Escape from the significant problems of the world with Answer Me This! Episode 388‘s parade of ultra-low-stakes problems about such things as:
knock knock jokes
lolly stick jokes
Fab lollies vs Zoom lollies
cutting pizzas the Pooseum
lawns the house in the middle of the M62
avuncular Instagram etiquette
and
the back end of a wombat.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for Apple and Android, Olly reports on the progress of his long-awaited pickle empire. Like a jar of homemade pickles, it’s coming along slowly and steadily.
Hear our other work:
• Helen makes The Allusionist, an entertainment show about language, and Veronica Mars Investigations, recapping every episode of Veronica Mars from the beginning.
• Olly hosts many podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com, including Four Thought.
• Martin makes music 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‘.
Buy AMT episodes 1-200, our six special albums including the all new Home Entertainment, and our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015 at answermethisstore.com.
Here’s the inside poopscoop on the Shitting Log that became our new favourite festive tradition in AMT329. Lauren in Mexico City writes:
Caga tió doesn’t actually have anything to do with uncles – it’s tió (‘log’ in Catalan) rather than tío (‘uncle’ in Spanish) so the name means “Shit log”. It comes from the imperative, “Shit, log!”, which is often part of the songs sung whilst hitting him. There are some examples in this multilingual video.
The tió is always made from a real log and many families buy several different sizes so the tió gradually “grows” over the weeks that the kids feed him. When it’s time for him to shit, the kids are sent out of the room for a minute while the presents are stashed under the blanket.
I lived in Catalonia for 8 years and have my very own little tió who now lives at my parents’ house. My mum is a big fan and brings him out of the attic every Christmas with the rest of the decorations. She usually sends me a photo of him for good measure, so I’ll do the same to you:
Like babies, logs are cute, till they start shitting.
THE DAY HAS ARRIVED! Answer Me This! Episode 300 is here, in all its tricentennial glory!
You’ve deluged us with questions about AMT300, for example:
“Will it be your last episode?”
“Is it going to feature Gerard Butler and be directed by Zack Snyder?”
“Did you guys ever…you know…?”
“Is it possible to polish a turd?”
“Yeah but seriously guys, is it going to be your last episode?”
Discover all these answers, and many more surprises, by listening to the episode right now via one or all of the following methods:
Don’t read below this point if you don’t want spoilers! Listen to the episode first, then come back here and revise its contents.
Alright??
On the slate for AMT300 are such topics as:
our alternate realities if AMT had never existed evidence of our life of crime
long-term relationships
bumhole problems
mashed potato vs nutmeg
Peter Jackson vs Raymond Carver
bases
nasal honking
hiding your rubber fetish gear
and
garnish.
And the wonderful special guest answerers bending their wisdom to your questions are:
✮Adam Buxton, the man who made us want to do this podcast. He doles out excellent advice on giving your children The Talk, ridding your kitchen of mouse turds, and changing your whole life to avoid minor annoyances. Enjoy more of Adam’s work on YouTube, on Twitter, and at live shows including BUG.
✮Sarah Millican, who even manages to make questions about anal fissures sound charming and wholesome. It’s a gift! Her new DVD Home Bird is available for pre-order; she’s writing for the new online magazine Standard Issue, and she dispenses Sarahmillicandour at twitter.com/SarahMillican75.
✮Jesse and Theresa Thorn, the first couple of podcasting, the power behind the Maximum Fun throne (at MaxFun, they record everything sitting on thrones). Tackling questions upon Americana and parental embarrassment, it’s a rare treat to hear them on a podcast together – but it’s a regular treat to hear them on their own podcasts, which include One Bad Mother, Bullseye, Jordan, Jesse, Go!, Judge John Hodgman… Yeah, it took us nearly eight years to churn out 300 podcasts; they probably do more than that a month. And just in case you needed even more podcast-related excitement on top of this, it’s MaxFunWeek right now, so you can have maximum fun with other podcast aficionados around the world.
✮Josie Long, who delighted you in AMT84 and returns to do the same, on such matters as losing your virginity, beating procrastination and Lord of the Rings – the latter with the help of her boyfriend Simon of the Picturehouse Podcast. We hope this important matter doesn’t come between them… As well as seeing Josie on stage, you can hear her on her Lost Treasures of the Black Heart podcast, and the new series of Radio 4’s Short Cuts.
✮Tony Blackburn. TONY. BLACKBURN! Answering YOUR questions and sounding off about wandering eyes, Hobbits and nutmeg! He was the first voice on Radio 1 in 1967, and he currently has shows on Radio 2, BBC Berkshire, BBC London, BBC Three Counties, KMFM, Magic…phew! Switch on a radio, and Blackburn will probably be talking on it. You can also read him at twitter.com/tonyblackburn.
✮ Today’s new email jingle is by the Hackney Colliery Band – because there are few things more stirring than a brass band. To see them live and listen to their records, including their new EP Common Decency, visit hackneycollieryband.co.uk.
Our special guest answerers supplied such a lot of marvellous material, there’s a bumper tricentennial Bit of Crap on the App today – extra questions about tattoos, pineapples, balloon animals, taramasalata, adventures, wedgies, and there’s even a cameo from AMT190 superstar Jon Ronson. The app is available for your iDevices, Android or Windows playthings, but since it’s an ‘appy day, you appless can also stream or download it via SoundCloud. Or just play it here:
We could not have done these 300 episodes without you, listeners: without your attention; without your support, financial and emotional; and particularly without your questions. Please keep sending those in: call the Question Line on 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis, or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And do celebrate with us at facebook.com/answermethis or twitter.com/HelenAndOlly.
Thanks so much for joining us today! We’ll be back with business-as-usual non-landmark AMT301 on 30th October 2014.
Listeners, who is the bigger idiot: the questioneer who is too big an idiot to make toast, or the podcasters who talk about that big idiot for nearly ten minutes?
The only way to decide is to listen to Answer Me This! Episode 292:
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we delve deeper into the grotesque and terrifying world of novelty toasters. Join us if you dare on your iDevice, Android or Windows toy.
If you’ve invented your own amazing multi-functional toaster (“Guys! It can heat soup at the same time as cutting the toast into perfectly equal croutons!”) then build yourself a snazzy online store through our benevolent sponsors Squarespace.com, deploying the code Answer for 10% off their services for a whole year.
We shall return on Thursday 3rd July with AMT293 – but we’ll also be appearing on this Radio Academy panel about podcasting on 25th June; and as we mentioned, we’re also available at our side project podcasts The Media Podcast, Sound Women and Brain Train. Furthermore, to accompany all the SPOOOOOORT that seems to be happening at the moment, you can hear us talking as sportily as we are able on the AMT Sports Day album, available now at answermethisstore.com.
That’s it! We’re off to make some toast. We could be gone for some time.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT292 Child-Friendly Rating: 40%. Swears. Cartoon phallic noses. Kicks off with feedback about parental sex, the very notion of which can be traumatic for your progeny. •••
NO DON’T TELL US. Tell nobody. Find that impulse that lurks deep within yourself to vocalise your opinions upon a matter so boring, so mundane, so underwhelming an indicator of anything interesting about your character; find it, then destroy it.
Then listen to Answer Me This! Episode 248:
Today we ponder upon:
Flu Camp
pregnancy disguises
Stevenage slush puppies (not a euphemism)
Ming Dynasty toilet paper
Joseph Gayetty
posh Pot Noodles
domestic rubbish vs. commercial rubbish
London, UK vs. London, Ontario
figure skating vs. Dancing On Ice
Tiny Toronto
and Sergey Brin hiding in the bushes.
Plus: Olly’s lukewarm about Google Glass, but looking forward to the installation of his Google Womb; Helen believes the empire waist to be an offence to waists (and empires); and Martin the Sound Man doesn’t like the principles of Ayn Rand, he just looks like he does.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is a question from Poppy wondering why Skittles’ latest ad campaign is targeting the people-who-eat-bodily-growths market. Cheer up, Poppy; at least they’re not suggesting you wipe your bottom with Skittles then tell them about it.
Tell us your QUESTIONS, though: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis. Then treat yourself to a free Audible audiobook as a reward. OK, you can have one anyway, for being so well-behaved (and because we receive a bit of lovely money for each of you who has one; let’s not be coy about it).
Cait from Bristol but currently in Orlando got a little wild in her hotel room and now is suffering the shame that inevitably follows:
I am staying in a hotel and have just accidentally got chocolate all over the white bed sheets. Unfortunately, the chocolate looks a lot like I’ve shat myself.
So please answer me this: do I leave housekeeping a note explaining that it’s chocolate and not shit? Do I do nothing and let them think I pooed the bed? Or something else?
It’s so delightfully British of you, Cait, to think of leaving a note! If it makes you feel better, by all means do that – or leave the chocolate wrapper in the bed as an indicator of what has gone on in there (NB also a useful cover in the event of you actually shitting the bed).
However I imagine that the average hotel housekeeper has far too many rooms to clean to spend much time analysing your suspicious-looking stains, or sniffing them to ascertain their origin, or sending off a sample for lab testing. Moreover, they will have surely seen so many scenes of filth and degradation during their careers that your little one-woman scat party would barely warrant an eyebrow-raise.
Round here, we thought there’s no way the opening ceremony of next year’s London Olympics could be anything but a damp squib. Given our Glorious Nation’s inherent shyness, we assumed we’d be lucky if the expected pageantry ascended such heights as the whole squad doing the David Brent dance, with commentary from Myleene Klass wearing a low-cut dress and speaking only in adjectives. But au contraire, we were much mistaken! Here, in Answer Me This! Episode 170, we discover what’s going to make the Olympics go with a bang:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
Accompanying the episode, like a flock of primary schoolkids wearing national dress, are topics including:
Booze Britain Ibiza Uncovered
Winston Churchill
coffee stirrers Jaws
dog trends
Wiesbaden Danger UXB
monkeys in clothes
fancy-dress football
the abandoned bomb register
Jonathan Creek’s downtime
illegal snoods
the other Martin Austwick the real-life Miss Marple
dihydroxyacetone
and the Maillard Reaction.
Plus: Olly is silenced by booze; Helen’s not going to be winning a car anytime soon; and Martin the Sound Man intimates that the dinosaurs might have survived, if only someone had bought them little pink coats with diamante on. Martin would also like you to know that his latest album is out today, which is sadly diamante-free but not without other compensations – download or buy a special edition physical copy here.
Today’s Bit of Crap on the App is the Deleted Scenes from our chat about amateur detectives. How does one get from the FBI to Paul Ross in five easy steps? Find out for yourself on iPhone or Android.
We be wanting your QUESTIONS for next week, so send them as voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or findanswermethis on Skype) or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. And you know what else is next week? Red Nose Day! So if you fancy a bit of pain-free fundraising (ie no climbing mountains or digging latrines or songs involving Bob Geldof), please come along to Literary Death Match on Friday 18th March, in which Helen joins Spaced alumna Jessica StevensonHynes to judge the bookish equivalent of sumo wrestling.
This week, listeners, we go on a journey. Don’t worry – it’s not an emotional one like they have on reality shows! We go from Great Yarmouth to Gibraltar, California to Celebration, and end up in Utopia. It must be good if Cliff Richard is skating around it. Anyway, strap in and travel along with us in Answer Me This! Episode 169 (dudes):
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just 79p at the Answer Me This! Store, through a secure server, without DRM restriction. CLICK HERE to find out more and support our podcast. (This helps keep our most recent episodes free)
We also consider:
Sam Cooke vs. Claire Tully
razor clams
dirty sexy waxworks
carp
Visalia
dusky pink
Alisha’s Attic
cork floors
sorghum
creative management tips from Jeffrey Archer
bathroom predictions from Sarah Beeny
dried apple
pork six-pack
and
Aberystwyth.
Plus: Olly wonders why toilet seat vendors have missed the opportunity to part this fool and his money; Helen fails to reap the full entertainment offered by a bowel movement; and Martin the Sound Man wishes* that the whole world could be as democratic where men’s crotches are concerned as Madame Tussaud’s is. If that’s not enough crotch for you for one week, today’s Bit of Crap on the App is us reminiscing about that 90s TV trend to line naked men up behind a screen then leer at their genitals. Relive those glory days of The Word with us on iPhone or Android.
It’s Lent next week, but we’re not going to give up answering QUESTIONS, so send them as voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or findanswermethis on Skype) or emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. Not that Lent holds much sway with atheist Jews, mind.
See you next week, for AMT170!
Helen & Olly
* He also wishes that you stick around till the very end of the episode to hear one of the songs off his new album ‘Songs from the Scientific Cabaret’. Make his wish come true, do. And come to see him play at the Geekpop festival on 10th March, why not? Because you’ll have given up geeky pursuits for Lent? Liar!
We love that the podcast encourages you lot to share. Or do we? Does Ed in Halifax, Nova Scotia just feel comfortable in our relationship, or is it a case of TMI? He says:
I was just now listening to episode 121 and was inspired to write to you after hearing listener Chris’s question “Why do I get the urge to squirt dirt whenever I visit a second-hand bookshop?”
This happens to me too!
It’s been happening for years!
And often enough that I have actually given it some thought.
I think I have a reasonable explanation that does not require some twisted mental association between books and excrement, leaving the works of ________________________ (insert name of your least favourite but wildly popular author… I choose Dan Brown):
1) I like books, so I tend to spend more time per visit in bookshops than in other types of shops.
2) Most used book shops I have visited contain jumbled piles of books and over-stuffed shelves that require even more time to find books of interest.
4) When I pay a long visit to a bookshop (45 minutes to more than an hour) I’m standing still for longer and getting more and more relaxed.
4) Confirmation bias: I claim that book shops ALWAYS makes me want to drown the kittens, but really, I think it has actually happened about six times in my adult life (I am 47 years old) that I have had to urgently leave the book shop in search of a drop-off spot for the hostages. But each time it happens it’s a much more memorable event than all the times it didn’t happen. I’m sure I have made more grunt sculptures at theaters and restaurants, but that just seems more expected, and so less memorable.
5) I suppose if you are the sort of person who makes a habit of reading while sequestered in the fortress of solitude, it is possible that you have a very direct and obvious mental association with reading and putting your thoughts down on paper.
In conclusion, I think it mostly comes down to the amount of time I have spent in bookshops making it more likely that I will be in a bookshop when it becomes necessary to beam down William Shatner.
Ed, we’ll let you off the charge of over-sharing because of your outstanding euphemisms.
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