednaswap Randy Newman vs Tom Jones
the Recycle Bin vs Trash
rawl plugs vs wall plugs
Lizzy Yarnold
Magic FM
saloon doors
Mini Babybel
‘Hazard‘ by Richard Marx
the face of fistula
and
magnolia paint.
Plus, there’s a manliness contest between Olly and Martin the Sound Man. Which of these opposite-of-Titans is the least masculine? It’s a VERY close contest. Like a boxing match between a wet lettuce leaf and a fluffy sock.
There’s double Crap on the App this week, as Olly chooses chateaubriand over speakeasies (whither the gastrospeakeasy?), then says gardening’s for girls, even though he’s got a grow-your-own Alan Titchmarsh. Fire up the app on your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgetry.
Also fire up Squarespace.com, who have not only given us money to make this episode but are also giving YOU a 10% discount off their services for a whole year if you use the code answer3.
Back in a fortnight!
Helen & Olly
AMT285 Child-Friendly Rating: 52%. The topics aren’t unsuitable, but two f-bombs are detonated in the first ten minutes. Miscellanous other swears appear towards the end, when discussing the vile names Martin the Sound Man gives to computer things. So blame Martin for the defilement of your children if they hear this episode.
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