Answer Me This! - AMT360: Astronauts' Underwear, the Blockbusters Hand Jive, and Sushidoku

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

AMT360 will be a huge relief for you if you've spent a lot of your life wondering what astronauts do with their dirty underwear, why the audience is jiving during the credits of Blockbusters, and whether Bowling for Soup are bowling to OBTAIN soup or on BEHALF of soup. There's more about this episode at http://answermethispodcast.com/episode360. Send us questions for future episodes: email words or voice memos to [e-mail], 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 http://answermethisstore.com Hear Helen Zaltzman's podcast The Allusionist at http://theallusionist.org, Olly Mann's The Modern Mann at http://modernmann.co.uk, and Martin Austwick's Song By Song at http://songbysongpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new BMO VI Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points. More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card. And then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO VI Porter MasterCard. And get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months.

Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash theiporter to learn more. How many people will check the envelopes at the Oscars this year? Does Warren Beatty now associate reading with fear. Let's spin the magical AMT globe and ask Helen, where in the world are you this month? Vietnam. Vietnam. Hello from Vietnam. I don't even know what is hello in Vietnamese.

I don't even know what that is. I failed to learn it, which is embarrassing. Do you know nothing? Not even thank you and I'm sorry I'm English. I don't even know what that is. I failed to learn it, which is embarrassing. Do you know nothing? Not even thank you and I'm sorry I'm English, I don't understand you. Well, it sounds a lot like thank you in English, just louder and slower. Helen went kayaking. She's an adventure sports person now. Wow, you and the Arnold. As the Arnold won her second Olympic gold medal in a row,

I thought she and I, we are on a par with each other it's extraordinary isn't it that she's now do you know officially uh britain's greatest ever winter olympian two consecutive gold medals yeah yarnold yarnold i think it was answer me this that made the difference it's gotta be when does she listen when she's training or when she's actually doing the the competition unfortunately it's not just before she chucks herself down the luge because um i listened to the interview on five live with her the next morning and as chris warburton asked her that exact question when do you listen to answer me this what are you listening to in your headphones the answer was um it was a rap song i can't remember what it was okay fine but fine. But it wasn't Answer Me This.

To be honest, if I was listening to Answer Me This, it would make me want to chuck myself down a sheer ice cliff. Here's a question of travel from Mike who says, The town where I live in New Zealand, Napier, is a pretty big destination for cruise ships. These things just keep on getting bigger and bigger. That is true. They're building the world's largest cruise ship at the moment.

Have you seen those pictures? Oh, my God. Hang on, I'm going to look it up. You would never, ever in a million years. It's called, although that said, if someone wants to offer me free tickets, I'll consider it. It's called Symphony of the Seas. Oh, my God.

Yeah. It's like a massive tower block on its side. Yes, exactly. And what's weird is it's got this huge internal area that they call the boardwalk, where the two towers of the ship face each other in the middle to form a kind of oceanic atrium. But that means that you have balconies facing each other on a ship. I mean, what is the point of that? Oh, it's because you can charge people to have a window.

Because a lot of ships, when the accommodation was in the hull of the ship before they started building these like huge structures above the rim of the hull yeah then there was a premium on having a cabin with a window but now everyone can have a window and a balcony but it's just i mean i'd rather almost have no balcony than a balcony looking at someone else's balcony when i'm on a boat i'm sure the whole point of being on the boat is that you see the ocean and the things you're looking at not each other then you can pay a fuck ton more for it that's what they're after mike says helen answer me this why are cruise ships white i've seen the odd luxury yacht that's blue but never any other colors they do come in other

colors so the cunard line uh has black hulls with red funnels and that harks back to when ships were coal powered. And so shoveling in the coal would leave coal dust on the side of the ship. So they would paint them black. So that was less obvious. And now it's more of a branding thing. I've got a Cunard so I want it painted black i am the disney cruise and my hull's also black with 13 blue paint so it's not as bleak as black because that's considered non-disney do they have a black hull that's interesting because i actually assumed um the naval reason for the predominance of white would be that a black ship presumably is harder to spot at sea i mean that's why pirates like it isn't it yeah some of the ships are blue like um paul mantour some of royal caribbeans are pale blue some of them have got like huge patterns on them but i thought there are probably several reasons why cruise ships are white it stands out against water much more visible it's easier to repaint bits because it's easier to match white

than a specific bespoke colour, like Disney's 87% black, 13% blue. The white reflects sun and heat, so it takes less air conditioning. Cruise ships are sold between companies, so presumably if they're white, you don't have to do a full repaint to put your branding on it.

I guess it's easier to see the plimsoll line if the ship is white the plimsoll line that shows whether the ship is overloaded or not but i think it also stemmed back to a company the united fruit company in 1898 they repainted their whole fleet of fruit boats white to deflect the heat of the tropics where they were getting their fruits from and they also did start running cruises because those were going to fun destinations so they would take passengers with them so it wasn't like the mega cruise ships now but that was where the trend started with the united fruit company in 1898 it became known as the great white fleet and then inevitably other people started to copy them both in the whiteness of the boats and taking passengers on cruises we went on our first cruise the other day literally for a

day it was a 24-hour cruise but i think i could get a taste for it ollie was rob bryden there zero incidences of rob bryden though we did meet a french woman there called carol and tell me ollie if this is normal or not at breakfast she took a fried egg and sprinkled it with sugar and then ate it. That's certifiable, in my view. You know, travelling the world really opens you up to new experiences and ideas. It broadens your horizons, doesn't it? What's the best breakfast bar you've had so far? Japan, we had a really stellar breakfast buffet.

It was phenomenal. What made it so special? It was one of those ones where the the presentation of all the little things is classy so you don't feel like such a gluttonous pig yes that's good isn't it and especially actually you know far eastern food smaller packages it somehow feels like you're not eating 10 courses but you are oh you absolutely are they had these square plates that were divided into nine sub squares so when you put a thing in each of those,

it looks very Instagrammable and very restrained. But then if you eat two or three of those plates, you've eaten a shitload of them. And also, presumably, you can do Sushi Sudoku. Oh, that's a good idea. Why don't we think of that? Just a thought. Ollie, I think you're a fucking genius with this Sushi Doku.

Market it. Question is, you know, how much time does one have in one's life to put all one's brilliant ideas into action? You know, that's the issue, isn't it it i'm too busy implementing too many other great ideas yeah but i think maybe you've got this ahead of you going into your 40s maybe you'll be just astride a sushi doku empire there's a vision well look i was 10 years ahead of the podcasting wave helen maybe sushi doku come 2028 will be the next big thing. I should get in now. Buy the sushi now and it'll be putrid by 2028.

Hello, this is Joe in Seattle. And Helen and Ollie, answer me this. Would a record player work on a sailboat or would it be too choppy? Well, this used to be a big issue before Walkmans came along. I mean, nowadays, it's just a question for nautical hipsters which is a niche within a niche but at some stage in the past obviously this was can you listen to music on a boat which obviously something people wanted to do you know if they didn't have a live string quartet there so actually there were record players that were deliberately developed

to be as robust as possible and be waterproof oh i don't know about you but when i think about record player i think of an open turntable yeah maybe with a plastic cover on it but there are ones and they're still available on ebay sharp made them technics made them which are vertical record players so they don't skip as much and they're self-contained so they're in a they're like a plastic unit in a box looks a bit like like a Walkman, but record-sized. And it plays both sides of the record, so you don't have to get it out and turn it over. And it's a self-contained unit that protects it against

not just water, but things like dust. They were designed to go in cabs of lorries and things like that so they could resist the skips and scratches that you'd get from bouncing along the road. It sounds kind of similar to the problem of accurate accurate clocks if you've got movement of the ship that means that the speed of the disc can change so you know the music will speed up and slow down and there's a similar thing isn't there with um accurate timekeeping on ships so that they can navigate properly. Well in terms of just adjusting to the momentum of the boat any boat um I suppose the simple solution to this

although it would work better on a yacht i guess than on a sailboat which is what joe's asking about is to hang the record player from the ceiling so you like suspend a platform from the ceiling like a hammock basically for your record player and then that way you could put an ordinary record player on and when the boat sort of slowly lilts around this wouldn't work in open sea but it would work when you're docked when the boat lilts around then obviously the record player is moving with the boat it wouldn't feel like it was skipping i mean it's funny isn't it when you think that i mean for a long time all the pop radio stations the pirates were literally coming from boats so there must have been a lot of records on boats when radio caroline was going

oh yeah that's a good point I guess also the bigger the boat, the more stable it often tends to be. Yeah, those were big trawlers, like, moored not far off the coast of Britain, weren't they? They weren't, like, broadcasting from the Mid-Atlantic on a dinghy kind of thing. Sure, but they must have had their own problems regarding, for example, mould

and weight. You know, storage of records, I imagine, was an issue rather than being able to play them in a stable situation. It was more just how do you keep them and keep them working. But essentially now this isn't a problem because digital music just makes this a bit easier. It's really not that important, is it, to be able to play records on a sailboat? I mean, just don't worry about it. Here's a question from David who says, a video just came up on Facebook of the Blockbusters hand jive. Helen, you'll have to clarify. The children Facebook of the Blockbusters hand jive. Aww.

Helen, you'll have to clarify. The children's quiz show Blockbusters, presented by Bob Holness. Bob Holness, the first James Bond, says goodbye, and then the credits play over a shot of the audience. There's pretty dramatic music. Do you remember? Da-da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da-da. Da-da-da.

It's dramatic music, but visually there is fuck all happening is just a shot of the audience sure a bunch of bored looking people wearing polo shirts they've sat through up to five recordings at that point so that's what's happening except on fridays after 1986 they'd all be doing a coordinated hand jive. It's worth looking at, listeners. Blockbuster hand jive. It's on YouTube. I have no memory of this, although I did watch blockbusters. And as far as I remember, I would sometimes watch it five days a week.

But maybe I was too young to take notice of the audience hand jive. But having just looked at it, it's just the slightly despondent British way that a group of people doing something coordinated and yet underwhelming and yet somehow subversive and it gets broadcast on TV and no one mentions it ever or talks about it I just thought it was beautiful just to try and express this in audio form it's kind of knee clap hand clap hand over hand potato hands elbow point twirl, repeat three times and there's sneak clap, hand clap, finishing with clap in the air. Have you got a picture? Anyway, David's question is, Helen, answer me this.

How did this start? How did the Blockbusters hand jive become a thing? thing yeah well like i said the audience is pretty bored because they sit through five recordings of shows back to back because they recorded a whole weeks worth of blockbusters in one sitting five five wow i mean i think these days if you go and watch a daytime quiz show being recorded you get three five is really pushing anyone's patience so three years into blockbusters many year run instead of clapping one bored audience member decided to get the audience to do this coordinated hand jive as the cameras rolled. Cameras couldn't do anything about it, could they? And do we know his name for posterity?

We don't. Just like seventh guy from where the camera was, the first hand jive. And the jive became an instant custom in blockbusters they would allow the audience to do it in the last recording of the day that's why it always went out on fridays bob holness what a gem used to teach the audience how to do it in the filming breaks what an innocent dorkish fun dorkish fun is essentially the real title of blockbusters isn't it yeah the trouble is they try to revive these things but people aren't dorkish fun is essentially the real title of blockbusters isn't it yeah the trouble is they try to revive these things but people aren't dorkish or fun in the same way anymore they're too knowing no exactly a bit too self-conscious aren't they well being a geek is cool isn't it

and those people weren't geeks they were actually deeply uncool and it couldn't it couldn't exist in a world where it's okay and there's a whole subculture ready for you to watch in the mainstream. Right. Yeah, where do you go now if you genuinely aren't cool? What is there left for you? I don't know. Fishing? Reddit?

I feel like if you're on Reddit, you've almost by definition got a community of people that think the thing you do is cool. I think one of the amazing things about blockbusters as well was the prize fund. I mean, we've talked before about game show prize funds in the 1980s and how small they were well where you won like a an owl shaped mug or something so the champion of each episode of blockbusters well in 1986 this is the best one in 1986 they got a blockbusters

branded cardigan in a choice of colors and a blockbusters embossed filofax i mean i would buy that now on ebay i would wear the fuck out of a blockbusters cardigan but that was the grand prize helen per question per correctly answered question how much money do you think you got you'll probably actually underestimate it now it wasn't as low as that but it was a fiver you got five pounds for each correct question which i don't know when you think that even at 1980s prices it probably cost about two grand a minute to film i mean that is a derisory amount to give the contestants isn't it yeah but then they're kids maybe there were lots of rules about whether you could give kids money probably yeah exactly yeah whereas a child's file of facts it was the capitalist 80s

turn them into little city gents at a young age i've got a question then email your question to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com answer me this podcast at googlemail.com answer me this podcast at googlemail.com answer me this podcast at googlemail.com 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 Andrew in Melbourne who says, My grandpa has just moved into a nursing home,

where he amuses himself by flirting with the nurses and trying to escape. Wow. My family has suggested that, as I'm the only grandchild still living with my parents, I should go and live in his empty house to look after it whilst they work out what to do with the place. It's a pretty sweet deal. I get to live rent-free in a nice house in a good location, and more importantly, it gets me away from the frustrations of living with my parents.

However, there are a few conditions. I'm not allowed to use the lounge or dining room where the expensive furniture is. What do they think you're going to do in there, Andrew? Living room parkour, probably. I'm also not allowed to remove any or change any of the existing fittings or furnishings, not that I can currently afford to. That's weird, isn't it, Helen? Do they just assume that he's going to, you know, do it all up on Wayfair? So what if he gets himself a new chair? What they're afraid he's going to do, like rearrange all the pictures and take them down and replace them with posters of Charlene and Scott yeah got my up-to-date Melbourne references

sure you know what it sounds like a bit to me that he's gone into the nursing home and even though he's trying to escape people know that at some point they're going to have to face the truth that grandpa's not going to be back living with these things and they're going to have to decide to redistribute these symbols of his life but at the moment they can't come to terms with that that's what this sounds like to me they don't feel comfortable with him replacing grandpa's furniture whilst grandpa is still technically alive and i kind of get that yes but then when someone's dead it's also a very difficult task isn't it because you're like you're not ready to erase them in that way

my grandmother dealt with it by throwing away all of her stuff while she was still alive and we're like oh i would have liked something to remember you by but uh never mind did you get to keep anything i've got a chopping board for some reason she kept several dozen chopping boards i've got my grandma's plastic colander which is not even a remarkable colander what color is it from it's sir beige i remember it from when i was a child and yeah you know it's at least 30 years old and i think it was probably 20 years old then so in a few years you could take it on antiques roadshow genuine 1970s colander yeah but to be honest i don't look at the chopping board and think of my grandmother because that would be a bit like slicing into her face yes which is not representative of my feelings about her sure but i would have liked some of the visual reminders of her existence

anyway andrew in melbourne continues the conditions are fine as far as i'm concerned but the main drawback is that the place feels downright creepy it is cold damp and dusty as grandpa has basically lived in two or three rooms for the last few years and never cleaned nor turned the heater on. It used to be his and my late grandma's pride and joy, so to see the house decayed is sad. The place feels haunted with memories of how it used to be, and I feel uncomfortable coming into that. Yeah, especially as you're not allowed to detach yourself from those memories. They're saying you have to keep it as is and you can't create a new life for the house. And you're not allowed to use certain rooms you have to preserve them as a

perverse museum. Yeah why don't you put little velvet ropes by the doors? He says in recent years grandpa's hygiene left a lot to be desired too. I'm a bit of a clean freak, so I'm not sure if I can cope with the ordeal of having to sleep in the incontinent old man's bed, no matter how well it's been cleaned since. Hey, if we had one of those podcast promo mattress codes, now would be the time to mention it. Ah, ah, damn it. Damn it.

Use the code ANSWER to get yourself a piss-free mattress delivered to your door. Andrew says, answer to get yourself a piss-free mattress delivered to your door uh andrew says the only other possible sleeping space is my mum's old room which is the stuff horror movies are made of with the same pink wallpaper and creepy dolls that have been there since her childhood oh creepy dolls are really one of the creepiest things even creepier than clowns i think i'm not sure there is such a thing as a non-creepy doll it's just a question of how creepy they are on the scale of creepy or very fucking creepy the picture i have is that these are the victorian style china dolls with curly hair and little velvet dresses and they're standing in a menacing row on the mantelpiece staring at you wherever you

are am i right andrew carry on anyway andrew says i'd love to be able to move out of home this seems to be the best prospect i have for the moment so helen answer me this how do i make this creepy old house feel more homely i think it's a bit like when you're trying to spruce up a really shitty like student rental house room where it's stained and the walls are dingy and you're not allowed to really put anything permanent on the walls or you're not really allowed to repaint yeah and the rental agent says you cannot basically touch this property so everything has to be temporary yes i so i think firstly andrew spend a little bit of money they don't cost too much get a dehumidifier and then i think for changing the decor lamps do a lot to make a room nicer the

lighting is very important and you can get lamps for not too much as well and then wall hangings maybe if he's got some horrific pictures up that you're not allowed to take down maybe you could hang a nice piece of fabric over them tuck some throws over the sofa go to a charity shop and find some brightly colored bed covers or curtains or whatever that smell less than grandpa's stuff and then chuck them over the furniture that you want to sit on and maybe flip your grandpa's mattress to the other side if that's a bit less saturated and maybe buy a mattress pad so there's at least a little bit of padding between you and him your answers are very practical solutions helen and hopefully they'll encourage andrew to take up this offer because it does sound like a good one but equally

i do think andrew you need to just sort of level up to the fact you are moving into your grandfather's house your grandmother is dead there are emotional reasons that some of the rooms have to be kept the way that they are and you are going to be sleeping in a man's bed who's in a nursing home because he's not very well you sort of have to I think if you don't deal with that if you suppress that it will come out later problematically i think you also have to talk to her mother about why these relics of her childhood are unchanged and whether she's ready now to take the step into adulthood and put the dolls on ebay or just throw them into a skip it is astonishing how difficult people find that to do isn't it yeah i think it's because they know that it's a signifier of their inevitable decay they know

that they're going to be next basically don't they yeah so once you once you throw away your parent's stuff you it's your stuff that's next that the death is coming for but i think maybe go to the house with your mum and just see gently over a few visits if she would concede to maybe moving some of the dolls out into a box under the stairs and maybe moving the dining room furniture into the living room so that you have a bit more space i think if she was there and helping you i agree it becomes harder for her to obfuscate the issue like clearly you don't want to live with dolls in your room so you know she's she's going to be in a position where she's either helping you or not rather than telling you to ignore something i wonder also

whether if you just put in incremental steps so like if she comes to visit you and most things are the same but you've got a nice vase of flowers her eyes will be drawn to the flowers and she'll be like oh it looks a bit different in here but in a nice way and then maybe she won't notice that you've taken a really horrific picture of a clown down and hidden it there's something to be said for that like i think very often if you make changes while someone's away like we're not all that good at spot the difference are we people aren't that observant they'll notice if something's there that it's always been there but if you take it away they might not remember what used to be there i think you can be quite cunning if you rearrange the furniture in a room for

example but you've actually thrown half of it away people won't notice that half of it's missing they'll just notice that you've done something different it's misdirection isn't it there's a picture up on my parents wall that i don't like and doesn't go with anything and um i'm not sure why it's up on the wall because I don't think they like it either. So I have occasionally hidden it and it's often been months before anyone notices. But if I said to my dad, can I move this picture? It'd always be a hard no.

So I think long-term project, Andrew. Is there stuff that you're looking forward to inheriting? You know, stuff that you don't think of as, you know, a little bit old fashioned. No, I just want my parents never to die. Yeah, sure. But is there furniture of theirs that you've got your eye on? That's all I'm asking. you know a little bit old-fashioned no i just want my parents never to die yeah sure but is there furniture of theirs that you've got your eye on that's all i'm asking um i don't have the same taste in furniture as them oh actually there's a wooden filing cabinet that i like

with slim drawers nice and my dad's sculptures obviously i'd want to hang on to my dad's sculptures interesting you said wooden filing cabinet first though well you said furniture i did i did direct you It was misdirection again. I was thinking about the sculptures, but then I reconsidered. Sure. And, like, my mum's sewing stuff because it reminds me of her. Oh, I'm feeling sentimental now. What of Stanley Mann's were you like, yeah, I'm keeping this?

I found an awesome photo of him from the 1970s just looking like the coolest dude in the world. It's like if Jeff Goldblum was in the Bee Gees and selling vintage cars, he'd look like that. That's amazing. Yeah. Are you going to frame it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that actually is really all I really want.

But I think my favourite thing of his that I found when I was sorting through his stuff, like stuff that I wasn't expecting to find, was there's a little matchbox that he'd obviously presented on the occasion of his bar mitzvah to all the ladies who attended his bar mitzvah party and it's inscribed wow it says like you know on the occasion of stanley's bar mitzvah presented to the ladies of edgeware synagogue or whatever it's kind of amazing what a player yeah so that's exactly um so i'm i'm keeping that that's amazing gotta have those ladies i don't know whether you have watched the netflix reboot queer eye i haven't although i've heard good things i think it's episode three where there's a guy who's hoarding all of his late father's clothes because he misses his father and he can't stand to get rid of them but they're

filling his own closet and he's got nowhere to keep his own clothes so the gay men convince him to let them take the clothes into a different room but what they do is sneak off and get them made into a patchwork quilt so he can be like oh that's his flannel shirt oh that's his blankie because none of the clothes themselves uh that's special beyond the association with the person and a quilt takes up less space um so that's a nice memento That's a good tip for you Andrew, just sew everything together Yeah, make a giant quilt of all your grandfather's furniture

Of all your grandfather's drawings Mum, why aren't you crying? Mum, why do you look angry? Mum, I did it for you What do I love so much about Tom Waits? Is it his gravelly voice or his gravelly face? Or the instruments he made from metal plates? And an anvil and a saucepan? If you love him so much, then make a podcast about him.

I have. Build a Squarespace site so you can tout him. I did. And one day there may be an award, even your show can win. It already did. Fuck you both. Thanks very much to Squarespace for supporting Answer Me This and for making it very easy to build a website

if you don't know how to do that, and you don't care to know how to do that, but you do want it to be done, and you're the one who has to do it. They make it as easy as falling off a log or falling into the street from the pavement. It's less painful than that. It's as easy as falling down a moving staircase but less damaging. Why do you keep on having these injury metaphors? It's not like being injured. It's as easy as breaking the glass on a fire escape door, you know, in case of emergency.

There's a lot of calamity in your metaphors. If you want to do, say, a gallery of your injuries and glass-based disasters, you could do that on Squarespace. If you wanted to do a podcast about your injuries and glass-based disasters, you could do that on Squarespace. If you wanted to sell shards of the glass that you had smashed or shards of the ankle that you had also smashed, you could sell them on Squarespace because there are templates for building your own store or if you just want to do something nice that doesn't involve pain and injury you can do that too and

your website will look beautiful across a variety of different devices but don't look whilst you're walking down the street because then you could walk into oncoming traffic and hurt yourself there it comes full circle go to squarespace., use the free two-week trial to experiment and to build up your website, and then if you want to keep it, you can sign up for a year and get a 10% discount off your first purchase of a website or domain by using our code ANSWER. But don't type it too hard because you might get RSI. Hi, Helen, Olly. Lyndon from Huddersfield.

So the band Bowling for Soup, Helen, Olly, Anthony, Miss, RSI Hi Helen Lilley Lyndon from Huddersfield So the band Bowling for Soup Helen Lilley answer me this are they bowling in order to get soup or are they bowling

on the soup's behalf tips Is this our first question about bowling for soup I believe so Our first question

about the semantics of the word for are they bowling in order to obtain soup or are they bowling in order to obtain soup or are they bowling on behalf of soup?

I'd never thought about it. I can't even think of a bowling for soup song right now. It's the only one I can think of is Girl All The Bad Guys Want. She's the girl all the bad guys want. That's the only one I can think of. They are bowling to achieve soup. Yes, the name of the band was inspired by the tv game

show bowling for dollars uh in which people would play the sport of bowling to win cash okay i don't know why they chose soup but anyway it's supposed to be funny they are playing 10 pin bowling in order to obtain soup okay are they real soup fiends or something they just adore soup i presume so because i mean maybe their first like 10 years worth of albums were all about soup because Are they real soup fiends or something? They just adore soup? I presume so, because, I mean, maybe their first, like, ten years' worth of albums were all about soup, because they'd been together for a very long time before they had a big hit, which I didn't realise. So until they hit upon their college pop-punk persona,

maybe it was all about soup. I don't know. OK, Lyndon has another question. I'm not planning on doing this, but if I smelled weed in my parents' house and I got a hoover that would suck in the air, wouldn't that get rid of the smell quicker or am I just a stupid idiot? So Lyndon from Huddersfield wants to know if he smokes weed in his parents' house,

could he suck in the air with a hoover to make the weed smell go away quicker? Well, it depends when, doesn't it? If what he's saying is, could I smoke weed directly into a hoover and would that remove the smell? It it probably would but the problem with that is if you're the kind of guy that's in your bedroom all day smoking weed at your mum and dad's house and you're worried that they're going to know you're doing that they'll probably be more suspicious when the sound of a vacuum cleaner comes through the floorboards oh i see um so that's concern number one you're drawing attention to it aren't you by using the vacuum cleaner if If you're saying, after I've smoked weed, should I go around the room waving a hoover in the air,

trying to suck up the air and purify it in some way, that seems not very practical to me. Yeah, I agree. I would consider instead a preventative measure, such as smoking it in a vaporiser, which means you get far less of the smell or you could burn a candle called cannabis killer during and after which according to amazon reviews is pretty effective except for one reviewer who was disappointed that it didn't come with stickers cannabis killer sounds like tabloid slang for a serial murderer or you can make a sploof which is a new word to me which is something that you smoke into and it absorbs the smell. And here's how you make one.

You need those dryer sheets that I've never bought, but have you, Wally? It seems like the kind of shit you would use to make your clothes smell nice. Dryer sheet? Yeah, put it in the tumble dryer when you're drying clothes, and what does it make it? Less static-y and smells a bit nicer?

Ah, no, I've got dryer balls, as it were. That's what I've heard. Whack, whack. The psoriasis is running rampant. No, in all seriousness, those things have never really taken off in the uk i know what you're talking about they're like sheets of fabric that have fabric softener on them aren't they and they they freshen up your clothes yeah in this country if you're looking for that solution you get these plastic balls that you put instead but then you can use them multiple times well that's not going to work for the sploof well

then you can't make a sploof in the uk easily can you let's hear how we make it and then we'll figure out how to improvise a uk sploof okay you wrap a dryer sheet over one end of an empty toilet roll and you secure it with a rubber band then you stuff the toilet roll halfway with toilet paper so you're basically creating a filter you're creating a massive fire hazard is what it sounds like you really have to use this responsibly which may be beyond your stoned abilities or you can use like half a plastic bottle similar principle you use it a few times once the dryer sheet has turned brown it's time to make a new sploof but then i do wonder if your parents caught you with dryer sheets they would think what the fuck is wrong with this kid yeah well as i say why is linden high and everything

smells of clean laundry young man in his parents house having a real kind of good housekeeping style product on the shelf just feels weird. I think if you're going online anyway to buy dryer sheets you might as well just go online and buy something that is like a sploof but doesn't smell of laundry and it's basically the same principle in that it's a tube you smoke into and the smell gets trapped by a charcoal filter. Okay so what is the UK equivalent of using dryer sheets in this recipe? They sound quite crucial to the device an air wick well a lot of people online suggest covering weed smells with air wicks and things but i think it just makes everything stink of air freshener and weed yeah yeah that's the worst possible of all worlds the only thing that i think you could

truly get away with pretending the weed smell was is the smell of actual skunks as in the animal you go around berkeley and you're like has someone been smoking weed or has a skunk been here because either scenario is very plausible in this place but i don't i don't think they have skunks in huddersfield i found another solution online that doesn't involve sploofs or dryer sheets oh tell me more um apparently rather than the hoover the domestic appliance that is your friend in this situation is the freezer uh-huh apparently if you take a toke and then open the freezer door and exhale directly into the freezer no and then close the freezer door that will disguise the smell that's and then by the time someone next goes to get some oven chips

the smell will have dissipated yeah but then like as soon as you take another toke and open the door, all the smoke that hasn't yet frozen will just float out again. You'd be better off smoking it through the window. Yeah, I think this only works for one singular toke. I don't think this works for a session. It also works, apparently, if you work in an environment where there are freezer rooms. So if you're in catering, for for example you can go and stand and smoke weed in the freezer room and then if people walk in they can't tell if your exhalation is from smoking

weed or just the product of warm breath in a cold environment no that's rubbish smoke and steam look different and also that you've got a burning spliff in your hand that's a giveaway i just think that amount of effort is at odds with the relaxation that a lot of people are seeking from the weed smoking well the other thing i've seen some people do is that you could put a box fan in the window and exhale through a tube into that so it goes straight out the window like a kind of weed-based air conditioner. Yeah you've just got to make sure that the fan is correctly set up so it's not fanning it right back into the room. I like reading, but not while I'm driving. Apparently that's illegal.

I want to listen to Richard Dawkins reading Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. Me too. Well, now we can do that, and I'll keep my license by signing up for a free audiobook. Let's go to answer me this podcast.com slash audible and have a look now. Hey listeners if you want more noises for your ears

well answer me this is being quiet in between times then audible is offering you free audiobooks yeah note the plural because whilst other podcasts including our own in leaner years will offer you one free audiobook for taking out an audible free trial which you can cancel at any time without paying any money we are offering you two that's right fuckers Two. And that's four times better than the podcasts that are only offering you half a free audio book. That's right. You have to pay a hundred quid to get to the thrilling denouement. What audiobooks have you got your

eye or even ear on, Oli? I've got your ear on. That's an interesting semantic point, isn't it? It doesn't quite work, but you know. I think you eye them up to desire them, but then you put them into your ears. I think it's still still ion would be the correct term okay the answer is um fire and fury which i still haven't read yet but at some point i'm gonna have to get around to and the reason i would rather do the audiobook than read the paperback it is read by michael wolf and i

just think that having that sort of gossipy delivery, some of my sources spoke to me and gave me a direct quote that was not for attribution. I think that would bring the whole thing to life. Is that what it sounds like? You know what I'd listen to? I'd listen to Olly Mann reading as Michael Wolff. Well, let's be honest. Sales are going to dry up this time next year, aren't they? If they want to sustain this phenomenon,

then they need a second incarnation of the audiobook, i am available anyway if you want to get your ears around a free audiobook and there are hundreds of thousands to choose from and then you want to get a second one for free as well oh it's so good go to answer me this podcast.com slash audible this offer only works if you're a listener in the UK, doesn't it? It does, yeah. But it's nice for Brits to feel like someone's jealous of them somewhere. Exactly. Hello, Helen and Ollie. My name is Cassidy. I'm calling you from the middle of the woods in Tennessee

because I am through hiking the Appalachian Trail, which I don't think you'll get at all, but that's okay. Anyway, answer me this. When do bears hibernate? Should I still be worried about them? Or is it just mice that are trying to steal my food now? So when she says, I'm through hiking the Appalachian Trail, does she mean she's over it?

I've done it. No, what it means when you're through hiking the Appalachian Trail is that you're hiking the whole thing. It runs from Georgia to Maine. It's 2,200 miles long. And so most people will do a little bit of it. But some people will through hike. And some people will hike up to one end and then turn around and hike back down to the other end. Okay, so what she's asking is, I'm actually on the Appalachian

Trail. Am I going to be attacked by a bear? Well, maybe. There are black bears all along the Appalachian Trail. Black bears bears are quite shy they generally want to run away and hide from humans so um they probably won't fuck you up she says should you worry about things other than mice stealing her food there are very strong cautions about correct food storage because bears will come and nab it or they'll try and eat your toothpaste so you need to very carefully box up everything you need to cook far away from where you're camping because apparently bears which used to be quite rare things to see along the appalachian trail have become more and more confident about coming to steal hikers and campers stuff okay so what is the answer when do

bears hibernate okay well i did not know that there's actually a great big argument about whether bears hibernate at all, or whether they're just sleeping very deeply with lower heart rate and less breathing and blah, blah, blah. Sure, you tend not to hang out on bear forums. Well, that's what you think. I get mentioned a lot on bear forums of a different kind. So we'll use the term hibernation for the sake of argument. Black bears, they sleep deeply,

but they might rouse themselves in an emergency, like if their den gets flooded. They might even go out for food. The bears give birth in January or February, so then they're awake taking care of the bear cubs. So can't guarantee hibernation, but depending on climate, and the Appalachian trail is very long so the southern end is warmer than the northern end obviously they'll hibernate for less long at

the southern end it's approximately between three and seven and a half months that they'll hibernate from like october november december wow here's a question from kieran in bedford who says ollie answer me this which time zone do astronauts in the space shuttle follow? Surely they can't just follow their home time as the people up there are from different parts of the world. Does Kieran mean the International Space Station? He does. And of course, they don't do that, Kieran.

But I love just even the idea that that would be possible. Like if you were in space with a Russian astronaut, a Chinese astronaut and a British astronaut, they were just disagreeing about the time all day. That is right. That is not what they do. They were just disagreeing about the time all day. That is right. That is not what they do. They do not stick to their home time because they're in space. The International Space Station runs to UTC,

which is basically what they call GMT when they don't want it to sound like Queen Victoria forced them to be British. But it is basically GMT. So British winter time. Yeah. And the reason for that is that britain is in the middle of all the countries that are involved in the international space station so usa canada european space agency russia and japan britain's roughly in the middle so it's just easier

of all the world centers that's the one to go with that forms a circuit that covers the almost the entire globe you can pick a point in the middle of the pacific and it would also be in the middle yeah you could go for the international date line equally. True, but, you know, with respect to Canada and our European friends, I mean, it's really about the US and Russia, isn't it? So it's between the US and Russia. I mean, that's the important thing. Most of the astronauts are either American or Russian.

That could still be the Pacific. International dateline. But it is useful. I guess the thing about UTC is that it's zero. So you don't have to then go, oh, okay, but we're on this time, so we have to add five hours and then minus two hours to figure out what time the space station's on that you just go we're at utc minus five so they're five hours ahead dead easy well also it means that each of

the two main mission control centers there's one in houston and one in moscow get to do half a day's worth of running the space station each in their own time zone naturally yeah so you can cover a whole day's activity using the standard working day on each side of the earth okay that makes sense clever use of time we'll allow it it's like uh sharon haugen and rob delaney isn't it writing transatlantically you get twice as much done in december when we were in la looking after our friend nate's dog we saw a rocket launch fuck off but we didn't know it was that then so we thought it was an alien invasion and we were preparing for death. I thought it was a bioweapon or maybe a nuke. I was terrified.

And then I realised what it wasn't, and in retrospect, it was incredibly beautiful. I was like, Martin, look at that. It looks like a plane trail, but it's unusually bright. Martin, Martin, Martin, look at that. And then it sort of broadened out into this tadpole shape. How did you not know that was happening? I'd imagine if a rocket launch was happening

anywhere near me, I would be aware of it. It was launched from an air force base outside LA and it was the 17th launch of the year so at this point it wasn't even that big a deal. I don't think you know Musk was like going around going hey I've got a rocket it's like it's another rocket I'm launching another rocket. So yeah I didn't think the residents knew about it walking down the street and everyone was looking up at the sky going like, what is that? Would you like to know what International Space Station astronauts do with their dirty underwear? Sure. They apparently put all of them in a waste bag

after they've been wearing them for three to four days, their pants, because there's no way of laundering them, but apparently you don't sweat very much up there. Right. Do things smell in that environment? Your sense of smell is inhibited compared to earth because you're in space and so your body reacts in different ways but what they then do with their dirty pants that they've been wearing for four days is they then instead of just putting them in a bin i sort of imagine they put them in a bin and the bin compresses it or something and then when they

come back down to earth they've still got their dirty pants with them but they don't they put them on a supply spacecraft that undocks and then burns up in the earth's atmosphere oh my god pants special pants spaceship yeah that seems so wasteful wow such a great way to empty the bins though isn't it so dramatic in future years will the expression astronaut, pants on fire be a new thing? Well, I think it's possible that, you know, like people now go and stand in their garden to watch a total eclipse of the sun or whatever, you know, maybe one day Tim Peake's dirty pants rocket will be eclipsing Mars or something and you'll be able to see it from Kent.

Be able to smell it from Kent and all. Because there's no landfill, there's just space fill. It's there forever. I can't believe how much we've already shat up space given that not that many people have been there. Humans have still managed to trash it. Well, literally, because the solid waste from the toilet goes in there as well.

With all the dirty underwear, so you definitely are not going to want to use those pants again. It's like that island that is just rubbish that's floating around the Pacific in space so there's going to be planets made out of human shit and pants ash one small shit for man on the twitters i follow at helen and ollie Helen and Ollie. I should clarify, when I say at, I don't mean the preposition at. I mean one of those A's with a surrounding circle of the sort that used to designate the price of fruit per fruit.

Here's a question from James who says, Helen, answer me this. What is the best way to respond when someone asks you the question, how old do you think I am? He doesn't specify here whether that person is male or female, but I think that makes a material difference. He continues, I am notoriously bad at judging age once as a supermarket cashier i asked for id from a lady who was buying alcohol she was

so shocked that i'd asked because she turned out to be 39 years old if it's a supermarket in the usa though that is totally normal yeah yeah what is the legal limit for drinking in the u.s 21 but they id you until you're 90 just to be safe yeah but in the uk for american listeners who might not know you can drink here from well basically 16 and everyone turns a blind eye but certainly 18 legally you can buy alcohol after you're 18 if you're a teenage girl like 13 they don't even bother asking at 13 you want people to think that you're older but in any case when when james says that the 39 year old was shocked that he asked i mean that shock was flattery wasn't it helen if you were asked you would basically be flattered wouldn't you um it's

a mix isn't it it's a mix of flattery and disbelief that someone would genuinely make that mistake it depends whether you're the kind of person whose self-esteem is propped up by people thinking you're young and you're going to be like oh young man you made my day or whether you're just like is this guy stupid is he taking the piss because clearly i'm so much older than what he's suggesting well this is the nature of james's question he says helen when someone asks me to judge their age i obviously don't want to go too high for fear of offending them by saying they look decrepit and ancient but if i go too low they know that I'm politely and awkwardly trying not to offend that way. So what should he do? What should he be thinking when someone says to him,

how old do you think I am? It's such a weird passag thing to ask, isn't it? Because probably someone asking that is out for flattery, because otherwise, wouldn't they just say their age? In which case, I think take your estimate and if you think they're 25 or under, anything between 20 and 25 is fine. I don't think anyone minds being considered to be between 20 and 25 if they are a teenager

or if they're in their late 20s. If you estimate them to be around 40 knock about five years off 60 knock 10 years off 70 not 15 years off yeah that's what i would say the flattery proportions were it's interesting okay so i've got a different rule based on gender so with men my rule is usually tell the truth like if a man says how old do you think i am it tends to be less loaded than if a woman asks me how old i think she is i think that is tempered by whether you think the man might have some sensitivity about how much hair he has that's exactly what i was about to say i was about to say tell the truth difficult people are so tender unless they're bald if he's bald uh deduct two

years because a 35 year old man does look 40 if he's bald so me in the middle basically say oh you look about 37 and then you think okay i only look two years older than i am he doesn't he looks five years older with women the rule is i deduct 10 yeah so if if they look 50 i say 45 if they look 80 i say 72 if they look 25 i say 22 and a half i would just go 15 i just think it's safer to have a bigger margin well the maths is harder they go 15%. I just think it's safer to have a bigger margin. Well, the maths is harder though, 15%. It's like tip maths. All right.

But even though I don't have any particular need for people to think I'm younger than I am, I do often wonder what people's answer to this question would be in my case, because I think I look quite confusingly like an elderly baby. To me, you're ageless, Helen. I'm not sure you looked 20 when we met and i don't know that

you now look the age that you are but i don't say that you look older than you are you just are zaltzman last week we were at this hotel in hanoi and martin got majorly trolled by the manager who was also called martin when he introduced himself said my name's martin martin said oh my name's martin too and hotel martin said okay well i'll be young martin you can be old martin whoa yeah was he clearly young martin though was he like 14 years old it was pretty sprightly it's probably like late 20s i guess yeah i guess late 20s maybe 30 late 20s that's more sass than i want from a hotel receptionist so martin's a can i be something else and i I said, why not beard Martin? Because Martin has beard and Hotel Martin

does not have a beard. He was clean shaven. And he said, okay, you be beard Martin, I'll be handsome Martin. Zing, zing, zing. There's space for more than one handsome Martin. This isn't Highlander. No, there can only be one. There can be more than one. Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of Answer Me This, but

beget the next episode by sending us your questions. all of our contact details are listed on our website answer me this podcast.com and of course you can use those contact details to send us a question we must reiterate still safest way to get a voice message to us is to record it on your phone and then email us the voice memo it's tedious but at least it works yeah and the sound quality is better unlike skype um we have uh other things for you to explore online not least the back catalogue of this podcast if you want to hear the first 200 episodes of this show uh and our exclusive albums and apps they're all

available for purchase through our sister site answer me this store.com last month it was valentine's day and the Winter Olympics. Yeah, and we promoted neither the love album nor sports album. But if you're still, like, full of love for the Olympics and Valentine's Day, why not listen to them in March? Just to wean yourself off those for another one to four years. I'm going to take this content and make it evergreen. And Oliver, is the modern man back for spring 2018 the modern man is back helen thank

you for asking yes uh the seventh series of my other podcast the modern man fuck seven we talk about trends and sex questions and amazing life stories uh and yeah episode one of season seven which has just dropped is called the two billion dollar. And it's an interview I did with a guy called Kwaku Adeboli. He is Britain's biggest ever rogue trader. He's the guy who lost the Swiss bank UBS two billion dollars. But that isn't how he sees his story. So you'll have to hear that. It's a really, I mean, he gave me an amazing interview.

So do check that out. Modernman.co.uk. Helen, you are keeping The illusionist going uh at the illusionist.org but also you have exciting video content this month yeah uh you remember that uh last april i went and spoke at the ted conference the big one in vancouver i remember it like it was last april 10 months later ted have decided to release the video evidence of that i think they were holding it back in case it was too life-changing for all of you. I just imagine it was hugely contentious,

had to be put through a lot of lawyers. They're just like, the world's not ready for this truth. And remind us what the controversial subject of your talk was. Well, Ollie, you know that Ted was a really good career opportunity for someone like me and an amazing global platform to go and spread a message. So how does Helen Zaltzman capitalise on this golden opportunity? By talking about medieval pen strokes, of course.

And the funniest typo in the world. Sounds good. Where can I see it? So that's on the TED YouTube channel, the TED Archive. And I'll also put it up on our website, answermethispodcast.com. Martin? Well, if you're a little tired of listening to podcasts or seeing people talk in video form, why not download my

album at palebird bandcamp.com You can pay what you want, including £0, and listen to some lovely music that I've written and performed. And it's not the slightly weird, silly jingles I do for ransomware, it's slightly weird songs I do.

£0, you say? Yeah, you could do it for £ not pounds it's a bargain get your not pounds worth if you've got this far we know you love free stuff and that's at palebird.bandcamp.com and halfway through the month specifically on the 22nd of march there will be a retro episode of answer me this which is only available to you if you subscribe it will be in your RSS feeds for only a month. That will be something from the AMT archives. And then on the first Thursday of April, we'll be back with an all-new fresh episode of Answer Me This. Fresher than a stale grandpa's house. Fresher than your room after you've been smoking weed through a dryer sheet.

So please rejoin us then. Bye!