Answer Me This! - AMT354: Magic Wands, Mount Fuji and Freakshakes

Episode Date: September 7, 2017

There's MAGIC! all over AMT354: how to MAGICALLY transform a banana into a sliced banana, how to MAGICALLY turn an egg into an egg IN A BOTTLE, and how to MAGICALLY turn an adolescent boy into a hit with the ladies. Find out more about this episode at . Send us questions for future episodes: email call 0208 123 5877, Skype answermethis. Tweet us http://twitter.com/helenandolly Facebook http://facebook.com/answermethis Subscribe on iTunes http://iTunes.com/AnswerMeThis Buy old episodes, albums and our Best Of compilations at Hear Helen Zaltzman's podcast The Allusionist at Olly Mann's The Modern Mann at and Martin Austwick's Song By Song at . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How often will Sandy Toxvick describe herself as shortcake? Hustle it is, hustle it is If you feed a cow marbles, do you get marbled steak? Hustle it is, hustle it is Heaven and all the hustle it is Thank you very much, you're one in a million Thank you very much, thank you very very much Thank you very much for feeding, William

Thank you very much, thank you very very much Since we last recorded, Martin and I went on an Thank you very, very much. Thank you very much for feeding, William. Thank you very much. Thank you very, very much. Since we last recorded, Martin and I went on an Auspik family trip to Cadbury World. Oh, yeah. That was a wonderful trip. And they played the Roses ad, did they? Not only that. They have like a special avenue of the ads with dioramas.

So this one had like a full-sized elderly woman lifting off the back of a car. Like an animatronic, not a video of a woman lifting the car and there was also the video on a loop of that ad so i just stood there watching transfixed for several minutes the roses ad there i was thinking i was giving you a bit of nostalgia actually fresh in the memory that is a corker of an ad because who doesn't remember thank you very much for feeding william who was william was he a cat or a fish goldfish but you're thanking someone by giving them cabris roses that is a real backhanded gift.

I imagine they were more exotic in the 1980s than they are today. They still weren't Quality Street in the 1980s, were they? Anyway, I didn't intend for this diversion, but I enjoyed it, as they'd say on Just a Minute. It's the same with Cadbury Worlds. No. Cadbury Worlds is absolutely an intentional diversion as you head into the Midlands. What else are you going to do? Well, I'd say it's not necessarily an essential stop, but I did enjoy it. Martin's mum literally bought a chocolate teapot. Oh, wow, that's quite cool.

She's similarly pleased about that. Anyway, Lindsay has written in to say, thank you very much, do you see? Thank you very much for making Answer Me this. You are welcome, Lindsay. That's what she's written in to say. She says, I first started listening to your podcast in august 2008 blimey on a long dark and mildly terrifying eight-hour coach journey from beijing to shandong province i was 20 years old and it was my first time abroad alone that's actually

amazing isn't it to be someone's reassuring comfort you know sound of home as they venture abroad um very flattered to be that yeah I didn't know anyone I'd just done a 14 hour flight and your podcast got me through and I've listened ever since

aww that's so nice I also nearly made it to AMT 100 live I got a ticket and then was unable to attend because I had swine flu oh yeah

oh who was that one oof she says here it was a problem very much of its time I think that's flu. Oh, yeah. Oh, I thought she was that one. Oof. She says here, it was a problem very much of its time. I think that's right. Real 2009 flu. Yeah.

I am still gutted, she says, about missing out and I've decided to try and rectify this to at least some extent by booking tickets to come and see The Illusionist live at the London Podcast Festival. Could you book another couple of hundred

and then the room's full and I can stop stressing about it oh well maybe you can advertise the event helen by means of answering her question thanks she says helen answer me this how long will the illusionist live show last for well it will commence at 2 p.m on saturday the 16th of september this is like working ticket master again where's the best place to sit somewhere in hall one at king's place best place to sit? Somewhere in Hall 1 at King's Place, just north of King's Cross in London. Yeah.

And I haven't written it yet, so I think I'll probably bang on for about an hour. Advertise it, Helen. Advertise the hell out of it. Don't say I haven't written it yet. I think I'm going to give you an hour of extreme pleasure. Right. But allow for an hour and a half so you've got some recovery time.

No one leaves the London Podcast Festival the moment an event finishes, presumably, because there's other stuff to do there, right? Yeah, why wouldn't you stay and go to one of the many other excellent shows it's three for two tickets and i'm doing six events in four days at this thing the live illusionist saturday at 2 p.m as aforementioned uh the live bugle which i think is the sunday with my brother andy a radiotopia panel uh song by song with With Martin Orstwick That's on Thursday At 9pm It's me and Judge John Hodgman

Talking about the songs Of Tom Waits this time It's going to be great And Jordan and Jessie Go on the Friday And you're doing That maker event With Julie and Jessie

And Imri Knock yourself out Lindsay Get the equivalent Of a camping ticket Make a weekend of it Yeah If they had camping tickets That would be sensible

Because it's spread Over four days Well but there's nowhere To erect a tent at King's Place. On the towpath of the canal? Yeah, a bit risky, isn't it? Mixing that with alcohol, I would argue. Giles from Exeter has written to say, I was listening to Answer Me This 353,

where you were talking about whether or not it was morally right for Josh in Exeter to take a picture of a wedding guest getting bitten by a dog. I remember it well. That wedding guest was me. It was pretty painful at the time, and it did mean I needed three stitches in my lip. Luckily, it hasn't scarred too badly. If Josh has the photo, I'd love to see it.

And if he does sell it as a stock photo, I'd like a cut of any earnings. Well, there we are. That's a very gracious victim. I think even if I was involved in a near-death accident, afterwards, even if it had scarred me for life i'd want you can want the pictures i'd want the photo if it existed it would be interesting wouldn't it i've probably mentioned this before i got knocked off my bike by a driving instructor when i was a student i don't think you have mentioned that before have i not still so much to discover about us nearly 11 years in still finding new

depths um so i i wasn't badly injured but i wascussed, and I have no recollection of it. So had there been someone passing and just happened to be taking a photo of their friends and I was in the background getting knocked off my bike, I would be curious to see it. That would be a great Street View screen grab, wouldn't it? Same when my mum had her car crash that nearly killed her. Seeing the photo of her car I think was intriguing to her

because she couldn't remember it, but looking at her car, the think was intriguing to her because she couldn't remember it. But looking at her car, the entire front is just completely squished. Like the difference between a sandwich and a toasted sandwich. Yes, good comparison. I think it was just... She being the molten cheese.

And I think it was just intriguing to imagine how the hell she made it out of that alive. So yeah, we like gory things, don't we? As humans. I think, as I say, I think what happens to the photo afterwards is up to your taste and decency as the photographer and don't put it on sick.com or whatever if you don't want to but i think by all means man.tumblr.com make the picture um and thanks too by the way to courtney uh who sent in a photo of the moment her bridesmaid smashed her dad in the face with a croquet mallet at her wedding i'm sorry it was

a really funny looking photo because also it was a beautiful photo with like pastel skies yes it was dad very formally dressed adorable little bridesmaid dress the bridesmaid was a kid yes cute little girl uh and also thank you for sending in the picture john and laura light from their wedding jewish wedding where they were doing the bride and groom on chairs thing when the bride went crashing to the floor from the chair which they say is a treasured moment of their wedding they have the picture on the wall. Yeah, why not? It's the funny picture.

Here's a question from Ash Faye from Edinburgh who says, I went to the Edinburgh International Magic Festival. Yeah, you did, you winner. Did you know that was a thing? It wouldn't surprise me. Edinburgh has so many festivals. So many festivals, but... Why not magic? I bet that's a fun festival.

You know, I think it's diminishing returns in all honesty. I think maybe I'd see a sort of night of competing magicians trying to get the top prize. You know, I could bear two hours of different magicians doing their best trick. Five days of lots of magicians doing similar things. Maybe you don't have to go to the whole thing. How many times can you see someone caught in half or...

You go to the fringe and you think, how many times can I see a white man doing stand-up? And then 12 hours later, you realise 12. But anyway, Ashvay says uh the festival was amazing and even enchanting excellent but it made me wonder surely wonder is one of the many emotions it's designed to provoke ashvay uh helen answer me this why is the traditional magician's wand a black rod with two white ends well there's a practical purpose for it first of all it's very theatrical because your eye follows the white end

when the magician is gesticulating with it. Like a laser pointer, but Victorian. Yes, sort of like a laser pointer, but Victorian. So they can be doing sleight of hand with their hands while still gesticulating at the thing they want you to look at. Diversionary tactic. Exactly. So it's perfect for misdirection.

But wands evolved from staffs and sticks that were used in ceremonies religious ceremonies or mystical ceremonies or even medical ceremonies but when you're swishing one of those around it's much more likely that you're going to hit yourself or someone else in the face than with a little one so they shrank to be more performative but this particular design which was originally ebony with ivory ends, this was a popular wand because it originally belonged to Jean-Eugène Robert Houdin, the French magician who is considered the father of modern conjuring. Who Houdini named himself after. Houdini named himself after.

And it was him who popularised magic being performed in theatres and at parties rather than at fairs. It was Robert Houdin who wore evening dress, you know, the tailcoats, rather than wizarding-type clothes. And so because Robert Houdin was such a big deal, a lot of his visuals and a lot of his gadgets and tricks were ripped off by other people. So I reckon that's why this wand became the symbol of magic, as did the top hat and the tailcoat, because that all came from there too.

Yeah. Do you know any magic tricks? I am absolute bullshit at magic. became the symbol of magic, as did the top hat and the tail coat, because that all came from there too. Yeah. Do you know any magic tricks? I am absolute bullshit at magic. I don't understand how it's done, which I think is great because it means even the simplest trick, I'm like, very good. But you do understand how it's done

because in your answer, you just explained diversionary tactics, sleight of hand. That's how it's all done. Yeah, but I still don't know how. It's all lies. It's all making you look at something else whilst doing the thing.

But that's just like saying Usain Bolt's really good at running fast. There is more to it than that. No, it's not, because I couldn't train to be the thing that's just like saying usain bolt's really good at running fast like there's there is more to it no it's not because i couldn't train to be like usain bolt ever i could learn magic i don't think you could like to be i could top top notch like a top note okay all right yeah no i'm not going to be david copperfield but i could be a proficient close-up magician by spending 12 hours a day in my teenage years in my bedroom doing just that i don't think i'm that good at sleight of hand i think i'm manually quite slow.

So I think that would be a problem. I'm not dexterous enough. I think you've taken my question and turned it into how you, as a 30-something-year-old woman, would be a magician. What I'm asking you is, as a child, did you never even just try to learn some magic? As a child, these things still pertained.

So you never tried? I had a book about how to do magic tricks. Ah, here we go. No, these ones were like, how to slice a banana before peeling the go. No, these ones were like how to slice a banana before peeling the banana. That's a good trick. What was the answer?

You kind of make a loop of thread inside the banana and then pull it like a cheese wire. Brilliant. Yeah, but... The grand reveal is a bit disappointing. You're like, oh, it's a banana that is already a bit brown.

Exactly. A bit mashed up. It's hard to get a really clean cut when you're going in through a banana peel with a needle and trying to get all the way around. You need some really good patter as an eight-year-old to get the grown-up who's watching interested in the big reveal of a banana

that's already been cut up. I think this is why I didn't cleave to magic, though. I didn't want to do patter. I've always been very uncomfortable with social performance. I'll perform on a stage in an agreed performance context. I don't want to be

performing out of that context but still definitely performing yes so mystery evenings for example oh i hate those yeah can't bear it actually i mean my friend jeff i don't think he'll mind me saying this is magic jeff magic with the forks actually his email address was literally magic jeff for a while he would you know that's how he liked to define himself and he was that teenager he was one of my best friends as a teenager. He spent all of his teenage years in his bedroom learning magic tricks. And essentially, I mean, I'm simplifying here.

He did that in his teenage years because he was embarrassed to talk to girls, basically. Okay. I think a lot of people, that's written to magic, isn't it? Yeah, and he became a really good magician. But what was weird was, even into his early 20s,

he'd come to, this is probably why Helen remembers him. He'd come to my house parties and helen remembers him yeah he'd come to my house parties and inside his jacket would be five spoons and forks ready to bend because he could do the uri gala spoon bending right and rather than go up someone say hey i'm jeff what do you do where do you live nice to meet you what do you want to drink he'd say look at this spoon i mean that would be his first and actually it would work he'd always have a crowd of adoring people around him at the party and and he also he could do the david blaine levitation i still don't know how he did

that i mean i know that it's you know poles down the back of your legs but i don't know how or you couldn't see them when he's walking around and again that involves a lot of advanced preparation when you're going out for a night doesn't it but yeah it was sort of so obviously a shortcut from social awkwardness that that i always found unappealing. To me, it was obvious that that's what you were doing. So that in itself became a thing you wouldn't want to boast about. Maybe that's another reason why I didn't do it because I was obviously socially awkward.

Why make it more obvious? But also you don't tend to get nearly as many women doing magic, do you? And I don't know what that is about the male psyche that makes it more likely you'll obsess about learning those tricks. I remember all the books I would get, you get these books of sort of magic tricks and it was always this one about

like putting an egg into a bottle yes soak it in vinegar soak it in vinegar yeah exactly and then that was in my magic book that's good that's good tricks and egg tricks well i suppose they don't involve special equipment or a live rabbit because once you've got the book you don't want the book to say and the solution is go to selfridges and spend 20 quid buying trick cards or bendy wand yeah magic does strike me as something that the young ollie man would have done yeah no I had boxes of magic tricks did you perform I was constantly performing I was the opposite I know I know the question was when was I not performing um so yes part of my routine was magic yeah i could do um so marvin's magic did this trick that they sold in hamleys which was a pile of pound coins you said let me make these pound

coins disappear and you just took them and left um i can't remember how it worked i think once one pile of pound coins were hollow inside so it looked like a pile of pound coins but actually it was just a hollowed out tube and you'd put it on top of the real pound coins and sort of scoop them up somehow. So yes, effectively, what you just said is what you'd do. You'd steal someone's money, but it would be a funny joke. So that was one thing. And then there was another one that involved, it was a kind of egg cup based trick, but with a fake egg and a fake cup.

Another one, yes. Like a kind of which cup is the egg in type puzzle. And then you'd make it disappear. But it was a specific red plastic device that they only sold to kids that looked like a circumcised penis. I don't know what that thing's called. That thing.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I wouldn't have described it that way. Anyway, yeah. Golly. Did that. But I wasn't very good, so. Didn't get all the girls then. Are you kidding?

It was pussy central from then on. I didn't want to learn any more magic ever again. Want to see my circumcised penis trick. If you've got a question, email your question to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com 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 Tom from Northampton, who describes himself as a long-time listener, Jagerbomb drinker and student at Newcastle University.

Wow, this is like you're someone on blind date. I feel like I know a lot about you, Tom. Well, I'm going to roll back the screen and reveal more about him. Tom says, I just watched an advert for Jägermeister. Ollie answered me this, when did this and Jägerbombs become commonplace in the UK?

I'm 22, and when I first started going out to bars and clubs, et cetera, around the age of 17, they weren't common, and people hadn't heard of them. Now they're everywhere and pretty standard my first and pretty much only experience of Jägermeister was when I was at university and this was uh February March 2000 and I remember it made my friend throw up all

over a wall yeah it's pretty vicious stuff I don't like it I mean Tom we are older than you and yes when we were at university Jäger bombs sort of had just come in. So actually they may not have reached Northampton or Newcastle yet. But why would you know about them before you were 17 anyway? Like if you're eight, it's probably not going to cross

your consciousness that much. But generally speaking, the answer was, it was around the sort of late 90s, turn of the century that this Jäger bomb thing began to gain traction and it has got steadily more popular in the years since and to explain why broadly I'd say it's almost like a

kind of viral marketing but for alcohol because they didn't have any traction in this country Jägermeister as a spirit it wasn't something people drank here it's something from a small German town called Wolfenbuttel which is near hanover it's been made there for nearly 80 years there by the way in germany it's still not very popular like you can get something like a jager bomb but people basically don't drink it because it's in as a bit of a naff drink but in other countries first new york and then america generally and then london and then britain generally they've been able to market the bottle the look of the thing the very stern 1930s german look park that thought i'll return to that that gothic-y script that the jägermeister has written in yes uh you know the

nazi looking i'll return to that they've been able to promote that as an exotic um kind of what the fuck is that kind of vibe and then create interest in it which led to the Jägermeister. So what you need to know about Jägermeister is the brand is still owned by the Mast family who have been making the drink in Wolfenbottle for 80 years. The bloke who invented Jägermeister had inherited the business from his father who'd started it as a red wine and vinegar business in that town some 50 years before that hadn't really taken off so he came up with this herbal liqueur spirit thing which is what jagermeister is but it wasn't herbal what did they do to those poor herbs they developed this

spirit and it was kind of reasonably popular at the time in the area, but here's what happened. Wolfenbottel became a favourite haunt of Goering. As in Hitler's number two and commander of the Luftwaffe. It was where he used to go hunting at the weekend. And then when the Nazis came to power

in 1933, none of this is on the Jägermeister website, folks. You might not be surprised to learn. When the Nazis came to power in 1933. None of this is on the Jägermeister website, folks. You might not be surprised to learn. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 and Goering was appointed interior minister, one of the first things he did is he created regional Jägermeisters, which means masters of the hunt

because he was into his hunting. And he made himself the grand lodge master of the district near Wolfenbuttel. And the bloke in the Maast family who'd created the drink we now know as jägermeister saw a marketing opportunity here the nazis were popular at the time they'd won an election goering was a big cheese he thought this is a popular movement which needs a drink named after it so he uh changed the name to jägermeister and changed the font to a National Socialist looking font. Wow!

Specifically, he might as well have called the drink Goering. That was basically what everyone in the village would have understood it to mean. I mean, it can't have hurt the subsequent marketing that he didn't actually put a swastika on the bottle. I think that's right. I think he played it absolutely right. Right on a knife. Because it was just Nazi

enough that everyone understood the innuendo at the time. Just Nazi enough. There was a crucifix on there, wasn't there? On the bottle, as well as the sheep's head? What do you mean, deer's head? There's some pretty Gothic iconography, but it's on the right side of Nazi from the point of view of the end of the war.

The British, actually, it was, allowed them to carry on brewing it because they said it wasn't so closely associated with Hitler that it needed to be banned so they carried on with the same bottle and the same typeface obviously decades went past and actually I think it was a Jewish guy who brought it to New York ironically and turned it into this sort of cocktail sensation but it was always that Nazi iconography that created the interest in it people saw the bottle and they were like what the hell is that they tasted it as what the hell is that it's not a rum

it's not a vodka you know you have to taste it to understand what it is and it created mystique around it and no one knows exactly who first dumped it into some red bull and created the jager bomb but it was essentially this kind of seeding concept of viral marketing let Let's just give it to barmen, let's sponsor rock tours, let's get people talking about this exotic-looking gothic German thing. And that is essentially what caused the Jägerbomb to go interstellar. So it had to go to America to become worldwide famous, as so many people do. Yes, although as far as I can tell, the Jäger bomb itself is a British invention. People in Britain love things that get you really pissed fast.

Yes, and it's not something that either Red Bull nor Jägermeister like to talk about, even though if you analyse the amount of Jägermeister that's been sold just as a shot on its own versus the amount sold with Red Bull, you know, it pales into insignificance. I suppose it would take the edge off the sweetness of Red Bull a bit. I think it's more that everyone knows it, as you say,

it can create some pretty violent effects in people, and that neither company wants to be seen to encourage reckless drinking, but of course they have built their business on it. You can only drink that recklessly. In 50 years' time, surely there will be a commercial partnership between Red Bull and Jägermeister, and you'll be able to buy it ready-mixed. Like you can buy Gordon's gin and tonic, yeah.

Surely. Because they know that everyone's drinking it together, really. But for the time being, they're kind of pretending it isn't happening and just, you know, putting aside the bad publicity and enjoying the money. It's more of a sipping drink. It's very quaffable, isn't it? The Jägermeister.

That's the market they're going for. You can also get a bomb Jäger in which the quantities are reversed. No. A pint of Jägermeister. That is not how I want to die. Let's take a break now and have our intermission. And what better way to take a break from present day Answer Me This than with

a little snippet of olden days Answer Me This. That's right yeah because we're not on commercial radio we don't have to break from the banter that you're enjoying now to give you something completely different like someone trying to sell you ppi protection we can we can instead sell you more of this our first 200 episodes are available for sale on itunes and amazon but better than both of those answer me this store.com as are our five albums of exclusive content oh yes and our best of episodes yes and some apps it's all there and here's a little clip from answering this episode 171

here's a question from dana in austria who says a while ago a friend of mine went to a check-up at her gynecologist whose patient she has been since puberty after the examination the female doctor typed in some sort of synthesis into her computer and then was called out of the room with the document still open on the screen. My friend was suddenly gripped by an overwhelming desire to read what had been written about her. Obviously

you would, wouldn't you? She'd been told that all was well. So she took a quick peek at the screen. There she read to her utter amazement, patient is a young professional with a plump arse and a very wide vagina. No, wow. Wide vagina. Plump arse,

wide vagina. That's the more you say it, Helen, it doesn't make it any more palatable. Well, Dana says, my friend has a black belt in taekwondo and definitely has no plump arse. I cannot vouch for her fanny, but according to her husband and former lovers, there is no noticeable slackness. That's not the point!

Answer me this, Ollie. Should my friend remain with this doctor and confront her about writing mean stuff about her private parts, thus letting her know she had a peek at the gynaecologist's computer? No, because that person is then near your genitals with a scalpel. Go to someone else. I don't think they use scalpels in

routine examinations, Ollie. It's not common, Ollie. They have it in their power. Oh yeah, they do smear tests with a scalpel. Go to someone else. I don't think they use scalpels in routine examinations, Ollie. It's not common, Ollie. They have it in their power. Oh yeah, they do smear tests with a chainsaw. I'm a little bit worried, Ollie, about our phone line. Me too.

It's just not been the same since Skype took away our cheerful voice greeting. To be clear, they took away voicemail functionality on every Skype account in the world. It wasn't personal to us. Okay, good.

That makes me feel less got at. But for us, it's kind of a big deal that when you dial the following number... 0208 123 58 007 You no longer hear our voices saying, Hello, this is Don't Me This, here's a question. So you have to rely on your own intuition that you have called the right number. You have. Leave us a message.

Yeah, we've had a lot of hang-ups though because i think people are not sure so another option listeners if you're dubious is to record a voice memo on your phone or similar device and just email it to us yes at the usual place yes indeed we because we love to hear questions in your own voice love it and we particularly love it when we can hear them because you're not in an area of shit reception yes so that's another thing in voice memo's favour. Yeah, yeah, true. But if you disagree and you like Skype, we're at Answer Me This. The following person made it through.

Hello, hello. I'm Ollie, a Martin the Soundman. My name's James Higgins from Crystal Palace. I'm currently on top of Sugarloaf Mountain in Wales. And I'm wondering, what is a Sugarloaf? And why are there so many mountains, at least two, named after it? There are two in Wales alone.

Are there really? There's one in Carmarthenshire, the other is just outside Abergavenny. There are 450 sugarloaf things in Australia. Get the fuck away. It's not just mountains, it's geological features as well, like sugarloaf-shaped lumps.

Because a sugarloaf is sort of like a bullet-shaped brick of sugar. A loaf because sugar loaf is sort of like a bullet shaped brick of sugar a loaf of sugar if you will i thought it might be an allusion to bread making no i think it's just kind of fruit loaf no no it was actually just the way that sugar emerged after the refining process with like the separation for the molasses it was like this hard white very heavy bullet shaped thing it's pretty big you then carved off bits of it with a tool called the sugar nip but does it dictate a certain kind of mountain you know sugar loaf mountain in brazil that's the famous one so portuguese explorers in 16th century brazil looked at that

mountain they're like that looks like a sugar loaf it's called sugar loaf mountain and that happened all over the world because they're like that thing looks like another familiar thing so let's just call it after that thing okay but then why are there no mountains called big hill well because they are big hills not just they look like big hills they are them but some of them are called big hill but in a different language so you might not realize it so i don't very many people know today what a sugar loaf looks like why were they so widespread or was it just explorers that knew what they look like because these are for rations or something that's how sugar came at the time it wasn't in nice granulated bags so when you got some delivered to your home it would be a little like a mountain in wales huh and you'd have to

make it last a long time because it was a precious substance but these things were like 30 pounds of sugar in a highly compressed heavy form wow and also i guess if it was solid it meant it was harder for pests to burrow into it and shit all over it. Have you ever climbed a mountain? Climb? No. Have you been dragged up on a school trip?

Yeah. How tall? Not very. I mean do you remember doing a hike and how many hours it took? Probably a couple of hours. That's the scale of the mountain

we're talking about. At my school we went to Scarfell Pike in the Peak District. And it took about 12 hours. Oh jeez. Yeah to take a load of 10 year olds out there. Why would you jeez. Yeah, to take a load of 10-year-olds up there. Why would you do that?

Why would you take a load of 10-year-olds? Character forming. And see how it's changed my life. Remember, you and your now wife and I and Martin went to a friend's wedding in Scotland. And the next day, Martin climbed a mountain on his own and then slid down the wet grass back on his bottom. I do remember that.

That was amazing. And we went to a kind of hipster tea room that somehow had found itself there. We went to a castle. We went to a fancy castle. We went there too, yeah. Yeah. I've got a video of you

in the greenhouse there. Have you? We've got a lot done while Martin was sliding down a mountain. He'll be sliding down a mountain on his bum. On his bum.

I mean, going mountaineering in Wales specifically takes me back to a particularly perilous school trip. I think I've described this before

in the early days of the podcast. How Wales is just out to get you. Yeah, it would have been in that context. Was this the trip where you broke both your arms? Yes. And your face? That's right, yeah. Don't rub it in, I'm just recapping for people who are new recruits.

So Martin will remember when I say that it was a school trip that was two weeks in the summer and it was a dual purpose affair. You said you'd have loved this trip. Week two was mountaineering, I never made it to week two. Week one was a tour of various different nuclear and coal power supply stations in Wales. And I said that would be my kind of... Yeah, eight days ago you were like,

yeah, that sounds like a great trip. Okay. I mean, it does sound okay. There's also an alternative energy centre there. Yeah, we went there too. Yeah, that's cool. So anyway, absolute nightmare trip for me. And day one, I vomited up a lot of vegetarian pizza

all over the youth hostel carpet. Oh, God. And then day five, as Helenen recalls smashed my face out on a seesaw and the arms at the same time i broke two wrists one arm my front two teeth in my lip on the seesaw one wrist my teeth in the lip were on the seesaw then as i fell onto the floor i put the other wrist in front of me to protect myself and then broke my arm on the concrete imagine the damage you could have done if they had allowed you up a mountain it's not fair thinking about if that if you did that on a seesaw in a playground which gets up to a height of about four feet i think that's probably why they sent me home uh well we have another question of mountains from live hi live uh she says i'm live

and i live in japan she could equally have said i live and i live in japan but she didn't i climbed mount fuji last weekend that's a good one isn't it mount fuji yeah one of these celebrity mountains i've heard of that one yeah after the insistent prodding of my boyfriend sounds motivating i think you can't really blame someone else for your personal goal live you must have wanted to do it really uh it is a gruel-hour ascent, which we did for 12 hours because of the sheer amount of people climbing up it. There was a long queue to the top. Oh, God.

You don't imagine there being a queue, do you? No. And it was a four-hour descent, which we did for eight hours because we were very, very tired. Fair enough. So in what sense is it a four-hour descent? Everyone's tired, presumably, when they do that. I don't know.

I think probably there are some who just really bolt down. It's like whether you're the kind of person who prefers a show that's got a short second half or whether you prefer the meat to be in the second half. Some people prefer the first half to be like a little amuse-bouche, set the scene and then everything happens in part two. I prefer hour and a half part one,

interval have a piss, part two, 45 minutes to have a loose end, showstopper. Do you want a meaty but short second half? a pepper army i want it to be emotionally significant but short okay yeah so you want narrative first half yes emotional payoff second half exactly yeah and of course a reprise so it sounds like mountaineering would suit you because it is generally how are you drawing that into a metaphor i mountaineering? I know I tried. It's generally quicker to go down a mountain than up a mountain. It's still very stressful on the joints and legs and thighs. Anyway, she says, Helen, answer me this. When did climbing Mount Fuji become such a fad that there's such a long queue?

I don't think the monks of old who climbed Japan's mountains were that many. I attach here a photo of the queue to the summit from the ninth station where we took our rest. It doesn't show too many people because this was way past sunrise already, but as you can see, there is a queue. I've seen the photo. I wouldn't call it a queue, but there's a lot of people

considering you're halfway up a very tall mountain. I would say if you want a specific date for when Mount Fuji became crowded, it would be 2013 because that was the year mount fuji was designated a unesco world heritage site and that year the number of climbers escalated i think 35 percent pretty shoppish interesting i wonder as well whether increased tourism to japan i'm guessing that has happened from the west recently is causing this fad because perhaps japanese people

aren't as into mountaineering as western people or they are maybe that's the thing they're getting more of everybody on the mountain and there's a pretty short climbing season so the official climbing season is first of july until early september if you're a hardcore climber and you really know what you're doing you can go just before or just after that but there's much more danger of snow and it's really windy and it gets really cold. And if you want to go outside of those shoulder seasons, as they're known on the edge of the official seasons, then you have to have a guide, which is expensive and you need equipment for getting through the snow because that will have fallen on the top of it.

So Liv, your boyfriend's insistent prodding might have been very sensible. Yeah. Go for it now before you get killed in an avalanche. Yeah. So it's busy during the summer which is when you went and particularly during the school holidays which judging by your email is when you went but also it's a very famous mountain it is and it's a famous mountain that is doable if you are an amateur mountain climber is that right so if you're the kind of person who goes up arthur's seat i mean i've done that yes or table mountain you can you can do my dad used

to do it when he was a drunk student in cape town i'm trying to think now whether i did when i went to cape town no i just looked we did cable car yeah it's a lot quicker fyi um so are you surprised that this is a popular climb well i can think of another reason that may have increased its popularity recently and it's a complicated fad but in a word instagram i think that's the other thing because it isn't it interesting that you pinpointed 2013 but i mean that's also roughly the time that people started endlessly taking pictures of themselves i think for the sake of i think their friends what they were doing i think mount fuji is one of those ones that's very very photogenic if you're not on the mountain so actually there's lots of mountains which have

beautiful views but that's one of the ones where you can just take a picture of it and people go wow that looks like a beautiful mountain from a distance yeah whereas actually in Liv's close up picture it looks like a pile of mud

it doesn't actually look very attractive but I still think the fact that you can say like I said I'm using the word Instagram to mean

a whole slew of websites but I mean if you put an update on Facebook or Twitter or anywhere saying you're on Mount Fuji you're going to get a lot

of likes aren't you and I do think pics or it didn't happen exactly and that bucket list phenomenon or show us that you've done this thing

I think that's partly responsible for a lot of these kind of amateur mountaineers sorry Liv but you know she would admit I think yeah giving things a go

that maybe they would like it spurs people on doesn't it I can tell my friends about this in real time do you think that also intensified the queuing because people were slower

because they were taking photos a lot? Well, it's like, have you seen that photo that's been doing the rounds this summer of just tourists at the Louvre in front of the Mona Lisa doing selfies? And it's extraordinary, no one's looking at the picture. I mean, to be fair, I always do, when I'm on holiday, believe that the best picture is the picture

of someone I know in front of the thing because I can't get a picture of the thing somewhere else. No, I think the best picture is of a funny thing you wouldn't get at home. Well, I've noticed that from your photo, really. but i like the fact that you ascribe the busyness of mount fuji to the same thing that has made freak shakes popular and if you don't know what a freak shake is listeners is that phenomenon of a milkshake that is extremely top loaded with solids often bits of cake like a whole cupcake sticking out the top of a milkshake. Bits of bacon.

The other day I saw a Facebook friend posting a picture of a freak shake with a burger on a stick coming out the top. Ugh. Ugh, indeed. Why would you stick the burger onto the milkshake? Well, because Instagram. That's the thing, isn't it? Yeah.

Somewhere up Mount Fuji now, some fucker's eating avocado on toast and taking a picture of it. And that person's an idiot. I am your current website. I look rather shabby. I've got an ugly font and my graphics are scabby. And I have more wasted space

than Westminster Abbey. Adam Mezzanine, guys. You need a makeover provided by Squarespace. Their award winning Templates give you A new face Seriously I promise

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He's renamed his band, No Longer the Sound of the Ladies. Pale Bird. Oh, I don't mind that. Do you like it? As an artist, you're going to be called Pale Bird. I'm going to be called Pale Bird, and also all the music I've done in the past is on the website, Pale Bird Music.

But it's great, because I can put all of the different band things with nice pictures, and you can click through and get links to all the social media stuff. It's great because I can put all of the different band things with nice pictures and you can click through and get links to all the social media stuff. It's great. It is great and it also has all you need to power an online store as well. So if you actually want to sell it, are you giving your music away for free or are you selling it? Well, I'm selling it through third parties, but if I wanted to, I guess I could do it through Squarespace. You could sell it through Squarespace as well.

And it's because of Squarespace's patronage of podcasts generally, but specifically this one, that we're still bothering to do this. So thank you to them. I mean, without Squarespace, we wouldn't have 22 songs about squarespace which is the high peak of our creative output of well my life that is absolutely true if you want me to release that as an album i've got the capability now we do get requests for an album of our jingles we really got 22 22 22 squarespace jingles i keep track on a spreadsheet but the offer is the same in every squarespace jingle and that is that you can try out squarespace you can build yourself a website uh fiddle around in their two-week free trial and then if you want to opt in and keep that website you can get to 10 off for a whole year if you use the code answer here's a

question from heather from voxel who says whilst walking to work today i noticed a man walking with his guide dog ollie answer me this how do guide dogs know where you're going i understand if you use a guide dog on the tube or the bus the announcement will prompt you that you're in the right place and you need to get off the transport i'm pretty sure those announcements aren't for the dogs but this man was walking along the road so how does he or the dog know when they've reached their final destination okay well obviously i don't know this particular blind man in question um but most blind people or people who are legally blind or people who are walking around with guide dogs aren't actually totally blind

there are visual cues they can pick up to do with for example light if you walk the same route every day there are all kinds of cues what you hear and what you smell and what you sense the guide dog is there as your belt and braces don't walk into a lamppost thing. The guide dog is not there to take you there. You know the route. You're actually in control of the dog. They have a special term for it, which is intelligent disobedience. That's how the dogs are trained. Intelligent disobedience? Yeah, so in other words, the dog is at the moment you're about to walk in front of an oncoming car, the thing that stops you but the rest of the time you can tell the dog where to go so long as you're not about to hurt yourself so the dog is more about the immediate and you're more about the overall plan exactly yeah intelligent

disobedience sounds like a phrase that the tech industry is going to co-opt yes doesn't it yeah board of disruptor so there's all kinds of ways that a blind person might be tracking to get to a place well now you might have a gps thing that goes off when you're in that yeah exactly so on your wrist you could just be getting vibrations but also more traditional things you can count paving tiles these are things that sound weird if you're not blind but subliminally if you're blind you do it all the time automatically you can hear the way air currents come out of buildings but if you hadn't been there before so you didn't know yeah well you wouldn't go if you've never been before with just a guide dog

because the dog wouldn't know where it was going so that's the answer you'd only go with someone a few times learn the route and then take the guide dog so the answer is the person knew the route but it's been quite interesting looking into this because i obviously i realized there was a lot of training for a guide dog yeah care to guess how much two years you're very close you're actually overstepping it slightly a year and a half yeah 18 months that doesn't surprise me do they start from when they're puppies yes and it costs loads again not surprised because you've got to house a dog and have experts training it during a lifetime a guide dog costs 35 000 pounds and how much would an average dog of similar size cost oh that's a good yeah you're right there's probably what's the working life of a guide dog as well like are they retired at a particular age or are they allowed to work

until they're kind of old and yeah okay i see your point nonetheless that's it's 18 months of training and 35 grand investment and because it's all done through charities blind people pay 50p for the dog right so that's why when you raise money for guide dogs for the blind that's why they need the money basically and the most interesting thing I thought actually was, because I thought the most important thing about training a guide dog would be combating their instinct to sniff other dogs and... Show independence. Play around, exactly, yeah.

But actually, apparently the most important thing is training recall, which is basically saying Fido and the dog coming back. That's the most important thing because a blind person can't see where they've gone. So you don't want to bolter you don't exactly here's a question from chris from manchester who says ollie answer me this why are lions called the king of the jungle when they don't live in or near jungles that is actually an excellent question very good i've never thought about that just assumed without really thinking about it in any deep way that lions must live in jungles but of course they don't tigers do are they non-domiciled for some kind of financial

reason well i think let's break down the phrase so king of the jungle right the king bit i think is quite easy you can see why civilizations for thousands of years have compared the animal kingdom and the role of the the male lion in particular to the role of monarchies around the world and the role of the king because for a start you can easily identify which one is the king of the pride he's got fancy hair he's got fancy hair and he sleeps 20 hours a day so he's got a kind of fuck off attitude and he's quite regal you know and everyone does work for him king isn't he yeah so yeah so exactly so he's the top of the food chain it's henry the eighth in animal form basically isn't it right so you know exactly so he's the top of the food chain it's Henry the eighth in

animal form basically isn't it right so you know that's why there are so many statues to lions that's why there are references to lions in the bible and killing lions as being the greatest strengths that man could have it's one on the coat of arms of Britain it's on the coat of arms of Britain the Netherlands our good old friends in Luxembourg these are countries in which lions are not native so yeah you you know, the mythology of lion being king had spread all over Europe and all over the world with people that never seen a lion. But love the idea of one. Well, no, what I think it is, is even though they'd never seen a lion, they'd heard from

explorers who had seen lions. Had they also seen taxidermied lions that hunters had killed and brought back to Britain? Well, probably that too. But my point was those explorers hadn't seen tigers because tigers are a lot more elusive and they live in the jungle. And they hadn't really seen jaguars. They'd only seen lions at that point. So of course the lion's the top of the food chain.

So, and it looks like a king. So you see how it became the symbol of strength and legality. But actually the obvious answer, tiger being king of the jungle, basically the people that had been telling them about lions hadn't told them about tigers. They didn't know about them.

Right, so tigers do live in jungles. Tigers do live in jungles. Lions do not live in jungles. Correct. But they were like, well, this jungle probably should have a big cat in it of some kind. So transpose the line there. We'll never get found out. What was it?

Just one of those things where it's so shorthand for Africa because British people weren't really smart enough to know better. Well, there is an etymological reason as well. The word jungle comes from Jangala in Hindi, and that translated means an uninhabited place. It doesn't mean a forest. So it covers forests like we'd have in Britain. It covers any kind of wilderness, any part of the world that doesn't have human structures.

It's about emptiness from humans. So king of the wilderness is kind of what it means. it's basically just king of the animal kingdom that's what it really means and apparently in india there are still people native hindi speakers who would still refer to deserts as we'd call them in the west as jungala right so the lion is king of the empty space that humans aren't in okay so lion is just top lion in the place where lions live. Top cat, but not living in a bin. Could be. Well, could be.

That's an area where humans aren't generally. Yeah. Except on the days where the council come round. Helen, Oliver, though life is full of questions, there are answers you must know. One. questions there are answers you must know one no it will not fall off but moderation in all things too yes there probably is but we won't find out in our lifetimes three most people prefer colliery. But my personal favourite is Dalton. For if you try and slip a one, it would ruin your friendship.

Yes. Here's a question from Niall who says, I'm an American student living in student housing in Germany with about 20 other people. Wow. A housemate, there's a lot of people in one house about 20 other people. Wow. A housemate, there's a lot of people in one house. If it's a house. If it's halls of residence, okay. A housemate recently made these lovely personal wood engravings for everyone here.

Aww. Would you like a wood engraving? I suppose if someone that you liked gave it to you. Yeah. It would mean more. I wouldn't buy a wood engraving of my name. No, but it's a very sweet gesture that seems to have taken a long time to make.

Yes, exactly. They are all personalised to some degree with their names and a bit of their personality. A bit reductive. Yeah. I definitely would not want that. I really don't want to become aware of what other people think of me.

It's too upsetting. I was thrilled to get one, says Niall, but my name was misspelled and now reads Nail. N-A-I-L-L instead of Niall. N-I-A-L-L. I am very thankful for this great gift, but I do find it annoying that my name was misspelled. So Helen, answer me this.

Should I ask them to redo it or simply embrace that no one will ever pronounce or spell my name correctly? Could you borrow the woodworking tools and just proofread it where you switch the letters around? That's like a little curve with an arrow on each end to indicate that the things need to be switched. That's true, because if you ask them to redo it, that's probably a lot of work,

but they'd probably find a way of, if you were to do that, which would be a bad idea, they'd probably find a way to correct it like that anyway so maybe you could try that yourself but i think maybe you should get used to it because what you have is not only a very sweet personalized gift but one with a story exactly yeah it's a conversation starter yeah if someone comes past and they're like nail is that you know no actually it's not a funny story it's not that funny a story but it's a little a little thing you can play with don't get big-headed with the story maybe i'm just so used to having my surname misspelt and actually my first name by a lot of you who write in who spells helen with two l's seriously i have never

seen that i forgive it with o-l-l-i-e when people write that because it's arguably even more common than my spelling of ollie i don-double-L-Y. But Helen with two L's? Never seen it. Literally never seen it. Zaltzman, I understand. Tricky name. But if you were doing a wood carving of Zaltzman, you could look it up first. I agree. I think maybe it's quite a nice souvenir. However, I think if you did ask

them to make you a new one, then they would feel ashamed and guilty and bad, but then the new object they made you would be tainted with those feelings too where you looked at it and i only got that because they messed up the first gift and then i forced them to make you definitely can't ask them to make another one i mean i had a similar-ish situation um i once presented a tv piece about glass blowing and and the process of the film was i was learning how to cut glass and then blow glass

this is terrifying because i filmed you learning to cut a welsh wooden love spoon and i've got a tremor in my hands and no sense of handicraft and hot glass can really cause you a lot of damage yes it does exactly and the director had decided partly for that reason partly for time because it takes about five hours to set that actually we couldn't really show me do the whole process because we'd be killing five hours in the middle. Did they do a here's one we've made earlier? They did a here's one we made earlier. So what we did is we filmed the first bit where I learned how to cut it

and I genuinely cut the word Ollie out. But then I had to open the kiln later as if that was my one and go, wow, it's so easy. Wow, it's amazing. And the problem was it was in this really infantile style. So it was kind of like baby blue and fluorescent orange rendering of my name on clear glass like for a child's bedroom door and i thought that's such a shame because it is a souvenir of this thing but i'd so much have

preferred it if only they asked what my son's name was that i that the story could have been i was making one for my son and then i'd have a sign to put on my son's door which would be nice yeah it was actually i don't want this hideous thing anywhere in my house apart from on my son's door good thing it's breakable well what i did in the end is um i put it behind my desk in my study against the window but my desk is higher than the window so i can't actually see it so i know it's there but i don't have to look at it so only the birds can see it well that brings us to the end of this episode of Answer Me This. It certainly does. Yeah.

How was it for you? Pretty good. It was all right. I'm a bit hot. It's a bit hot in here. A bit humid. I think maybe we should go off and have a Sichuan hot pot. That is what we did after the last recording.

We are very close to Martin's regular Sichuan hot pot haunt. Was it called Red and Hot? Red and Hot. Did you find it because you were Googling something else a man just called paul just mention me when you go in there yeah mention mr martin and you get treated very well explain because i'd never been to a sichuan hot pot restaurant concept before martin suddenly got very into it this january i had a very negative experience in shanghai many years ago and I went uh it's the beginning of a folk song isn't it with a hot pot it's relevant with a hot pot it may be not very well and then I went to uh Redden Hart and Charlton Street with um friend of the podcast

Dave Pickering and I saw people having it and I was like that looks really delicious but it made me really ill you thought 10 years on though maybe it's time and it was so delicious so the gap basically weekly ever since exactly so the gap between my expectation of horrible diarrhea and tears and the delicious food I got was so huge. Right. It completely exceeded my expectations, which were very low. And then they remembered Martin, of course, because he's there. Because I'm back there every week.

He's the only white man that is a repeat hot pot visitor. Excellent. Well, good. We'll do that. We want to go for a hot pot, but we also want you to send us questions for the next Answer Me This that will be out at the beginning of October. But of course, there's a retro one in the middle. And our contact details are on our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com

But remember, we are having this tricky time with our voicemail. So you may want to email us a voice memo just to be sure. In the meantime, if you want to listen to other bits of us on the internet there's plenty of that yes tons i make the illusionist just did an episode where i attended america's second largest crossword tournament no one else is plugging their podcast this week like that only you i don't know i don't know who else was there you can find that at the illusionist.org i do various different podcasts my my main show the modern man is on a break at the moment so let me tell you about The Week Unwrapped. That is a weekly show in which I and three clever members of The Week magazine's online editorial team

sit down to debate the news stories that you probably have missed because they're not making the headlines but they have significant impact on our lives. But if you like, I want some respite from being terrified of nuclear obliteration. Exactly. All anyone's been talking about the news this week is the end of the world.

I want to know about the role of... Or the royal baby who gives a shit. Exactly. I want to know about the role of health apps in the NHS or secret Kiwis infiltrating the Australian government. Come and find us. Search for The Week Unwrapped in your podcatcher of choice. Or there's links on my website, ollyman.com.

Martin. So my podcast is called song by song it's about tom waits don't forget song by song has a live show with helen and uh john hodgman uh from john hodgman on the 14th september so come along to that and the other five events i'm doing at the london podcast festival uh so yeah you can you can download the episodes at song by song podcast.com and you can get tickets to our live show And finally, just a reminder that if you want to support the show with your money, you can do that by buying all of our things at answermethisstore.com. But also, if you just want to chuck us some money, if you just want to donate to the show, paypal.me slash answermethis.

Right. That really is us, because all it is is a picture of us. And it just says, would you like to transfer some money directly to Alan's Answer with a Lollipop Man? The answer is yes. Those aren't fraudsters. picture of us. And it just says, would you like to transfer somebody directly to Helen's Answering the Law of a Man? The answer is yes. Those aren't fraudsters. That's us. So yeah, thanks for that.

So come back for a fresh episode of Answering This on the 5th of October. There will also be a retro Answering This on the 21st of September. So you can hear a whole episode of one of our amazing archive achievements. Beautifully sold. Bye!