Posts Tagged ‘hot’

AMT412: the opposite of porn

November 27, 2025

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Huge news! Skip over to Patreon.com/answermethis, sign up for the Sound Bag top tier, and you can 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. AND, all tiers get an ad-free version of the new episodes, bonus material each month, and our live video trivial-question-answering session Petty Problems. Oh, and most delightfully of all, you patrons are funding the continuing existence of AMT, due to keep going through 2026, hooray. Patreonage is also available to give as a gift for the AMT lover or liker or tolerator in your life.

And here we have AMT412, wherein we ponder:

widow’s peaks
similar-named people using your email address
garlic
Birmingham’s Frankfurt Christmas Market
Birmingham’s many twins (we explained twinned towns in AMT170 btw)
dominatrices
Innocent Smoothie hats (there are patterns to knit your own if you must)
Pete Seeger’s least unsexy song – any suggestions?
increasing someone’s spice tolerance
Sabrina Carpenter’s song ‘Espresso’ ‘Pesto’
Christian Slater vs Leonardo DiCaprio
Harry Houdini fetishes
and
whether a homemade mix CD tape is definitely a sign of romantic interest.

Plus: Olly finds the opposite of porn; Helen’s marriage motivation becomes apparent at long last; and Martin chats with the other Martin Austwick, who is a sword man not a sound man.

AMT413 will be out on Christmas Eve and halfway through the month, there’ll be an episode our new feature Answer Us Back in your podfeed, full of your contributions to AMT questions recent and ancient.

No Skip Christmas; Allusionist reading Xmas carol

Got questions for us? Send them 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. Next new episode will land in your podfeed on Christmas Eve so if you have festive questions, send them in now, or hang on for another year.

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, which is celebrating its tenth birthday!

Helen makes the entertainment podcast about language, The Allusionist, and also recently was a guest talking about the British Christmas pop music canon on Arnie ‘Hello from the Magic Tavern’ Niekamp’s new podcast No Skip Christmas. And, you can watch her read the whole of A Christmas Carol with musical accompaniment from Martin on the Allusionist YouTube channel.

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.

Thanks to Naked Wines for sponsoring AMT, and for providing bottles straight from world-class winemakers, cutting out the middleman, delivered to your door. Head to nakedwines.co.uk/answer to get a £30 voucher on your first 6 pack, including free delivery. 

Thursday Listening Party

January 29, 2015

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On the Thursdays we don’t release a new AMT, we crank up the spoken word audio and have a Thursday Listening Party.
Click here to attend all previous gatherings.

If you’re interested in podcasting, you might be interested in:

1. The newish weekly pod-newsletter Hot Pod, which recommends things to listen to, and mulls over what is happening in the field right now;

2. Several of the sessions from last autumn’s Third Coast Festival, particularly this one about making your own stuff if you need a little inspiration sprinkled with practical advice;

3. The ‘Burnout’ episode of StartUp podcast. Gimlet Media, the guys behind StartUp, are some of the most successful in the business, with the additional advantages of funds, skills, and This American Life stamp of approval; so if even they find podcasting a real slog, the rest of us should be sobbing in a heap by now.

But we’re not! We’re still churning out podcasts! Viz:

Have you heard AMT306 yet? You haven’t? With its hymn to chicken Kiev and Ainsley Harriott? Well, you know what you need to do.

Here’s the shining new episode of The Media Podcast, with Olly in the hosting seat to run down the latest news in TV, radio, news et al.

Here’s a new(ish) episode of Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown, featuring me and Holly Burn. I say newish: we recorded it last August late at night at the Green Man Festival, but it has only just been released, so the summer festival vibe feels very distant to me as I sit here typing with sock gloves on my hands.

In the new episode of The Allusionist, BuzzFeed senior editor Tom Phillips what linguistic sorcery he uses to goad you into making posts go viral. And there’s a cameo from AMTpal Roman Mars complaining that we’re all using the word ‘viral’ incorrectly anyway. SO THERE.

Remember, Martin the Sound Man makes numerous other podcasts, including Brain Train about clever things, The Global Lab about smart cities and stuff, and The Sound of the Ladies music podcast. He’s about to add a couple more shows to his roster. Wait for us to catch up, Martin!

What have you been listening to this week, you treasures?

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fit

February 26, 2014

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English, common language for so many around the world, yet the source of so many unfathomable idiomatic variations. Here’s one tormenting the mind of Bill from Toronto:

Answer me this: What does it mean to be ‘fit’?

Here in North America, it means physically fit: someone who goes to the gym or jogs or does Pilates and has toned muscles.

In the UK it seems to mean something different, though. “She’s fit.” “He’s fit.” “Phwoar, you’re well fit!”

Does it mean ‘hot’? Where we’d say someone is hot, you’d say they were fit? Is there any connotation of physical fitness to being ‘fit’? Madonna has lots of muscles showing, but she’s just looking stringy, not hot. Adele doesn’t have muscles showing, but she’s definitely hot.

Readers, would you agree that Bill has pretty much answered his own question? If not, go to the comments and elaborate upon the exact specification of fitness as opposed to hotness. I’d say that while they’re approximately interchangeable, ‘fit’ does imply a certain amount of physical buffing that is not necessarily a condition of ‘hot’. But, as Bill suspects, not every fittie is a hottie.

It’s possible that ‘fit’ is being deployed in the British slang-sense south of the Canadian border, though: here’s a previous question we received about ‘fit’ness from a North American. Chew on that, geographical linguists.

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