Posts Tagged ‘cliches’

AMT414: we’re under your mouse mat

January 29, 2026

LISTEN ad-free when you support us on Patreon

LISTEN: Apple PocketCasts MP3 YouTube SoundcloudAmazon Music

26 years late, questioneers want to know why there weren’t more songs about Y2K. We ancient historians consider that, as well as:

wax seals
paper p/reviews
Past Times
civil servant by day vs comedian by night
Silverchair vs fascism
listening to podcasts in the bath
Ian Dury’s last vocal recording
Mary Roberts Rinehard inspiring Batman
S.S. Van Dine’s 20 Rules for Writing Detective Stories
dodging dreary lunch companions
peppercup
and
Martin meeting his alt.

Also: huge thanks to Caroline Crampton of Shedunnit podcast for illuminating us about “The butler did it” and the servant problem. Check out the show at shedunnitshow.com!

AMT415 will be out 26 February 2026, so send your questions in writing or voice note to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or call 0208 123 5877 like the old days. Remember to include the formula “Helen and/or Olly, answer me this”, and let us know a name (pseudonyms are fine) and pronouns to use for you.

Mid-February, there will also be an episode of our new feature Answer Us Back, where you answer us back about questions from our recent and distant back catalogue.

Become a patron at patreon.com/answermethis and you not only help the continuing existence of AMT, you also receive an ad-free version of the episode, plus bonus material each month, and our live video series Petty Problems. If you sign up at one of the higher tiers, you get access to an RSS feed with ALL the AMT stuff EVER, including our entire back catalogue, our six themed albums, the retro AMTs, and every Bit of Crapp from the AMT App. It’s a lot!

Check out our other work:

Olly lists his work at ollymann.com, where you’ll find his several podcasts including his daily history show Today in History with the Retrospectors and his monthly magazine show The Modern Mann.

Helen makes the entertainment podcast about language, The Allusionist, and with Jenny Owen Youngs recapped all of Veronica Mars (including the titular character’s many crimes) in Veronica Mars Investigations.

Martin is a singer and composer; check out his songs via palebirdmusic.com or his Bandcamp. His very mainstream totally normal podcast is Neutrino Watch. And keep up with his pivot to video at instagram.com/MartinAustwick.

This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online empire. Go to squarespace.com/answer, have a play around during the two-week free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code ANSWER.

AMT Home Entertainment

May 22, 2020

Home Entertainment art logo beige

We made a new album!!

Like our previous albums – AMT Jubilee, Sports Day, Holiday, Love and Christmas – AMT Home Entertainment is an hourish of all-new AMT material that has never been on the podcast.

All the questions are about how you might homelily entertain yourself, with telly, music, films, food and some YouTube deep cuts. We discover:

🌴 What IS a wonderwall?
🎥 What was the first movie to have a director’s cut?
🐘 What’s with the big wooden elephants in Les Miserables and Moulin Rouge?
🅾️ What’s with blood groups in The Simpsons?
📺 Are TED speakers allowed teleprompters?
🍔 When did Justin Timberlake stop singing ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ at the end of the McDonald’s ads?
🍳 Why doesn’t Cathy eat breakfast in this, er, thought-provoking educational film/Dairy Council propaganda from the 1970s??

AND MORE!

AMT Home Entertainment is out now at the Answer Me This! Store or (but we make less money this way – just saying) from iTunes (UK / USA )

The album art is by the excellent Joe List, whom you can find at joelist.co.uk and on Instagram and Twitter @joelist. (You may recall that, way back when, Joe illustrated the AMT book after his magnificent entry to our 2009 Photoshop Challenge!)


EPISODE 267 – “My wife and I…”

August 15, 2013

Abraham_Lincoln_$1_Presidential_Coin_obverse_sketch

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:

Subscribe to AMT! on iTunes listen to the MP3 through your computer soundcloud-icon our podcast feed on Libsyn Share with Facebook

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.

PS Thanks to Kevin McLeod, Amy Smith and Sam Pay for providing the holiday album jingle.

*PPS Another subtle remedy for Josh’s gym sex scene shame.

ALBUMSCLASSIC EPISODESBOOKiTUNESSOUNDCLOUDFAQ
iPHONE APPANDROID APPFACEBOOKTWITTERYOUTUBEMERCH