Posts Tagged ‘Christmas gifts’
December 3, 2020





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.
Hang out with us online at twitter.com/HelenAndOlly and facebook.com/answermethis, send us pictures of elves on your shelves and your advent calendars.
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 six special albums including the all new Home Entertainment or the AMT Christmas, and our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015 at answermethisstore.com.
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. •••


Tags:advent calendars, books, Carol Aebersold, catnip, cats, Chanda Bell, cheese, children's books, Christ, Christmas, Christmas decorations, Christmas films, Christmas gifts, Christmas presents, crap presents, customs, decorations, dogs, Elf on the Shelf, elves, Emperor Charlemagne, environment, family, festive, foreskins, George Bush, glitter, health, holy relics, hospital, internet prawnography, Jesus, JFK, John F Kennedy, Like a Prayer, luxury goods, Madonna, medical supplies, microplastics, p0rn, parenting, parents, photos, plastics, Pornhub, POTUS, PPE, prawn, presents, presidents, Ronald Reagan, siblings, surveillance, Thanksgiving, traditions, traditions that are not at all old, treats, turkey pardons, turkeys, unwanted gifts, wards, waste, White House, Xmas
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December 5, 2019





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:
candy canes
boarding school pranks
turkey trends
Christmas Day in London
artificial Christmas trees vs toilet brushes
Thanksgiving dinner vs Christmas dinner
Pirates of the Caribbean vs squid
getting drunk on brandy sauce
the Snow Buddies puppy tragedy
Mister Ed’s mouth
podcaster baubles
the Serpentine Christmas Day swimming race
fake wine
and
the SPAM Museum.
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.
Hear our other work!
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.
Be our interfriend at twitter.com/HelenAndOlly and facebook.com/answermethis.
We’ll be back with AMT381 on 9 January 2020, and there’ll be a Retro AMT episode in your feeds on 18 December.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT380 Child-Friendly Rating: 78%. Some Santa Truth business. Discussion of puppy death. Couple of swears.
•••

Tags:advent calendars, Airbud, alcohol, American Humane Association, animal actors, animal cruelty, animals, animals in film, armed forces, artificial Christmas trees, Babe, belief, Ben-Hur, BFPO, Bob McCormack, Body Worlds, booze, brandy, brandy butter, brandy sauce, bullshit, candy, candy canes, CGI, children, chipmunks, Christmas, Christmas films, Christmas food, Christmas gifts, Christmas movies, Christmas trees, credulity, cruelty, dogs, drink, drunkenness, dry ice, Edward VII, Evergreen, factories, Failure to Launch, families, family, Father Christmas, Father Gregory Keller, festive, festivities, films, flavor, flavourings, food, gag gifts, gifts, handmade, Henry VIII, homemade, homemade gifts, inebriation, inventions, japes, Jesus, jokes, Keller machine, kids, kings, Leave Right Now, London, London 2012, mail, Martinmas, Matthew Perry, merchant navy, mint, Mister Ed, monarchs, movies, Mr Ed, offspring, parks, peppermint, Pirates of the Caribbean, post, poultry, pranks, presemts, puppies, religious symbolism, rock, royal assent, sailors, Santa, Santa Buddies, Santa Claus, Santa spoilers, Serpentine, SFX, ships, Snow Buddies, solitude, special effects, squid, sugar, sweets, symbolism, talking animals, talking dogs, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner, the administrative process of Christmas, toilet brush factory, toilet brushes, turkey, umble pie, VFX, widowhood, Will Young, Winterval, Xmas
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December 10, 2015


In Answer Me This! Episode 329, one questioneer wrestles with the ethics of breeding Christmas-truther children who ruin everything for the other kiddos; another introduces us to the Catalan Christmas tradition we now desperately need to appropriate. Listen to find out about those, and also these:
free coffee
safety curtains
Caffe Nero loyalty
the internet on disc
caganer
dehumanising apps
phosphor burning
Elf: The Musical
festive NORAD
and
the shitting uncle.
Plus: Olly rode the carousel we all dream of riding; at primary school, Helen reined in her Junior Richard Dawkins; and Martin the Sound Man manages to ruin Oral-B for everyone, thanks Martin.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, the talk of free coffee fraud turns to a far graver offence: Toys R Us fraud. To hear, fire up the app on your iThings, Android and Windows devices.
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.
Thanks also to everyone who has supported the show by buying the Answer Me This! Christmas album. If you haven’t yet, this is really the time of year to do so. April, not so much. It’s available at answermethisstore.com, as well as some of the online retail behemoths – links and further details of the contents are available at answermethispodcast.com/christmas.
We are now collecting your questions for AMT in 2016! Leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – and send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Befriend us online at facebook.com/answermethis and twitter.com/HelenAndOlly.
We’ll return with the Best of AMT 2015 on 24th December 2015.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT329 Child-Friendly Rating: 5%. Some swears; some bawdy references; and the greatest peril of all: THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS OF CHRISTMAS GIFTS IF YOU KNOW WHAT WE MEAN AND WE THINK YOU DO. So, beware! Also, Olly encourages your children to break the airport rules, which will probably get them tasered. •••
Tags:African fabric, air travel, airports, apps, Babar, baggage, baggage carousel, baggage handling, baristas, belief, bodily functions, brand loyalty, cafes, Caffe Nero, caga tio, caganer, Catalan, Catalonia, Catalunya, chain coffee shops, childhood, China, Christmas, Christmas gifts, Christmas traditions, coffee, coffee shops, computation, computers, conveyor belts, CRT, curtains, customs, deceit, dental, dental hygiene, devices, early days of the internet, electric toothbrushes, Elf, Elf The Musical, faith, families, family, Father Christmas, fibs, fire safety, freebies, gifts, good luck, honesty, internet, inventions, Jar Jar Binks, JJ Abrams, lies, life spoilers, logs, loyalty cards, luggage, lying, lying to children, mistletoe, musical theatre, musicals, nativity, news, NORAD, nostalgia, old technology, oral hygiene, Oral-B, parenting, parents, phosphorescence, planes, prawn, presents, Pret a Manger, religion, ringtones, safety, safety curtains, Santa Claus, screens, screensavers, shitting, shitting uncle, Spain, Spanish, Starbucks, teeth, the administrative process of Christmas, theater, theatre, tio de Nadal, toothbrushes, uncles, Xmas
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