Answer Me This! - AMT 389: Banana Pizza, Sewing Machines and Monaco

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

In AMT389, questioneers need help with being heard through a mask, watermelon rind raining down from upon high, and understanding the financing of bin collection in Monaco. Find out more about this episode at . Send us questions for future episodes: email written words or voice recordings to [e-mail]. Tweet us Facebook Our new album Home Entertainment is available now for £paywhatyouwant for a limited period at , where you can also obtain our other special albums, AMT episodes 1-200, and our Best Of compilations. Hear our other work: Helen Zaltzman's podcasts The Allusionist at and Veronica Mars Investigations at ; Olly Mann's five podcasts including , The Week Unwrapped, and Four Thought at ; and Martin Austwick's music at his Tom Waits podcast Song By Song at , and his new music'n'science podcast Maddie's Sound Explorers, hosted by Maddie Moate, at . This episode is sponsored by: The Great Courses Plus, the streaming library of courses on topics from chess to mystery fiction to yoga to formal logic to dog training. AMT listeners get a free month at . Squarespace. Want to build a website? Go to , and get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code 'ANSWER'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What song did Lady Macbeth sing while washing her hands? Hustle it is, hustle it is Why would you call something sweet bread when it's made out of glands? Hustle it is, hustle it is Helen and Molly, hustle it is You never quite know what's going to hit a nerve on this show. Always some fucking thing though. But this month, Helen, we've received many impassioned emails about pizza

cutters. Oh, I suppose I should have seen that coming given that we had two questions the same episode about pizza cutters. Paul in Hong Kong has been so moved by this subject, Helen, that despite being, he says, a long time listener, this is the first time he's written in. He says, I recently heard your segment about pizza slicing techniques and regional etiquette i was fully expecting my tried and tested method to be discussed and i cannot he says in good conscience leave this out of the debate debate i don't frame things as a debate paul it's a discussion it seems like a strong term for what we did. Yeah. Lower than discussion. I mean, like somewhere between bants and chat, I would call it. Chants.

Bat. But anyway, here's his contribution. I'm going to solve everyone's problems with two words. Pizza scissors. That's not solving the problems, because the first was a question from people who are out and about, and would you expect them to carry pizza scissors on their holiday in London? Unrealistic.

The second question was from someone who already had a rotary pizza cutter. They weren't saying, what's an alternative tool that means this problem will not exist? They were like, what do I do specifically with my non-scissors rotary cutter? That's true. I guess he's not saying this is something we should have given as advice to the questionnaire who had written in, but advice that we should have imparted to the listenership at whole to prevent them ever buying a rotary pizza blade because he has found pizza scissors so incredibly useful i mean what you're

not thinking paul is that all of the people who are using pizza scissors if this works they don't need to write to us to ask how to cut a pizza no but he wants to spread the word helen i mean that's not how evangelism works is it you're not like oh like, oh, everyone who believes in Jesus is safe, so I just won't tell anyone. I've seen pizza scissors in pizza restaurants. Other people are on the pizza scissor train, Paul. Well, what he says is, I've had a dedicated set of pizza scissors since university

when times were harder and my resourcefulness was higher. People said I was insane, disgusting, wasteful, pointless. Innovators are just often not appreciated in their lifetimes, Paul. That's right. I really don't see how any of this applies. Agreed. You've got two knives which are really easy to coordinate. I mean, he's basically now describing scissors. That's the shtick. They eliminate the issue of smudging the toppings around. Well, it's more that they'd like chomp the toppings between their blades but okay it's no more difficult to wash them than two knives i take issue with that actually far more difficult to sharpen them as well you usually have to take

them to a shop and i find stuff sticks to scissors around about the half moon very frequently yep like you know if you're if you're doing a quick sponge off you've got to allow i would say an extra 50 cleaning time for scissors than knives it's not that I'm dismissing them, Paul. I just think that you've gone pizza scissor evangelist at the expense of some of the practicalities. You know, none of the methods are perfect. I think like a lot of people who are truly of faith, they're blind to some of the contradictions, aren't they?

They're not willing to engage with some of the discussion, or as you'd frame it, Paul, debate. I think he says, these arguments are solid and I have never looked back. He's living his best life. My only request is that you give it a go before you pass judgement. How do you know I haven't Paul? It just wasn't relevant to what we were being asked last time. But

I'll say my personal experience is never having had a particularly acute problem in cutting a pizza using a knife or a rotary cutter. That's true. I have used scissors in food preparation. They're pretty common in a lot of cultures. If I go to a Korean restaurant,

they often snip up things with scissors at the table. I've seen Nigella snipping a spring onion into a broth. Right, you snip a spring onion, you snip some chives with scissors. But when I was growing up, we had meat scissors for like snipping up the backbone of a chicken when it's raw i do have some resentment though towards food scissors and this is based on an incident many many years ago a flatmate's partner was cooking in our place and used my specific sewing scissors

to cut up bacon oh firstly that's a hygiene problem raw bacon yes also sewing scissors you're only supposed to use them for fabric like if you use them on other substances they get blunted like you shouldn't use them on paper you need to keep those scissors specifically for fabric i don't know if bacon would have compromised the blades in that way but still the principle is sewing scissors for sewing bring your own bacon scissors if you must anyway i have tried cutting pizza with scissors at paul request, actually, because I did have pizza this weekend after we received this email, so I thought I'd give it a go, to be fair.

This is only a request. And here's the issue, Paul. When the pizza is hot, you're picking up something that's too hot to handle, whereas if you're using a knife or a pizza wheel cutter, then obviously you don't have to touch the underside, which is hotter than the top sometimes. That's the issue. Good point. So I see what you're saying. Certainly fine than the top sometimes. That's the issue. Good point.

So I see what you're saying. Certainly fine for the next day when you put the takeaway in the fridge. Not sure that straight out the oven pizza scissors are the best solution. Sorry. Here's another pizza related question from someone who has kept themselves anonymous,

but to say that they are from Israel. They say, I was recently discussing getting a pizza with a friend when she happened to mention that her Swedish husband puts banana on his pizza. Oh, I can feel Paul sharpening his blades in disgust.

He's got his banana scissors ready. After seeing the look of shock and disgust on my face, she promptly promised me that this is a normal thing to do in Sweden. I can imagine a lot of things are normal in Sweden that aren't in Israel, like cross-country skiing. This bizarre food combo is the second weirdest I've come across.

The first being when I was served a starter of tuna and grapefruit at a Friday night dinner in London. Imagine tuna mayo with big flakes of grapefruit throughout. Well, actually, I at least see how the flavours could work together. Yeah, I do. I mean, they're not my favourite flavours, but I can imagine it. Ollie, answer me this. Have you ever tried banana on pizza, the Swedish delicacy? No. And what's the weirdest and maybe surprisingly tasty food combo you've ever had? Okay, well, I mean, mean in pizza terms this is a classic uh conversation this but i am a staunch defender of the hawaiian like you know that is something that's on the

it's on the menu isn't it but a lot of people take issue with the idea of tinned pineapple cheese and ham being a combination that anyone could tolerate but for whatever reason you know i don't know if it's my palate i find that a pleasurable food combination and i don't see what the fuss is about there what you've got there is that ham goes well with fruit, like pork generally pairs well with fruit and cheese kind of goes well with a zingy fruit. It's a chutney analogue. Maybe there it's truly the tomato that is throwing people off.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting what you say about cheese there because, again, I don't think it's weird to combine things with cheese for all the reasons you just said. I think cheese goes with anything, but perhaps some people would find some of the things that I've put with cheese to be questionable and things like marmalade roast vegetables pickles like any leftovers basically can be enhanced with cheese in my view I suppose banana kind of mimics the texture of cheese on a pizza it'll just get softer in cooking and its

flavor will largely be obliterated by the cookery process or by the stronger flavored ingredients that accompany it i mean i think with pizza like it's normally the bland ingredients that are worse yeah chicken yeah chicken on the pizza it's just chicken and cheese and dough that's just the most boring things there's nothing there to provide contrast or interest it doesn't mean it's actively bad it's just a bit dull isn't it must say, I'm not interested in trying banana pizza for any other reason than having said that I've tried it. That does sound pretty rank, actually, don't you think? Would you try banana pizza?

To me, it's the tomato and the banana combination again that becomes disturbing, but I can see how it might work. And also, it depends, like, are you going for a really ripe sweet banana or is it more like a kind of plantain type of textural element? You cooked a really nice banana curry, which was like a kind of plantain type of textural element you cooked a really nice banana curry which was like a tomato base with like a battered banana that was delicious so maybe that would work on a pizza no that was good because um it was a slightly sour tomato sauce in my collection of off-putting 20th century cookbooks i noticed a recipe in 282 ways of

making a salad for salmon and banana salad which wasn't a combination that appealed to me enough to try it but it's my own prejudice i'm fascinated by the idea that pre-buzzfeed anyone would have come up with such a random number for the amount of salads to grace the title page of a book yeah do you think they just ran out of ideas at 283 they're so close to 300 yeah exactly but maybe if they like stopped at 250 it would have seemed like they were just trying to make up the numbers but contrived when you have 282 it's like this is the perfect you know every salad in this deserves to be here because it's not a round number but what is the weirdest and surprisingly tasty food combo you've ever had ollie i'm trying to think now

because i guess when i eat them and it is tasty i don't think it's that weird anymore well exactly yeah one person's weird is another person's conventional isn't it i remember being in tuscany with martin's family and martin's dad who dislikes what he calls pudding with his mains ordered a savory pasta dish that had strawberries in it uh-huh what else would he term puddings with his mains i'm curious now. Tuck a larange or... Yeah. Right. Apples with roast pork or something like that. Yeah, we're so conditioned, aren't we, in the idea that the

sweet course comes last. Which, my understanding is, is basically a Victorian idea, and before that, like, it was anything goes. Right, exactly. You might die by pudding. Have it now! Well, here's a question from Brooke in Dallas, Texas, who says says my husband and i live in a fourplex which is basically a big house with two downstairs units and two upstairs units

a month or so into sheltering in place i started noticing bits of watermelon scattered about our shared backyard yeah Yeah, it's a lesser-known COVID symptom. A few weeks later, I pulled up the blinds to let some sunshine in. You don't need to explain why you're pulling up the blinds, Brooke. That's, you know, that's a pretty textbook. Only to see more melons and orange scraps all along the side yard. Oh. At some point, some fruit scraps were even sitting on our window ledges, rotting away.

Nasty. Today, after months of mystery fruit, I finally witnessed fruit being chucked out the window of the upstairs unit, falling on the ground right outside our windows. Now, I don't think that months of it, this could have been your first suspicion that it was coming from upstairs. Can it, Brooke? Did you think it was being sprinkled from heaven above?

Maybe she thought there was like, you know, sometimes like when exotic birds escape from a zoo or someone's private collection. And maybe as they fly over, you know, people hope against hope, don't they? You just hope it wouldn't be your neighbour that you share a building with that would be chucking disgusting used fruit slices all over the lawn you come up with a kind

of alternative suggestion however ludicrous might seem more comforting everywhere in dallas has been seeing watermelon showers exactly where we live at the moment is a street away from the sea and sometimes you see like a crab shell on the street and i've always assumed that was a seagull just carrying it and dropping it but now i guess it's the neighbours. Maybe she says it's just because I'm home nearly 24-7 nowadays but I found myself enraged enough to knock on my own window as if the guy upstairs would be able to hear me. Oh Brooke you're too good for this world. Yeah not enraged enough even in this acute pain to actually confront them yet. The very few dealings I've had with this neighbour have been oddly tense, as he seems quite terse.

Well, he sounds like kind of a selfish jerk. We've always tried to be mindful of the fact that we live in a shared space, so I wish our other neighbours were more mindful as well. That is reasonable, yes. So Helen, answer me this. Should I just dismiss this behaviour as we're thinking of moving in a year anyway? And how would you feel about it? How would you feel about it, Helen, if someone threw used watermelon rinds down on your floor? I would similarly feel like Brooke that you wish the neighbours more communally minded. Evidently, this guy isn't. So since he hasn't been particularly

friendly in your previous interactions, I think you can just meet terse with terse i think you need to go upstairs and say you've been chucking fruit into the yard stop it it's rotting it's attracting pests even if it isn't i think you could say that it is because that is actually a hygiene concern dallas is a warm place yeah and he needs to sort his shit out also he might just be chucking it out the window because he's like la la la it's not in my space anymore so it doesn't exist like people who throw non-degradable rubbish out of their car windows but she says that she's a considerate neighbor um and maybe she should try and analyze what's happening from his point of view like why is this man throwing fruit out the window it may be that he thinks from his point of view this is natural waste which will disintegrate or feed the wildlife therefore it doesn't matter if i throw it out

my wind i mean what all i'm saying is maybe there's a sensitive way to approach him without storming up there and saying you've chucked this out the window don't do it but that is probably it isn't it he's probably like oh yeah it's biodegradable and like birds will eat it not it's going to sit there for weeks before it degrades well fruit waste takes a surprisingly long time to degrade right but that's's clearly not something he's thinking about, is it? No. So it's not acceptable that he is doing this. What you could do,

depends how Passag you want to be about it, is gather it up in a bucket and take it up to him, saying, oh, I think you dropped this. Or buy him a compost bin. I mean, kill him with kindness. Right. I've noticed your interest in recycling fruit waste. Look, here's a present.

I think if you don't want a direct confrontation with him, you could put a notice in the communal hall or on the front door or something yes as if everyone's doing it put your name on it don't make it anonymous say there's fruit waste in the garden yeah it's rotting in the heat it's making the garden untidy please don't throw things out the window into the garden and it's impossible to do this in a way that doesn't seem like a bit dickish but on the other hand he's being a dick so yeah what's the worst he's gonna do put a whole load of watermelon through your letterbox right if you do get into a conversation with him though about the watermelon you could always uh persuade him to eat the rind because um there is amino acid citrulline in it which um can help people with mild erectile dysfunction you know i don't know if he suffers

from that but that might be one of the reasons for his frustration and he's become a vegetable thrower and also it can help reduce your blood pressure particularly if you're obese apparently a way to make watermelon rinds more palatable is to freeze a whole slice of watermelon and then you can actually suck the rind like a lollipop this neighbor is not asking for tips for what else he can do with his rind he's clearly unconcerned about consuming the rind like a lollipop. This neighbour is not asking for tips for what else he can do with his rind. He's clearly unconcerned about consuming the rind. I've got a question. Email your question to answer me this podcast

at googlemail.com to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com So retrospectives,

what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday, we bring you the real story of the mutiny on the bounty. On Tuesday, the anniversary of the day somebody invented the meatball, but who? On Wednesday, the iconic British car that ripped off an iconic American car. On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on

Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a question from Mrs Mullins who says, Monaco is famously a tax haven. So, Ollie, answer me this. How are services like refuse collection, schools or road maintenance paid for? Is it the case that residents are excused say income tax but have higher local tax or sales taxes to compensate i love that we've had such

a boring question about monaco because often people like monaco glamorous but actually how do the monaco logistics work great question well there is actually a 19.6 percent vat on all goods and services right so that's that's low, but actually it's not higher than France. It's set to be equal with whatever France's one is. So they do pay tax on goods and services, and they also pay inheritance tax if you leave your possessions to anyone outside of Monaco who isn't a direct descendant. And basically, if you're not leaving that to your children,

that's essentially everybody because there's only 30,000 citizens of Monaco. And then you do get taxed on that when you die. But yeah, they don't have a huge variety of complex taxes. That is why people want to move there. And what surprises me is that they've been doing so ever since 1869. I assumed that the tax thing was like something from the 70s or whatever. but no, it's been going for like over 150 years now. I wonder how that compares with how a lot of other nations' taxes work. Because although tax is a very old concept, like many hundreds of years old, perhaps the way that it is meted out now is not old. Right. In fact, I mean, it's constantly being fiddled with, isn't it?

I mean, you know, headline news at the moment is what is the Chancellor going to do to tax people to make up for the money they've just spent dealing with the pandemic? I mean, this is economic policy all over the world with isn't it i mean you know headline news at the moment is what is the chancellor going to do to tax people to make up for the money they've just spent dealing with the pandemic i mean this is this is economic policy all over the world isn't it it's fiddling with taxes whereas actually monaco hasn't really changed their policy since 1869 so in a sense it works and to answer her question how does all that stuff get paid for the schools the roads the refuse collection i mean for a start it is a tiny place two square kilometers and it's full of very rich people so i mean there's a lot of stuff that gets paid for privately but what does get slightly overlooked i think is that yes monaco is a tax haven but that doesn't

mean that you move to monaco because you believe in smaller government or something actually on the contrary because it's just one region and it has no localized government there's just one government that rules monaco a lot of their infrastructure is a state-run monopoly effectively oh wow so the government's constantly recouping money by you going out to bars and restaurants and nightclubs because they own them the government owns night clubs yeah well not just nightclubs, but I mean, most famously, the Monte Carlo Casino, which is the reason that a lot of people go to Monaco

because, you know, it's got the kind of James Bond glamour attached to it. And so if you imagine, you know, the Las Vegas Strip, instead of it being owned by the mob or in recent years, MGM Resorts, imagine that being owned by the Nevada government. That's how they pay their taxes basically and they've got loads of tourists coming in extraordinary and they couldn't really

be clearer about the fact that their local services are paid for by fleecing tourists than in the naming of the company that owns all those assets, which is called, my French pronunciation is not amazing, but Société de Bains de Meur et du Cercle d'Estrangers, which translates as Company of Seabathing and of the Circles from Abroad. So the government-run company that owns the casino is called the Company of the Circles from Abroad. In other words, we are going to fleece tourists here. And in fact, if you're a Monagask citizen, you're banned from gambling in the casino. Really?

What? Yeah, isn't that interesting? How does that work? You're not allowed. Because then you'd be paying tax, effectively. Well, I guess the truth is anyone who knows a casino knows that the game is rigged. I mean, not literally,

but in the sense that the odds are so against you that you don't want to be encouraging the local citizens who are benefiting from the revenues of the casino to spend their money in the casino. So they don't, they actually prohibit them. How do you become a citizen? Like, is it just if you're rich enough, then they'll be like, yeah, right. So becoming a Monaco resident is quite easy. Comparatively, if you've got half a million pounds in the bank, then it's quite easy. If you're French, then you're always going to be a french citizen living in monaco and that's because they don't want french people crossing the border to avoid paying taxes um but if you're not french

then you can just move to monaco for three months or more a year and then you don't have to pay tax and you're a monaco resident but to get all the benefits of being a monagasc citizen and there are so few of them and it is passed on through the bloodline so it's a valuable thing to have it takes fucking ages like there's three steps step one you have to open a bank account and deposit 500 000 euros and then you need a letter to the government saying you have enough to support yourself in the country and then step two you need to have gone through a process of at least three different bits of paper, like there's a temporary residency and then a longer residency and they get renewed after two and then three and then five years, I think. So you're already like seven years into the process by the time you are then ready to apply for step three, which is that you have to be over 18, lived in Monaco for a minimum of 10 continuous years, have no criminal record, and prove good character? And that's the bit that's a bit dubious, like they don't explain

what that means. Yeah, I mean, is good character contradicted by wanting to live somewhere with no personal taxation? Exactly. And also, would the monarchy of Monaco be allowed? Well, the monarchy of Monaco get to choose, ultimately, who gets the monogast citizenship because they're all personally awarded by the prince. So that's the final sign-off. So yes, I think they probably would permit themselves. But are they good character?

The monarchy, actually, in Monaco is really fascinating. Prince Albert's dad, I can't remember his name now. Rainier. In around 2002, he knew he was going to die because he had a terminal illness, and he also knew that Albert had no children. I mean, actually, he had illegitimate children, which they found out about later, but he had no children

so there was no obvious dynastical line because they had a rule that, like lots of monarchies did, to be fair, that the line of succession goes through male lines, right? If there's a man available then you can't have a woman. So he changed the constitution so that a woman could succeed to the throne, because Albert's sisters, Caroline and Stephanie, could accede to the throne in the event of Albert's death if Albert had no children. And then,

despite the fact that they changed the constitution so that a woman could ascend to the throne. When Prince Albert had children, they were twins. The girl was born before the boy, but guess who got to be the monarch, Helen? Well, he's not the monarch yet because he's still an infant. No, the crown prince, the heir apparent, yeah. So Jack, the boy, was born two minutes after the girl, Gabriella, but nonetheless, despite the fact his grandfather changed the constitution so that theoretically Gabriella should become the crown princess, Jack became the crown prince because of the tradition that it's usually a male successor.

But isn't that something that Britain did a load of ruling about before Prince George was born? Yes. Where it was like, if the firstborn is female, then she will succeed. Whereas before that, it was like the first male born will succeed. So they're just a step behind the British monarchy, which is many steps behind how the modern world should operate. Yeah, sure, sure. But that's a crucial step behind, isn't it? I mean, yes, they're a step behind the British monarchy. But you know, if you change the law so that a girl can become queen in the future

and then decide not to make her queen, that just seems like having your cake and eating it. Well, no, because technically they don't have to. It's not like they want to modernise because they're a fucking monarchy. So until it's enshrined into law that the firstborn will become monarch, whatever the gender,

then they're not gonna because they don't want to fundamentally. I mean, I suppose the whole thing's slightly ridiculous in the sense that if Albert was to be killed in a car accident now, you'd have two five-year-olds who would be being considered for the throne. Whereas in fact, he does have two illegitimate children who are adults. I mean, that seems bizarre as well, doesn't it? Yeah, I suppose the whole concept of monarchy would be very different if the extramarital children of monarchs had been considered in the equation. Well, except in the Monegasque monarchy,

Louis, who was the heir to the throne in 1918, didn't have any children, any legitimate children. And the next heir was going to be a german prince who was the duke of yurak and obviously it's the end of the first world war so france was not very keen on the idea that a german would become the king of of uh monaco so they put in a constitutional provision then that only the monarch's own children could inherit the throne that that's why they're in this situation now they're not allowed to have extended family anymore in monaco in case it's a german and to avoid the demise of the dynasty then louis adopted the

daughter that was born to his mistress so there was an illegitimate so albert i think is the descendant of an illegitimate monarch because prince rainier who succeeded louis was the grandchild of louis right so he was the child of the legitimised by adoption daughter. I find micro-states and principalities and stuff just so hard to wrap my head around anyway. This is the second smallest

sovereign state in the world after the Vatican. Yeah, but I don't think of Vatican City as a real country, really. Vatican City feels like oh come on, it's really part of italy do you want to mean whereas monaco really does feel different to france does it have you been yeah well i've been to the casino for a night out yeah and does it not feel like france because the vatican being like the pope's big golden house sounds less like italy than monaco appears to be

from my distant perception i guess it's more the point that everyone in Vatican City has got there via Italy, haven't they? Whereas I guess some people in Monaco do really live there and have families there. And there's a Monagas tradition. And yeah, you do notice it. I mean, loads of things are different to France. But like one thing is the police presence.

There's police everywhere. I think it's the most policed proportion of the population place in the world. What are they afraid of? Well, they're walking around with like Rolexes and diamond necklaces and stuff i think it's basically that so there's that and then also there's just english is spoken everywhere i mean i don't know what their official language is it probably is french but i mean people are speaking english everywhere including the police so that's different obviously to the south of france the official language is french right uh but there's multiple languages present italian being one but also local

ones like monagask and provencal i mean it just has an international feel it's like being in an airport or something in fact all the designer clothes and designer shops really do make you feel like you're in an airport oh brilliant sounds very pointful going there oh it's fun to visit i mean i'm fascinated by small states like that's one of the reasons we got married in gibraltar actually i just i find the idea of like a little place clinging on to a heritage that's now really idiosyncratic is just kind of fascinating to be amongst. I just also think about the practicality. If there's 38,000 people, absolutely tiny area, even if you want to go there to spend your 10 years trying to become a citizen,

presumably the housing market is not going to be that busy. They were going to build into the sea like build a whole new island to join it on to monaco so they could expand the land a bit wow dubai style dubai style yeah and then that fell through um at the time of the banking crisis but they are now i think or they were before this pandemic but i'm sure they're still continuing with it doing something a bit smaller but it's like a kind of it's essentially a reef where they're going to put three skyscrapers so that they can put another you know whatever it is 5 000 luxury penthouses in because there's nowhere else to buy anymore i wonder what the rules are about boats boat living yeah you can actually moor a yacht fairly

cheaply i think but i mean you've got to have the million pound yacht in the first place to moor haven't you that's the thing got to be able to get the mooring as well. The coastline is three kilometres long. So world's shortest coastline. There you go. It's the world's lot of things, isn't it? Thank you for not picking me up on saying that they were going to build a skyscraper full of penthouses.

I mean, obviously that is logistically impossible. That's probably how they sell it though, isn't it? Be very flat. You know, I always thought that loft would be like the top part of a building, but the way that loft apartments are sold now, it's really an aesthetic, isn't it? So maybe penthouse is similar. Loft-style living.

Yeah. Penthouse-style living with the convenience of the ground floor. LAUGHTER Tom Waits Is it his gravelly voice Or his gravelly face Or the instruments He made from metal plates And an anvil and a saucepan If you love him so much Then make a podcast about him I have

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between mobile and desktop versions of the website you're building as well so you don't have to actually get your phone out your pocket to see what it looks like on your phone you can see what it looks like on your phone on your desktop if you see what i mean go and play around with the two-week free trial head to squarespace.com answer and then when you're ready to launch receive a 10 discount off your first purchase of a website or domain if you use our code ANSWER. And now a question from Isabel, which she has recorded as a voice memo and sent in. Hi, Helen and Ali. I'm a trans woman and I've been having some difficulty figuring out how to talk to people while wearing a mask. At the best of times, it's a challenge communicating with

people face to face. I'm generally red as a woman, and people consistently use she-her pronouns for me until I talk. Then they'll get confused and misunderstand what I say. Now that I'm wearing a mask whenever I talk to anyone outside the house, it's even worse. The extra muffling means I have to repeat myself a number of times during simple interactions. So Helen and Ali, answer me this. How do I make myself comfortable communicating with people while wearing a mask? I think on this way up, what makes you more uncomfortable? Is it not communicating at all or communicating like this via a mask? And if the answer is the latter, then keep that in mind.

I mean, it's still the best option for you, isn't it, to communicate rather than not? My research suggests that all genders are having problems with the clarity of speech wearing masks. So while there is the specificity of you being perhaps misgendered, which sucks, the masks are absorbing quite a lot of voice frequency and removing the social cues we get from people's facial expressions from their lips. Also, people are reporting voice fatigue from having to project more. So there's some quite simple things that, as a person who communicates in speech for a job, I might suggest. One is that you speak quite quickly. So I would slow down and just maybe repeat yourself a bit more so that people's brains are able to catch up more to what you're saying because they have less other information to go on because half your face is obscured.

Yeah, I'm really finding that myself. Like smiling is something that I really rely on when I'm being quite abrupt for customer service. Like if I'm saying something where if you looked at the words, you'd think, Christ, why are you going up and being so blunt? I'm often doing it with a smile and I get away with it. And I've noticed that I'm not getting away with it. People find me rude. I've really noticed that recently. And so I'm trying to be more concise. Forget the flowery stuff, but just say what you want in simple words.

It is a change, isn't it, in how we communicate? Because our brains are trying to interpret things that we find difficult to interpret. So you just really need to simplify the communication. So simplify constructions, try not to loop back to complicated sub clauses, train yourself out of word salad, pause more so that people's brains can catch up, use hand gestures to make up for the lack of facial cues for expression, and then face the person directly if you can it's just a bit easier for them to focus on you if the problem is loud places and you're able to move the conversation to a corner rather than the middle of a room say so there's just like slightly fewer sensory inputs becoming involved and maybe look at some youtube videos for just like actors who've had to do classes in mask

acting because that's something that goes back through actor training to the beginning of theatre basically yes and that might actually help with her question I mean you've given some very sound advice but actually the question is how do I feel more comfortable a lot of that frankly is psychological as you acknowledge in the way you phrased it it's about how you feel about it isn't it and you're you're projecting the anxiety of how you might feel based on how someone else might perceive you which may or may not be there that's all stuff you can nlp adjust yourself i have um cis female friends who are frequently misgendered and one of them says wearing large earrings has been a big thing for her in not getting misgendered anymore. So maybe that's an option with the mask,

if you can get them to work with the elastics. I'll tell you what the real problem is for me, is actually just smelling my own breath. It's disgusting. Yeah, although it does make me feel relieved that other people are less likely to smell it because it's trapped with me. And also if I have things in my teeth, they don't know. That's true.

But I mean, now I'm aware that my breath smells disgusting. Well, I'm buying more mouthwash. Let's put it that way. Our next question is from Susan in Susan's voice. Helen and Ollie and Martin back there in the echo chamber. I am a seamstress, a very good seamstress. I am not humble. I have a theory that the sewing machine,

as we know it in general design, must have been designed by a left-handed person. Because I believe that the design of the sewing machine is much more suited to a left-hander than a right-hander. So, Helen and Ollie, was it a left-handed person who invented the sewing machine? Do you know what she means, Helen? I do, because in the design of sewing machines, you have the sort of body of it on the right where the engine is, and then on the left you have the needle and that's where you're pushing the fabric through. So I guess what she

means is it seems like your left hand is a lot more dominant in guiding the fabric, even though your right hand sort of has a platform on which to do that more. Also, on the right, there's a lot more buttons and levers to deal with. So there are a lot more complex procedures where if your right hand is non-dominant, you might have more difficulty doing that with precision. Although I am a left-hander, and obviously I've never used a sewing machine. Well, that's not obvious to anyone but you. You could. Well, I'm generally cat-candid and injure myself using any kind of adventurous technology.

So sewing machine's definitely not something that appealed to me. Is it because it's a right-hand normative world though and the inventions have been constructed so that you're at a disadvantage as a left-hander? Possibly. So I'm curious as to whether or not i would fare better with a sewing machine but what i was going to say is actually in the right hand dominated world as a left-hander you do learn to do more with your right hand than right dominated people learn to do with their left if you see what i mean like because so many bits of apparatus are operated with the right hand my brother andy is left-handed but he plays guitar with his right hand and he

plays cricket with his right hand yeah like you can get guitars and cricket bats that have been made the other way, but it's just easier not to. It's like I use a mouse with my right hand because that's how I was taught, even though it would make more sense for me for it to be on the left. And you could change that. I could, but I've tried it and it's weird. Also, the mouse buttons are the wrong way around, so I don't have to get a special left-handed mouse. It's interesting, with the QWERTY keyboard, some of the most common letters, like A, S and E, are left-handed letters and with a weak finger. Yeah. Anyway, sewing machines.

Other people have Susan's theory that left-handers invented sewing machines. The thing is, like, it's not even clear who invented the sewing machine because it's one of those things where, like, well, one person came up with the first sewing machine, then someone else like changed it in this way and it's like so many people have got patents on different parts of the machines and the different ways that they work and so some people are like well uh isaac singer of singer sewing machines must have been left-handed but it's very hard to get confirmation on that i did learn though that he had over 20 recognized children which sounds like a lot he'd be great in the monaco royal family but the reason why the sewing machine is this way is because it was originally hand cranked so your right hand would have been turning a crank because it wasn't the like electrical engine there were some foot treadle machines as well but there was still like a lot of work for the right hand to do and because

it's a right hand normative world of inventors that was why it was that and then the design just evolved so it's i mean you look at early sewing machines and they're very recognizably similar to the machines of today so they just kept the bodies the same way and i don't know if there are many machines manufactured that have been flipped because manufacturers are probably going to look at the proportion of people who are left-handed sewists and be like it's just not worth like creating all these new factory molds to flip it but what i couldn't understand is why left-handed scissors are not more common because loads of people buy scissors scissors are so useful why is it that's still so hard for people like you ollie to have scissors that have been designed for you it's hardly like left-handers

are such a rarity well Well, they do exist. But again, again, again, I've grown up in a world where because I know most scissors favour the right hand, I just automatically start cutting stuff with my right hand, which is one of the reasons probably that I am cag-handed, yeah. It's unfair. Yeah. Unfair.

It bloody is. Five Star Hotel. It had an omelette station, a multitude of pools But thirty quid for parking, WTF! Four Star Hotel There's ethernet, not wifi like it's 1998 But there was a swim up bar in the rooftop pool Three Star Hotel.

A bit more down to earth. They did still have a pool but it was full of kids. Two Star Hotel. A lot more down to earth. They also had a pool but it was full of dogs. One Star Hotel. There's a body in the pool. Thanks to The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring Answer Me This. And if you like Answer Me This because you think, I love learning through online means, then The Great Courses Plus is...

Imagine it's like Answer Me This, but with people who actually know stuff. But legit. And can explain it in depth. Yeah, they have more than 11,000 lectures available for you to watch on demand. They've got lectures about history, cookery, dog maintenance, business, philosophy.

Well, I've been watching Understand Opera this month. Really? You've been going for a lot of fancy ones. Wine, opera. Yeah, well, I suppose that just, you know, indicates where I feel like my knowledge could be expanded. With opera, you know, I love musicals, as you know, but I have a bit of a blind spot on opera, even though I know that one leads to the other. And I always feel a bit of a philistine around it. So I thought I'd try to understand opera. And I've learned loads just from the first sort of hour or so of it. He sort of contextualises a lot of the histrionics that I find a bit distracting now. You know, when you watch it, it just seems like a lot of screaming. He really explains that that

stuff was, well, A, because of the size of the auditorium they were trying to fill with their voices, and B, because it's such an old medium, like it pre-exists Shakespeare's Hamlet, for example. It was almost like a special effect, basically. It was like going to watch an IMAX movie going to the opera. You were supposed to be lifted off your feet by sensation in a way that people now look to movies and the internet

to do. So have you started listening to opera differently as a result of doing the course? Well, yes, but so far only the operas that he's explained. Like that's the only thing I'd say is like he explains brilliantly, like he'll play a bit from Mahler and then explain what's going on. So now if I hear that thing from Mahler, I'll be like, ah, I know this about it. Ah, so you can at least watch Frasier with a totally different set of ears. But obviously the idea is that then you can go and encounter an opera that you've never heard or seen before and somehow interpret it better. And I'm not really ready for that because you realise that without the synopsis, without the context on a lot of it, you still are a little

bit in the dark. But maybe that's what I've learned is that you have to put the work in a little bit and that's fine. That's the medium. That's why I was struggling with it. Education is not instant. Exactly. But because it's Great Courses Plus, you can do it at your own pace and you could return to it down the line and refresh yourself. And right now they have a limited time offer just for our listeners. You get an entire month of access for free.

Get started by signing up today at our special URL, thegreatcoursesplus.com slash answer. That's thegreatcoursesplus. dot com slash answer here's a question from chris from bath who says last night i was flicking through paul mccartney's back catalogue imagining what his covid cancelled glastonbury set would have included i'm sure that'd be just the same as being there when i came across the album cover for band on the run it's a photo of a group of escaped prisoners caught in a spotlight. The people include Paul and Linda McCartney, the horror actor Christopher Lee, 70s comedian Kenny Lynch, TV presenter Michael Parkinson, and a free Parker pen, and most bizarrely, chef and politician

Clement Freud, together with other people I don't recognise. Oscar-winning actor James Coburn, professional boxer John Conte, and Denny Lane, who was actually in Wings. And by the way, Denny Lane, even though it's not his birth name, astonishingly, he was not named after Penny Lane by the Beatles. That's just a coincidence. So, Ollie, answer me this. What's the story? How did they come up with such a random selection of people for the cover? Well, the context for the album is 1973. And just before recording the album, which was Wings' third album, Henry McCullough, who was the guitarist, and Danny Sewell, who was the drummer, had just quit the group.

So there were only three members left, two of which were married to each other. So, you know, it was an obvious target for the press if there was a picture of the band on the front you know it's a bit like take that now it just looks a bit sad doesn't it when there's three of them yeah so yeah i think partly to avoid that idea that it was just mccartney's solo project basically you know he roped in his wife and some mates the idea was to say we're a band we really are a band and clement freud's in the band well no the title's a bit of a playful pun

on the fact that some of the members have just left you know band on the run i think it was like here's the band and it's a totally different band to the actual band is it's just a kind of playful way of addressing that issue okay and the idea came from photographer clive arrow smith who was a mate of john and paul's from art school uh just brainstorming basically what i mean they'd written and recorded the song band on the Run already. That having happened, you know, what would Band on the Run look like in visual form? I think it was Linda's idea, actually, that you'd have this kind of classic Hollywood prison breakout. She's a photographer, she had visual instincts. And then they had this idea that, okay, well, who's in the band? What about all these other kind of various celebrities?

Wouldn't that be fun? I think that was also partly a nod to Sgt. Pepper, because obviously, the front cover of that had various celebrities alive and dead and i think paul had been he'd never admit this ever obviously but i'd been he'd been slightly bruised by the fact that his first two albums weren't very well received whereas john's were so i think there was an element of like nodding to sergeant pepper and saying to beatles fans look here's an album that you'll like it's a bit like sergeant pepper and it is the most like sergeant pepper of everything that he did after the beatles and unfortunately in terms of why these people were chosen why michael parkinson is in the same picture as clement freud um it is as dull but also intriguing as they were genuinely paul and linda's mates like they had their numbers

in their rolodex and that's who they could get to come to osterley park on a rainy day in 1973 and that's it i mean it is a completely Osterley Park on a rainy day in 1973 and that's it I mean it is a completely random selection of famous friends they had they'd all been drinking with each other and partying that whole day before they took the picture and I found a blog that Clive Arrowsmith had written about trying to take the picture and it was really difficult apparently because to get them all to pose in the exact position he wanted they all needed to stand still but they'd all been partying, so they couldn't. And there's quite a lot of crouching as well,

which makes the thighs tremble after a bit. Exactly. And the reason they had to stand still was because he'd got the wrong light and the wrong film stock. Oh, Clive! So it was like a super long exposure, like when there's Victorian photos.

Well, only two seconds, but that's a long time when you're taking 24 shots. If you're kind of in a stress position, crouched down, doing a gun pose with a hangover. And it was daylight film, which is why the picture has a yellowy tint on it. He'd accidentally bought daylight film rather than nighttime film and was too embarrassed to say

anything, and luckily Paul liked it. Well, if you don't like it, then you just put it in black and white and that takes care of that particular problem. It's far from the weirdest Beatles spin-off cover art, in my view. That would be Ringo Starr's 1999 album, I Want to Be Santa Claus. Please send us an email, we love to keep in touch. If you send us an email, we'll like you very much.

It's rsermithispodcast at googlemail.com That's rsermithispodcast at googlemail.com that's answer me this podcast at googlemail.com so please send us an email or we won't know you're there and if we like your email we'll read it out on air here's a question from ian from illinois who says i'm going into my freshman year of college this fall and my school is going to campus with safety precautions one of those is that all the dorm rooms are single occupancy even if they're usually a double hence removing as far as i'm concerned the the least appealing thing about american universities as viewed through the lens of cinema like the idea of like having to have a room share when you're 20 used to horrify me oh a friend of mine went to warwick university in britain ollie and had to share a room really yeah no fucking thanks on campus not on a house

campus in their first year and i don't think they knew until they turned up whoa i just think i'm 20 years old leave me alone let me masturbate at will wow ian says i was very excited for this having two beds and two desks would be great. However, I've just learned I'm in a room that is already a single, meaning one bed, desk and half the space. Well, kind of. I mean, I see what you mean. It is half double the space.

But I mean, it's the space, isn't it? It's the space they attribute to a single person. So it's not like getting half the space a normal single person would get. Given that I'll be spending a lot of time in my room because of online classes, I've already requested a room change, but I doubt it will go through. So, Ollie, answer me this. How would you suggest I manage being trapped in an even tinier room than I was expecting? I don't know. Put up a lot of artwork?

I also really like those sort of stick-on murals that people have where it's like a giant blown-up photo of mountains or a forest or something. And I think those can really make a small room seem much bigger. I also think that American versions of small rooms are a lot larger nonetheless than our small rooms of britain well that's it so like at our college which all three of us went to they really were just a box it was helped by the fact that there was a glass wall architecturally designed glass wall so you saw out you did get that view but it was a small small room do you have any tips from those days i i just remember kind of like multi-purposing everything so like the bed was also the sofa like my book storage

was also what i'd use during workouts you know everything has five uses i think having nice lighting is important like lamps because if you just have the choice of harsh lighting or no lights then it makes things worse whereas if you can have these sort of little pools of light in the evening that's a lot more appealing get a lava lamp get a lava lamp get a lava lamp yeah it's changed his life when i was living outside of college i had a really small and very dark room with very little natural light and i painted the walls this like dark teal color which made them feel further away made them recede like the night sky yeah don't paint them bright red i had a friend that did that and i don't think it helped his mental health it does seem a bit like you'd be

living inside an organ but martin you had a little room as your childhood bedroom i remember there just being a giant poster of tori amos but what other tips do you have for spending a lot of time in a room that's barely bigger than a bed well Well, I always had a giant poster of Slash to even things like... My parents put a lot of effort into it being, like, nice colours. So I had, like, green curtains and a nice green carpet and that felt quite restful. I don't really remember, like, most of that room was taken up by shelving and cupboards and the bed.

And so there wasn't a huge amount of space. But, I mean, I was the sort of kid that just sat on my bed and read things. So, you know, that worked OK okay you could get mirrors on opposite walls so you've got that infinite mirror effect in some of my favorite bedrooms have been the smaller ones like actually when you stay in a really big room if you're not filling it it can feel really daunting and i was i was speaking to a guy who does property guardianship when you live in an old office block or something and he was saying actually it's really weird having loads of space like when you've got a whole loft to live in you end up just using a corner of it anyway because it just feels like haunted huge space in predicament is not just

sleeping it's that he'll be working in it quite a lot yeah and will he feel more trapped yes and and the particular circumstance at the moment obviously with the pandemic going on is is a unique set of things isn't it because normally we'd, well, just go out a lot, you know, go eat all your meals in the cafe, but that may not be possible. So, I mean, it is an issue, but I do think it's probably worse in your head than it will be in actuality when you're there. I think there are ways to make small rooms feel, like I say, cosy rather than constricted. And I think you're only thinking this because in your mind, there was the thought of having a double room all to yourself. Yes. If you had been in one of those under normal circumstances, there would have been another person in it taking up more than just physical space, but mental space. That's an advantage.

Also, Illinois in winter, pretty chilly, easier to keep a smaller room warm. Well, if you've ever lived in an incredibly small space, maybe you have advice for Ian about how he'll be living in his probably not that small space, in fact. Do share. Yeah, there's an Ear Hustle episode about making your prison cell a little more festive.

Yeah, put it in context. Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of Answer Me This, but if you have any advice for today's questioneers, or if you have a question yourself, then please do supply it in the form of an email or a voice memo that you've recorded then attached to an email our contact details are on our website answer me this podcast.com you can also head over to answer me this store.com to buy our six exclusive albums most recently our new release

for 2020 answer me this home entertainment uh about tv and movies and stuff you can stream at home and things like that available now exclusively on that website for pay what you like and also at answer me this store.com there's the answer me this archive episodes 1 to 200 the first five years of the show available for merely 79 pence each halfway through the month we will drop one of those archive episodes into your feeds with a little commentary from us about all the things that we wish were not public domain with a little 10 minutes self-flagellation from helen but if you want to hear some contemporary work that helen is marginally more proud of helen

well the illusionist and veronica Mars investigations and my other podcasts I'm sure there's regrettable stuff in them but that's the thing you put content out into the world and then you grow as a person hopefully and then you hate your older self Ollie what's happening in the man podcast empire in the month of September yeah I do five podcasts you can discover them all at ollieman.com and one of them is the week unwrapped which is my current affairs show and the format of that show is we don't talk about the same news everyone else is discussing we talk about the stories that you've missed and you can find that by searching for the week unwrapped on your podcast app of choice is that weekly it is hence the name well you might just pick a week and unwrap it the week week we're unwrapping this week is, yeah,

the week of September the 5th from 1971. No, it's not that. Classic week. It is the week's news, digested and repackaged in ways that are novel. And Martin has recently unleashed a new series into the world. Yeah, there's a podcast series called Maddie's Sound Explorers, which is a science podcast for young people, 7 to 10, but we've had younger listeners as well and much older listeners.

With the Maddie Moat from CBB. With Maddie Moat. Do you know Martin's done a show with Maddie Moat? Did you know? That will mean nothing to most of you, but very exciting for anyone who's a parent of a toddler. Yeah, or a toddler themselves. They're not very excited.

Toddlers are my timeline at the moment. Every parent I know or every child of a parent I know, seems absolutely beside themselves about this show. Yeah, it's about science, and every episode we use the sounds of science and ideas from the expert we interview to make a new piece of music. So there's a song at the end of every episode

singing about thunder or bees or... It's real catchy shit about bees where rain comes from yeah it's a lot of fun excellent stuff we'll be back with a fresh new episode

of Answer Me This on the first Thursday of next month so please do join us then bye