Answer Me This! - AMT370: Peacocks, Hamsters, and National Bagel Day

Episode Date: February 7, 2019

This month's questioneers want to know what bullet journals are for, where hamsters come from, when the legal drinking age was invented, and what to do with a large painting by their friend which they hate. Find out more about this episode at . Send us questions for future episodes: email written words or voice memos to [e-mail]. Tweet us http://twitter.com/helenandolly Facebook http://facebook.com/answermethis Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Get your engine revving for Valentine's Day with the AMT Love album! One hour of your questions about your body parts and the various fun things you want to do with them. It's available, along with all our special albums, Best Of compilations and classic episodes 1-200, at . Hear Helen Zaltzman's podcast The Allusionist at , Olly Mann's The Modern Mann at , and Martin Austwick's Song By Song at . This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Want to build a website? Go to , and get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code 'answer'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash theiporter to learn more. Will the Oscars know who still gives more shit than James Franco? Exactly what should I mix with Martini Bianco. We've got some news from a listener that I think might hit you right in the emotions. Oh, just go straight in there. Yeah. When I'm feeling down anyway, this time of year.

Get you while you're vulnerable. This is in from Chris in Crawley, who says, When I was working at McDonald's back in 2001 or so, we did have little packets of mayonnaise behind the counter, just like the tomato, ketchup and barbecue sauce packets they have today. Well, now he's just rubbing it in. The mayonnaise. The fact of the mayonnaise. Good for your skin and hair.

One day, I don't really remember exactly when, I worked for five years there and it all blurs into one, it was announced that we would no longer be supplied with mayonnaise sachets interesting oh i wonder if that decision was taken in crawley and then applied nationwide crawl is very much the seat of power for mcdonald's chris says we were told this decision was because mayonnaise separates if it isn't kept in a fridge so it isn't suitable to keep behind the counter i'm calling bullshit on that one. Sashays are good enough, Chris, for the Welcome Break service stations, Burger King and KFC.

Yeah. I think you've been drinking too much of the McDonald's Kool-Aid all these years later. They don't serve Kool-Aid either. Stop drinking the McDonald's mayonnaise. Wake up, sheeple! I think he's a bit of a McDonald's revisionist, basically. Like, he's retrospectively applied this justification that is not true. Well, they've had the best five years of his life, Ollie. Imagine the psychological toll.

Well, it's an answer, and it's from personal experience, so I value that, Chris. But it's not really a proper answer to the question, why does McDonald's not serve mayonnaise? Here's a question from Patrick, who says, My dad works in bread selling. Is that different to baking? I'd imagine it's what you do after the things have been baked to distribute them to the- So he's like a wholesaler of baked goods.

Who knows? He might just be one guy with a little basket of bread, shouting, bread, bread for sale. I've just never heard that before. Like what, you know, if you meet someone at a party, what do you do? I'm a baker or I work for a bakery. Not I'm a bread seller.

I'm in the bread industry. Patrick's dad's in the bread industry and he remarked that national bagel day moved this year i believe it's moved to february the 9th so there's still time to celebrate if you're listening to this on day of release okay good good to know how would you celebrate traditionally helen national bagel day do you just put a hole in everything i I would set up a bagel hoopla. What is your favourite bagel flavour whilst we're on it? I like, well, you know me, I love my seeds. So I'm going seed. I'll probably go everything.

Just bagel filled with seeds. Just give me a bolus of seeds. Fuck the bagel part. Patrick has a question. He says, Oli, answer me this me this who decides when these inverted commas holidays take place such as national bagel day it's a funny use of the word holiday isn't it you know like someone would actually say oh i'm off for a week sorry it's national bagel day so my religion is bagels so i'm taking this day off yeah it's um smartphone awareness week so uh i can't come into work um who decides the holidays i mean they're not real holidays they're um

marketing days really aren't they they're pr opportunities because now there must be like 50 different products per day because you have of so many of them there are actually there are websites where you can go and see what National Awareness Day it is. And yes, there's typically at least half a dozen things going on because you get the awareness weeks coinciding with the awareness days. I want to find out which products I share my birthday with. And obviously, like within categories, it's not necessarily a problem. So, for example, it doesn't matter if it's national check your balls for cancer week at the same time as it being national pork pie day like that's not a

clash um the problem is you know the pork pie board wouldn't want to put their national day on the same day as the egg day right you can certainly eat a pork pie on the day that you check your balls for signs of cancer in any case it's essentially the marketing boards of various different products that aren't very newsy like bagels um that create these days uh because very often well actually you know checking checking for cancer is an interesting one checking for cancer is a story that news-based radio shows like to run on a roughly annual basis like it's good public service stuff isn't it it's good to tell a mainstream drive time audience hey guys check your balls but you feel

weird if you're doing that apropos of nothing checking your balls you feel weird talking about checking your balls right sorry talk yeah having the ball checking expert on for apparently no reason you know unless the host has just got testicular cancer or something like that but when it's national check your balls day then it's like okay we're going to talk about this thing today which we know is of public value and also is a relatively entertaining five minutes of content perhaps we can get a celebrity scientist on or a celebrity gp or whatever so it's kind of making an excuse for radio and tv shows to cover the same old shit year in year out my favorite of these days is actually quite a serious one, International Women's Day.

And the reason it's my favourite is because every year the comedian and podcaster Richard Herring checks who is tweeting, when will there be an International Men Day, and tweets them back, it's November the 19th. Yeah. Last year he also managed to raise a lot of money for a good cause whilst doing it. But also, I don't think there's anything wrong with having national days for that reason.

I mean, even if you disagree with what people say, like that reaction, oh, why isn't there International Wednesday when there is? The fact is, it gets people talking about a topic which, as I say, might not be the kind of thing they'd be thinking about in other circumstances. So if you're from the potato board, yeah, and your message that you're from the potato board yeah and your message that you're trying to spread through pr across the whole year is guys you don't have to fry your potatoes to make chips anymore you can air fry them that is not a new story but it is

beneficial to people's health so i suppose it's that thing of let's make national potato day and then we'll get a celebrity air fryer on to talk about air frying i mean it's that reductive i'm afraid uh here's a question from barbara in washington state who says my husband and i live a celebrity air fryer on to talk about air frying. I mean, it's that reductive, I'm afraid. Here's a question from Barbara in Washington State, who says, my husband and I live in the northwestern part of the US, and we've been binging several British TV shows over the past several months. We're big fans of Escape to the Country. Wow, that is a gentle show. I was really expecting looser. And we think we've cracked the code for several expressions. When people say they want character,

they seem to mean wooden beams and log burners, or what we'd call wood stoves. Not necessarily wooden beams. They might want walls that are wonky and a very low ceiling and tiny windows. Yeah, they mean a house that wouldn't look out of place in Harry Potter. Yes. Barbara continues, we've figured out that wouldn't look out of place in Harry Potter. Yes. Barbara continues,

we've figured out that homely means something completely different in the US and the UK. We know we don't want a homely home in the US, but it seems to be desirable in Britain. Yeah. What does homely mean in the US then? It means ugly. Oh, right. So homey in the US is how homely is used in the UK.

Is that like a way of being polite about a house that isn't appealing to call it homey? It's often the way of being superficially polite about a person that you think is not aesthetically appealing. It's a bit like mumsy. Yeah. Well, she says, what's confusing is that virtually every episode

of Escape to the Country seems to take place in an area of outstanding natural beauty as proclaimed by some sort of agency somewhere the government right so answer me this is an area of outstanding natural beauty the same as the country no are those terms interchangeable they're not are they no because an area of outstanding natural beauty is a it's a specific thing it's designated it is in the country but yeah it's a conservation area in the country it's a bit like a national park right it is a bit like a national park but the national park in britain is a bit different to a national park in the states as well people do live in national parks

in britain like there are towns in them whereas that is rare in a national park in the states and often there's like a volcano or something in the national parks in the states but i suppose the point that she's getting at is clearly there are so many areas of outstanding natural beauty in the uk that you can film an episode of escape to the country every day in a different one and broadcast it on daytime tv so how many are there are there too many no there are like 40 it doesn't cover a huge amount of the available countryside of britain but i guess they want something televisually beautiful and people want to move to the country and a lot televisually beautiful and people want to move to the country and a lot of the places they'll want to move to are the places that are also

covered by that but I don't think it is every episode it's not called escape to the suburbs is it no it's not like I want to live somewhere close to a train station and a Gregg's it's people saying I want to live near an area of outstanding natural beauty the reason why these areas might be mentioned and particularly desirable to buy in is because if you're moving to the country and you want to have a view of the country, if you buy in an area of outstanding natural beauty, they're unlikely to build stuff in that countryside because it's protected. So you get to keep your country vibes. Although if you wanted to do work on your house or build anything there are stricter regulations for doing that i'm not sure i've ever sat down to watch escape to the country uh describe it to me well you can only watch while sitting down it's really not a program that you can do anything physically dynamic whilst

watching i suppose what i mean is i may have stumbled across it but i've never deliberately chosen it what happens is they show house buyers three houses and one of them is the mystery house which is supposed to mean that oh it's not really what they asked for or is it oh yeah yeah i have seen that that's really weird because the family will say like we want to move to a village in oxfordshire that's got a tennis court and the presenter will say ah but look at this one it's in a cave and it's it's in a cricket it's in an actual cricket pavilion just think that's so not what they've asked for why are you doing this no because often the mystery house is the one they go for because really they didn't so they didn't say they'd be up for a converted school but might as well try it right i have seen it

yeah that's what i've thought when i've seen it when i've stumbled on it i've thought why the mystery house yeah why not they come to you with a brief you've got researchers give them what they want i don't want to see someone challenged i used to watch Escape to the Country quite a lot when I was doing a very boring job from home early in my career. So like this is around 2002, 2003. And the format then was the presenter would go to the first two houses and the people wanting to buy the houses would watch on like an online video. What?

And then they could choose which one to go to one of those two or the mystery house so they would only actually view one house in person that's weird yes it's a fun program watching other people view camera footage of a house i just remembered i i met uh one of the presenters of escape to the country now is uh sonali shah oh yeah i met her backstage at the Audio Production Awards, glamour, glamour, glamour, and I was chatting to her and David Aronovich about fitted kitchens.

Wow. That was an amazingly partridge-esque name drop, Oli. Congratulations. Yeah. Anyway, I'd asked her what she'd learned from looking at lots of nice houses doing the programme. I'd forgotten it was Escape to the Country. And she made a great point, actually, about utility rooms,

because she'd just done up her house. She said, why do British people put their utility rooms downstairs? You know, like if you have a separate room with your washing machine and your drying machine in it, why do you put it downstairs? Because then you've got dirty clothes next to the food. You've got the smell of the cooking. You've got to carry the clothes between the floors. Why don't you put your washing machine upstairs? And when she told me,

I was like, you've, you've flawed me. I don't know what to say. You're right. You're so right. Well, that's a fine American attitude to have where a lot of the houses are newer than in Britain, but in Britain it might be, you don't have drainage except on the ground floor. And also those machines are noisy and make kind of bouncing sounds. You need a pretty solid floor for them. That's true. Yeah. So yeah, maybe it doesn't work in all the houses. And also for a lot of people, the utility room is like a back entrance to the house. So if you've got muddy boots, you go into the utility room and take them off and thus

don't pollute the rest of the house with mud. That's what we've got, Helen. We've got a muddy boots room. There you go. So next time you're backstage with Sonali Shah, I hope you bring up these points and then let me know her counter arguments. I certainly will. I don't know what Aranovich will have to say about it. It wasn't Aranovich, it was Jay Rayner. I get them confused because they're both middle-aged Jewish men who are on

Radio 4. It was Jay Rayner and Sonali Shah I was talking to about this. Well, now I'm interested. What did Jay Rayner have to say about it? I don't remember. He was perfectly nice. He was a bit sniffy about the fact that we'd got our kitchen from John Lewis, which I'm quite proud of. proud of to me that's an aspirational kitchen but he went to a bespoke kitchen designer oh jeez of course he did he's a food critic yes i suppose that's true yeah but a food cooked somewhere else not in his house yeah but nonetheless like it's important to him the kitchen looks good i guess plus he's clearly got more money than me so what do you

mean he was sniffy he was like oh you didn't get a bespoke kitchen did you well we were chatting about house renovations and that wasn't bourgeois enough i can't remember which one of them said oh you've got done your where did you get your kitchen done i said oh john lewis and they laughed they both just sort of laughed like i'd said a joke yeah no it wasn't that it wasn't obvious it was more i just i knew what it meant but it was just more of a kind of, yeah, no, I mean, I've looked and the best one is whatever. Did they back away from you when he said John Lewis?

He's tainted. Oh. Did you find any nice items in the Argos catalogue? Oh, back away. I don't want to catch Basic Bitch. I've got a question. Email your question to answer me this podcast

at googlemail.com to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com so retrospectives what historical events are we ticking off See 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 Michael, who says, I'm just watching the news, and a piece about prisons came on.

Ollie, answer me this. When was the idea of incarcerating wrongdoers first thought up? Well, the idea of imprisoning does go some way back, Michael. Like the Romans did it. You know, there are metal cages that they created for the purpose, which have been discovered. And for example, there was a prison called the Mamertine Prison, which was established around 640 BC in ancient Rome.

That was beneath a sewer, Helen, contained a large network of dungeons where prisoners were held in squalid conditions and contaminated with human waste. Oh, great. So the sewer is definitely contemporaneous with the prison. It's not a later addition. I suppose the point was they didn't really care.

But yeah, I reckon that the sewer came first because then you think well we've got a hole underground let's put them down there but i bet even then the the contemporary phonins of the day were like uh oh they got everything down there spend all day playing with the human waste what a waste of taxpayers money so here's what i wonder how long were people imprisoned for under these old systems or were you just put to death fairly quickly if you were in for something serious yeah well okay so like in the uk we had the old time jails didn't we they were if you go to those sort of rather sensationalist museums aimed at tourists clearly places of killing and torture weren't they so i treat that as different to the idea of like a rehabilitative you know supposedly rehabilitative prison building,

as we know it now. So the modern prison in that sense actually only came about in the late 1700s. And even then, how rehabilitative was it rather than just keeping people sequestered from the rest of society? No, well, there was a philosophy behind it by then. So there were the Quakers getting involved. In fact, in America, some of the groups that mooted the first prison buildings there are still involved in running the prisons now um so the idea of a rehabilitative prison building was supposedly first mooted in benjamin franklin's living room uh in 1787 uh there was a pamphlet read that suggested the construction of a house of repentance. There you are, repentance, Helen. Doesn't sound that enlightened, does it? But it's not

rehabilitation, but it's not just punishment, repentance. And the idea was that if you gave the convicts solitude, they could become enlightened upon what they'd done wrong rather than just be punished. So it was to avoid things like the gallows and the pillory and the stocks and the whipping post. And that is what led to the first in America design of a purpose-built prison, which was the Eastern State Penitentiary. Huh, where's that? Philadelphia, 1829 to 1971.

Till 1971? Yeah, but I mean, actually a lot of the prisons we have in the UK started as Victorian prisons. I mean, that was the era when the idea of having lots of private cells with toilets and running water and a window and a walled off outdoor exercise area like they came to be seen as very squalid and degrading and whatever but at the time they were created they were seen as being really humane and fair and decent and they lasted for centuries oh well apparently uh the british prison in shepton mallet closed in 2013 at which point it had been in operation since 1625 good lord but i

suppose the conditions for everyone outside of prison were pretty poor well also workhouses existed in britain for centuries and those were basically prisons uh for people who were poor yeah exactly yeah or people who'd you know been impregnated by someone so equally difficult to get out like i find this question quite grim because you just think like how humans have been inhumane to other humans possibly for fairly arbitrary reasons since the dawn of humans but i suppose you know since the dawn of humans the question of what do we do with people that society judges to be beyond the pale if we want to be more decent than flogging and killing them in public it you know remains a relevant question doesn't it so although the answers might

be controversial looking back on them you sort of understand the motivation take galley slavery for example you know that is rightly condemned these days for its human rights abuses you know the idea of sticking a load of prisoners on the boat and forcing them to row to australia doesn't feel correct you know especially if their crime was stealing a loaf of bread etc but the theory behind it the theory of these people have done our society wrong what do we do well we might as well get work out of them rather than simply lock them up you know they might as well do a job they might as well contribute something back to society like that still motivates a lot of discussion now doesn't it that might be the theory but not the practice i've got um an 18th century lockup just down the road from me what is

it now is it still a prison uh it's only one cell on the high street so it wouldn't be a very useful prison i mean there's no space for a prison guard just for the prisoner so it's a little dome from about 1800 um and a plaque on the side that says do well and fear not be sober be vigilant oh yeah because they were the the drunk tanks those little single cell things yeah that's what it is yeah it's basically if you get pissed then the publican throws you in there and calls the police to come from the nearest town but because they're on horseback that's going to take an hour so that's where they keep you but a lot of those like single cell prisons there was one in the village my grandparents used to live so they used to take me to see it as a child probably as a threat yeah so a lot of those might predate the

police and so i wonder who got to let you out town jailer yeah it always struck me there's an element of vigilantism in it because who's to say the publican deeming that you're too drunk to be on the streets is right yeah like who's who's judging that like they could just decide that you've said something unacceptable so you're going in the in the locker well the publican wants to go and steal your things yeah exactly get you out the way i i do have in the back of my mind though like a jail plan if ever i got sent to jail huh i'd want to write something i think there's the only place where i'd have the focus to write because you do normally get pen and paper don't you i don't know because the pen can be

weaponized i doubt that i'd be in a wing of a prison where they'd be worried about me having a pen but you could be right yeah isn't that a thing in uh evelyn moore's debut novel decline and fall the um protagonist gets put in prison i forget why now and he has a lovely time because he just sort of treats it like kind of study break yeah yeah i think it's slightly like glossing over the fact that it's an enforced study break like it's more like a detention i mean it was literally a detention than a study but i suppose the thing is i already have a platform so that's what i'd be thinking i'd be in there thinking how am i going to use this when i get out where you know it's like all those tory mps that went to prison isn't it in the 80s and

90s they all thought right i'm going to write my memoirs i'm going to go and talk radio stations and talk about prison reform yeah they it's a career move isn't it it's not one they would have chosen but they know how to use it whereas your average prisoner that's not really what's on their mind no well they don't really have the privilege to exactly leverage it in their media careers when they get out here's a question from felicity who says my boyfriend james is currently reading oliver twist and commented on the amount of underage drinking happening in the novel helen answer me this when was a drinking age first legally introduced interesting question because when you when you read a dickens book the children

would be drinking gin or something it is watered down but it's because the water wasn't that safe to drink so alcohol was kind of a practical measure i've heard that a lot is that really true like it makes it safer to drink dirty water if you mix it with a spirit how does that work doesn't the alcohol kill the bacteria but you never hear that now do you in countries that have droughts like oh there's no water here so people are going to drink beer yeah so so why was it a thing 300 years ago well okay for a start you need water to make beer so it's not a question of like replacing a drought and secondly it's dehydrating so if you're somewhere very hot it's not a good idea places with contaminated water

you never see a report on the news from a country with contaminated water where people are getting sick drinking the water and they say people are so ill they've turned to drinking beer instead of... Do you know what I mean? It just doesn't come up anymore, does it? If the narrative was like, you know, these poor Ethiopians are drinking beer all the time, like the right-wing press would just jump on that and slightly, you know, poison the well, no pun intended, for

any charity money, you know, fundraising attempts. They also used to brew different strengths of beer. So in medieval times they did three fermentations from one batch. So the men would drink the strongest one, the women would drink the second strongest, and then the weakest one

would go to children and nuns and monks. Also, is it a storage thing? If you store water in a vat for ages, it gets bacteria in it, whereas beer, you can store it for longer periods of time and also uh as well as the bugs being killed off in beer it was um somewhat nutritional it used to be thicker so it had some of the nutrients of bread but in an easy to consume liquid okay but the point is

i mean i know that there are a lot of ne'er-do-wells in oliver twist so maybe that's the point but i mean surely children plus alcohol must have created some pretty terrible crimes. What I was surprised to learn is that even now, if you're over five, it's not illegal to drink. It's just illegal to buy alcohol when you're under 18. Is that right? But it must be illegal to feed it to your children, isn't it? If they're over five, it's not illegal. And in Scotland, I think there is no lower age limit that this is like england and wales but in practice if you

administering alcohol to your children on a daily basis i'm sure that the social workers can intervene well i guess then that it's a you know if you poison your child and they have to go to hospital that's a crime whereas giving them a little bit of wine when their sex is probably okay yeah it's interesting though yeah it's also illegal to buy alcohol for someone who's under 18 if you're using their money so like a kid outside an offee that wants to give you 10 quid to go in and buy stuff for them when you're an adult yeah you can't do that but you could buy it and then give it to them, technically. Yeah, okay. This is all from the 1923 Intoxicating Liquor Sales to People Under 18 Act. Before that, it was slightly earlier.

So 1910, it was under 16s. 1908, it was children under 14 weren't allowed on licensed premises. I think the first act was 1886, the Intoxicating Liquors Sale to Children Act, and that banned selling booze to the under 13s. So I'm going to go with 1886 as when a legal drinking age was introduced, but it's more a legal booze sale age rather than a legal drinking age. And what I find interesting nowadays is not the age at which it's fixed, but how seriously people take it. Do you still get ID'd when you're in America? Yeah, sort of like a formality. find interesting nowadays is not the age at which it's fixed but how seriously people take it do you

still get id'd when you're in america yeah it's sort of like a formality i got turned away from a pizza place once and my id on me since i don't drink and i'm in my late 30s i didn't think it necessary what's the pizza eating age it's uh 55 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. Yes, thank you very much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of Answer Me This. Their tagline at the moment is

look like an expert right from the start. I think there's something in that, don't you, Helen? Like if you run, I don't know, an IT support firm, but the reality is it's basically just you and a mobile phone going out to help old people restart their computers, you can make yourself look like a high-flying digital entrepreneur consultancy by using Squarespace and giving yourself a jazzy website. If your core market, though, is people that don't know how to use a computer,

is giving yourself a jazzy website a helpful tool or not? I think it is. Because I think whatever age you are now, it's accepted that if someone's website looks a bit crap, you're not going to use them. That's how I see it. You know what I mean? Like if they don't have an internet press, it's like, who are you?

It's like Martin's dad's business card has several different fonts on it and a Virgin Media email address. It doesn't matter. He's the Santa Dave. It's for his Santa gigs. It matters. Maybe if we set him up as Squarespace, maybe that should be his birthday present. I reckon

that would go big if we set up your dad a birthday Squarespace. His birthday is in a month, so we should do that. That's a good idea, because you could get him the domain as well, davethesanta.com The Santa Dave! The Santa Dave, not davethesanta.net Forgive me. It could be thesantadave

at thesantadave.net. That's much better than a Virgin Media email address. The at santadave.net. Do you get email addresses with Squarespace? You do. Oh, that's perfect. And if you want to try Squarespace out, you can use the free trial at squarespace.com slash answer.

And then when you're ready, you can get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using our code answer. And thank you as well to Chris in Salem, Oregon, who wrote to us to say that he started a website on Squarespace last month and then decided to donate the money that he saved from a year's subscription to this podcast. Oh, that's jolly nice of him. Double win, Chris.

Well, double win for us. You got your discount. Well, no, he gets a discounted website. We get some money. Very happy with that. But he's spending the same so he doesn't really win except he feels like he's supporting two organizations squarespace and us but it's us who are the winners like i say double win i'm not going to read the t's and c's double win for ollie man here's a question from jane who says one of my mum's friends has a farm in the north of scotland they have sheep but they also

have quite a few peacocks it's not a fancy stately home in fact the bits the peacocks stay in is almost a junkyard ollie answer me these why do they have peacocks surely that's a question jane for your mum's friend not ollie i think it would be easier to ask them yeah i'm gonna guess why not state a symbol you can get a peacock for 50 quid and wouldn't you be curious if you had the space and you lived somewhere where it wasn't going to annoy the neighbors with squawking agree they're beautiful to look at maybe one just wandered in one day and won't leave jane says is there farming potential with them or are they just pets where are peacocks indigenous to surely not scotland correct so why so why do they have them or why would anyone well do you know where peacocks are

indigenous to yes they're indigenous to the indian subcontinent or at least the kind that are mostly imported to britain the blue pea fowl they came from india what happened was because they're so beautiful people like took them to middle east and then the ancient romans got hold of them and spread them to a lot of europe and britain got them because ancient romans brought them here okay so not scotland no but with regard to her other questions why why would you have peacocks and is there farming potential with them there is farming potential in the sense that you can eat them if that's what she means yeah um essentially that hasn't been done since medieval times

people used to roast them and then dress them up on the table to suggest they were still alive yeah they would like peel off their skin wouldn't and then put it back on the cooked peacock so you still got the benefit of having a spectacular looking peacock yeah because otherwise you've just got a bird that looks like any dead roast bird but the bird meat apparently was very rough and tough um so that sort of faded out and i would suggest generally in addition to the things that you said helen like um you know if you live on a farm, you've got lots of space for them to roam around and fewer neighbours for them to annoy

with mating calls at four in the morning. Also, the presence of a peacock can elevate a humdrum environment. Oh, yeah. With a hint of the exotic. I mean, that's basically what it's about, isn't it? It's a way of saying, look at this sophisticated, beautiful thing.

And the whole environment changes. So last year we stayed in a hotel, a resort hotel in Dubai. It's an entirely man-made place. It's on a beach made of imported sand. The view was of a partially constructed bridge to a non-existent theme park because the money collapsed when they were building it. Wow. Were you staying in a metaphor? The thing that made this particular resort genuinely feel exotic were these very well

manicured grounds because they had grass everywhere, which of course also is not native to Dubai. So obviously they'd spent money and they'd sprinkled it with water. And the presence of peacocks because, you know, immediately, I suppose it does, it suggests India, like you said, it suggests colour and vibrancy and sophistication the other place that i've seen them wandering around weirdly is port merion in wales yeah to add to the eccentricity and the grandeur like he's not he's not going for a little cottagey vibe in port merion when he built it it's a peacock compatible aesthetic but the other appeal peacocks had was that they were a Christian symbol of eternal life and Christ.

It wasn't everything. Yeah. I literally can't think of anything that wasn't a symbol of Christ. But it's confusing to me because they were also a symbol of vanity and pride because they have these spectacular tales and they will get them out if you're fucking with them. But religious symbols don't always make sense, do they? Not at all. Not at all.

But what's impressive about peacocks is that they do adapt pretty well to harsh climates even though they're from india they do okay in scotland and they have them in canada and stuff by the way we should stop calling them peacocks because technically they're peafowl peafowl that's right and so the females are called peahens yeah i know that because there's a pub in st albans called the peahen and i googled it one night whilst I was waiting for a bus. Wow. And yeah, the whole genre of bird is peafowl. I was also interested that peacocks are not covered by British wildlife laws because they're not wild birds in their classification.

Because they're not native. Yeah. But then I suppose the fact that they've been imported and someone spent a lot of money to breed them and then buy them, sort of almost by definition means they're going to be looked after. I suppose they get stolen, but then they probably get sold on rather than killed, don't they? Like I say, the meat's not nice.

Yeah, but I was surprised at how cheaply you can get peacocks. 50 quid for a six-month-old peacock. Yeah, but then there's a lot of veterinary bills and a lot of specialist food along the way, isn't there? And also, you know, it might be a 50 quid peacock. How are they going to get it to you on your farm in Scotland? Yeah. That's got to be a hundred quid journey, hasn't it?

There's not Uber for peacocks, as far as I know. Is there? Is there? You might just not have downloaded it now I wonder whether because when I see a peacock I see the fantastic display of feathers does that mean that the males are the only ones that sell really is it like an inverse of the the battery egg farm where you only get the female ones because I don't think I've seen female or do the female ones have the feathers but they're not erect them the female ones usually a lot dowdier so do the hotels in dubai only get male peacocks and not get peahens well i think they might have peahens that they just keep around the back for mating for mating yeah because you're gonna get a lot of sexually frustrated peacocks

otherwise aren't you yeah i mean apart from the odd gay peacock i don't know how many what proportion of peacocks are homosexual but no i don't know if many studies have been done about peacock sexuality. I feel like bird studies are very heteronormative. Except for the ones into penguins. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, some proper, like, queer theory on penguins. Here's another question of animals from Kate in Leeds, who says,

in memory of Hammy, 1997 to 1999, so this is a question dedicated to a dead hamster, Helen, answer me this, where do hamsters live in the wild? They are from Syria. Most domestic hamsters are descended from the golden hamster, which was first captured in Syria, then exported in 1930 by an archaeologist, and then got bred and exported to other countries as pets. That's extraordinary because, you know, like it would be a shock to see a recorder being played in an orchestra. I can't imagine a hamster in any context other than a nine-year-old's

bedroom now. But it's odd because they are a rodent and there are lots of wild rodents. But I suppose because hamsters prefer dry places like deserts and sand dunes, you'd have to be on the lookout for them in those environments where you're not often present. I did not know that hamsters have very poor eyesight and they navigate by smell. And so that they can get around, they've got these smell glands on their backs and they rub those against things. So they've got a little hamster smell trail. I wonder if that helps them survive in a nine-year-old's bedroom as fun as i think it would be to roll around in one of those rolly balls yeah that would be fun yeah well i think

it'd be fun but then actually if you're a hamster you're taken out of your cage put in the rolly ball you're like if i run i can escape this place. But you can't. The prison comes with you. Were you ever taught the fundamentals of pet ownership? Oh, yeah. Through the medium of hamsters? Yeah, we got to take home the school hamster for the Easter holidays. Wow, lucky hamster. It died.

Oh, not so lucky hamster. It busted out of its cage and then went down the stairs, which was ambitious for a small rodent, and then died under a cupboard. What happened? Did your dad melt it into a sculpture? Died under a cupboard. No, my mum did melt the base of the cage, though, because she was putting the cage somewhere warm so the hamster didn't get too cold,

because the house I grew up in was fucking cold, and the base of it melted. So all in all, it was a disaster, because she had to buy a new hamster and a new hamster cage. Did you pretend it was the old hamster? No. No. Do you remember the day you went hamster and a new hamster cage. Did you pretend it was the old hamster? No. No.

Do you remember the day you went into school and have to say, I killed the hamster, but here's a new one? I think there was a bit of kudos. Like, yeah, fear me now. I am the one who knocks. Valentine's Day impends like our own oblivion, but sooner.

And to celebrate it it perhaps you might like to try the Answer Me This love album an hour of sexy romantic times in the Answer Me This style and here is one of the sexy jingles that Martin composed exclusively for the album

oh yeah I'm gonna show you what goes on in my bedroom between my poor poor Pokemon sheets that is very special uh there are um numerous jingles like that. How many, Martin, do you remember that you wrote? No idea. He was transported to a special sexy plane. It's at least four. So if you enjoy at least four songs like that in the Answer Me This Love album, it is a one-off album of exclusive material.

You will never hear those questions on the podcast. It's a whole hour of love and sex and dating and genitals. It is available now on Amazon and iTunes and at answermethisstore.com for the bargainous price of only £2.99. Here's a question from Fiona who says, Helen, answer me this, what the hell are bullet journals about and who invented this methodology? Ryder Carroll. I'm a big fan of the Pomodoro technique, but bullet journaling seems to be a similar model. Where does it come from? Well, I'm trying to think of the similarities of both of these

because Pomodoro technique is like dividing your day up into specific chunks of time and then doing one task for that 25 minutes and then taking a five minute break and then doing another 25 minutes. Whereas bullet journaling is sort of itemizing your day in written form, but it's it's not necessarily doing the thing i suppose both of them are making you more conscious of

how you're spending your time but one of them is doing the thing and the other one is writing down the thing in a complex and decorative way yeah i mean i think one of them is easily explainable like you just did pomodoro technique chunks of 25 minutes with a break i get that understand what that is the other one is completely incomprehensible i mean i've spent like 10 minutes reading into bullet journals watching the videos on youtube minutes no but like long enough to think what can i learn from this technique that i could use in my own life to be more productive and it's all about like modules and yearly migrations and collections and it just makes me anxious yes Yes, same.

But that's because I'm a very disorganized person. I was curious that this is such a recent thing. Bullet journals were created in 2013 by Ryder Carroll. And he said, I had a learning disability that did not allow me to focus very well. Notes started either as a blank page with no template or as a super rigid template, which I didn't understand or enjoy.

I had short bursts of very intense focus, so I had to figure out a way to capture things very quickly and um so that's how he came up with the bullet journal technique which i applaud him for you know finding a technique that worked for him but what i find weird about it is then other people would study his thing and think right these are the rules for me that's the opposite of what he did isn't it like he found the thing that worked for him to organize his head but why does that mean it would work for everyone else it's a lot less work to you know if you find a system that works for you to use someone else's system they have to invent it i'm not sure it is well it depends on the person i like again if you if you look at it and go well that's not for me that's fine but there must be other people who have similar

i don't know like learning styles or journaling styles, which is why it's become popular. It's basically just paper diaries for hipsters, isn't it? It's adaptable, though. So you're drawing in your own calendar. So I suppose the amount of space per day or per week is not prescribed by the lines printed on the page like your Filofax does. So it's sort of like keeping an infographic of your life which i think would be quite a nice thing to to have maybe i couldn't do it because i don't really whenever i have like a paper diary or anything after about two days i stop keeping it and also i'd probably spend all the time doing the swirly writing and if i even got to the list i would feel like that was getting a task done like to me the list writing is more of a task than a lot of

the tasks yeah what i find quite interesting is the concept that migrating the lists which is the terminology he uses for when you have to write out the list again basically because there's lots of different pages you put your tasks on isn't there in orders of priority migrating the lists continuously writing out the same thing encourages you essentially to do the fucking thing because if you have to keep writing it every day you're like oh enough with writing out this task again i'm just going to do it now no with me it'll just be like just avoid the diary that's how my mind works i mean i've got lists i you know i'm a big fan of lists uh and there are certain things on those lists that i've been looking at for a year um but the idea of deliberately contriving to

continually write them out to clear my head it just feels like a complete waste of time i don't know i think it works well for some people um because apparently it's good if you have anxiety because you're writing these things down you're making your thoughts orderly and you're putting them on paper so they have a kind of physical presence rather than just this enormous existence in your mind. And so apparently that is very helpful for people. Bullet Journal is a mindfulness practice disguised as a productivity system. I'm terrified of mindfulness. I think another reason why this level of listing might be very helpful to some people is when you're depressed, you can think, I haven't done anything today.

But then if you break it down, you can be like i did the laundry and even something that on another day you wouldn't even register on that day you're like i did achieve something and i ticked it off so i can understand that for a lot of people it has been a very useful process i wonder how long term people can keep it up for because i i can see the initial excitement of having a fresh notebook and being like, okay, so in the front, I'm going to do this in the back, I'm going to keep a list of films I want to watch and draw like a little picture per film. And then by like, four weeks hence, you've not caught up on it. How long does the average bullet journaler go for? Yeah, well, the reason that they went viral in the first place was because people were sharing their bullet journals on Instagram like the artistic ones oh look how organized i am look at my swirly writing look at my calligraphy and i think you know a common sense evaluation of that

surely is saying are you so organized because you've just spent 10 minutes pimping up a photo of your diary but that's not an organized thing to do that is a waste of your time and it's needy as well it's quite judgmental maybe that's another reason why you don't get it because as you've said in recent episodes you're not a visual person you don't get instagram so these these kind of visual first documents of your life wouldn't necessarily spark excitement in you correct i would be interested to see other people's bullet journals and for them to tell me their systems. Just I'm curious of how people kind of translate themselves to a page.

But I think another reason why I couldn't do this apart from just being crap at organizing and bad at paper diaries is the only way I can cope with the amount of stuff I have to do all the time is by not looking at lists of it and not itemizing it and only thinking about the next couple of things in the queue of concern if I was like okay every day I'm writing down the queue of concern or every week or every month I would just be like beside myself with stress well see I thought that but the problem with holding it all in your head is that it is really stressful like you put it on the list you're like great I don't have to think about it I just look at the list the list tells me what to do today

and that's actually quite reassuring yeah that wouldn't work for me i interviewed a guy on the modern man called chris bailey who is one of these guys who like for a sort of stunty slightly kind of um self-promotional reasons decided to actually try every productivity trick in the book so he did goal setting he did meditation he did early rising he spent a year trying out productivity techniques and measured the actual outcomes of those and you know when it came down to it and i said to him what's the like what's the thing that actually works like the stuff about reducing everything into a manageable list of like i can't remember what the number is but it's five or six or seven things per day that you can basically cope with really like when you reduce them down into tasks yeah and in that way i suppose it's similar to the pomodoro technique that works like

not overwhelming yourself like you're saying helen with like here's a hundred things i'm going to do but saying these are the seven things i'm going to do today that works but i just don't think you need a special pretty diary for that that to me seems like well he called it productivity porn that's kind of what it is isn't it yeah but you know notebooks are lovely yeah and i'm a fan of the notebook but again i say to you filofax prescriptive filofax don't tell me what to do and when rider carol is also prescriptive so he's very cleverly i think ridden both horses at once here because if you go to his website uh bulletjournal.com oh and i did it's it's all about like you can use these techniques in any diary this is an analog

method for the digital age you don't need to buy my special book nonetheless like on the home page you scroll down once and you're being sold the notebook which is like 20 and the companion app which also costs money so i feel like he is shilling stuff as well as the original book which tells you how to do it you could easily like the novice who thinks i'm going to revolutionize my life and clear up my organization probably the average one spends 30 quid straight off the bat on a diary on a plain diary exactly a diary full of possibility it's like empress new clothes stuff rather than the control of the file effects rather than paying someone to draw the lines for you

down and lonely life is so confusing i need some answers preferably amusing preferably your music now i'll find a podcast that will suit i listen to helen and ollie on my we've had an email from a couple called a and k uh no not the luxury travel agents Abercrombie & Kent, but just a pair of ordinary listeners like you. And they say, we got married in 2016. Join the club. And whilst we know that many couples look at wedding gifts

as a way to recoup some of the costs of their wedding, we didn't feel that way. Our wedding was very cheap. The venue was a public park by the ocean. I got my dress at a thrift store for $60 and we made our own cake. God, that really is a budget wedding, isn't it? Yeah, good for you though. Thus, it was alarming to us when a dear friend who attended our wedding started going on and on about how she hadn't given us a gift,

despite our insistence that it wasn't necessary. Yeah, people still want to give you gifts, though. They do, yeah. And you can't really, yeah, you can't. So even people we didn't invite to the wedding, even though we were specifically saying, don't give us a gift, then took it personally as if we were saying, don't you get us a gift because it'll be horrible.

You'll ruin our love. We just genuinely didn't want gifts. They continue. In what we felt was a slightly panicked attempt to just give us something, about a year after the wedding, she gave us a painting that she had done as a gift photo attached yep how would you describe this painting helen okay yeah i would say it's abstract big brush strokes some quite thick paint i'd say the the color that catches my eye is yellow the background is mainly white but

there is some like pale blue splodges some teal and a bit of black and a tiny bit of what looks like gold but could just be light on the uh painting to me that's a painting if i saw it on the wall of a cafe of a three-star hotel i i wouldn't think twice i think yeah that looks like it belongs there i like it that could be the solution to this question then if they can afford to send it to you i don't have anywhere to live so uh um they say uh i think she thought we wanted it because one evening at her house she was showing us some art that she'd been working on and we expressed politely that we thought the piece she ultimately

gave us was very nice but we were just trying to be kind what else does one do when an amateur artist friend shows you their art we were once at martin's cousin michelle's house and um i was admiring a painting on her wall and she took it off and gave it to us and it was one she'd done but i i genuinely love it yeah it's great great for us yeah i feel a bit guilty for having it but very happy it's in storage at the moment so no one gets to look at it okay but that's an answer to a different sub question to the one ank have asked the one ank have asked is what do you do when an amateur artist friend shows you their art that you're indifferent to? That's the implication.

That's a valid sub-question. What do you say to that? You ask them about their motivations. You don't express an opinion on it. You ask them about how they do it, what materials they use, how long it takes, how often they get to paint. Just ask about them rather than the specifics of the painting. I say,

wow, what a man slash lady of many talents you are i'm like wow you're look at that who knew you could do things like that so i make it about them rather than the horseshit that they've produced that's implicit still that you like what they've produced yeah but it's it's implicit but it's not explicit is it i'm not saying what a beautiful painting for some people an implicit cue is enough over a year on from that continues amk our friend is asking us why we still haven't put up the painting the reasons are one we don't like it two it isn't framed and can't be hung as is and a custom frame will likely cost over a hundred dollars i disagree it looks like it's painted on board and i quite like that look unframed and you prop it up that's right unless your picture is you know badly taken and actually

it is a piece of paper i don't see why you couldn't just hang that on the wall like that on a nail yeah and if it is a piece of paper then you can hang it up with bulldog clips but i would prop it up and and also some people prop up art in layers so they have a kind of picture overlapping another picture so if you really hate it you can have it in a group. Well, the third reason they say is even if we do find a frame for it, it's a pretty big piece. So we just can't find an inconspicuous corner of our home to hang it in. We feel it either has to be prominently displayed or not displayed at all. And they've gone for the latter.

It sounds like it. Helen asked me this. What do we do? It feels wrong to bin it. It's definitely wrong to bin it. Yes. Or to give it to a thrift shop. Yes.

It feels wrong to give it back to her. I mean, out of the three options, that's the best. I suppose it could live in a closet until we both die and our heirs have to deal with it. This is why I find receiving gifts difficult because I feel so obligated to the gift that I'd rather just never get a gift. Some people just are quite easygoing

about the materials that make up their homes. You know, aesthetically, they're happy to look at different things from different influences in different places and other people are really, you know, they design everything, they think about everything carefully, they consult Pinterest boards

and then you're fucking with them by giving them something different. I think that's the problem. I think my answer to this question is coloured by the fact that from the photo they've sent us. I think that's the problem. I think my answer to this question is coloured by the fact that from the photo they've sent us, I think the painting looks fine to quite nice. And certainly not offensive.

When they mentioned that they'd been sent a picture, my mind immediately thought, oh, is it going to be like a pastel coloured painting of a unicorn rearing over a waterfall? And it's just too cheesy to have in your home. Or like a Gilbert and George style splayed arsehole or something. Or like something that's very cutesy. Those is cartoons they've knocked off a load of those in their own style but i i quite like it and maybe their home is one that doesn't lend itself to

having clutter and that's why they don't want it because they're like we have one painting up in this place and i don't want it to be that one yeah but what i would do with it i would have it like in the toilet maybe or the hallway like a small space that every inch of the wall is covered with different pictures yes of contrasting styles this is it so they say it has to be displayed prominently but they don't say in which room i mean you know you might have a spare room you might have a staircase um like you say you might even have a toilet where there's pictures hanging up and then it's not really a case of displayed prominently it's a case of making it less mundane you know i guess you do have to look at it every day though and

they don't like it well yeah but then if you if there's a way to put it up above the toilet then you barely have to look at it if you're sitting on that's a good idea above the toilet looks like pride of place but you don't have to see it my aunt who was an antique print dealer she had um a downstairs loo that had like a very busy wallpaper like kind of big william morris print style dark green wallpaper and then it was covered like floor to ceiling in framed pictures and it looked great so i think maybe do something like that group it with other things that are high contrast that might help neutralize it i wonder if there's a third way, which is find someone who loves it, then sell it to them and say to the person who gave it to you,

I know it's really difficult, isn't it? It's a gift, a wedding gift. But like, let's say, for example, that person owns a three-star hotel and they want to hang it in their cafe. That might be exciting for the person who painted the painting. Here's a long view kind of thing

that might help your friend. Engineer it so that she gets an exhibition somewhere she doesn't like her work ellen she's not going to be able to propagate an exhibition for it i don't know and then like give it to the exhibition and then just don't get it back it's an option and just if you have like a local cafe that puts up different artists art like there's a greasy spoon in crystal palace that used to do this like every month the pictures would change this is so beautiful the gift you gave us was so beautiful that uh a local art dealer wanted to exhibit it right would you mind terribly if we gave it to them right i mean that's perfect because it gets it out of your way

and she's very proud and whereas if you give it back to her i think the picture will always remind her of how you didn't like it sure yeah no don't give it back to her i just said that was the best out of the three bad options i have a friend who um he got together with uh someone a little while ago and she's a painter and in the first few weeks of their relationship a friend of theirs was like joking about her doing a topless painting of my friend so she did one and like it's a really good painting it's really interesting style but he is topless and kind of doing bedroom eyes in it and then he's then everyone is like he's a handsome man what do we do with this painting because the friend was like it's weird to have a large topless painting of my friend and that but my friend of whom the painting was is like you can't have a topless painting of yourself in your house can we have it i guess that would

be the solution to give it to us everyone give us your unwanted paintings and and now we're gonna get an amazing collection and now he and the artist have broken up like what do you do with the topless painting of yourself by your ex well if you have any paintings that are awkward in some way i'd sure be faintly interested to see pictures of them and hear why they're causing you so much trouble and all our contact details to send us those are on our website, AnswerMeThisPodcast.com. And using those contact details, you can, of course, also send us your questions for episode 371. Yes, and if you want to send us a question in your voice,

the safest way to do so is to record a voice memo and email it to us. Indeed. We will be back on February the 21st with a retro answer me this an episode from our 12 years worth of archive only if you subscribe gotta subscribe to get it only available you need to subscribe to the show um and by the way if you've never clicked play on any of those you might not realize we do record brand new introductions for those so if you're craving an extra six minutes or so of bonus content there it is for you folks yeah look out for that what do we think about our terrible past selves in detail yes um we have other projects online as well helen i make the illusionist podcast an entertainment show about language which you can find at the illusionist.org and a notable recent

episode includes um i had suzy dent from countdown on the first episode of this year four etc what a dream she's a dictionary dreamboat uh and i have a podcast called the week unwrapped uh it is as the name would suggest a weekly show um each week myself and three very clever people from the week magazine's digital team sit down and talk about three stories you might have missed. So if you're a bit depressed by Brexit and Trump, find out what else you should be depressed about. Yay! Stories you've missed.

Pile it on! So in recent weeks, for example, we have covered the dating leave policy they have in China for female employees over 30. We have talked about the trend for human composting and also why elephants are being born without tusks you can find all that kind of thing each week at theweekunwrapped.com and it is hosted by me so even if those stories sound serious i do try and bring my trademark levity to uh

those conversations uh martin i'm releasing a song a week for 40 weeks it's called year of the bird uh and you can get it at palebirdmusic.com there'll be a new song every week that's the sound of me in real life hearing about that project for the first time uh good okay well i shall check that out can you download them in uh mp3 form uh you can download them if you pre-order the album uh which will be there we go well it went before you can order like 10 tracks at a time it's not like you have to buy a 40 that's a bit ridiculous so listen to those and then come back on the first thursday of each month for a fresh new answer me this bye