Jingle those bells, it’s festive Answer Me This episode 392, and, as the episode contains Jesus porn, Christmas parental deceit/logistics, and swears, we’re just going to put this right here:
AMT392 Child-Friendly Rating: 1%.
Today’s inquiries include:
The Elf on the Shelf™
Christmas decorations made out of hospital supplies
the White House turkey pardon
swanky advent calendars
pen advent calendars
dog advent calendars (of and for)
the health impact of glitter
too many photo-based gifts
and
12x Jesus’s foreskin.
For more AMT festive content, there’s our Christmas album, with questions about Kwanzaa, kissing under mistletoe, and Rudolph’s red nose; and on the free feed check out AMT329 for our favourite festive friend the Shitting Log; AMT380 for candy canes, the history of eating turkey at Christmas, and artificial trees being invented in a bog brush factory; Zwarte Piet and other Santa/Father Christmas/St Nick sidekicks turn up in AMT368, and AMT328 whether you ever see pictures of Mary pregnant with Jesus; in AMT357 the fake or real snow in Home Alone 2…there’s a lot! Enough to keep you going till Twelfth Night.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for Apple and Android – we have the Tale of Two Christmas Trees.
Hear our other work:
• Helen makes The Allusionist entertainment show about language – hear the festive episodes here and the swearalong quiz here – and Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping every episode of Veronica Mars from the beginning – season 3 has begun!
• Olly hosts many podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com, including The Week Unwrapped and The Modern Mann – hear the festive episodes here.
• 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 new 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 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‘.
Send us your QUESTIONS, in writing or as voice recordings, to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com for us to answer in 2021! We’ll be back with AMT393 on 7 January, and there’ll be a Retro AMT episode in your feeds on 17 December.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT392 Child-Friendly Rating: 1%. As aforementioned: questions about Jesus porn, and the secret mechanics of festive mythmaking etc. •••
Well Spotify just named AMT one of the top podcasts of the decade, so let’s conclude the 2010s as we began them: by answering your questions! Answer Me This! Episode 380 features a feast of such festive treats as:
In this month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows – we belatedly celebrate Martinmas! Which has more to do with geese and vintners than echoey-voiced Sound Men, but he’ll take it nonetheless.
How about some more AMT festive-related material? In AMT329, we have a Santa truther child, and the Catalan tradition of the Shitting Log; in AMT357 there’s the filming secrets of Home Alone 2, what happened to the three wise men’s gifts, and what the “new old-fashioned way” is that people are dancing in ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’; in AMT364 we talk about how cranberries are farmed; and in AMT368 we learn about Saint Nicholas’s sidekicks, department store Santas, Jesus and Mary’s relationship, and gift snobbery.
And of course, there’s a whole hour of festive AMT funtertainment in the AMT Christmas album, available at answermethisstore.com for a tiny price. Also there are AMTs 1-200; if you’re looking for a place to start, episodes 160 and 200 sit nicely at this time of year.
Martin is releasing four albums of new music this year! Hear them at palebirdmusic.com, on the Pale Bird podcast, and on Spotify etc. You can also join him in contemplating the work of Tom Waits in Song By Song, which has just got to the end of Black Rider.
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
We’ll be back with more AMT in 2020 – the podcast turns 13 (!!) in January, and as our birthday gift we want your QUESTIONS: send them, in writing or as voice recordings, to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Plus: for Olly, giving is better than receiving (when it comes to picture messages); Helen does not belong on wheels; and Martin the Sound Man searches for logic in cartoon characters off adverts, which is really the wrong place to look.
All we want for Christmas are your QUESTIONS, so shove them into our stockings, by which we mean leave a message on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send an email to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Also, forge the bounds of internet friendship at facebook.com/answermethis and twitter.com/HelenAndOlly. Not LinkedIn, NEVER LinkedIn.
Thanks very much to Squarespace.com for supporting this episode, and for giving you 10% off their website-building and -hosting services for a year if you use the code ‘answer’. That’s got to be better than anything you win in a cracker. (Except for the set of tiny screwdrivers or a bottle-opener shaped like an animal; both of these come in surprisingly useful. But, you know, the miniature pack of cards or tiny plastic comb or annoying puzzle made out of metal rings.)
The Best of AMT 2014 will be out next Thursday, 18th December. Return then!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT304 Child-Friendly Rating: 74%. Opens with further discussion of AMT303‘s cheese handjobs, but once the first couple of minutes are over, the rest of the episode’s topics are clean aside from two or three strong swears. •••
Answer Me This! Podcast 