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.
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‘.
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. •••
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.
Got any great tips for gaming a hotel breakfast buffet? Do share in the comments; but first, listen to Answer Me This! Episode 297 to learn from the master (ie Olly Mann):
In today’s buffet of audio delights, we’re serving:
Sea Monkey refills
second hand wedding dresses
green peppers vs red peppers
Bob Dylan vs grapefruit juice Steve Wright in the Afternoon vs heroin Harold Von Braunhut
the Pizza Hut salad bar
Oxford divorces
cryptobiosis
spying on your children
and
gobbing in the pot.
Plus: if you see Olly roving towards you armed with a Tupperware tub, he’s either going to take advantage of your buffet or imprison you with fatal consequence; Helen will be survived by a sackful of raw gingerbread; and Martin the Sound Man is a masochist for grapefruit juice.
In today’s Bit of Crap on the App, we tackle another Great British Bake Off question from Katherine from Sheffield. To find out how we go from that to the Sword of Gondor in just four short minutes, fire up the app on your iDevices, Android or Windows playthings. As a happy by-product of buying the app, you’re funding the show – likewise if you splash out on any of our albums or vintage episodes at answermethisstore.com. So you know that along with your purchase you’ll receive a free dose of our eternal gratitude.
And because we’re simply brimful of gratitude today, let’s throw a bucketful over Squarespace.com, for sponsoring this episode, for allowing people to build and host websites easily and beautifully, and for offering you 10% off their services for a whole year if you use the code Answer.
By the way, if you’re keen to start your own podcast, book a ticket for this Guardian Masterclass and on 20th September, Helen and a host of other podcasting mavens will teach you all you need to know, and then some.
We will return with AMT298 on 18th September, and we hope you do too. Cheerio!
Helen & Olly
••• AMT297 Child-Friendly Rating: 88%. Light on profane language. Unfortunate TMI about Olly and Martin’s bodily fluids. Question from a parent running surveillance ops on their teenager, which may instill trust issues in your own offspring. •••
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