Posts Tagged ‘timekeeping’

Answer Us Back: ‘nduja-smeared rubber glove

March 12, 2026

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Hello! Welcome to this month’s edition of Answer Us Back, full of your feedback on AMTs old and new. Today:

  • Helen’s going to watch ice hockey this weekend, i.e. she’ll get to see zambonis in action, per AMT415!
  • Olly got sleb-spotted when out for breakfast (hi Simon!).
  • Pete in Bloomington, Indiana, wants to know whether Kyle from Bloomington, Indiana, is still stealing olives from the olive bars of Bloomington, Indiana like he was in AMT305 back in 2014. Well, Kyle, are you? ARE YOU???
  • Provoked by AMT402‘s discussion of proposals via book dedications, Emma in Canada has a real life example from her own parents of a proposal via printed text, in their case the local newspaper.
  • David from Glasgow heard us talking about the radio pip pip pips in AMT406 and explains how they use them in his work on cargo ships.
  • Amy has a tip for Olly, to end his despair from AMT402 about all the little plastic bottles containing his cholesterol-reducing Benecol.
  • We get a bit verklempt as Ricardito reminisces about what AMT meant to his late partner Stephen – including this excellent prank in AMT303 and response.

And along the way we learn about Olly’s greatest technological fear and pragmatic proposal, and Helen’s parents’ pugnacious proposal.

If you’ve been amassing thoughts about AMTs 1-415, send them to us for future episodes of Answer Us Back. And as always, send in your questions, in voicenote or written form to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com. All new AMT416 will be in your podfeed 26 March. 

29 March is the next edition of our video livestream Petty Problems, so send us your unserious concerns and queries for that. To watch it and all the previous ones, sign up to patreonise the show at patreon.com/answermethis, where highest tier gets access to our ENTIRE back catalogue, including the paywalled episodes, the special albums, the Bonus Bits of Crapp on the AMT App, and all the Retro AMT episodes with our commentary reflecting upon them years later. AND by supporting the show on Patreon, you’re helping to fund new AMT.

AMT406: crashing the pips

May 29, 2025

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If your neighbours want to set up a catering business but you don’t want them to waste their money because think their food is sludge, can you stop them? Should you stop them? We face this question along with other matters, including:

taking butter from a cafe
Popes learning Italian
Danish wedding traditions
morning suits
“pip… pip… pip… pip… pip… piiiiippppp” on the radio
“young, dumb and full of cum” in Point Break
David Bowie emerging from a church wall
and
dropping your phone into a toilet at a festival.

Become a patron at patreon.com/answermethis to help with the continuing existence of AMT, and to get an ad-free version of the episode, plus bonus cuts from the show, AND you get our new Entertainment Experience: Petty Problems, a live YouTube version of the show where we are only answering questions that are trivial, unserious, minor. And the best part is, because it’s live, and you can hang out in the sidebar chat, you can weigh in on the problems in real time – and if it’s your Petty Problem, give us instant feedback. It’s going to be fun! The first edition will be 10pm UK time on Sunday 15th June, so go go go to patreon.com/answermethis to sign up so you can attend, and pose us a petty problem.

Got questions for us? Send them in writing or voice note to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – 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 episode will land in your podfeed 26 June 2025.

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.

Olly has a daily podcast, Today in History with the Retrospectors, and a monthly magazine show The Modern Mann, both of which you can find along with his other work at OllyMann.com

Helen‘s entertainment podcast about language, The Allusionist, returns in early May with a season about four-letter words; she and Martin are also doing live shows in Toronto on 1 June and Montréal on 9 June, get tickets via theallusionist.org/events.

Martin‘s other sounds include songs, available at PaleBirdMusic.com, his completed Tom Waits podcast Song By Song at SongBySongPodcast.com, and his experimental fiction podcast Neutrino Watch at neutrinowatch.org.