Answer Me This Episode 397 is an unofficial animals special! We’ve got:
meerkats
dog mayors
goat mayors
crawfish presidential candidates
and
albatrosses around your neck
And also:
coffee berries
hot-but-not-boiling water
caffeine twitches
playing presidents
your friends mocking you for being a penny-pincher
and
Mary Shelley having sex on her mother’s grave.
And if one probably-useless coffee gadget wasn’t enough, you can get your fill of a second, in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for Apple and Android.
Hear our other work:
• Olly hosts several podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com. Subscribe to his all new daily show The Retrospectors!
• Helen makes The Allusionist, an entertainment show about language, and Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping every episode of Veronica Mars from the beginning – now digging into season 4.
• Martin makes music – including a new EP – 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, and he produced and composed the kids’ science podcast Maddie’s Sound Explorers, hosted by Maddie Moate.
This episode is sponsored by:
• The Great Courses Plus, the streaming library of courses on topics from piano-playing to yoga to ancient history to dog training. AMT listeners get a free fortnight 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 six special albums including AMT Holiday for your summer staycation, and our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015 at answermethisstore.com.
Ever worried that if you donate blood, someone might have it transfused into their body then incriminate you in their crime? No, us neither, but one questioneer is concerned. Hear his fear in Answer Me This! Episode 343, as well as:
Plus: Olly concocts a brilliant/ridiculous Jonathan Creek plot;
Helen misses working as a barmaidbartender, even if she was effectively a parody of the role; and Martin the Sound Man would like you to bring him flowers, please.
The Mann family firearm features in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App. Get the app for your iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices.
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‘.
Happy new year to you, listeners, and here’s your first dose of AMT for 2016. In Answer Me This! Episode 330, we ponder upon:
All Saints – not the band, the shop
Della Duck
Air Force One
boxing belts
remembering people’s names
Tom Cribb vs Tom Molyneux vs George Foreman Grills
Carson vs Alfred vs Jeeves
the psychology of Hampton Court
presidential decoys
and
Jacuzzi bubbles.
Plus: Olly dreams of being like Kathy Bates (in About Schmidt, not in Misery); in the Battle of the Butlers, Jeeves is Helen’s man – even if he’s a ‘gentleman’s gentleman’ rather than a butler; and Martin the Sound Man makes a new friend in the jacuzzi.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iThings, Android and Windows devices – we consider a sporting event that appeals to fans of both board games and blood sports: chessboxing.
Thanks very much to today’s sponsor Squarespace.com, who’ll give you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you invoke the code ANSWER. And if you do so, you’re showing Squarespace that they should continue supporting this show, so we all win. Unlike chessboxing, which we’d probably all lose.
SCHEDULING ANNOUNCEMENT: Olly’s baby is due out imminently. AMT331 will land on 28th January 2015, and after that, we’ll be taking three months off for paternity leave. We’ll let you know any news about the Mannbaby as soon as it/he arrives!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT330 Child-Friendly Rating: 85%. Maybe a couple of swears? Low on bawdy content. Overall: pretty respectable. •••
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. •••
Supplementary learning now thanks to Lee from Cambridge (the one in the US):
I just finished listening to your latest episode 274, in which you discuss the strangeness of the US chain of command.
First, a definition: the President Pro Tempore of the Senate is the leader of the party in power in the Senate (currently Patrick Leahy). He runs the Senate when the President of the Senate isn’t around to do so. Who is the President of the Senate? Why, it’s the Vice President of the US, since there has to be something for Biden to do other than waiting for Obama to die.
Secondly, it’s totally charming that you think we have something approaching a functional parliamentary system! Bless! You cannot call a special presidential election in the US, it states in the Constitution that the presidential elections occur every four years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Presidents are also now constitutionally barred from serving for more than two terms, so George W. Bush couldn’t have hung on for a while; it would (most likely) have gone down the normal chain of succession into the new House and Senate.
Thanks Lee. Previously we got all our information about the order of spare presidents from the Kevin Kline film Dave. In fact we get all our information about everything from Kevin Kline films*. Between In and Out, Sophie’s Choice, The Ice Storm and A Fish Called Wanda, most matters of import are taken care of.
*A few dozen of which are available on LoveFilm, for which you can have a free month-long trial via answermethispodcast.com/lovefilm. We get free money if you do so; you get to glut yourself on Kevin Kline masterpieces. And Kevin Kline gets…to be Kevin Kline. So everyone’s happy.
Why even bother listening to Answer Me This! Episode 274 when you can book PAT SHARP AND THE TWINS to come and do Fun House with you????
Once the disappointment has faded that they don’t actually bring the house with them, they just conjure it in words, then you might as well hear today’s episode:
In which we discuss:
Leonard Cohen’s party anthems
parliamentary mutterings
winking
Anne Robinson vs Doris Day
Bourbon biscuits vs Bourbon boozes Breaking Bad vs Streetmate
Bud Lite Platinum vs Old Speckled Hen Platinum Scandal
Justin Timberlake’s part-time jobs
spare American presidents
and six degradations of Kevin Bacon.
Plus: Olly is NOT a winker, whatever you’ve heard; Helen will waive all usual constitutional structure for Michelle Obama; and Martin the Sound Man is happier than you’ve ever heard him. Possibly happier than he’s ever been. Including his wedding day.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices, Android and Windows) Olly worries about being out-butched by a baby. Accept what you cannot change, Olly.
You can change AMT by sending in your QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And you could also change the education of young people by helping Martin raise funds for the charity Arts Emergency: they’ll receive all proceeds of his concept album with Mark Burrows, Kill It With Fire.
You can also give us a bit of money without actually giving us your own money: just take our free LoveFilm trial. With it, you can stream The Perks of Being a Wallflower (as well as thousands of other films and televisuals) then tell us whether you concur with our opinion voiced in AMT233.
Even if you can’t be arsed to do any of those fairly low-stress things, please join us again next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT274 Child-Friendly Rating: 95%. Bit of mid-level swearing right off the mark, but otherwise an episode largely free of ribaldry and profanity. Child-appropriate topics including Fun House, biscuits and Doris Day. The kids are fairly likely to zone out during the politics stuff.
Good morning, you lazy bastards! One listener called Martin has been up and at ’em since earlytimes, because before this post even went up, he tweeted us with a solution to one of the problems discussed in Answer Me This! Episode 267: Josh, who is trying to watch racy HBO shows on his iPad at the gym without feeling ashamed, needs to get one of these. Wallop! Problem solved.* And what have you done lately, eh?
Don’t worry, you don’t really need to do very much at all, except listen to the episode, of course:
We also consider:
spiders Victor David Brenner
SculptureShop
Thomas Jefferson vs. Mariah Carey
Olly’s dad vs. DVDs
corrupt bakers
Theresa May: monarchical midwife À la recherche du temps perdu
madeleines
Farter’s Day
the definition of virginity
and
Richard Nixon.
Plus, each of us is ready for combat this week: Olly provokes a rematch of the Battle of Agincourt, but this time over French cakes versus English cakes; Helen wages war against cliché; and Martin the Sound Man takes a shoot-to-kill policy on spiders and whelks.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, learn how to decorate your home in the Olly Mann style: with squashed moths. Or, if you prefer slightly less morbid things on your walls, you could get the AMT clock that he mentions in the show. That’s right: Olly Mann’s clockface is his own face. We’re still working on turning Helen’s face into a sundial.
While we do that, you should work on sending us your QUESTIONS. It’s easy: leave voicemails on the Question Line (call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis) and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Bam. Job done.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT267 Child-Friendly Rating: 50%. Just a couple of swears. Question about sex scenes in HBO shows. Graphic mental image of Jack Straw staring up a royal birth canal. Question about virginity at the end of the show with, naturally, references to sexual practices, albeit thoughtful rather than lairy in tone.
RT @HelenAndOlly: 🎵I gotta question
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