Answer Me This! - AMT377: Bull and Bear, Quality Street and Biblical Jokes

Episode Date: September 5, 2019

In AMT377, we go looking for jokes in the Bible. It's...a mixed bag. 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

Does being told to keep calm ever keep someone calm? Has to be this, has to be this Will old Macdonald's family inherit the farm? Has to be this, has to be this Heaven and all the us of the us Sad news, since the last episode came out we were discussing in it Morse Code and the Inspector Morse theme tune

and the day that episode came out the code and the inspector morse theme tune and the day that episode came out the composer of the inspector morse theme tune died barrington for long i'm very glad that we didn't slag off the inspector morse theme tune on such a significant day for the inspector morse theme tune he got proper obits everywhere he's done a lot of films did the music for truly madly deeply and for the film hillary and jackie yeah well that came about because anthony mingala wrote episode one of inspector morse because anthony mingala was into his sort of classical music and ballet and stuff and saw a ballet that barrington for long had done the music for um and uh commissioned him to do inspector morse and then liked it so much he commissioned him to do truly madly deeply wow which is a very

musicy film. Tom has been in touch with this feedback. The Morse code in the TV show Morse was different every week and would include clues sometimes red herrings to the episode content, including Morse's unknown first name. That's quite high effort, isn't it?

It's very high effort. Imagine the high effort of creating a new theme tune for each episode, Helen. Who would be stupid enough to do that? It's a goddamn nightmare, probably. They used to put in the name of the murderer, but when the viewers got wise to that, they put in fake names, people who weren't the murderer, so that these kind of sleuths picking apart the Morse code would be red herringed. But also, I think it was so different then, because you would have had to tape it off the telly and play it a number of times to interpret it whereas now someone on youtube would just crack it in like five minutes yes and in fact you'd be

doing those kind of easter eggs wouldn't you for the kind of reddit audience basically yeah whereas then it was like this is something that no one's going to discover for 20 years until someone bothers to realize even though i never would have been the kind of person who was trying to crack that code because you could just watch it for two hours to find out who the murderer is and that would probably take me less time than cracking morse code i do appreciate the effort and a little uh puzzle for the diligent more feedback from josh uh it's about the macaques in gibraltar but nowhere else in europe and by the way josh seems to know his shit about macaques because josh is an m res primate biology behavior and conservation and he says there's been wave after wave of

primates with longer european histories than ours they've been migrating into europe for ages settling diversifying going extinct the first known european native primate is an ape tooth from 17 million years ago. Wow. Found in Germany. Humans, brackets homo, maybe erectus, got to Europe only about 1.8 million years ago. The monkey species you discussed that now live in Gibraltar, the Barbary macaque, those came furthest north. There are fossils of them in Norfolk.

I said in the last episode, didn't I, that there were no wild monkey fossils in Europe. What I did is I jumped from knowing that the Gibraltarian monkeys don't have fossilised remains in Gibraltar, but yet are the only surviving wild monkey population in Europe to assume that Gibraltarian monkeys had not been fossilised in Europe at all. But I'm thrilled to be corrected

by a man of your qualifications, Josh, to say that they had in fact been in Norfolk. Yeah. I didn't bother looking into the Norfolk fossilisations of macaques. Apparently they went extinct really recently from Norfolk, around the time that our species, Homo sapiens, arrived. Coincidence? Josh thinks not. Here's a question from Erin.

Ollie, answer me this. Where do the terms bull and bear come from with regards to the stock market and trading? I know bull means it's a good stock and bear means it's a bad one, but why were those animals chosen? They both seem to be pretty temperamental and dangerous. Yeah, I'm surprised we've never answered this question before because it seems like an all-time classic one, doesn't it? I know it's not such a familiar image to the brit yes i think the americans are very used to the stock market being called the bull and bear market yeah i didn't have any idea although i think they are british terms aren't they originally well there are two different explanations oh no ah you'd welcome to my world where you're like well

it's conjecture about etymology could be this could be that but that. But yes, both of them do have British origins. So yes, you are right in that assertion. I say there are two reasons. I mean, there are actually like 50, but I've chosen the two that seem the most plausible to me. The one that's the most popular, the one that most people think it is, is that the reference to the bear market

being a bad market or a market where you're selling on the basis that it's losing money, comes from the phrase bearskin jobber. Oh, I use it a lot. What a bearskin jobber, I say. It's rhyming slang for knobber. It was a derogatory term for a sort of Del Boy type who would flog you any old shit. Right.

So you're flogging bearskins, basically. And that came from a proverb which was popular in the 16th and 17th centuries it's essentially don't count your chickens before they hatch but with an added element of fraud don't sell the bear's skin before you've caught the bear and definitely not before the bear has been born exactly don't count your bear eggs a bear in the hand is worth two in the bush sorry don't sell the bear skin before one has caught the bear okay so bear skin jobbers were unscrupulous types who would sell you the air that you breathe if they could and there's a reference for example in daniel defoe from 1726 to this phrase being a bear skin jobber and that's what it means so basically they are doing pre-sales on bear skins before they have got the bear skins from the people who skin bears their chances

they're divers they're a little bit way they're a little bit whoa now that's a good explanation for the bear bit obviously but the problem with it despite its massive popularity and this is what most people will tell you the bear and bull thing comes from is it doesn't really account for why the bull market is called the bull market no proverb don't sell the bull's skin before one has caught the bull so people are like oh bull probably just came about because they needed an optimistic alternative to the bear market and bulls are strong it's all a bit fucking macho isn't it it could have been like a bear market versus a i don't know like a beautiful horse or a unicorn market or something.

I read that the reason it might have been bulls in particular is because there was a lot of animal fighting at the time. It was a very popular sport. And bear versus bull, that was like a real clash of the titans because they're both such strong animals. Okay, well, if you think it is actually legitimate that people who watched bear fighting 300 years ago would genuinely see the bull as the opposite to the bear for that reason, then I guess that explanation sticks. But the one that has slightly less traction, but I prefer, is that in the early London Stock Exchange,

traders filled the bulletin boards with bulls, as in bulletins, short for bulletins, right? So they'd pin up their bulletins when things were going well to say, let's trade this let's buy this let's sell that but in slow markets the board would be bare b-a-r-e which becomes over time as an opposite to bull b-e-a-r so it's like a pun it's sweet it sounds like absolute dog shit well of course it could be both couldn't it i mean i'm just if you forget about the b-a-r- bare bit if you just say that the bulletins were called balls so that indicates a lively market and at the same time there was this extant phrase bearskin jobber it could be both those things i guess it seems unlikely to provide that combo like why would you bring bearskin jobber and slightly tenuous bulletin board connection together because it's trader slang isn't it that's why. It's just the same now, isn't it? If you ask stock

market traders to explain their job, it's almost indecipherable to someone who doesn't work in it because there's loads of slang and jargon. So I'm just saying that there could be slang and jargon from two slightly different places, but the same era, and it came to be bulls and bears. But I saw this other explanation that seems to be all over the place. The bulls, like, their horns spike upwards, whereas the bear's claws slash down. Again, it's not what I would choose if I was trying to think of a way to express the vagaries of stocks. And yet they all smack a bit of bollocks, don't they? But you can see how that one has become a thing that people have told people that are training to be market traders well that's easy remember bears swipe down balls thrust up so

that's the difference between the bull and bear market everyone can remember that but i can't believe that's the origin story i think these terms were also quite insulting initially in like the 1700s i think they were expressing that you're a bit dodgy so it wasn't like like a kind of celebratory thing either, which I think the spiking upwards, slashing downwards would have been. I was reading up a bit about bear fighting in Britain, which was hugely popular until the 19th century when it was outlawed in the Cruelty to Animals Act in 1835. So they would like chain up a bear, and presumably like they had to import the bear. And then they would just set dogs or badgers or possibly a bull on it to fuck it up. And you think, well, that's a really miserable form of entertainment, isn't it? Like getting a precious animal and then watching it shredded to bits.

I mean, we get a lot of that from watching movies, don't we? And video games and living vicariously through the thrill of violence there. But if you didn't have those things open to you, and the only ways of experiencing that was through drama on a stage or the written page, this is very visceral, isn't it? It's a way of using violence as entertainment. There's nothing new about it.

But it's not even a fair fight because they would often blind the bear and remove its claws and fangs. So what's it going to fight with? And it's chained up. It could just sit on the badger. And with the bulls, they might put pepper up their noses to enrage them or put fireworks on their bodies. Pretty shit. And that might have been as well because they thought that bull baiting tenderised

the flesh if they were going to eat the bull after the match. We have a question now from someone who's chosen to remain anonymous but has called themselves a concerned citizen. They say, last week I was walking home drunk and I found a sealed box of Quality Street on the street. I don't know why that makes me laugh. I just, I guess, Quality Street being on the street in itself

just feels like not the brand. It's returning to its street roots. Anyway, I found a sealed box of Quality Street on the street, underneath the boot of a car. Wow. I picked it up, the box of Quality Street on the street, underneath the boot of a car. Wow. I picked it up, the box of Quality Street, not the car, to check it wasn't open. And it wasn't.

And as it was just lying on the street, I decided to take it home. Fair enough. And it wasn't like reeking of piss or something? Yeah. And I think being drunk as well, like I can well imagine that I'd be thinking, oh, fancy a snack. There we go. Now, a few days later, I'm feeling guilty for having taken it. There are student flats on the

other side of the road, so maybe it was someone's birthday and they left it there or something. Maybe. You're like, what do you want to do for your birthday? I'd like to leave a tin of quality street in the street. It's always been a dream of mine. I mean, students have some odd jokes, don't they? But I'm not sure undercar storage is particularly one of them. It's always been a dream of mine. I mean, students have some odd jokes, don't they? But I'm not sure undercar storage is particularly one of them. It's more likely, it seems to me, that it would have just dropped out of someone's shopping bag. Right. It's a packing error.

But I like the scenario that he's painted. I feel guilty for having taken it. I haven't opened the quality street yet. I don't know what I should do. Morally, what should I do? Helen, answer me this this should I take it back to the area where I found it well if it's been a few days they've probably given up the idea if they've even been searching for the quality street but you could pass the problem on to

someone else couldn't you I mean by leaving it there the original uh person who left it on the street might rediscover it but also someone else might steal it and then have this issue you will have cleared your conscience somewhat I think if i'd left a tin of quality street in the street and it was no longer there i would assume that it had been disposed of as refuse and i would think oh that was my fault for leaving something in the street that could be construed as litter so i think now it's too late to return it. And also, it's not like you found a wallet with 200 quid in and no identifying characteristics. No, Quality Street are not the most pricey chocolates, are they? He says sealed box.

So I'm presuming it's one of the cardboard boxage, which are like £3.50. Right. Yeah. I mean, I feel like most people could afford the loss of the box of quality street even a student they could absorb that loss we should explain actually for non-british listeners um that of all chocolates really quality street i would say are very much associated with giving they're not really a chocolate you'd buy yourself yeah they are a mixed bag pick and mix style style, toffees and chocolates, cheap chocolates. They're gifted. They're around at Christmas. Yes. Even if you never buy them, they are there at Christmas in your house.

So the fact that there is a box of Quality Street on the street does suggest that maybe this was a gift that never reached its intended recipient. So I think that's important to understand. It's not that he hasn't just found like a bag of Mars bars. He's found something that, you know, he may have taken away someone's gift from a special occasion i think that's why there's this extra dimension of concern here yeah but it's quality street so it may have just been like oh quality street uh only three quid today so i might as well buy some so i've got them in the christmas cupboard i feel like the morals are secondary to the practicality. You can't reunite these quality street with whoever owns them. You don't

know who owns them or if they're even geographically proximal to where you found them or if they have returned to look and not found them and therefore know that they are lost. You just can't presume who had them and who is looking for them and who is lacking them. And it's a low value thing. So I think that's less of a problem. Like in the past, when we've had people asking how much money is okay to keep if I find it on the street versus what should I take to the police?

And I think we were like, if it's 20 quid, that's probably wasting the police's time. So up to 20 quid, you can probably keep. I would say that to soothe the conscience of this person, they could pay it forward,

buy a box of Quality Street for someone else. And leave it on the street? But leave it on a wall or something. He found this under a car in the street. It was probably in the gutter. Gutter Quality Street. Would the person even want them back? I mean, I suppose the modern millennial take on this would be to do a kind of Instagram story about finding the Quality Street and then see if you can reunite the original owner with the Quality Street because even if they don't get in touch you've got a viral sensation on your hands. The people at Nestle would probably get in touch and offer you a free box of Quality Street. Compounding the nightmare. You're right that this is the kind of trivial mission that would probably get 200,000 retweets in the age that we live yeah yeah okay so leverage this concerned citizen

for your own viral game well i suppose now we've talked about it on the show i mean if you haven't concerned citizen actually eaten the quality street yet if they still exist you could get in touch with us on twitter and we could retweet it because there could be someone listening to this who recognizes the scenario knows it was their quality street we don't even know the town that's true we don't even know they're in britain where else do they sell quality street though uh they sell it in norway but it's called something else not just because it's in norwegian but it they call it something like fisherman street because they were brought back by fishermen to norway but like norway's mad for pick and mix they love any kind of chocolate selection box.

So they do have it. Right, but they probably wouldn't be emailing us referring to Quality Street if it's called something else. That's probably right. So I think this is probably in Britain. Would you like a Quality Street fact, Helen? Yeah. The chocolates were named after a play by J.M. Barrie.

What? The play Quality Street by J.M. Barrry was a flop on broadway and then it came to the vaudeville theater of the west end at the turn of the 20th century it was a big hit and so uh the chocolate makers uh to macintosh decided to pay tribute to the play and the characters that were on the front of the tin were versions of the characters from the play um and it wasn't like a licensing deal because it was 1906 or whatever but it it was essentially the first example of a kind of marketing spin-off from a hit media product that is amazing you're welcome they're named after a flop play by jm barry a flop in america but a

hit in the west end right with the first example of of such well like the scissor sisters were far more successful in the UK than the US. That's right. Where's their chocolate? If you've got a question, email your question to answermethispodcast.googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com 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 Matt in South Wales who says, I am in the process of writing a cover letter to accompany a job application for a job I really want. This is the crucial moment, I would say, Helen, the cover letter, wouldn't you? It's been a while since I applied for a job. When you're self-employed, you don't do as many cover letters, I think.

I was always very bad at job applications, though, and I think I would have found writing a good cover letter a very, very difficult task. So good luck to Matt in South Wales. Well, you're obviously completely the wrong person to ask this question to, but nonetheless, Matt has. Yeah, terrible. He says, naturally, I've done my research into the company

and I've pored over their website for what feels like hours. But was only 10 minutes? I mean, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount of research. That's true, yes. No, I mean, while he uses the phrase naturally. He's saying that would be the right thing to do. And I think we're all agreed it is. But there is a fly in the ointment. And it's this. During my research, I've noticed a pretty glaring spelling error on one of the web pages. And you still want to work for this company.

Helen, answer me this. Would it be bad form to tell the company that I've spotted their mistake or would it show them that I have a good attention to detail? I'm fairly certain the person I'm sending the application to is also the person who manages their website. I don't want to offend anyone, but I do want to show I've done my research. I see the predicament. I suppose it depends on the kind of job Matt's applying for. Like if it's a proofreading job, maybe it's a test. If it's not a proofreading job or anything really to do with

writing or attention to detail. You can find other ways to show that you've done your research, can't you? I mean, if you spend hours on the website, pick out something that they haven't made a mistake on and focus on that. But as an employer, would you think, oh, this person's quite diligent to have picked up on detail and that would be a useful quality in the job? Or would you think this person's a pedantic prick? Yeah. The problem is the context in which you're saying it. It's not that you've noticed it. Like if you're an employee there and you've noticed it, that's a useful skill to bring to the table, so long as you don't feel like you're slagging off the person who did it. It's not that you've noticed it. Like, if you're an employee there and you've noticed it, that's a useful skill to bring to the table, so long as you don't feel like you're slagging off the person

who did it. But if you're doing it in your job interview, it's almost like you're slightly tone-deaf to the idea that almost certainly that's how they're going to remember you as a candidate. Like, you know, for good or ill, I mean, it's a gamble. It's all your eggs in that

basket. You will be the guy who corrected them on their own website in your job interview that's how they will remember you that will be your legacy now that might work and you might get the job but in either case what you're saying is i don't mind if that's the thing you know about me and probably in a job interview that's not the best tactic. That in itself is a tactical misstep, isn't it? Well, how about this then, Matt? Send an anonymous email to the company. Set up an email address if you have to and see if they change it.

And if they don't, are they the company for you? Do you want to be working for such sloppy sallies? I mean, that definitely deals with the issue that's obviously burning inside him that he's noticed this error and now he can't stop thinking about the error, but it doesn't demonstrate that he's done his research because it's done anonymously. So you are kind of saying don't bring this to the job interview. I think like if you're getting on really well in the job interview and you've got the impression that the person interviewing you is not likely to take this too personally and they're

likely to understand that you know that you're being a bit of a tool by mentioning it but also you want to be useful then i think you could mention it but that is quite a lot of criteria to satisfy yeah if there's a lot of that kind of self-deprecating sort of ironized humor in job interviews isn't there where you're kind of like my worst attribute is that i'm just too critical of myself all that shit i'm too much of a perfectionist british people can't say that stuff without ironizing it slightly or like there being a freeson in the room that everyone knows that you're saying something that's just sort of hideously self-advertising so in that kind of context it might be quite funny to be like i am a real stickler for detail in fact but you've got

as helen says you've got to judge the room totally and some people just aren't very good at that you know if it's the kind of error that is going to damage the company's reputation like if an innocent word has been mistyped so it's actually a slur then that i would say you're really doing them a favor if they would be like oh my gosh thanks whoops then you could bring that up. I did see a friend on Facebook responding to a job advert for a content creator so if it's something like that I feel that's legit.

I think he'd have given the example if it was that kind of thing because he just says I've noticed a pretty glaring spelling error so it's just an error it's just a mistake I must say Matt in South Wales I'm afraid I've noticed a glaring spelling error in your email to us. You say, I'm fairly certain the person

I'm sending the application to, T-double-O, is also the person who manages the website. Oh, come on, Ollie. Fail. It's a fail. I'm sorry, I'm just hitting him with his own source here. It's informal. Sure. We're not interviewing these people.

But it's an error, isn't it? We just need it to be comprehensible. It's a glaring error, Helen. In an email about grammatical pedantry, that's a big error. So I'd just be careful, Matt. I make more and more glaring errors these days. It's autocorrect as much as anything. Well, perhaps that would be their answer, of course. Perhaps that would be the web designer's answer. And then what do you say? Well, you shouldn't be building a website for your company and relying on autocorrect. You see, now you've soured the atmosphere in the job interview, Helen.

This is why you don't get the job. Yep. Martin, do you have any job interview tips? Because you used to interview people for jobs. The thing that people most often fall down on is, like, they're so focused on demonstrating how good they are at the job, trying to fulfil the job description, basically, that they don't always demonstrate why they want to work for you or do

that particular job so they'll be like oh look at my amazing cv and you're just like that you haven't really shown how that's relevant to the thing that i'm advertising and the thing i need to fill so that's quite an easy thing to do like obviously reading a bit about the company and reading about the role asking about the role in the interview is that's those are pretty easy wins yeah having the question ready so there's that question at the end isn't there is there anything you want to ask us you're supposed to know what that question is and i never know because i'm like well i've i never know yeah what do you say you say something like oh i want to go on holiday next year can i take april off i mean what's the question you ask i just don't know well then at least you would have

a question prepared if you were desperate to talk about this typo yeah that's true uh yeah i remember actually we did interview one person once. It was for, like, a marketing role. It wasn't that it spotted a typo on their website, but his gambit was like, are you happy with the way your website looks? And it was like, I see what you're trying to do here, but you've just come across like a total dick,

and there's no way you're going to get this job. Well, because you've turned the tables there. You've become the person that's interviewing, aren't you, if you ask it like that? But it's just like, that's not how this works. I mean, i mean okay to some extent i do need to prove to you that i'm someone that you want to work with but not that way like you can't be high status in a situation where someone has the power to give you a job what's the example that you give martin when someone asks for the the occasion where you've shown how you can really think outside the box

but be a team player those are easy because i just want you to give an example and talk about your work a bit. And there's a bullshit question. It's like, I remember the first time I got asked, where do you see yourself in five years' time? And the first time I was asked that, I was just so surprised, I literally laughed. But then I answered genuinely, I want to be working with interesting people

and doing interesting work, which was true. I want to be travelling the world with my wife, semi-retired. Yeah, yeah. Not in this dump. The Silicon Roundabout's my favourite place To become a webpreneur would be really ace Like that awesome guy Tom Who was my first friend on Myspace We haven't kept in touch Get your foot on the ladder to online success

Through Squarespace, build a site and get a free web address. Then hang around East London until you get hired in the US. Mountain View is calling. Google have free buffet. Thanks very much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of Answer Me This. And exciting news. We mentioned last episode that they had an excellent iOS app that helps you edit your website on the move.

Yes. Can you guess what the news is that I'm about to break? It's fairly obvious having just introduced it that way. Android app. It is an Android app. Windows phone app.

Do they still make those? Android app. They're now available on BlackBerry. Yeah, no, they're now available for Android as well. Can I get it on my Nokia 7210? What about my landline? So if you have an Android

phone and you're on the move you can still edit your website in offline mode and we talked about all the advantages of that last time which are many but another thing that is a point worth making I think is if you are editing your website on a mobile phone and you think it's a website that more people will visit on mobile than on desktop actually then you can see instantly what it would really look like on a phone that's a feature that squarespace gives you even when you're editing on desktop you can switch between mobile view and desktop but using the app very useful it really makes it very clear like okay does this work on mobile phone or not it's brilliant and if you want to try out squarespace then you can just huddle along to squarespace.com slash answer.

You can use the two week free trial to see how their service works and build a little prototype website. And then if you want to keep it and make it a website that the world can view, then remember to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using our code answer. Now, listeners, we do enjoy hearing you ask questions using your voices. And the best way to do that is to record a voice memo or something and email it to us at the usual address. And let's hear who's been in touch. Hello, Helen, Ollie and Martin, the sound man.

This is Emily in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Helen and Ollie, answer me this. Are there any jokes in the Bible? There is that riddle that Samson tells, but it is not fair and it is not funny are there any actual jokes that are funny okay so firstly who's samson secondly what's the riddle you don't know who samson is i've heard of him with the hair like his strength is in his long hair and then delilah that bitch cuts it off as a sort of sting i remember when i was little there was um a musical my school would dig up these when I was little, there was a musical.

My school would dig up these weird biblical musicals. There was one about Samson, because I remember this song that was like, Samson, cut your hair. It's making you look like a square. And there was also one about Jonah and the whale. It was like Jonah man jazz. Jonah, get off that whale.

It really is a biblical fail. Anyway, what's the riddle? Samson wagered a riddle to 30 Philistine guests. Out of the eater, something to eat. Out of the strong, something sweet. Oh, I hate riddles. Yeah. Seriously.

I mean, just immediately, I'm just like, oh, stop making me feel stupid just because you've cleverly crafted something before I've even sat down. That's not real conversation. In that case, i don't think you're going to find the bible that funny but not much ad-lib comedy in it i mean it's a bit of slapstick samson tell us a joke make it funny what a chucklesome bloke but this riddle has kind of come up before it when someone asked why is there a dead lion on the lyle's golden before it and it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like it's kind of like when someone asked why is there a dead lion on the Lyle's Golden Syrup tin and it's referring to this

out of the strong came sweetness because oh is it a lion that had eaten some honey or something no Samson killed the lion

and then the bees went to live in its corpse and kind of made a beehive in the corpse so there was honey coming out of the lion so what's stronger than a lion and what's sweeter than honey?

That's the answer to the riddle. So you'd listen to some guy saying that, and you're like, well, it sounds like a dead lion with some bees in it. Right. What a load of shit. But that's the right answer, is it? A dead lion with some bees in it.

That's the solution. That's the solution you're supposed to come to. Right, so it's a riddle based on his own experience that you're somehow supposed to know the answer to. Right. What a twat. Yeah. So when Emily says that's unfair,

the Philistines all died because they couldn't get to that answer or what? They couldn't solve the riddle. They extorted it from Delilah, Samson's wife. The wager was for 30 shirts and suits. And because they cheated to get these shirts and suits, Samson murdered 30 Philistines took their suits and gave them to the Philistines that had solved the riddle through blackmailing Samson's wife for the answer well I'll give it this the old testament it is delightfully weird it's sort of like when you look

at jokes of the beatnik era yes they're not funny but you recognize them as the as a joke yeah it's like a Wes Anderson film isn't it it's got a kind of zany sensibility, but the things that are happening in it aren't funny. I think the thing with a book as old as the Bible, firstly... It can't be brought to life with a Bill Murray cameo? I could imagine him playing Noah or something. So could I. I could imagine that so hard. I think generation to generation,

humour doesn't necessarily last that well. Like if you went back to something that you enjoyed 20 years ago, you might think, and so if you went back to something 2000 years ago that was funny, it might not carry. And there's also,

apparently there are quite a lot of puns in the Bible if you read it in Hebrew. The translations don't necessarily reflect those puns. I mean, obviously I've read my bar mitzvah portion in Hebrew, the translations don't necessarily reflect those puns. I mean, obviously I've read my bar mitzvah portion in Hebrew, but not with such fluency that I would understand the puns. Did you notice the crowd giggling during the ceremony? I noticed some of them talking, but that's just synagogue. It's like with Shakespeare, you have to read the footnotes to know that a joke is being made.

Because if you don't have the context, you might not realise that a word is actually referring to another thing. Yes. But there are quite a lot of riddles in there and there's quite like people are like well jesus is a real hoot he says all this stuff like how dare you say to your brother please let me take that speck out of your eye when you have a log in your own eye and he's saying don't judge someone small floor when you're highly flawed it's an alan bennett monologue isn't it it's again it's not laugh out loud funny. So is that the best you can do? No, I've got others. What's the funniest joke in the Bible, Helen? Well, okay, I'm going to give you some options and you can decide. I think God does a lot of pranks, especially during his Old Testament phase when he's so vengeful and so literal minded.

So when people are in the desert and they're like, oh, we're starving. And God's like, oh, hungry are you? Well, look, now you're waist deep in meat. And they're like oh we're starving and god's like oh hungry are you well look now you're waist deep in meat and they're like well this is a different kind of nightmare would you categorize the story of abraham and isaac as a as a good punk oh yeah yeah go burn your son alive people like oh there's this really funny scene where god tells abraham who's 100 that his wife Sarah, who's 90, is going to bear him a son. And they're all like, ah! She's too old.

But I wonder whether also part of that is like nervous laughter, where they're like, fuck, really? I have to bring up a baby when I'm 100? Then in the book of 2 Chronicles, they have this statement. Jehoram was 32 years old when he became king and he reigned in jerusalem eight years he passed away to no one's regret deep birth okay yeah that's like

an austin like sort of rye aside isn't it yeah that's the funniest joke so far okay well there's this in luke 24 verse 13 two jesus's followers are walking seven miles from jerusalem they're talking about all the stuff that's been happening in Jerusalem like, oh did you hear about that Jesus Christ? what a palaver and as they were walking, Jesus strolls up and joins them God kept them from recognising him and Jesus said

what are you discussing so intently as you walk along and they're like look, you must be the only person in Jerusalem who's not heard all about all this Jesus stuff, the guy from Nazareth. He walks for several hours with them and only after that does he do the big reveal

where he's like, well, actually, and then he disappears and they're like, oh, what the shit? Okay, so it's a bit like that moment where Maggie Thatcher was standing behind John Sargent on the news at 10. Well, that amazing prank when it's like an Adele impersonation competition, but one of the impersonators is secretly Adele in heavy makeup.

That's some pretty good dry timing. I suppose Jesus has already exhibited a great deal of patience. He can wait to land this gag for a few hours. Do you think the bit where he's like, shove your fingers in my wounds, do you think that's a gag? And he didn't really expect Thomas to do it. Go on. Finger my cash.

Okay. Got anything else? Okay. In the book of Judges, King Eglon is stabbed, but because he's so fat, the murderer can't withdraw the sword to stab him again and finish him off. And everyone's like,

ha ha ha, fat, he didn't die because of his fat. No, he did die because no one came to help him when he was stabbed because his servants were like, we better not go in the room in case he's having a shit. Huh.

That's not funny. That's fatphobic rather than humorous. And also he's murdered. It's Farrelly Brothers stuff, isn't it? They were one of the contributing editors to the Bible. They really punched it up. This might be the most straightforwardly funny one. Please, finish me off with a big laugh, Helen.

Don't build yourself up for disappointment. In the Book of of kings the prophet elijah is squaring off with some pagan priests about like which is real god or bail not funny so far but who's bail bail is uh like their pagan uh deities they're not supposed to yeah they said bail when i was when i was in Scripture Union camp in 1989. And he's like, oh, where's your god? Don't hear him. And he says, call louder, for he is a god. He may be busy doing his business, meaning your

god's on the bog. Okay. Okay, I mean, that's pretty elementary, firstly. It's like a five-year-old doing a joke. But then he ruins it because he says he may be doing his business, or he may be on a journey. Perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened. So it's structurally anticlimactic.

It's much funnier to suggest God's doing a shit than God's asleep. Stepped on the joke by trying to have like three punchlines. That's right. You did do rule of three. You've got to build up to the climax. So after that, what would you say? There are jokes in the Bible, just not good jokes? I think, yes.

I think it sounds like the accurate answer to the question is, because even if some of those are just interpretation, like they weren't intended to be funny, it's unlikely that all of them are. So obviously some of them were intended to be funny. Yeah, they're just bad at it. So yes, there are jokes in the Bible. I suppose the point with Bible gags

is they are there to further the narrative, but they're not the point. No one heads to the Bible for laughs. So you're not supposed to have the takeaway point being the joke. I guess on its own terms, bearing in mind it's the most famous long-lasting book of all time, it succeeds. But they're not, out of context, a hoot. I reckon Jesus, in his speeches, would have had a few funnies, like Barack Obama did, because it's the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, isn't it,

when you're doing rhetoric and you want people to do the things that you say. So hold on, what you're saying is, we're seeing what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John reported of the substance of what he said, but if you were there live, he did his own warm-up? Jesus is notably good at rhetoric and at getting people all excited to do the stuff he says.

So I reckon he would have had some gags in there because they're laughing at it and then they're agreeing with whatever he's saying. It's a powerful tactic. He's good at observation too. And it was easier then when people hadn't made so many observations in public speaking.

I mean, water and wine, that feels hackneyed now. But then you're like, no one had done that before you know. That's another thing like if you find stage magic funny you might have found

like a lot of Jesus's miracles pretty strong humour wise rather than just a wow. Yeah walking on water yeah. Well especially if he did some backflips and stuff.

Yeah exactly we don't know the finesse with which he carried that off. If only there was a video. Do you think Jesus now he would have been doing YouTube prank videos? Please send us an

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Here's a question from Megan in Portland, Oregon, who says, Ollie, answer me this. Where did the trope of cartoon journalists wearing little scraps of paper saying press begin this is never something you see in real life old-timey photos maybe it predates common photography of journalists so i'm left to assume that cartoonists needed a way to make sure people understood that certain characters were journalists or papagazzi is she talking about something where they're wearing a hat

and there's a little piece of paper stuffed into their hat that says press? Yes. Like a trilby or something. And it's interesting that Megan sees it as a cartoon thing because I think of it as more of a Hollywood thing. In my head, Cary Grant in His Girl Friday wears one or maybe Humphrey Bogart in Deadline USA

and possibly even Clark Kent in Superman. But I Google imaged all those things and I can't find a picture of them wearing a hat with a press card in it. So maybe it's in my imagination. But I think the reason that you don't see many photos of real journalists wearing hats with press cards tucked into them is because the journalists who mostly wore those hats, if ever that was a big thing, were the photojournalists. So you don't see photos of photojournalists because the photojournal you don't see photos of photo journalists because the photo journalists were taking pictures by definition of other things but also who would

have been taking photos of journalists at a time when hat wearing was really common exactly so the reason the photo journalists may have had these little press cards in their hat is because if you're quickly rushing to a breaking news scene and you don't have time to introduce who you are and the police see you taking a photo of a dead body the quickest way to nullify that situation when you've got a heavy piece of equipment in both hands in those days is to have something on your head so i think that's why photojournalists may have worn them because they were carrying bulky cameras and it instantly explained why they were doing what they were doing also i can see the practicality of a journalist wearing one because it would leave their hands free for a pen and a notepad and it'd be visible if you were standing in a scrum of people

because it's high up on you. Yes, although in reality, it might be that you wouldn't want to alert the police, for example, to the fact that you're reporting on them until they ask. It might be that, you know, if your news organisation had written something critical of them, you wouldn't want to out yourself as press immediately. So I wonder whether, like, reporters did put a press pass in their hat band. And then, like, the kind of shorthand, visual shorthand in a film or a cartoon was that it just literally said press, nothing else.

Hi, Helen and Ollie and Martin the Sound Man. It's Dan from Sydney here. I've got a question about bathrooms. When you go to the bathroom in a public place, you're often presented with multiple ways to dry your hands. Sometimes there's a hot air dryer, sometimes there's paper towels, sometimes there's both of those things. I want to know which one of those is the most ecologically sound. Thank you. Right, well, if it's an old hot air dryer, then it's probably about as bad as a paper towel, which is considered to be the ecologically worst impact of the hand drying methods because of the production. And it's as

bad because it's using up a lot of electricity or because the hot air itself is harmful in some way? I think because they use up a lot of electricity and they don't really get your hands dry, generally. And also the damp on your hands being warm is delightful for bacteria. Paper is apparently the worst, generally. So you've got the production and the deforestation and then transportation. The landfill impact is terrible apparently two percent of america's annual landfill is paper towels and it decomposes and releases methane which is a greenhouse gas so paper towels are a 2.5 billion dollar industry which i'd imagine means a lot of people have a vested interest in not making it better it's 270 million trees worth of paper

each year just in america So paper towels are pretty bad. But if you somehow knew that if the paper was being recycled, then that wouldn't be such a bad choice. Paper recycling is still very water intensive and it's just not happening. Nearly all of them are ending up in landfill. And also comparatively, okay, so a study showed that if you use the average hand dryer, it would cause between 9 and 40 grams of carbon dioxide emissions every time, which is quite a big range. But if you use two paper towels, that's 56 grams of carbon dioxide emissions.

Isn't the best thing then just to wipe your hands on your trousers? That's what I do, or a scarf. The new hand dryers that are very powerful, like the Dyson Airblade, apparently those are up to 80% more energy efficient than old dryers that are very powerful like the dyson air blade apparently those are up to 80 more energy efficient than old dryers but a lot of the surveys saying that they're the environmentally best have been commissioned by dyson so it just depends whether you believe that or not i tend not to use hand dryers just because they don't seem very effective apart from those very aggressive dyson ones which at least like they're not hot, are they? They just kind of blow the water off your hands.

I don't use them now because I'm angry at James Dyson for being pro-Brexit but then moving his company to Singapore. Yeah, like, every time you dry your hands, that's 0.01 pence that goes into a Brexiteer's pocket. Those little blue ribbons of, you know, a never-ending towel, they've gone out of favour, haven't they? But that was dealing with this issue, wasn't it? The cloth towels on the roller are the quickest way to make your hands dry.

But I suppose there you've got fabric production, which is not great, and then washing and then presumably re-spooling them onto a thing. But I wonder whether a lot of people, like in America particularly, single-use hygiene products are a big thing, like the toilet seat covers. They're a country very committed to landfill. And I wonder there, people would just think any bit of damp cloth, they're just not going to touch. And also, big paper towel in charge of things.

When I was growing up, my mum used to get really furious because we would dry our hands on the bathroom curtains, but they were made out of towel. So she was asking for it, really. Towel curtains? Yeah, out the same fabric, orange towel curtains. I didn't know such a thing was possible. She was a woman of the 70s where everything was made of toweling. I guess, yeah, I mean, towels are fabric and fabrics get cut into curtains, so I can see

that it is possible. I just never would have dreamt it. Well, now it's the end of this episode of Answer Me This. But for there to be a future episode, we need your questions. Yes, please. You can email them. You can email them. You can record them as a voice memo and email us that. You could Skype or call the question line number if you want a slightly more unreliable way of getting a voice question to us. All of our contact details are on our website, answermethispodcast.com. Remember as well, you can buy our first 200 episodes

and our five never-before-heard-on-the-podcast albums from answermeth this store.com and doing so is a way of getting extra material into your ears but also supporting this podcast with your monies and also we have our other work so ollie which of your many podcasts is at the top of your consciousness this week would be my magazine show the modern man you can find it at modern ma double n.co.uk we test out trends answer listeners sex questions and meet extraordinary people and on the most recent episode i meet a young man only 20 years old with porn induced erectile dysfunction it's fascinating martin what are you up to at the moment you can listen to a podcast

in which I release a song a week pretty much this year, 40 songs for 2019 and that's called Year of the Bird. If you look for Year of the Bird wherever you get your podcasts, you can hear music and me explaining where in the world the song was recorded and with what instruments. I have to say, Martin, I recently met long-term Answer Me This listener Lizzie Yarnald, Britain's greatest winter Olympian. Oh, cool. Her first question to me, and she said, I've got so many questions.

Oh, my God. Is Martin lovely? Does he have a big beard? And literally, who is Tom Waits? That's what she said. Well, you can answer all of those questions at sungbysungpodcast.com. Or you could just Google it. And this month is the London Podcast Festival,

and Martin and I are doing some events there on the 14th and 15th of September. There is the Illusionist Live Show which is a real entertainment caper through removing gender from language. We're also in the 90 Minutes or Less Film Fest podcast where the prize for your ticket

also gets the screening of a film which we will then talk about for the podcast which is Safety Not Guaranteed, starring Aubrey Plaza. And who's that directed by? That is directed by Colin Trevorrow. Who also did the Jurassic World movies later? Yeah.

This is exciting indie early work. Very good. And then on the 15th, I'm talking about Things I'm Afraid Of on the Fear podcast. You get a discount if you buy tickets for three events at the London Podcast Festival. So just saying, I'm in three events. Just saying saying and then there will be a retro episode in your feed halfway through the month and we will be back with a fresh new answer me this on the first

thursday of october