Answer Me This! - AMT376: Morse Code, European Monkeys, and Peanuts

Episode Date: August 1, 2019

Peanuts! Why do pubs have them? Monkeys! Why does Gibraltar have them and the rest of of Europe doesn't? Pickled eggs! Why does anyone eat them? We can't answer that third question, but tackle the others and more in AMT376. Find out more about this episode at . Send us questions for future episodes: email written words or voice memos to [e-mail]. Tweet us Facebook Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Hear AMT episodes 1-200, all five of our special albums, and our Best Of compilations at . Hear Helen Zaltzman's podcast The Allusionist at , Olly Mann's The Modern Mann at , and Martin Austwick's Song By Song at . 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

Can you pay me in buttons rather than sterling? Does Sky Sports have a channel for curling? Helen, I know you're still reeling from going deep pincushion last episode. It's so hard to come back up. But prepare yourself for this question from Julie in Medford, Oregon. She says, I've just finished listening to your discussion of pin cushions in episode 375. And this issue is just so important and burning inside me that I just had to open my laptop and send it to you immediately. Finally an outlet for my feelings. I have a related sewing paraphernalia question.

Yeah, what could it be? Helen, answer me this. Whose idea was it to put a cameo portrait on all the needle threaders? I'm going to assume that you don't know what a needle threader is. Well, I know what a needle is. Great. You're halfway there. And I know what thread is.

So my imagination is filling in the gaps but i'm not sure i've ever knowingly encountered a needle threader no yeah you haven't met the optional intermediary between needle and thread usually it's like a little flat disc of metal that you hold which can have a face stamped onto it which is what she's talking about and then sticking out of one end there'll be a narrow loop of wire and the idea is you thread that through your needle's hole called an eye yes then you thread the thread through the loop of wire because it's a lot easier to get it through that than your needle and then you pull your needle off the needle threader and magic the thread is through your needle's hole got it okay your

imagination is really visualizing um she says i have been sewing for 40 years presumably not solidly and i have purchased and lost many of the small flat metal devices every single one of them has featured stamped into the thin metal a raised image of a woman's head usually in silhouette so helen answer me this is this some effort to make something really cheap look elegant? Or is there a fascinating backstory to the needle threader portraits? I love the idea that there is a fascinating backstory to everything, but if there is, it's not necessarily easy to find out, like the fucking pin cushions that eluded me, very sadly. Have you been sent on another merry sewing dance? So I have some theories as to why they stamp the face onto these needle threaders. It makes the metal a bit more stable and strong and less likely to bend

and snap. Okay, so it's got to have something on it. So it might as well be a pretty picture. Well, they don't always have something on it. But yes, it might as well be right. Why not decorate something if you have the option? There's a little disagreement as to who it was. Some people say, oh, it's Queen Victoria because she had her face on a lot of things. She did. Possibly the French emblem Marianne, who's on everything in France. This is the most plausible explanation I've come across. Don't know if it's factual, but I think it's strong. Minerva, the ancient Roman goddess of handicrafts, amongst other things. Okay.

And then I read about minerva's origins which i had no idea she's uh one of the children of jupiter and jupiter turned minerva's mother into a fly and swallowed her because he'd heard a prophecy that his child would one day defeat him yeah right you would think turn her into something more tasty than a fly turn her into an after eight great no i just said why so that you could say i don't know why he swallowed a fly i do know why he swallowed the fly he didn't take the bait but you do know why because you've done your research because of a prophecy that his child will one day defeat him so get rid of the problem but if the prophecy is true perhaps he'll die right yeah maybe that's the case for the woman in the rhyme as well we don't know do we no one asks about what prophecy

she's right yeah yeah exactly metis is the mother of Minerva, and whilst inside Jupiter, presumably living as a fly, inside the digestive system of a god, she made weapons for the baby Minerva, and the noise of her making weapons gave Jupiter a rotten headache, so he asked the god Vulcan to hit his head with a hammer

and split it open, and Minerva burst fully formed from Jupiter's head with the weapons that her mother had made wow there's a lot of sewing isn't there in um greek and roman mythology there's the fates they are basically like people that draw out and cut measure thread didn't have mass production then so there was a lot more craft it was very relatable wasn't it you know if you're going to create religion around things people understand i suppose that's the thing everyone has at home isn't it a thread you wouldn't you wouldn't make an ipod based in uh exactly 1000 bc yeah now i have now reached the age helen and this is useful for my future self listening back to this when we do a retro episode in 2029 to know that it was now

in 2019 age 38 this age now i have decided i am going to start keeping the extra spare buttons that come with shirts for your button jar finally you're gonna get a button jar i'm so proud i've got an old tube of cat treats helen uh i'm going to keep all my buttons in there and one day i don't know when i'm going to sew one back on i've decided no you need your button jar to be clear so that you can see the buttons inside oh shit and thought of that i can find a jar i just you've just slightly i mean i'm glad that you've dashed my hopes around the cat treat tube because i haven't started yet so now's a fine time to tell me i'm saving you time in the future exactly and also it means the buttons won't smell of fish i feel like in my 40s will be the time

i'm still about 15 years away from being interested in sports cars or classical music but i feel like in my 40s i can do some sewing i found an incredibly delightful and comforting corner of the internet last month which was all about visible mending so you've got a big hole in the crotch of your jeans or something and instead of throwing them away you patch them and everyone's going to be seeing the patch anyway so you might as well really make the most of it and make it look great so people will will sew it on with these practical stitches that are in a cool kind of geometric sunburst design or something or on like their elbows or their knees or whatever i've got such plans for visible mending now here's a question from chris who says there's famously a bunch of macaques in gibraltar but europe otherwise seems devoid of apes other than Homo sapiens.

Not just seems devoid. Europe is devoid of monkeys apart from in captivity, aside from the Gibraltar ones. The Gibraltar monkeys are the only wild monkey population in Europe. Okay, Ollie, answer me this. Why isn't, say, Sherwood Forest teeming with gibbons or the Black Forest full of bonobos? According to nature documentaries, apes seem as comfortable in tropical rainforests as they do on snowy mountains,

so climate doesn't seem to play into it. It does play into it. They prefer warmer places, yes. Your use of seem, Chris, is covering up a lot. You're making a lot of assumptions. My observation from seeing an ape on a TV. Is it something peculiar to European geography, or is it just boring old humans forcing nature out yet again? And if introduced or reintroduced, could there be, say, a sustainable population of gorillas in Epping Forest?

Well, there's no evidence, or to use Chris's term, there seems to be no evidence that monkeys were ever native to Europe because there's no fossilised evidence that they existed, you know, pre-glacial eras and stuff. However, the Gibraltarian monkeys could be natively European themselves. We know, actually, that Churchill brought a load of monkeys

over from North Africa during the war because there was this myth that if Gibraltar ran low on monkeys that it would cease to be British so it's a kind of propaganda thing that's a fucking weird myth it's eccentric he thought it'd be fun to bring a load of monkeys over from Morocco can you imagine that there's nothing more British than a monkey we know that the majority of the monkeys in Gibraltar were brought over fairly recently from North Africa, although it's not documented, but anecdotally Gibraltarians will tell you that's the case. But there were a few

left. The population hadn't entirely depleted at that point. And those ones that were there in 1940, whatever, had been there since prior to the Islamic period. They were there by the turn of the 17th century. So it could be that they are natively European and just happen to share DNA with Morocco across the coast. But people would suggest, no, they came from Africa. And so yes, Chris, you would need human intervention to bring monkeys to Europe. I've not been to Gibraltar or to the Gibraltar adjacent bits of Spain. Is there any barrier to them moving from Gibraltar to Spain? It's quite hard because Gibraltar is a rock.

And in between Gibraltar and Spain is the strip of land which is Gibraltar Airport. So I don't think a monkey would last long running along the runway. But also they're fed by the Gibraltarian government. They are effectively domesticated. They're there basically because tourists come to see them now. So although they live in the wild and they are wild animals, they are also fed by the government. So there's no reason for them to go to Spain.

There would be no reason for them to think that would be a better option than living in the rock where they've been for centuries. Okay, that does make sense that they are comfortable and not motivated. Yeah, and in fact, so comfortable that they breed. And so they have a really successful population of monkeys there, which is why occasionally, rather than shoot the monkeys, which is bad PR for the state of Gibraltar, what they occasionally do is export them to safari parks. So, you know, this is captivity, obviously not native. But to answer Chris's question, you know, there are Gibraltarian

monkeys that are living quite successfully at Blair Drummond Safari Park in Stirling in Scotland, where clearly the climate is not quite preferable for their species but yeah they can live perfectly happily there. There were some guinea baboons that escaped from a zoo in Paris last year and there have been reported sightings of them in the wilds of France so they can survive but all the evidence we have is that they're not native do you know of any campaigns in britain to get apes introduced to wild areas no i but but i i like the ambition of it like it's just that little bit more renegade isn't it than people who are like oh let's protect the badgers no let's get some gorillas yeah i like it i like i like the boldness really add some spice i suppose the problem would be that you're adding them to places where they

don't necessarily have the immunity against local illnesses and local creatures don't have immunity against the apes. So that's probably why not. Yes. And also, as like anyone listening to this now in India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka or whatever will tell you, they're a pest. When they actually, you know, when you have monkeys, I guess, rather than they actually you know when you have monkeys i guess rather than gorillas but when you have monkeys all over your cities uh they learn how to unzip rucksacks and open bins and they're a pain they steal stuff and you know they're infectious so they're not really i mean in gibraltar they've got it under control just but what they do is they fine you up to four grand if you deliberately feed the monkeys yourself to try and discourage them from stealing stuff but they you know that's what they do.

They go on balconies and nick your breakfast. So it's not necessarily something you'd want to choose to introduce, I think. Basically, I'm fine with there not being apes elsewhere in Europe, unlike Chris. Well, unlike Chris seems to be, but who knows. Here's a question from Nikki who says, I've been enjoying some fleeting moments of joy from our english summer in a beer garden quaffing beer by the third pint we fancied a nibble and indulged

in some knobby's nuts and that's when these questions came to me great to know where the inspiration came from yeah christopher nolan could do a trilogy about that backstory helen answer me this how did peanuts become a bar snack when we don't farm them here? And why did the peanut come so far ahead of any other in the nut snack race? How did tea become a ubiquitous drink in Britain when we don't farm that there except in Tregothnan private estate in Cornwall, which is not farming enough tea to quench the thirst of all of Britain's tea drinkers? That's not even making enough tea to quench your thirst. Quite. And there's lots of things that Britain has a lot of that... chocolate. We don't grow chocolate. But to be fair, the story of how chocolate and tea came to be seen as a

British thing is quite well told. I'm not sure I do know why peanuts are a bar snack. No, it was a bit more complicated to find the history of the peanut trade to britain the reason why peanuts work as a bar snack though is that they are salty which makes you want to keep on drinking and it also takes the bitter edge off the taste of beer but they're not naturally salty are they so they they pour salt on them so you could put anything i mean people do don't they have um wasabi peanuts like fried broad beans these days yeah exactly all those corn kernels from spain those are lovely yeah so okay so that's a way to get you to drink but they're not naturally salty so why the peanut i think crisps are far more common but i think peanuts have the advantage of not shattering if improperly packed yes but i don't see peanuts nearly as often

as i would see crisps in a bar scampi fries is the one that you see most commonly despite never really seeing it anywhere else. That's what I find weird about that. You only see them in pubs or occasionally a newsagent but you don't see them that often. You don't see them in the wild. It's like you must be drunk because you see scampi fries in front of you. I think it's because a lot of pubs now they have quite posh crisps like kettle chips and they've really eased off on the things that have not been gentrified, like scampi fries and frazzles. Pickled eggs have yet to be gentrified, don't they? I don't think they're gentrified, but they're disgusting. But it's a protein injection when you're hammered

and you need to fill your stomach quickly. Anyway, nut facts, please, Helen. Okay, so peanuts, they're original to South America and then the Spanish went there and then took peanuts up to Mexico and then back across to Europe, whence the peanut made it to Africa and Asia. Then got imported to Gibraltar, where it was left to live wildly in the rock. And then from Africa, peanuts went to the USA, basically with slaves in the 1700s. And they were

planting them there. I think initially for animal feed, they were quite difficult to grow. But then they became more popular in the 19th century. Their cultivation was really encouraged. And then they began to be actually valued because during the Civil War, they were high protein foodstuff. So both Civil War sides ate them. on it and i read some academic papers about the nutritional value of peanuts it was quite an impressive food stuff which i didn't really appreciate uh so given how dense and small it packs and how durable it is i get why it's a useful food but then it became popular as a fun time snack apparently thanks to pt barnum because when that was touring they sold hot peanuts no which would have been pretty cheap finally I know what I want to see in the Gracie's Showman sequel. Is there not a peanut song in the... I've not seen the film. This is the greatest nut.

It's not even a nut, Ollie. It's salty. What? It's not? No, it's a legume. I learned that from friends. Peanuts are not a nut, they're a legume. And so in Britain, bar snacks, I think they started selling bar snacks in the mid to late 1800s, like pickled whelks, boiled peas, lamb's feet and black pudding.

And then in the 1930s, packets of crisps were the mega popular bar snack. But then peanuts crept in in the early 50s. And it might have been that they were an American fashion that caught on in the UK after World War II. Ah, like STDs. Chewing gum. Better example. KP, the famous peanut seller, began selling them in 1952. It was originally selling jam and then roasted hazelnuts.

And I wonder as well whether they took over from nuts that grow in Britain, like the hazelnut, because maybe they are easy to grow multi-seasonally rather than just ripening it one time of year does that sound plausible yes sure then now they grow peanuts all over the world china grows the most than india nigeria usa and sudan as of 2016 that was the top five peanut growers when nikki says why have they come so far ahead of any other in the nut snack race you've answered that historically but surely nikki has a point that now when other nuts are as easily available and are as easily flavorable and are potentially more gentrifiable why are the other nuts not competing with peanuts for the premium spot in the bar snack nut race well i think i far more often see cashew nuts or pistachio nuts in the as the classy places

you're going to helen i'm sure statistically the peanut is still the one. There's a machine that can take the husks off peanuts really fast, whereas other nuts are more challenging to de-shell and therefore more expensive. So I think it's just peanuts per nut item. And I'm generalising, so no, peanuts, not a nut, are probably cheaper and easier to produce than other nuts if you're selling them without husks or shells. Fine.

But there's this interesting thing that I did not know about, the Tanganyika groundnut scheme, which I would have thought would make peanuts just very unpopular in Britain forevermore. It was a British get-rich-quick scheme after World War II. They wanted a quick and prolific source of cooking fat, and they were worried that there was going to be a global shortage of fat. And so they thought, let's grow groundnuts, i.e. peanuts,

in Tanganyika, which is modern day tanzania and um it was a fucking disaster uh because they went over there with lots of soldiers and the land was completely unsuitable for growing peanuts it was covered in thorny scrub bushes the soil was totally wrong for it there were killer bees local workers wrecked two-thirds of their tractors and um four years later they had to abandon the scheme and it had cost 49 million and returned basically fuck all and ruined a load of land like hundreds of thousands of acres of land and then afterwards there were still a lot of these broken tractors submerged in the land because a lot of the local workers were like ah how am i going to get out of this it's easier just to abandon the tractor and

never come back to work than it is to try and sort it out. Should have grown pickled eggs instead. No one wants. That's the lesson. No one wants. If you've got a question, email it in. To Martin the sound man,

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

And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a question from James from Walthamstow, who says, I recently moved into a flat which has a terrace area with outside decking. Nice. It is nice, isn't it? In Walthamstow. Fuck you, James.

Yeah. Awesomestow. Fuck you, James. Yeah. Awesomestow. Yeah. He says, this area isn't communal and is technically my own private area. Lovely. Perfect for sitting out on as the summer progresses, you may think. I was thinking that. Where does it all go wrong?

Prepare to be wrong-footed by Walthamstow. The three flats next to me, says James, have similar decking and the only thing separating those flats decking from mine are small flower beds. No walls. Da da da! Four. The row of four

flats feels like the same area with no privacy if a neighbour is also outside. Yeah, I see. So those flower beds are symbolic, like the velvet rope at a stately home. Like you could jump over and jump all over that sofa if you wanted to. Or like one of those mazes that is just engraved into a lawn and doesn't have actually any walls. Right.

Now it's getting sunnier. I want to try and get some sort of tan. So Helen answered me this. What is the etiquette of me sitting on my own terrace with my shirt off to get a tan on my body i'm just sitting on a chair reading i'm not full-on sunbathing i don't think my body is overly unsightly but i appreciate my neighbors might not want me sitting there like that but at the same time it is my own space it is he's really venting here for now i've just gone back inside

a little bit after they come out if they do to avoid it seeming related even though it normally is but you were there first exactly i think he's feeling overly anxious about this i could understand if he was worried about getting onto his terrace when the neighbors were already out there and then taking his shirt off as if he was like hey everyone cop a load of my nipples look at my Right, if they're having a family barbecue on their tiny portion of the terrace and then you've got an equally sized bit and you go out, plant yourself in the middle

and take your clothes off, yes, possibly then you've breached some etiquette. But otherwise, don't see the issue. I'd have thought them coming out when you're already doing it is the perfect way to ease them into the concept of you sunning yourself because they have the option to go in if they really can't bear the sight of you.

But if they don't seem to be put out, and if they say, oh, hi, James, how's it going? Then you can be like, okay, they're fine with it. You've removed the option to check their responses instead of just seeing how it goes. Yeah, that thing of having to have a conversation, even just a hello, how are you? That's the thing that I'd feel awkward about.

I'd feel awkward about hello, how are you doing small chat and then doing that thing where you're pretending you're not there within earshot and i shot of each other because if there's all that is between you is a flower bed when you feel the obligation to have a proper chat with your neighbor or feel like you're putting an obligation on them to chat with you that's much more of relevance to me than whether or not my top's off obviously you follow our usual advice when you don't want to have to engage in conversation with someone which is to wear big obvious headphones although it does mean your ears won't get tanned so if that was a priority very difficult yeah so i was thinking about an obvious halfway point would be to have the shirt halfway open but the problem with that is that um tan stripe yeah you

just get a huge column of skin down the middle of your torso. And also, judging by Martin's dad, that's almost more graphic than taking the shirt off. Yeah. When Martin's dad's out in his Speedos and an open shirt, I feel the Speedoness far more than with no shirt. I think that's such a strong look. I wonder if there's a landscaping option. I don't mean your personal landscaping. I mean the Garden Terrace landscaping.

In that you could just buy yourself some little trees. Like if there's pot plants there, why not get a more modesty protecting series of pot plants of your own? What if it blocks the sun though and he doesn't get his tan? Do you think that would? Put up a rack full of laundry as if it's a modesty screen that's completely natural to have there. Yes, that's very clever actually because then that would function like a windbreaker on the beach, wouldn't it? People wouldn't be able to see you on the other side of it. Although it would cause potentially a shadow, which again is the same issue.

Or he could read a massive book. But you used to live in a place with a communal garden. Did people turn out there or did no one really hang out there because of the fox piss? No one really hung out there, not because of the fox piss, one really hung out there not because of the fox piss but because i don't it's a bit weird i'm all obviously all of this is unspoken so i have to just rely on what i could interpret i think it was that it was such a big garden so it's a block of flats that i lived in that had perhaps 25 flats it was a large block of flats it was a converted hotel and so the communal garden was massive but then that rather than being nice which you might

think you know what a lovely facility i think that put people off i think they felt that because you could kind of theoretically invite 50 people back to the communal gardens for a party no one ever did because they felt that that would be breaching some sort of communal standard of you know respect and so it just didn't get used at all i mean it's quite a weird thing that isn't it like if the gun's so nice that you could put a marquee in it no one wants to use it because they feel like their presence doesn't justify it it's a strange very british conundrum i think if i had the terrace next to james uh i don't think i would be miffed by him doing what he wants in it especially if it was quiet and he didn't want to chat. That would be my ideal.

I think I'd be more annoyed about music, actually. I'd be more annoyed about him playing his music if he's in the same space as me. I'm always very aware of that, because I often have a Bluetooth speaker with a stake on the end of it, so it's quite good for stabbing people in the heart, but also it's designed for putting in a lawn

so that you can listen to your sounds whilst you're in the garden. But I'm just very aware when the neighbours are out that they probably don't want to listen to what i want to listen to why have you got it then because i want to listen to stuff you're never going to use it no i do use it but i use it when the neighbors aren't there how do you know what if they're like in the house they want to go out and they're like ollie's playing his bloody show tunes i know they've come out because i hear the sound of fucking five live rugby commentary you know they don't return the favor do the sound of fucking five live rugby commentary. You know, they don't return the favour.

Do you think Britain is just not a country where anyone is well suited to having neighbours? It's a shame it's so densely populated because people cannot deal with the proximity of other humans. Just stay indoors. Just get a spray tan. Helen, how many minutes should I bake a cake for before it gets all burned and dry? Ollie, how many onions can I slice before my eyes start to cry and Martin how many sausages would you like for

your evening meal if you answer me these I'll be very pleased that describes how I feel. That's the question from down in Wokingham. Is he doing Perl and Dean? Oh.

What is that? There's a song with Morse code in it. What's the song with Morse code in it? It's also the theme to Inspector Morse, because they tap out his song with morse code in it what's the song with morse code in it it's also the theme to inspector morse because they tap out his name in morse code that was like the big reveal at the end of the series that's clever isn't it but he's not called inspector morse because of anything to do with morse code is he i don't think so i'm not a completist i think that's just his name maybe colin dexter liked the idea of codes and thought what's a famous code Morse great done named well sadly this isn't a question about Inspector Morse you know my feelings about Inspector Morse yeah I do know your feelings and it's not appropriate on a family show

Dan says I know what Morse code is and what it was used for good for you answer your own question then but helen answer me this why am i unsatisfied with my own internal information on the subject how does morse code actually work how do the dots and dashes equate to letters is there a pattern involved and how many people generally understand morse code? Question mark, dit, dit, da, da, dit, dit. Is that, have you just done one or is that, did you make that up? That's the Morse code for a question mark. And is dit the way you say the little dot? Yeah.

And da is how you say the long dot? That's right, yeah. I don't know exactly how many people understand Morse code. I think quite a lot, but now it's mostly ham radio enthusiasts that use it. It's no longer an official requirement of people in that kind of communication system sort of job. But it was until about 12 years ago. It would be a grim electronic billboard, wouldn't it, that counted down the people in the world that understood Morse code as they die off. It's still somewhat useful.

For instance, if there are people who i don't know say had something like locked-in syndrome and could only use one eyelid or like use one finger they would be able to communicate in morse code how would you verify that they knew morse code you'd have to worked all that out with them in advance wouldn't you if they're a ham radio enthusiast and then they get locked-in syndrome right yeah that's an option what i'm saying is it's not a completely pointless system of communication because it requires very little movement because it is just dits dars and spaces okay so how did they come up with like i've looked at the chart on wikipedia and you get one long one for t yeah and one short one for e right i mean that surprises me those to me don't seem like the two most common letters in english and yet they are are they yeah e is the most common letter so it gets the quickest

sound which is dit okay then t is the second most common so it gets dark fuck off t is more popular than i and o and u and a yep fuck off i'm done i've learned something i can't believe did you know that martin that t is the second most common letter in the English language yeah I is two dits A is dit da and then Q which is less common that's da da dit da I'm a bit surprised though that M is just da da because M is it's quite low down the list of most commonly used letters and yet it gets a just a two noise Morse code sign so Dan didn't ask who invented it because he was like, I know all about it, but who did invent it? Well, it's named for Samuel F.B. Morse, who invented the single-wire telegraph,

which wasn't the first form of telegraph for long-distance communication down wires, but it was the one that then became the international standard. The VHS of the Morse code world. The sky rather than the BSB. The reason why he did this was he was a painter. And in 1825, New York City had commissioned him to go and paint a painting of Lafayette in DC. While he was doing that, a horse messenger delivered a letter from his father saying, your dear wife is convalescent.

And then the next day, he got a letter from his father saying that his wife had died. Then by the time he got back home uh his wife had already been buried and he was like fuck this we need a system of communication that is quicker so i won't miss my wife's funeral again right so he invented hotmail but since the technology didn't exist it was like next best thing he came up with the single wire telegraph and the morse code he he only came up with it for numbers. And then someone called Albert Vale, who also worked on the telegraph with him, expanded it to letters.

But tough shit, Albert Vale. It's called Morse code. But hold on. Why, if his problem was wife's dead, would he come up with a solution that involved only numbers? How would you say that with numbers? I suppose it'd be like number one, wife's ill. Number two, wife's dead.

Number three, wife funerals happened. I see. So you'd only have nine options of things you could tell someone i guess i don't quite know it also wasn't made to be heard at the time it was supposed to make marks on paper tape and it wasn't until quite a lot later in 1890s it was used in early radio communications before they could transmit voices because you don't need as much bandwidth just to transmit dits and dars. And also if the sound quality is terrible, you can more easily make out a dit and a dar than what someone is trying to say verbally. So it's a bit hard to say who decided

the exact patterns of what the letters were because it was a number of people. You had Albert Vail and then you had someone called Friedrich Clemens Gerke who changed the code a lot. Initially there were four lengths of sound and he refined it. So it was just the dits and the dars. He changed about half of the letter pattern. So it was a communal effort. The numbers do have a pattern. So it's basically like number one is dit, dar, dar, dar, dar.

And then number two is dit, dit, dar, dar, dar. Why isn't it just dit, dit for two and dit, dit, dit for three? Because it's a lot of counting. By the time you get to nine, it's da-da-da-da-dit. So it's symmetrical. Nine is the opposite pattern to one, and five is just five dits, and zero is five das.

John Kent, London. Hello, Narnia. Answer me this. How many shits are allowed in a U-rated film? It turns out BBC guidelines says you can't have any shits in a U-rated film? It turns out BBFC guidelines says you can't have any shits in a U-rated film, yet Flight of the Navigator contains two shits and one bastard and is rated U. There are currently no U-rated films that allow the word shit in it. So Helen Olly answered me this. How many U-rated films have shit in it?

And how come it's not allowed today? Shit's minimum is a PG. So to translate for foreign listeners the BBFC is the British Board of Film Classification. They're not censors but they do offer advisory certificates based on age ranges for film releases. Right and the way that they decide these has changed over the years. What they did in 1986 for the release of Flight of the Navigator is not necessarily what they would do now because they consult with the public

and shuffle around the guidelines every few years. Right. And the language that they use is that the guidelines on language reflect public attitudes on the issues. But do you think it's really the case that in 1986 or whatever it was, people were less prudish about their children

hearing the word shit than they are in 2019? I wonder whether it was just harder to see films so people were maybe, they weren't exposed to it as much. That was around when home video, I think, was really catching on, wasn't it? And video ratings tended to be higher, didn't they? Than cinema ratings.

Yes, I see. So a U rating, actually, when Flight of the Navigator came out, didn't mean this is something to leave your children alone with. In any case, you'd always be there with the child. It was, here's a film that's safe to take your child to because the peril in it is so mild that they'll enjoy it. Yeah. And will negate the fact that it's got the word shit in it. Including someone called Jeff saying, don't take any shit, David. And a NASA scientist saying, holy shit. And other words including bastard, scuzzbucket buttface little weasel dork and

goddamn apparently it was only the second film released under the disney banner to contain profanity what was the first one was it the director's cut of scene but willie minnie i can't steer this fucking ship i found a bbfc piece of writing from 2010 talking about how they update this and they were saying the scheming fairy godmother's use of bloody twice in the u-rated shrek 2 upset some parents as did the phrase bugger it in nanny mcfee also you so maybe just flight of the navigator was so much earlier in their career of considering what was suitable for children and now they've honed it more because they've seen how people react to bugger it appearing in nanny mcfee but it is a case-by-case basis isn't it and i know this i should say um because i've kind of stopped listening now because it's been around for years but i would highly

recommend on the basis of my listening about five years ago the bbfc's own podcast they have every month they talk about this in detail they'll take one film and they'll say this is why we rated the adams family pg or whatever and it is kind of fascinating these kind of case by case examples the one that sticks my mind is saving private ryan i think that's a 12 right even though it starts with that really vivid really long war scene but the reason that was classified as a 12 after much discussion and consultation was they felt that in that context the educational value of early teenagers seeing a relatively realistic depiction of war was judged to outweigh the upset that might be caused you wouldn't go and see that film accidentally think it was going to be a barrel

of laughs even though the violence in it would normally mean it was a 15 if it was violence that was completely unjustified by any educational value it would have been a 15 so it's that kind of case-by-case thing that they're doing all the time. Yeah, and also it's not necessarily saying 12-year-olds will love this. It's like the straight story by David Lynch is a U certificate because presumably it doesn't contain anything particularly ripe or scary. It doesn't mean that five-year-olds will enjoy watching the straight story. Yes. The BBFC say that they no longer rely upon a list of swear words simply rated by offence,

but instead they take into account the strength, context and tone of the words used. So yeah, it is case by case, even with the words themselves. I'm sure they wouldn't have, like, Mother Jaffa in a youth certificate. No, exactly. But they might have bloody. So they say more offensive terms are removed from junior ratings, while the strongest sexual expletives are restricted to the upper ratings and were used aggressively to 18 i think you can have fuck in a 12 but again i think the ones where i've noticed it is when it's got some level of

historical interest like in a wartime drama right if someone's about to get you know if someone's about to go over the trenches and they're like i'm so fucking scared you might be able to put that in a 12-certificate film because it's in context, it's not gratuitous. So an educational fuck. Exactly. Good title for a film, actually. Before you name your baby, have you bought their name.com?

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that will become their personal house. So it'll be worth every penny. LOL. Thanks very much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of answer me this and for creating their new ios app which means that you can edit your website whilst you're on the move if you've got an iphone oh that's useful it is useful because also they have an offline mode so you can edit your pages in a place where you haven't got 4g signal i love like writing a blog on the go and then uploading it when you've got signal. That's super helpful.

It preserves your work. And then when you reconnect, you can pick up where you left off. Yes, Martin. Thank you, Squarespace. Do you know, I was looking through my emails the other day, Helen, and I stumbled across the email from 2013 when we first heard from Squarespace. No. And it's funny because it was a...

Did you frame it? It was a forward from you because someone had written into the podcast from Squarespace. No. And it's funny because it was a- Did you frame it? It was a forward from you because someone had written into the podcast from Squarespace saying they'd like to sponsor the show. And you forwarded it onto me with the message, real or spam? They do sponsor this American life, dot, dot, dot. I think it was pretty early on

in Squarespace's sponsorship of podcasts, particularly in the UK. Yeah, I think early in the UK. I think they've been doing it for about three years in the US, but still, you know, it's not like now where everyone knows what Squarespace is and we're just grateful that they're continuing to allow us to be sponsored by them. Back then there was still a message to be broadcast certainly. What a trip down memory lane. Then as now Squarespace allows you to make your own website very quickly very easily you

check out their award-winningly designed templates and then build the website that you want that does the things that you want. Maybe displaying the goods you have for sale or the menu for your restaurant or some photos that you take of birds. Someone dressed as Big Bird at a theme park. Someone dressed as Big Bird in your garden eating at your bird feeder would be terrifying.

Sure. And you can take out a free two-week trial by heading to squarespace.com slash answer. And then if you enjoy using their platform and you want to make your website a real thing on the internet that people can search for and find easily then get 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain by using our code answer this is from ryan from melbourne who says helen answer me this why do hairdressers ask if they've cut your hair too short when it's much too late to change it? Is it just to rub it in that it's going to be another three months

before you manage to grow back what they've done and then you're going to have to have a haircut again and ruin it again? Ryan, you are applying logic to the process of getting one's haircut, which is actually emotional, isn't it, as well as practical? Because people go there to feel pampered. They go there for the illusion that a collaborative design between hairdresser and client has occurred. And this is part of that lie,

isn't it? At the end, have I cut your hair too short? It's a way of keeping the client feeling like they have a sense of control, where in reality... Oh, there's no control's no control it's too late exactly often the hairdresser has just done the haircut they were always going to do the one that they did for the person before and after you and you are stuck with it i don't go to the hairdresser to be pampered i go to get my hair shortened in an orderly fashion that i couldn't deliver unto myself with blades i had a very very upsetting haircut the last time. This is not from my regular hair cutter, who I know that some of you have been to

since I recommended her on the show. But because I've been in Australia, I had a haircut in Sydney. And she started off quite strong. We had some entertaining chat. And then after about 45 minutes, she seemed to get a little bit tired. Yeah.

And I was like, we've only done half of it. And then she just started making a litany of excuses as to why she couldn't finish it. She's like, well, if I cut that part any shorter than this and that. And I was like, no, you're bullshitting me because it's been done before. And so then I kind of had to force her to finish the fucking haircut. That's weird. And so it was like an hour and a half altogether. And I hate getting my hair cut. And knowing that it's getting worse and worse, the longer you're in there is upsetting.

You know, the very back of your hair where it hits your neck, that's kind of the bit that gets messy first. And usually they like clip it or something or they make it tidy with a razor. She'd left a sort of wispy moustache along that. had real bum fluff on your neck yeah like a teenager's first moustache that was growing off the edge of my head did you come to realize this while sitting in her chair no no you realized it afterwards when you got home yeah because i can't look at the back of my own head and razzing the mirror past isn't really good and i just didn't want to ask her to fix it either because i just thought she'll give me five minutes of bullshit and then do a very bad job so all all in all, it was crushing.

And I had that thing where I was just angry for about three weeks whenever I touched my head or saw it in a mirror. That's interesting because the bit where they show you the back of your head, I always think that's a bit gratuitous, a bit like Ryan saying, why have they asked you if I cut your hair too short? I just think, well, I'm not used to seeing the back of my head. I can't objectively assess. I don't know what the back of my head looked like when I came in. Like, I don't know. Fine. I trust you. But you're saying if actually you're not showing the back of my head i can't objectively assess i don't know what my the back of my head looked like when i came in like i don't know fine yeah i trust you so but you're saying if actually you're not showing the back of your head something hideous could be covered up yeah well now i know

you learned the hard way but also my regular person in london they've got cameras above your head so you can see the back of your head while it's being cut the whole time which is kind of intriguing because that's not a view you usually have it's like being on cctv our mutual friend leon helen whom we know will be listening to this right now told me the other day that he has cut his own hair ever since he was a teenager wow just because he cannot bear the small talk of being in a hairdresser absolutely identify and leon is a man who talks a lot i quite like the small talk of being in the hairdresser speak up for it martin tell us the kind of small talk that's good in a hairdresser. I guess because I have my haircut in a lot of different places.

Like last time I had my haircut was in, where was it? In Perth. Like because I'm not a very sociable person, I kind of chat to people in bars and things like that, or even go to bars. It's quite a good opportunity to like find out what do you like about living here? Where's a good place to go and all that kind of stuff.

Well, I would cut my own hair like Leon does because i not only don't like the small talk no don't cut your hair like leon does it would look a bad look on you it might be worth it though but nearly all of the haircuts i've had in my life have been disappointing or just out and out insulting and i would just like to avoid that and for a few years i did cut my own hair and it wasn't worse than what the professionals were doing and it was free but i've lost the knack now i just think the secret to getting over the small talk anxiety is to treat the haircut as an audition for the hairdresser and then when you find one that you actually get good chat with that you had naturally flowing banter richard of hair on broadway is that man for me go back to that person but i actually

choose my hairdresser not based on the fact that he's the senior stylist, although he happens to be, but because he's intelligent. He watches political discussion programmes, he reads the newspapers, but he doesn't work in the media, he doesn't work in Westminster. So he's actually a good research for me of what an intelligent, normal person thinks about the world. Well, you have to pay someone to talk like an intelligent, normal person. That is tragic. Well tragic well listeners we have come to the end of this episode of answer me this but for there to be a future episode of answer me this and we all desperately want that we need your questions and you can supply those questions by finding our

contact details upon our website answer me this podcast.com and halfway through the month there will be a retro episode of answer me this through the month there will be a retro episode of answer me this in your feeds there will be a fresh new episode of answer me this on the first thursday of next month and we all also do other podcasts mine is called the illusionist it is an entertainment show about language i know that you're interested listeners because you're always sending in questions to here going what is a thing called a thing so might as well go to the illusionist.org and learn why that thing is called a thing. I do four other podcasts.

You can discover them all at ollyman.com. This month, I would like to highlight my show, The Week Unwrapped. It is a weekly panel discussion show in which clever contributors from The Week magazine educate me about underreported news stories. So recently, for example, we've discussed the return of commercial whaling in Japan,

the rise of rickets in the UK, and I talked to a panel of female journalists about why women self-identify as less interested in politics than men. Probably because it's a big fucking sausage fest. Yeah, that was it. That's right. Yeah, that was what we concluded

after half an hour of discussion. You can download that every Friday on your podcast app of choice just search for the week unwrapped and martin i have two podcasts one of them is called year of the bird in which i'm releasing pretty much the song awake throughout this year songs i write in 2018 traveling around the world so go to palebirdmusic.com you can find the podcast you can also find the music that goes with it and blog posts about each of the songs. And if all of that isn't enough, remember our first 200 episodes are available for sale

at answermethisstore.com, along with our five exclusive albums. Well, that seems like enough to be getting on with. I think it's more than enough. It's the summer. Just chill out, man. We're in the Southern Hemisphere where it's not summer. So you're being very

northern hemisphere normative. And please return for the next edition of Answer Me This. Bye! Bye!