Answer Me This! - AMT326: Crying, Gogglebox, and the Haka Dance

Episode Date: October 29, 2015

Can farts cure crying? How is Gogglebox concocted? And what's really going on inside matryoshka dolls? Delve into these mysteries and more in AMT326, by visiting http://answermethispodcast.com/episode326. Send questions to [e-mail], or the Question Line (dial 0208 123 5877 or Skype answermethis)Tweet us http://twitter.com/helenandollyBe our Facebook friend at http://facebook.com/answermethisSubscribe on iTunes http://iTunes.com/AnswerMeThisBuy old episodes and albums at http://answermethisstore.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can I get trick-or-treaters done for extortion? Answer me this, answer me this Has Downton got so dull due to writer's exhaustion? Answer me this, answer me this Helen and Ollie, answer me this It would be remiss of me not to thank you all for your many congratulations on the news from last episode that I am to be a father in January.

How is the Hall of Presence coming along? Not bad. I've been offered free nappies from someone who runs a nappy website. That's good of you. Or diapers for you Americans. Or shit sacks for everyone else. But not everyone treated it with the solemnity that it deserves.

Dean in Glasgow has been in touch to say, I've just listened to your latest hilarious podcast. Thanks, Dean. I didn't think it could get funnier until you announced that Ollie was going to become a father. That's way harsh. Thanks for that. Vote for confidence.

Anyway, he continues, what I really wanted to say was Helens with two L's do exist. Whoa. My wife is such a person. Wow. Lol. Precious as a unicorn. Two L's in lol as well.

Her father registered her birth ever so slightly inebriated and registered her as Morag Helen, H-E-L-L-E-N, which has been a standing family joke for years. What, her father? Yeah. Did you ever have the children's books Marmalade about a girl called Marmalade Atkins? Not that I recall.

The reason why she was called that was because her father went along to register her birth and her mother wanted to call her Clementine and he couldn't remember the name. He was like, I know it's something to do with the stuff I eat at breakfast. That's better than Marmite. Deja has written in to say... They've already written in.

Having a unique name isn't the worst thing in the world. I speak as an expert since my name is Deja, pronounced like the French term déjà vu. Yeah, you already said that last time. Oh, God. I have spent the entirety of my vocal life spelling, correcting and explaining this name. Yeah, I know, you said.

This seems really familiar. And almost 30 years later, I don't hate it. But I do hate you two. Sure, I've had to deal with puns like, I feel like I already know you or haven't we met before? She's certainly heard all the jokes before, hasn't she? She certainly has.

The worst part was going to school with a boy named Daniel Vu. We hardly knew each other but the jokes about us getting married were endless. Yes, well that's a funny conceit, isn't it? Even all these years later. Unless you're a bit feminist about it and he took your name. Playground chants tend not to take account for feminism in later life, Martin.

Good point. But Ollie, your baby is not the only new Ollyman production. That's right. You might remember that a few weeks ago I mentioned that there was a project in my pipes gestating teasing the time has come to shit it out i have a new podcast series that's right uh it is called the modern man m-a-double-n so it's a pun have you contemplated calling your forthcoming son the modern i haven't brand extension what's it all about tech and trends and food and fashion so the kind of stuff that you'd read in a men's magazine basically it's a musical theater well no there's definitely room for musical theater good because that seems to me like one of your traits that is uh you know

very characteristic and kind of modern because that is something that other men's media doesn't deal with enough yeah i mean i've i've tried to choose uh features where i think your average mainstream listener would be interested, but they overlap with my interests. So, for example, I'm not going to do anything about football. Sorry, don't care, don't like football. There's also quite a lot of football coverage already. You can get it if you need it.

But episode one, for example, I meet the CTO of IMAX and talk about how they build their theatres. Episode two, I go tasting the best burgers in America. So, you know, general interest. Did you think they were the best? Oh, no, no is that a spoiler it's a bit of a spoiler i i met the man who writes the list of the 33 best burgers in america every year 33 um yeah bloody internet and i tasted two of them i didn't taste the other 31 so i couldn't i couldn't say whether they deserve their place on the list so you might have had just the 32nd best burger. Exactly. But certainly one of them was the best burger I've ever had, yeah.

Okay, good. Anyway, there's that. And then the show's kind of bookended by a bit about trends and then a sex chat at the end with a lady called Alex Fox, who will take listener questions like we do, but in a much, much filthier way. Really? With much more precise detail about exactly what to

do with your cock. Have you learnt a lot? Not yet because the first one was about masturbation. I already knew it all. So she was interviewing you right? You're a solo sexpert ollie man. So anyway we're on iTunes we're on Pocketcast, we're on TuneIn. Just search for The Modern Man. Modernman.co.uk

Well here's a question from Rhianne in Sleaford, who says, me and my husband, my husband and I, have just started watching Gogglebox. We should explain what that is for listeners in other countries that haven't got this. It's a reality show, I guess, in which members of the public are filmed watching TV

in their own sitting rooms. And then it's intercut in a comic way, the different reactions of different people watching so that you get almost, it's like live YouTube comments I guess you could say on the shows that the country has been watching that week it's like crowdsourced TV criticism crossed with reality television

crossed with YouTube commentary right exactly okay what is Rhiann's question about Gogglebox? Ollie answer me this are the people watching TV expected to stay in every night all week to watch that night's telly that seems a bit extreme I think that all week to watch that night's telly. That seems a bit extreme. I think that the production team record

that week's programmes on a little VCR and then send a DVD to each family but they are wearing different clothes each night. So do they pretend they are watching it live? Gosh, it's really, I'd say overthought this. Is Gogglebox alive?

This is like the mainland thing all over again, isn't it? So Ollie answered me this. How does Gogglebox work? Do the people actually stay in each night to watch TV? Okay, I've asked my Gogglebox mole about this. You have eyes everywhere. And yes, Rhianne, Gogglebox is a bit of a lie. One thing my

Gogglebox mole was very, very, very keen to stress though, because they said they get asked this question a lot is it scripted? It is not scripted it's 100 unscripted what you're watching is the genuine reaction of real people watching tv but i wonder how much they record and then edit it down to the five minutes per person um because apparently sometimes they're there till three in the morning watching tv because they have day jobs these people so they start at 7 p.m or something and watch till two or three in the morning until they've watched everything. Because it's not until they get in the edit that they know which bits were working and which bits they want to use.

And they've got, like, what, five, six households per series? Sort of. So secretly, my Google box model told me. Oh no, say it isn't so. You sort of know this as a viewer. There are A-list contestants and B-list contestants. So the A-list is Steph and Dom, the posh couple. Yeah, I haven't watched it enough to know their names.

Okay. Just tell me the stereotypes that they're fulfilling. Leon and June, the friendly pensioners. Okay. And what's the other A-list one? There's one other. The gay couple? The gay couple.

Yes. I don't even know their names. The gay ones. The male gay couple. The male gay couple. Right. So those three are the A-list, right? So what they tend to do is film the stuff with those guys first

because they're in every show and the viewers get upset if they're not in every show. And then once they've decided what works with them, they then show that footage to the B-list contestants so that they can construct and edit around it. So no, they're not watching TV live. But the reason for that is quite practical. For the reason that Rhian suggests, you'd have to have a TV crew there every night of the week

if you wanted to film them reacting live to everything. Which, unless they all lived in the same building, would be incredibly expensive anyway, given how many units that's going to require. Precisely. So the production team spend two nights with each family. They do ask them to change clothes during the shoot. Fair enough.

They don't tell them what to say, so when the gay couples sort of get back and pretend they've just had a day's work and they're having a bit of banter, that's all natural, but that is them having come down from a costume change, not them having come down from a day's work. The people do not know what they're going to watch.

It's pumped into their sitting room from a control room that's in their kitchen. The producer controls what's on their telly, and the crew are genuinely not in the room with them so as to be unobtrusive and get genuine reactions but they are in the kitchen four people in the kitchen controlling the telly so if you've got an open plan studio flat you're never gonna get exactly um bango our dreams oh shit we just bought a new sofa for the purpose as well your sofa is beautiful actually yeah thanks thank you i've got you on goggle box so yeah they are watching everything on tape. So if it's a big

show that they know everyone's going to be talking about like The Apprentice or something, and they have to be talking about The Apprentice, then they'll have the preview disc. The Gogglebox families will see the final of The Apprentice a few days before everyone else, so that they can film their reaction to it on the Tuesday, and it will be on the TV on the Friday after everyone else has seen

it on the Thursday. They're never told what to say, as I stress. Sometimes they are told what to comment on so for example if steph and dom have said something really hilarious about alan sugar's shirt yes uh then when they're filming one of the b-list contestants they'll say look we're going to show you uh 15 minutes from the apprentice because that's the thing they don't even show them the whole show oh right sometimes just take forever we'll show you 15 minutes from The Apprentice. Just look out for what Lord Sugar's wearing in the boardroom. Right.

And that's a steer so that they're hoping that they're going to say something that will edit well with what the other people have said. I'm just surprised. I thought our listeners were worldly enough to know that TV is... Full of lies. There's artifice in it, let's say. Yes, but Gogglebox does almost make you think that it can't possibly be done in that way because they're watching news sometimes for example yes so but

even the news what they were because if you think about it some of them would be watching the BBC news at 10 some would be watching ITV some would be watching Sky yeah you'd never be able to get an edit point so even the news if there's been a big event like David Cameron's speech at the Tory party conference they'll be played in the edit that they're going to be talking about from the itv news at six or whatever it is so they're all talking about the same thing so sometimes they have to fake and pretend they don't know that this is the news from three days ago yeah it's always the way with things that appear naturalistic a lot of effort goes in to make them seem that way hello it's from barbcoe i have an issue with crying which is weird to say whenever I'm at

the height of any emotion I cry and it makes it really difficult to stand up to yourself the worst part is I work in retail so altercations are unpleasant and frequent and I can't stop crying so don't really answer me this why do I cry all the time and is there anything that you can do to prevent yourself from crying bye at least she sounds cheerful about it absolutely usually i'd say it's good to cry let it all out you know um don't suppress those feelings that's the the classic british technique that has failed us for generations yes um but i do think in the context of being a store assistant uh it's not really appropriate, is it, to constantly be bursting into tears when you're dealing with customers? No, I don't think I ever did it when I worked in a shop.

And you would have had ample excuse to. I really would have. You were in Tunbridge Wells. I was. There was dust everywhere, so that can stimulate the tear ducts. Absolutely. I mean, are there physical things you can do to avoid crying in the same way that, like, if you feel a sneeze coming on

and you want to suppress the sneeze, you can press your tongue firmly against the back of your front two upper teeth can you yes that's never worked for me it's worked to treat for me many a time the only thing that stops me sneezing is if i'm sniffing around kind of willing the sneeze to come on is if someone then says bless you before i've sneezed of course then i get like shy bladder but with sneezing but yes you can go for a walk i mean if you go for a sprightly walk that's a physical change that will deflect your attention away from whatever was making you sad as long as you weren't crying because it's very cold in glasgow like people distract babies but then presumably if she's at work though she can't

go for a sprightly walk crying is just a stress relief mechanism isn't it the average woman cries at least once a week um if you're crying every day i mean several times possibly yeah in retail i think you are probably pushing yourself over that. The average man sheds a tear. It says here 1.4 times a month. That, to me, seems like quite a lot. Really? I don't cry. Do you cry once a month?

I don't know. I cried at a cup of Earl Grey a few months ago. I don't know. You cried into a cup of Earl Grey? At a cup of Earl Grey. Why? How did it wound you? I think I was just quite in an emotional mood. And I accidentally made myself a cup of Earl Grey? I had a cup of Earl Grey. Why? How did it wound you? I think I was just quite in an emotional mood

and I accidentally made myself a cup of Earl Grey and then initially I was like, oh, everything's going wrong and I made myself an Earl Grey and then I remembered how much I like Earl Grey

and how long it had been since I had a cup of Earl Grey and I got really happy and just started to cry. Is that why you rarely drink Earl Grey, Martin? Because you're worried about the outpouring

of emotion that will result? Yeah, it's very emotional too. I don't want to be all armchair psychologist about this but I am going to do that i wonder whether you have some kind of uh anxiety issue and therefore you need to practice psychological techniques to deal with it maybe you're just like afraid of confrontation because you feel like it's a criticism of you whereas like in retail customers are often just assholes and they're venting it at you but it's a criticism of you whereas like in retail customers are often just assholes and they're venting it at you but it's not really at you you don't need to take it personally so you

just need to kind of keep your emotional distance from what's happening and train yourself to do that someone's shouting at you being unpleasant and rude and yeah but once you realize that it's not really to do with you then it's a lot easier to deal with when i worked in a shop and when i worked in a bar if people were being dicks i was super nice to them because then they had nothing to aim at and also everyone around was like wow they're being a real dick so you feel solidarity whereas if you act as dickish as them then the whole situation escalates anyway and no one is on your side i think also like can you think of a situation in which you felt brave and like you were in control of it like some people it's like i did a bungee jump and i felt like i was immortal and indestructible of it like some people it's like i did a bungee jump and

i felt like i was immortal and indestructible like it could be something really minor like i got my tax return done i felt like that when i rearranged your tupperware and i felt just violated but if there's anything like that that you can think i achieved that thing and i feel good about it and so you can access that feeling at later times and try and use it to calm yourself take deep breaths because like shallow breathing causes more panic a surprising number of people with anxiety too many to discount this actually have told us that they listen to us to feel better which is always very flattering when we hear that very flattering um because we have never done anything useful for this world deliberately so just maybe just have one ear on us constantly well just anything that makes you feel

calm again find what that is and keep it close to you. Maybe one of those little fart machines I used to have when I was a kid. Just makes me feel much more relaxed. It's difficult not to smile when you just let one of those go, though. Actually, yes. So if customers are being really difficult with you

and you want to cry, just reach down to your pocket and just go... That would be fun. Well, let me deal with your... Oh, sorry. So you can't... In the middle of the trunk. and just go... That would be fun. Well, let me deal with your... Oh, sorry. Yeah. So you can't... In the middle of the trunk.

That's such a South Park solution. I love it. And you can't control other people's behaviour. You can just control your response. So fart machine is one way of doing that. There we go. I've got a question. Then email your question

to answer me this podcast GoogleMail.com AnswerMeThisPodcast at GoogleMail.com AnswerMeThisPodcast at GoogleMail.com AnswerMeThisPodcast at GoogleMail.com So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's round 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. And now on Answer Me This, a question of sport. Do, do, do, do, I don't care. Do, do. Sport, sport, sport.

Do, do, do, do, I still don't care. Do, do. Turn this, turn this. Alan from Ireland says, Helen, answer me this. Actually, this is interesting. It's interesting, but I still wouldn't find it interesting on a question of sport. When did New Zealand start using the hacker before rugby matches? 3rd of October, 1888.

There we go. Done. What's a hacker? Segment over. What's a hacker? Martin, it's that kind of stampede dance they do. It was a Maori battle dance, but also often quite a positive dance as well. So it's the thing. If you're as uninterested in sport

as all three of us are, but me in particular. We still know that the hacker happens. I still know the hacker, but Martin doesn't apparently. My niece views love to do a hacker. I'm surprised you haven't seen it, Martin. Even if you don't care about rugby, you will be dimly aware. Think about it.

Think hard. On those boring bits of the news where they talk about sport, in between the boring, slightly balding Scottish men who all sound the same going, oh, this is really hard. In between that. Let's offend the whole whole world they'll then show a shot of uh people in rugby shirts doing like line dancing but like macho line dancing yeah stampy dancing that's the hacker but it's like a sporty lamb chopper that's the hacker but the hacker's great

because everyone knows about it. And we've just got people droning our national anthem, which is so plodding anyway. That's not getting you in the mood for quite a violent sport. Well, I wish that we did have something equivalent. Like I wish... Macarena? No, but the English sort of folk origin would be

a few lines from Beowulf, wouldn't it? A bit of Anglo-Saxon poetry before the match. Or like a bit of Morris dancing, because that's got thumping and stuff. That's from Henry V. Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more. What about doing Steps' tragedy dance? I don't see that as quintessentially English.

It's funny. And yet, and yet it is. It kind of is. I suppose because the Bee Gees, the progenitors of the dance, were semi-Americanised, weren't they? They were transatlantic rather than just British. All right, OK, hang on.

What about doing Who Do You Think You Are by the Spice Girls? Because also, that's a bit of a diss to the other team. Who Do You Think You Are? Yes, yeah. Did you watch any of the Rugby World Cup this year, Helen? No, and I think that was a good achievement, given how crazy my family are about it. Get this, my family were supposed to all go on holiday together at the end of November. And I missed the last family holiday because I was away.

So you're including yourself in the list of people that should have gone. Yes. In the end of November, which hasn't happened yet. Yes. They have cancelled the family holiday because they've all seen so much of each other going to the Rugby World Cup. Like, you bastards. They're making me choose. Do you love us more than you dislike sport?

And evidently I don't. I think I dislike sport more than I love anything. That's a close one, isn't it? I feel very affronted. In a way, what you football fans listening to this experience when the Rugby World Cup's on, and here I'm talking to the majority portion of football fans who aren't interested in rugby,

is what I feel like all the time when people are talking about football like it hints at what i feel like so you're indifferent to the fact that even though we're hosting a massive international tournament in our country that's what i feel like when the premier league's happening every single fucking sports funds are quite broad church though i think people who are football fans they are normally a bit interested in the rugby and a bit interested in the tennis even if they're not huge fans i think it might be more like for you when a big andrew lloyd weber musical comes out that you're not that interested in like if they revive starlight express you're like i'd love to see a big musical spectacle just not that one i i see the point you're going for it's a very poor choice i mean i'd cream myself if

martin gare uh that's not andrew lloyd weber you're embarrassing yourself that's people in schoenberg i would uh i would be i feel like I'm baiting you at this point I would be disinterested if the woman in white was revived okay do you now feel like a sports fan after all this time you've explained sport to me Helen found the way in well done so anyway the hacker yes it's a generic name for a Maori dance and I've read quite a lot of things saying it's ancient but it was invented around 1820 which I think doesn't make it ancient I feel like to be ancient, you probably need to be at least a thousand years old. Yeah, but in the context of a new country like New Zealand,

then it is, isn't it? It's not a new country. It's just Europeans tipped up recently. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's, yeah. On the 3rd of October, 1888, the New Zealand team first performed a haka before a rugby match against Surrey. They must have been intimidated.

Surrey would have been, they were just fucked off back into the changing rooms. What actually inspired them to do that? Because Surrey, they weren't like, well, we're about to face our greatest enemy we've ever played with, big guns against Surrey. I suppose it was just the decision to

take the equivalent of the warm-up exercise and bring it onto the pitch. It's not that dramatic a step forward, is it? Yeah. It was quite effective branding, wasn't it? Because coming from the other side of the world to Britain was a huge undertaking. Coming over here, stealing our rugby games.

Coming over here, and they're like, here's a New Zealand-ish thing to impress you with. But it was based on a battlefield dance and chant. Well, it is properly intimidating. Well, they're big, strong guys. It's a show of strength, isn't it? The lungs, you hear the lungs and the stamp of the feet. And it also prepares them for

battle as well. Gets you in the mood for some fighting and shouting. But now you know they're going to do it in a way it loses some of its power. For Surrey, that first time, that would have been seriously, bone-shakingly intimidating, I think. I think the big thing that put the hacker on the map was a match they played in, think 1905 in britain where it was filmed and therefore it

became the dancing craze of sweeping the nation's pitches so then it would be so identified with new zealand rugby team they kind of have to do it even if they didn't want to if i don't know about you helen but to me it feels like intermission time for the intermission we like to dredge up a bit of answer me this past uh all of which is available for purchase at answermethisstore.com. Yes, along with all four of our albums that you can only get there and on iTunes and Amazon and also our apps

and you can donate to the show there as well. Thanks. And today's intermission is from Answer Me This, episode 54. Who would win in a fight between the Grim Reaper and King Midas? The fun, of course, being in that whoever the Grim Reaper touches will die

and whoever King Midas touches will turn into gold and thus die. So King Midas is the mythological king. He was given a wish by one of the nasty Greek gods. So he wished that everything he touches turned to gold, which was all right for about five seconds when he got up and turned his bedside

light on and he was like oh it's gold but then put his clothes on they're all cold tried to eat his breakfast he couldn't so it turned to gold

just touched his mouth and then he kissed his daughter she turned to gold and thus died but presumably if he couldn't eat or drink anything he would die

fairly soon himself. So how far does it propagate? Like if you step on the floor of your house, does the whole house turn to gold, or just the floorboard that you're touching? What about his piss? Would that turn to gold as soon as it exited his body?

So many questions. Yes. Which classical scholars have been debating for centuries. King Midas, if you're listening, get in touch. Yeah, well, that's the point, isn't it? It's sweat gold. King Midas is dead, right? So surely the Grim Reaper has won that particular bucket.

Oh, good point. It's been had. Well, listeners, I don't know what you got up to during that intermission, but we were having a discussion about an alternative comedian that wants in a routine about Robert Blunt. Good times. Which feels like the right time to say, let's check our phone line and see who sent us a question this week.

The number is... 0208 123 58 007 Let's check our phone line and see who sent us a question this week. The number is... Oh, you can Skype answer me this. Hello, this is Derek. I was just wondering, what was Crystal Palace as an area called before the Crystal Palace was built. That's it. Upper Sussex. Somewhere near Sussex.

Lower London. Middle South. I don't know. What was it called? Well, the Crystal Palace was put on top of Sydenham Hill. Was it called Sydenham Hill? It was Sydenham Hill, but I don't think there were that many buildings around at the time. I think it was on the edge of several different areas.

So it was kind of in between Sydenham and Upper Norwood, which I think technically it's still called Upper Norwood. Is it? Yeah. But the reason why there are so many Norwoods around this area of South London is because this all used to be knout but oak forest, the Great North Wood, basically until they put the Crystal Palace up and then knocked down all the trees and built victorian terraces on them so having earlier

explained to some listeners abroad what goggle box is i think we should probably explain what the great exhibition of 1881 or whatever the hell it was right crystal palace first of all is the area of southeast london in which martin and i live and we're recording this podcast right now we are sitting in their sitting room recording this show and it is a suburb that was created when they built the crystal palace here in 1854 which previously had housed the great exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851 it was the biggest plate glass building the Victorian era had ever seen and it was full of shit they'd stolen from other parts of the world that's not quite true actually that once it was in here in crystal palace it was replicas of shit we'd stolen from other parts of the world

And they had Queen Victoria open it both times Really? That's a good booking isn't it? Well she lives locally Yeah She's in London But that's A-list When the Crystal Palace organisers were thinking

Okay well you know we're reopening the exhibition centre Who can we get? Peter Andre doesn't exist yet Well they probably aimed low to begin with They were probably like let's get a minor royal Let's get one of the grandkids And someone probably said should we just ask like you know they can only say if she's free let's just ask if the queen's free maybe she had such a great time at the first one she's like oh be delighted second crack at this would you if you could go back in

time and go to the crystal palace exhibition unknowing what you know now so obviously their displays of the future of electricity you't be like, I know. Imagine you'd be impressed by that kind of thing. Would you like to go? Do you think it would have been a good event? Yes, because also in the Crystal Palace Museum there are videos, very early videos, of some of the stuff that happen outside. So there's like this guy who's doing

somersaults whilst a dog is running over him in the opposite direction to which he's going now that's entertainment it is entertainment that is still saturday night that's britain's got talent i don't know because the situation uh for women in the mid 1850s wasn't as good and i bet the toilets were you know mixed bag yeah but queen victoria she would have had a decent lavy there i bet she just went where she stood who's gonna say oh queen can you not shit right there she can shit wherever she likes her country i do kind of miss the i'm nostalgic even though for it's from a time before i was born for the idea of having a great exhibition

where the world stuff could be and you'd see stuff you'd never imagine having ever seen i just feel like that can't really happen to us now we've seen too much we're so connected yeah even the millennium dome which happened before most of us had internet access yeah they managed to fluff that didn't they well conventional wisdom at the time and now is that they managed to fluff it and if by there you mean the government pissing our money away then yes compared to the great exhibition of 1851 i actually was the target age for that at the millennium more or less i was 19 and i went and i thought it was awesome actually i really enjoyed the millennium zone i thought it was a bit weird having a odd blackadder sketch that didn't really work starting the whole day but in a kind of danny boyle doing the olympics oh let's

celebrate the fact that we like weird comedy kind of way it was okay yeah but in terms of assembling the greatest stuff you've nicked from all over the world yeah bit of a fail they had a really good aerial show that they did nick from cirque du soleil i mean i thought that was good they had golf carts. I've never seen one of those in London before. So it was like a little dome full of Vegas. A little bit. I was in San Francisco recently and I walked past a museum and I thought, OK, $4.

Yeah, OK. This museum was a museum about the Panama Pacific World Trade Fair that was in San Francisco in 1915, which was kind of like the american version of the crystal palace uh exhibition uh and i went in and they showed you some of the cool stuff they did and you know again like from a 21st century perspective steam locomotives big deal you know but obviously i could imagine that that would have been a big deal at the time and it was all stuff you'd expect you know for them to be displayed right they also had some really seriously questionable stuff and what was great about this exhibit now in 2015 is is they kind of had to be honest about the fact that some of it was a bit

dubious or racist so included in the original exhibit in 1915 uh there was a doctor who was keeping premature babies in incubators and they had that as a kind of freak show display so he'd go to you when you've just had a premature baby and say i'm developing the new transformative technology of incubation um but the trade-off if you want me to treat your baby is i'm going to take it on a tour of america to show off to other people how the science will work do you want your baby to die or do you want it to be part of the circus i mean tough decision right wonder how many of those babies survived well i mean in fairness more than if they hadn't been an incubation freak show. But I mean, from a modern perspective,

better they weren't performing at all. Exactly. The other thing they had was an exhibit promoting the benefits of eugenics. Wow. Yeah. And they had an exhibit as well saying, and this wasn't questionable,

this was just bad science at the time, they had an exhibit talking about radium and how it was going to be the mineral of the future and help everyone. So from that point of view, I think I'd quite like to go to the original Crystal Palace, see that exhibit. Well, of course, the classic thing in terms of, you know, what science got wrong is the dinosaurs,

which they did very, very carefully, apparently, the sculptor. The dinosaurs which are in Crystal Palace Park to this day, Victorian fibreglass dinosaurs arranged around a lake. Absolutely huge, life-sized dinosaurs. There's, what are they, iguanodons and plesiosaurs.

The ones that they just kind of busked it. Do you think he saw us? He's the one hiding behind the bush. The one that's hiding behind the bush is the one where they're like we've only got the skull so we don't know what the body was like, just put it at the back. It's underwater, this little one. Yeah, so they tried really hard to get it accurate, but you look at it and a lot of it is nonsense,

like the iguanodon, which we now know has a huge thumb, has actually got a horn. But do we now know it, or do we now think it with best scientific evidence? Well, no. It's science, isn't it? It's going to seem silly in the future. Exactly. It's going to seem laughable to a dinosaur expert.

You'll have to do it in 100 years' time. They'll go, oh, yeah, the Victorians actually had it right. It was those idiots in the 21st century that got it right. I'm an answer me this fan. I listen with my nan. She is not so keen. She finds it too obscene. I follow them on Twitter.

Though Ashton Kutcher's fitter. I want to take things further. Just one step short of murder. I want to look like Olly Mann. I want to smell like O of murder. I want to look like Olly Mann. I want to smell like Olly Mann. I want to feel like Olly Mann. I want to chase like Olly Mann. I want to look like Olly Mann.

I want to talk like Olly Mann. I want to call my own. Hey, listeners, I know how you like to demonstrate affection with money. Roman Mars, is that you? I can't do his voice. Oh, God, if only I could do Roman's voice. Just like he was in the room. Because The Illusionist is in Radiotopia,

which is an American podcast collective, I'm learning so much about asking people for money, which in Britain is just like, oh, well, no one's making me do this. Oh, no, I can't possibly. This is you asking for money for your other podcast on this podcast. That's how brazen you are about asking for money. Give it. Yeah.

Because it's Radiotopia fundraising season. And if you want to finance 13 magnificent audio shows for a tiny bit of money a month. Including The Illusionist. Including The Illusionist. Which is very fine. Martin specified on his donation that none of his money was to go to me. Anyway, if you fancy kicking in a bit because you like the shows

Then go to radiotopia.fm Fundraising season at the moment so I'm doing weekly episodes Oh and also I know you like asking me questions And I'm going to do a Reddit AMA on the day this podcast comes out Which is the 29th of October So don't leave me in there on my own I'm scared of being alone in Reddit Yeah

So I'll tweet the link at helen zaltzman i've heard everyone there is very friendly yeah not a single death threat they just might want to share some images with you that you might be best not to click on hi it's claudia hello helen and ollie what is the origin of the russian doll like are they russian well they're obviously russian i'm really um but like why are there so many and why is the middle one so tiny if the middle one wasn't tiny it wouldn't fit in you see yeah yeah that's why unless you had an absolute whopper of a doll that was like four stories high then you could have quite a big doll in the middle but still much diminished i've got this idea ollie

it's loads of dolls that are nested. They're exactly the same size. If they were making more human centipedes, that would be his next thing. The human Russian doll. Oh, wow. That's grim as fuck. I've heard them

fit as matryoshka dolls. Is that mother? It means little matron and it's from the lady's name Matryosha, which is derived from the Latin for mother. So well done, Martin.

It was probably an idea the Russians nicked from Japan oh I was not aware of many Russian tourists visiting Japan now or then a bit of Russia is further east than Japan that's true yeah not that geographically far so the Japanese toy either used to feature the seven gods of fortune inside each other or the sage Fukurum which i may be pronouncing wrong apologies with his four students inside him wow that's a sackable offense now yeah absolutely and it's not the way you'd even depict the relationship between a student and teacher is it like actually if anything it would be the students with the

four professors inside him yes your learnings make us the man or the professor with the students as satellites yeah but then it makes sense that there's a kind of protective role for the doll on the outside when it is a little mother doll um so the first official matryoshka doll was made in 1890 the first official one the first official new pair of nike trainers so they think the idea for making it uh people came from this japanese toy but the russians were already making nested carved wood things like apples and eggs because because that's just a handicraft tradition that's just a thing that you can make they love to do some intricate painted wood it's never had any purpose apart from decorative has it there's no religious meaning or anything they did often depict religious figures or different storytelling

tropes and political things. I wonder from operas. You know how compelling it is once you start like the moment you take off the outer layer no one has ever not gone all the way through to the core. No. No one's ever done two and thought right that's enough for me. How could you resist? It's impossible to resist. How could they get any smaller than this

one? And yet on the actual shelf I'm just like ugh what a decoration i don't want that because there's not much to do except open it and then reassemble it i painted one once oh yeah as a wedding present for my friend joanna neary who supplied some of the jingles for the show the mary poppins one and the bjork one she's a character comedian so i painted her in her different comedic incarnations was there a danger that you were making some sort of analogy between the size of the doll and the relative funniness of the various different characters it was more the ones

which were visually simpler yeah went within well that's good yeah how did you build them could you buy from hobbycraft a blank russian doll you can buy blank russian dolls can you strongly recommend good gift although then it's not a good gift to have it's a good gift to receive briefly it's funny but then what you're right where's the playability where's the repeat visit it's just one of those things though isn't it that it's so tactilely satisfying like newton's cradles or one of those things it's just just to do it feels really brilliant even though it's such a simple physical act, but yeah, the unveiling of the core within. I'm fairly sure if Taurus didn't exist, then Russian dolls

would have died by now. Yeah. I think they've only existed because that's the thing you bring back from Russia. But the same with, like, pen holders with the Leaning Tower of Pisa on, and little plastic gondolas. My parents have got a Russian doll. I don't think they've ever been to Russia. No, I've never been to Russia, and I've got a Russian doll. Like, maybe it they've ever been to Russia. No, I've never been to Russia and I've got a Russian doll.

Maybe it's how Putin spies on all of us. Yes, probably. What's it doing in my house? Why is the little one so little? Do you have a Russian doll in here that you don't recall getting? God, maybe. Maybe you do. Maybe it's creeping up behind me.

There might be one on the ceiling. Watch out. Anyway, the first known Russian Russian doll was made in 1890 by the woodturner Vasily Zyozdochkin. Bless you. And it was designed and painted by Sergei Malyutin. And the outside doll depicted a woman holding a rooster. So she was the mother.

And then it was all of her children inside. And each of them had different items to show a different angle of their life. So one of them had like a sickle, a basket, a bowl of porridge, a broom. And in the middle was a baby. So it was a family without a father. Right, so that makes more sense because the ones you get now where they're identical... Boring when they're identical!

Well, there's no reason why they're getting smaller when it's going down to a baby, that makes sense. It's generations then, isn't it? Yes. So generations receding into the past, maybe. Yeah, but then you're acting like nothing changes between generations when that's inevitable. I bet some of our listeners have got Russian dolls

that are like super novelty ones. So more novelty than the Gorbachev, Reagan, Thatcher one. I'm feeling a gallery coming along. Please. Send them in. That would be fun. I bought my friend Brendy a robot one because he's big into robots.

Oh, yeah. I don't know whether he plays with it that much. Of course he doesn't because once it's a good gift and it's not a good toy. But yeah, I'm interested to see other people's because you get the novelty of seeing it once which is the same as being given it without having to have it on your shelf forever good point yeah so really what you want is a tumbler of other people's yeah exactly yeah good that they got their name on it though that's good marketing the japanese must be kicking themselves is there a british equivalent when tourists come

here what do they all bring home that's like a thing to show you've been to england a money box shaped like a phone box or a post box a little model soldier with a busby that yeah i guess a teapot it's not yeah but exactly it's not the same it's not there's about 10 things you could name but none of them are quite you know it's a bit like i don't know you go to canada you could bring back some maple syrup it's not like the one thing everyone brings back though it's not the i heart ny t-shirt exactly either russia's like got that nailed now well done russia yeah well done here's another question of chotchkiz from corinna from brooklyn who says ollie answer me this where do stress balls come from i have a theory that they're a laboratory mistake or offshoot or byproduct when they were trying to invent polygrip or something i have an infectious disease stress ball it's pretty gross and addictive oh that is disgusting does she mean one that looks like a kind of foam germ and you squeeze it and it's funny it sounds to me like

something someone in her family vaguely related to medicine was given free at a conference oh good yeah yeah we're a company we make drugs they target infectious disease here's a fun toy so you can remember us yeah one of those the ones you're talking about corinna are sort of an accident because they're usually made of foam rubber and foam rubber itself was a laboratory accident originally when they designed it they didn't know what it was for it was just mixing two chemicals together a guy called otto beyer in the 1930s was that just his tea break fun it was yeah you know he's a chemist he liked to mix chemicals he did it and he came up with foam rubber and he was like oh well that's interesting you know it's springy

don't know what you'd use that for and now it's in like every chair ever but at the time they couldn't work it out so you might better make these stress balls i suppose so in that sense give us something to squeeze while we work out what to do with all the foam rubber exactly so in that sense it's an accident but no stress balls are very much designed but the the earliest stress balls aren't the ones you're talking about the earliest stress balls are from the ming dynasty uh in about 1368 those like the two metal balls that you roll around in your hand i remember those those seem like quite an early 90s trend piece as well in britain you were meant to roll them without letting them touch each other well really my hand's too small for that.

Yeah, the other is that you would be concentrating so much on doing that that you'd forget about... That's why I play video games, I don't have stress balls. There was a bit of new-age dance music, wasn't there, in the 90s that, in my mind, has people playing with those balls in the video? Of course, the 90s. Are you thinking of Labyrinth? No, I'm thinking of... Do you remember?

It's going to be a fine day tonight It's going to be a fine day tonight. It's going to be a fine day tomorrow. And it's just that ad infinitum, isn't it? Well, no, there's... It's a fine day, it's a really nice day. I can't remember how it goes, but there was a second verse. But anyway, in the video for that, I imagine the woman who in my head looks like Hufty from The Word

had those dress balls in her hands. That might not be true. Well, because even when you're having a fine day tonight and tomorrow and you're probably singing about drugs, you might want to help your circulation, which is what those balls were for, wasn't it? So they stimulate your acupressure points. Yeah, that's why the Chinese had them.

And it does kind of make you a bit less stressed. It's a bit like a rosary, isn't it? It's a thing that has significance, but really it's just a nice thing to play with. But even the squidgy stress balls, they had precursors prior to the foam rubber discovery because people used to make them with the balloons filled with baking soda oh did they had quite a lot about stress in this episode as well we have well if you want to de-stress there is of course no better way than playing with balls no i was going to say write your feelings down in

an email and send them to us in the form of a question, Helen. Yeah, or spit them out into our voicemail service. Yeah. And then we'll have another episode of this show to bring you in two weeks' time to relieve your anxiety. Everyone will benefit. Yeah, it's a cycle, isn't it? Anyway, if you want to send us those questions, all our contact details are on our website.

AnswerMeThisPodcast.com And in the intervening period, remember to check out all of our extracurricular work including Martin's song by song podcast about Tom Waits Helen's podcast The Illusionist

and my new show The Modern Man and that is at modernman.co.uk a clever wordplay thank you Helen a wordplay I meant

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