In Answer Me This Episode 394, listeners are struggling with questions about:
catnip for lions
the humerus/funny bone/ulnar nerve/little Jew
Fabergé eggs
all the cool stuff that used to be on Woodhouse Moor
Gallifreyian garden features
treadmills in shoe shops
X-rays in shoe shops
your own children’s mediocrity
and
genies’ feet.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for Apple and Android – Olly struggles with home schooling.
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 – now powering to the end of season 3!
• Olly hosts many podcasts, and you can find them all at ollymann.com, including his monthly magazine show The Modern Mann and weekly under-the-radar-news show, The Week Unwrapped.
• 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 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 piano-playing to yoga to ancient history to dog training. AMT listeners get a free fortnight 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 Valentines-appropriate AMT Love, and our Best Of compilations from 2007-2015 at answermethisstore.com.
Fire up Answer Me This! Episode 373 and travel round the world on the wings of George Ezra lyrics and/or an evil sled, via the following:
Montjuïc in Barcelona
Olly’s Happy Fork
Helen’s sentient bed
the Queen’s en suite cinema (and post office, and operating theatre)
Slendertone
the new Narnia novel? The Magician’s Nephew vs Better Call Saul
Dr Klaus Maertens
the Relax-A-Cizor
and
a Tale of Two Seans/Shawns.
If you’re curious to hear Helen and Martin on the Potterless episode they mention, it’s HERE – but be aware, this episode is NOT FOR KIDS, also (unsurprisingly) contains spoilers for the Harry Potter series up to chapter 23 of the Deathly Hallows.
This month’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – is a question from violist Clem about whether concert musicians are more prone to haemorrhoids.
Olly’s other podcast The Modern Mann is back for a new series, which kicks off with an episode ‘Pupil A‘ that Olly says you do not want to miss. Do check the shownotes for content warnings before listening.
Helen and Martin are on tour of New Zealand and Australia with an all new Allusionist live extravaganza! Visit theallusionist.org/events for listings and ticket links to see the show that has been declared ‘good’ by New Zealand’s finest.
Sing along to Martin the Sound Man’s gap year diary of songs: his new 40-track mega album The Year of the Bird, complete with illustrations and diaries about each song, is being released at palebirdmusic.com.
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, with which you can easily and quickly set up a good-looking website for your projects eg your Oscar-nominated documentary. Visit squarespace.com/answer and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain with the discount code ‘answer‘.
This is the last month you AMT listeners in the UK can get a free trial of Audible at answermethispodcast.com/audible – or, if you’ve had such a thing before, you can get a spell of half price membership! And remember: 1. for each of you that takes up the trial, Audible gives us a little bit of money, even when you cancel without paying a thing; 2. you can keep your free audiobooks forever.
Ever run over a fox and thought, “Mmm, maybe I could cook that up for dinner – but how?” No? Well, listen to Answer Me This! Episode 350 anyway. You never know when survivalist recipes might come in handy.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – cats square off against their greatest adversaries: cucumbers.
Thanks jolly much to today’s sponsors Squarespace.com. Get 10% off their website-hosting and -designing services for a whole year with the discount code ‘answer‘.
Martin just won a BRITISH PODCAST AWARD for his Tom Waits podcast Waits Waits Don’t Tell MeBut Waits There’s MoreSong By Song! Well done Martin!
You can also hear our past selves in the retro AMT episode we throw into your feed mid-month; to get it, subscribe to AMT on your podcatcher of choice. Or if you want more of them at the time of your choosing, they’re all available at answermethisstore.com, along with our special albums.
Are you ready to get your stonk on? (Whatever that actually means.) Then listen to Answer Me This! Episode 315:
Today we deal with:
caffeine overdoses
the Lotto Drawmaster’s gloves
iPad infidelity alerts
soundchecks
Periscope
Hale and Pace
goatees
Van Dykes
imperials
and
nemeses.
Plus: Olly lies about his breakfast and reveals a surprising new phobia; Helen ruins some of your favourite songs; and Martin the Sound Man luckily has grown out of his Nu Metal phase.
Today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App (available for iThings, Android and Windows devices) is a question from Steffy in Bristol: ‘What is Swarovski crystal?’
For more additional listening, this is the podcast we mentioned about the consequences of soundchecking by asking interviewees ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ Makeuthink.
We’ll return on 11th June 2015 with AMT316, can you keep your stonk going until then?
Helen & Olly
••• AMT315 Child-Friendly Rating: 40%. Quite a few swears. Question about infidelity; not sexually graphic, but may compel your child to ask Awkward Questions. A lot of boner chat in the question about ‘stonk’, but not so much lewd as sobering in light of recent BBC revelations. •••
Plus: Olly’s pub quiz victory strategy is ruined by cocks; Helen would rather swear on the dictionary than the Bible; and Martin the Sound Man is vanilla-blind. Quick, throw a benefit gala for him!
There’s bonus Jews for Jesus jazz in today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App, available for iThings, Android and Windows gadgets.
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‘.
We’ll return on 30th April 2015 with AMT313, please return too!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT312 Child-Friendly Rating: 21%. Martin the Sound Man deploys the word ‘cunty’ in the first couple of minutes, but in protest at poor provision of services for the visually impaired, which is a cause your children ought to support. Shortly followed by a discussion of crude cock’n’balls drawings, with which the average child will already be more than familiar. Question about penis size at the end of the show. While the content is clean in between the penis references at either end of the show, there are a few swears sprinkled throughout. In sum: not an episode to enjoy on the school run.•••
Answer Me This! Episode 308 is a surprisingly jobs-themed episode, with questions about whether your tertiary education should prepare you for one, to how your hair can affect your ability to get one, to what you do when you lose one.
On today’s roster are such topics as:
cat-cleaning
pink hair
green hair
vocations
FDR’s hot dog banquet Bill Clinton’s night out with the lads
redundancy
sleeping naked
fainting at Elvis
and
throwing knickers at Tom Jones.
Plus: a typo made Olly a lot more popular in 90s chatrooms; if you’ve been made redundant, join Helen at the Daytime Cinema Club; and Martin the Sound Man manages to make a big pile of underwear sound like the grossest, most unappealing, least sexy thing possible.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – which you can get for your iDevices, Android and Windows gadgets – we continue to contemplate the question about how our nightwear-averse questioneer could dress for slumber. There must be a compromise between a tutu and a full suit of armour.
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‘. Which you should, to demonstrate your devotion to this podcast.
Since we are devoted to providing you with this podcast, we’ll return on 5th March 2015 with AMT309.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT308 Child-Friendly Rating: 64%. A few swears, though the strongest are right at the end, so you could cut out before then. Very mild bawdiness in the question about naked sleeping, but nothing that would startle a nun. •••
If you take the plunge and purchase it, you’re not only funding the podcast, you also get one hour of all-new Christmas chat about such festive topics as:
✯ FOOD!✯
Audio is entirely calorie-free, so feast your ears on mince pies, trifle, Brussels sprouts, poisoned turkey, lutefisk, Sandra Lee’s Kwanzaa Cake and what Christmas pudding can teach you about atomic physics (which is better than eating it).
✯ENTERTAINMENT!✯
Christmas titans Eric’n’Ernie face off against Mike Yarwood; Olly fails to be swept away by ‘Fairytale of New York’ (and don’t even get him started on ‘Christmas Wrapping’); and the Grinch stole Dr Seuss’s doctorate.
✯CUSTOMS!✯
How the Norse deities Frigga and Baldur got you to snog people under a bunch of a poisonous parasitic plant; why Rudolph’s got a red nose; how the first ever Christmas card managed to be offensive; why Kwanzaa was invented; and Santa on waterskiis.
✯CRISIS MANAGEMENT! ✯
How to salvage the situation if your partner’s bought you a brilliant present and you got them something shit; what to do if you dread staying at your in-laws’ house; how to uninvite people from your party; and why you’re more likely to end up getting a divorce at Christmas. It really is the most wonderful time of the year.
✯DECORATIONS! ✯
Let us deck the halls of your ears with Christmas jumpers, Christmas crackers, double beards, and paper hats, even though everyone looks like a dick in the paper hats. Especially because everyone looks like a dick in the paper hats.
The Answer Me This! Christmas Album is fun for all the family – no, it really is, because we don’t even swear. So Great-Grandma Gladys and Tiny Tim can listen happily together while you sneak off and neck the cooking brandy.
However, at the time of posting, the creature hasn’t actually been born, so try to keep a lid on that ROYAL BABY EXCITEMENT for long enough to listen to Answer Me This! Episode 263:
Plus: Olly’s money-based conjuring tricks weren’t fooling anyone; if Helen’s guess is correct and the ROYAL BABY receives the same middle name as Diana, Frances (Francis for a boy), then everybody has to give her £10 in congratulation; and Martin the Sound Man knows where to go in the event of nuclear apocalypse in the middle of Europe.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App, which is available for iDevices and Android, we harp on about Royal Baby Krispy Kreme. No, we haven’t had a heads-up that the baby will be named Krispy Kreme Kambridge (but if it IS, you definitely have to give us all £10); we’re talking about this shit.
But…if you are absolutely desperate to piss away money on some spurious tie-in with the ROYAL BABY, then the AMT Jubilee is obviously the best direction in which to piss. And we have no qualms about recommending our SMASH HIT TOP 15 ALBUM Answer Me This! Holiday.
Also, please do send us your QUESTIONS for the new series: leave voicemails on the Question Line – call 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis – or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
See you next Thursday,
Helen & Olly
AMT263 Child-Friendly Rating: 90%. Minimal swearing and a fair amount of educational content, but one question about a listener’s sexual dalliances and the psychologically damaging actions of his girlfriend’s parents, which some children may find troubling.
Spring has yet to spring in our homeland, but the spring run of AMT is ready to spring into your ears right now. Spring into action and listen to Answer Me This! Episode 250:
Today we discuss:
pizza delivery
Billy Kennedy’s fluffy dice
lolliPopes
selling intangibles on eBay
papal pants Les Miserables, unabridged
musicals vs. literature
second-hand gravestones vs. serial killer memorabilia
the Littlewoods catalogue
and
the Vatican’s sauna.
Plus: Olly would rather be gifted olives than a car; Helen is not comfortable being on first-name terms with South By Southwest; and Martin the Sound Man is uncharacteristically quiet, which you can attribute to the presence of a bag of Cheetos.
In this week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) we speculate upon what name Kate’n’Wills are likely to bestow upon their impending royal spawn. Clue: it’ll be something more boring than any of these.
Not boring, on the other hand, are your QUESTIONS. We want lots of them for the new series, so don’t be shy: leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis; or email answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
Apropos of more things to listen to this week: click here to hear Helen on Jordan, Jesse, Go! And our free Audible audiobook offer is still open, but not for long! You have until midnight on 1st April to get yourself a free audiobook, so click here right now.
We hope you enjoyed the Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part I last week. If you did, you’ll also enjoy The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part II, and if you didn’t, maybe you’ll prefer The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part II. Either way, you should listen to The Best of Answer Me This! 2012 – Part II:
This classic episode is available to BUY NOW for just £1.99 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)
Wherein we meet again our auld acquaintances:
Phantom of the Opera
Hamlet Hamlet
Prince Philip’s bladder Killer Net
Angela Lansbury fantasies
R Kelly’s fancy parties
the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution
Devon vs Cornwall scone wars
sex Jenga
the Owl and the Pussycat
the 21st-century Sweeney Todd
Olly’s solo sex tape
Helen taking an off-brand fruit into the Apple store
and
Charlie’s Angles.
And there are more previously unheard bits of AMT, which you can have more of every week if you posess the AMT App, available for iDevices and Android – on which you also get our Best Of episodes from the past five years, if you trawl through diligently enough.
Please be generous with your QUESTIONS for AMT in 2013: email them to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com or leave voicemails on the Question Line by calling 0208 123 5877 or Skype ID answermethis.
We’ll be back on 10th January 2013, but you can still hear plenty of us before then:
• We’ll be running through the year’s biggest online events on Saturday Edition, BBC 5 Live 8pm 29th December or available shortly after as the Let’s Talk About Tech podcast.
• Olly will be Manning the microphone on LBC 97.3 FM, 1-4am most nights from Xmas Eve to Jan 3rd – check lbc.co.uk for the schedule, and rouse yourself from your festive stupor to give him a call and keep him company.
• Helen will crop up on BBC 5 Live’s Radio Review of 2012, hosted by Jane Garvey and Mike Sweeney, which will be broadcast on at 11pm on Christmas Eve, repeated 4pm on Christmas Day, or, if you want to listen at a more sensible time, it’ll be available on the 5 Live website straight after.
• You can hear us discussing Christmas gadgets and songs on Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2 on 20th December. UPDATE: Here’s the link to the item on iPlayer.
• And we wrote some bits for the Celebrity Juice Christmas Specials; part one is already on ITV Player and part two will follow on tonight.
We hope you have very happy festivities, and we’ll see you next year!
Helen & Olly
PS if you need more noise to drown out the sound of sleighbells and Wizzard, direct yourself to our Jubilee and Sports Day albums, as well as AMT1-120.
Hello listeners! Refreshed by a month off, we return with an episode bursting with fresh new questions. Well, fresh except for the one about the Spice Girls, which we maintain IS fresh as long as you fell into a coma in the summer of 1996 and only just woke up. If that is your situation, we’ll help you catch up on what you missed. We hate to be the ones to break it to you, but Kate Moss and Johnny Depp split up. And things have been awfully quiet on the Meg Mathews front lately.
Everyone else, put Answer Me This! Episode 229 into your ears:
Plus: Olly is terrified of his own pubes (until they start paying rent for their residence upon his body); Helen’s attempt to trick the Tooth Fairy backfired right into her bank balance; and Martin the Sound Man dreams about how, in an alternate universe, Simon and Garfunkel would have replaced ‘The Sound of Silence’ with the sound of cartoon hammers.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App (available for iDevices and Android) is a question from Ginger Paul about toilet attendants, bog butlers, lavatory landlords, ablution assistants – whatever you want to call them, the principle is the same, but what’s with all the lollipops? Loo-lipops? Lolli-poops?
Our new series will be running all the way to Christmas, but only if you send us QUESTIONS: leave voicemails on the Question Line (Skype answermethis or dial 0208 123 5877) or send emails to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com.
As AMT devotees, you know that we don’t shy away from the most serious questions the human mind can concoct. Remember AMT198 last year, when we boldly tackled “What makes a pie a pie?” Today, in Answer Me This! Episode 220, we broach another foodstuff with an identity crisis – salad:
Seriously though, how can this and this and this and this be even nominally related? Pffft.
Anyway, tossed into the conversational salad this week are:
facts about Eugene, Oregon
Hamlet, the Madonna of his time
Madonna, the sexual bully of her time
alternating current vs. direct current
dentist chair vs. electric chair
Natalie Portman Hershlag
French Freemasons William Kemmler
Pizza Express
rainbow parties Rory Gallagher’s guitar
and
Spin the Bottle.
Plus: Olly impresses the ladies with his great big throbbing veins; Helen discovers that Thomas Edison was a right cnut; and Martin the Sound Man plays coy about his age. Don’t worry Martin, you don’t look a day under 55.
This week’s Bit of Crap on the App is more crap-related than usual, as it features a question from Stephy from Bristol about the point of patterned toilet paper. Along the way we learn upon what Simon Cowell and the Queen probably wipe their bottoms. The rich educational resource that is the Answer Me This! app is available for iDevices or Android, you’ll be relieved to know. Relieved. Ho ho ho.
Enough japery for one week; but if you want to listen to more of our japery next week, you are obliged to send us a QUESTION: emails go to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com, voicemails to the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis).
Answer Me This! Podcast 