Answer Me This! - AMT383: Missing Cats, Portraits' Eyes, and Jeremy Bentham's Corpse

Episode Date: March 5, 2020

AMT383's questioneers need to know what those funny things are called that you stick your face through at the seaside, how many lightbulbs there are in Las Vegas, how to say farewell to a hook-up, and why the corpse of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham is still keeping busy at university. Find out more about this episode at . Send us questions for future episodes: email written words or voice recordings to [e-mail]. Tweet us Facebook Hear AMT episodes 1-200, all five of our special albums, and our Best Of compilations at . Hear our other work: Helen Zaltzman's podcasts The Allusionist at and Veronica Mars Investigations at ; Olly Mann's five podcasts including and The Media Podcast at ; and Martin Austwick's music at and his Tom Waits podcast 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

In the last episode, Katie from Kingston asked what to do with a Book of Mormon that she didn't want, how to dispose of that sensitively, but also definitively. We gave her various suggestions. Yeah, we said donate it to someone, basically, like a college or a school. Well, Anonymous from the Wasanich and Lekwungen Territories, aka Victoria, British Columbia, says, as someone who used to work in a Canadian public library system, I found myself laughing somewhat maniacally when Ollie asserted that there is always a market for used religious texts.

Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha. On my first day of work as a library clerk, I was instructed to never, under any circumstances, accept donations of Bibles and was introduced to Bob, the box of Bibles that we accumulated every few weeks and then had to pay to have collected and recycled i once arrived early to work only to find one of

our sweet regulars furtively shoving water damaged bibles through the return slot wow when gently confronted she told me that she didn't want to see them go to waste and didn't know how else to get rid of them water damage is a slightly different thing. We were talking to someone who said that they had a pristine copy of a religious text, but I nonetheless hadn't assumed that libraries would get deluged with them. That is quite an insight. Yeah, especially as libraries don't really seem to be inviting donations of shit you don't want. Exactly. Why would you think to give a used book to a library? Like they're always trying to flog their used books to you. They're known for the hiring out of new books until they get so old that they sell them. You know, I still think, as we were saying last time, that someone somewhere

would have a use for these things. But I suppose the problem is that going to great lengths to populate them about makes it look like you're the evangelist in the first place. Whereas you're the person who actually wants to get rid of it. You're not the person who wants to try and go into shop after shop and say, excuse me, would you be interested in taking this? You just want it out of your hands. So I think with this perspective, Katie's thought to make like blackout poetry or do some other kind of arts and crafts projects with the books doesn't seem necessarily such a bad idea after all. Talking of unwanted things, here's an email from B who says, I'm planning my partner's big birthday party on the 29th of March. It's a big one because

it's going to be his 60th. The restaurant has been booked, the menu picked, and I am now writing the invitation letter for the guests to come. The problem is, I would really like to ask the people coming not to give my partner gift cards or vouchers because he tends to forget about them. Yeah, I can identify. I think most people can. I mean, very few of us have like a special wall chart of vouchers. What an aspirational thing to have.

He says, I have seen several gift vouchers worth hundreds of euros go to waste just because he didn't realise he got them. Some of the said vouchers were even pre-euro. They live in the Netherlands, that's why he's talking about the euro. But for international listeners unaware, that takes us back to the 10th century, basically. Presumably, most gift vouchers have an end limit. Well, even if they don't, there's a chance in the current climate, obviously, that a voucher dated from 1998, the business is likely to have gone under. i am sure that my partner will love getting whatever gifts he will receive on his birthday including gift cards but i'd hate to see so much money go

to waste he already has everything he needs and he can afford to buy what he likes so it does make it tricky to get him presents he does however get delighted when he's given presents no matter how random they are so helen Helen, answer me this. How do I tell our guests not to give him gift cards without my invitation letter going viral on the internet and me being branded a choosing beggar? So, like, when someone is like, don't bring anything worth under £200 to our child's birthday. Yeah, exactly. I think there are a few options that won't make you go viral on the internet in a bad way i think one of them would just be uh no gifts just yourselves because some people bring them

anyway so bob will still have some gifts to delight him yeah but he said that he likes gifts he says he's delighted helen but that's what i just said some people bring some anyway so some yeah but but what proportion what proportion of people bring gifts anyway when you say no gifts please well if it's a big party say 60 people are going to the 60th birthday and 20 of them bring gifts that's still 12 gifts which is pretty good gift opening fine you could say no gifts just charity donations only but bob would love to hear in a card why you chose the charity you chose or just like homemade cards because then he gets the pleasure of opening something but it is of no financial value

that Bea will be worrying about cashing in. But from the sense that we're getting of this man I don't think, I mean I'm not saying he wouldn't be delighted to give money to charity. He says Bob's got everything he needs. Yeah exactly so he probably likes things doesn't he? Why am I calling him Bob? He's not called Bob. Bob is from the previous question. previous question we can call him bob is the box of bibles okay

birthday bob the box of bibles it's fine we can call him bob i was going with that b says that bob has whatever he wants like he can afford to buy it so he doesn't need presents so the question is not depriving of bob of objects because it sounds like he has enough objects. And in the last few years, particularly, I've been very conscious, most of the people I know have enough stuff. And so as their birthday tribute, I'll do a donation to a charity. And then it feels as tricky as getting a good gift match for them. I think, oh, if I donate to this one, will they think that was good? Or will they think, wow, she's really misunderstood my priorities? Well, indeed. So it still feels like a very personalized gift you could i suppose if he's not the charitable sort

think about the one thing he'd really like that maybe is a big shiny thing that he'd like to unwrap and get everyone to contribute to that specific thing so if like bob would really love some skis yeah or you know a flight to Australia or something. Right, if you want to contribute to Bob's birthday fund. But then Bob really has nothing to open. Well, skis are not small. Or, my other suggestion is that you be, collect all the gift cards and cash them in for him. Yeah, just be his bloody voucher manager. It's not that hard. You've clearly got what it takes. Yeah, because you're already obsessing in detail about vouchers. You put more thought into this than anyone giving a voucher will. Yeah.

And as Ali mentioned earlier, voucher wall, you can have one of those in your house, make it much harder to forget the vouchers. Here's a question from Karis from Acton who says, a couple of days ago on my walk to uni, I saw a cat. Did it burst into song and start talking about the Jellicle ball? Fast forward to me walking home and I see a missing cat poster. I instantly recognised the cat from that morning and was totally certain it was the same cat. I rang the number on the poster and reported where I'd seen the cat and they were so thankful

the information because this cat had been missing for two months. But? Fast forward to this morning and I saw the cat again and I have come to the realisation that it is not the missing cat. So Ollie, answer me this. What do I do? Do I ring them and dash their hopes or let this wild cat chase continue? I'm mortified. Please help me.

I feel like their hopes are going to be dashed anyway, given that it's not their cat. So either way, it's not your fault. But it is your fault to withhold that information from them now you know. Yes. Their hopes will be dashed. So why would you want to prolong it for them like the only reason for you not to call and tell them is that you are mortified and you don't want to have to have an awkward conversation but that would be the charitable thing to do and you were trying to be charitable in the first place there's there's no benefit to them of getting their hopes up for longer only to go and find that that cat isn't their cat and or conclude that their cat isn't in fact alive better to tell them now an australian

radio producer i know had this exact experience where he also grabbed the cat and like took it to his home so that he could then return it to the people and then realized it wasn't the right cat um so he got a humorous radio piece out of it. You could do that, Carys. Well, I suppose she sort of has. He did more sound design than we've done here. So was it another missing cat that he found? Or was it just a cat that did belong somewhere that he'd then removed from its area? Well, I guess the cat was definitely missing once he'd locked it in his garage.

That's the way to be a real hero, isn't't it just lock up every cat you see just in case then they're all missing cats and the question is this a missing cat is nullified my cats are still like at each other constantly like constantly like four times a day and i sometimes do just think one of you why don't you just fuck off like i think we're too nice to them because they i think we're making life difficult for them we've got two kids now themselves make lots of noise throw toys at them attack them and everything else they attack each other they it's not like they're their apartment cats they go outside they could go and get rehomed themselves but they don't they're having a proper like territorial civil war and it's never gonna end how long has alvin been there now uh we got alvin in may may 2019 okay so coco's had nearly a year

to get to grips with this nearly a year to mother him which is what we were promised not everyone wants to be a mother ollie that was your presumption yes indeed well i've learned that lesson not every old female cat wants like a little young upstart boy cat to mother. That's not how everyone works. It's not everyone's dream. Maybe she was happy not having the responsibility. But related to this email, just a couple of weeks ago, actually, about six in the morning. So Toby, my six month old son, had woken me up because that's what babies do at six o'clock in the morning. And I sort of went downstairs like half awake to put one of his dirty nappies out on the step. Well just like open for like a prank for someone to step in.

For the milkman yeah and a cat that I didn't know and had never seen before came running into my house and it gave me such a shock and I did the modern day version of the found cat poster, which is go on to Facebook to your local village Facebook group. And I was about to write, I've seen this cat. Does anyone know who it belongs to? And my neighbor had already put a post up 10 minutes before saying, who is this cat? Because he's eating all of my vegetables or whatever. And everyone piled in that day. Like there must have been 20 responses on my village Facebook group that morning. Like, oh yeah, yeah, that's simba oh simba's great oh you've been simba'd oh yeah we all love simba and apparently simba this this tomcat his thing is he just like walks the length

of the village was like five miles across goes to different people's homes and jumps jumps into their cars jumps into their open windows what an absolute prick exactly everyone was like oh he's so cute we love it lol and i was thinking i've got two other cats who would either tear him to shreds or be torn to shreds by him and two kids this could go very very badly wrong for simba well that would be simba's comeuppance i guess but uh he was kind of cute that's what he's relying on we kept chucking him out he kept running back in the house again what do you do here's a question from caitlin in newport rhode island uh with a very arresting opening sentence she says i heard in passing that jeremy bentham's body is preserved per his wishes and gets wheeled out for certain university meetings she has a question which

you'll answer but just my question quickly yeah who. Who was Jeremy Bentham? Because I don't know. He was a utilitarian philosopher. He has a sort of intimate connection with University College London. Don't know how I missed that Netflix series. He also invented the concept of the panopticon prison, which is the one where essentially there's a sort of central guard post and then every cell has a sort of window facing onto that central guard post in a circular arrangement, so the prisoners never know if they're being watched but he also campaigned against slavery capital punishment corporal punishment helen would you know who he was if you weren't married to martin

who's worked at the university i'd heard of jeremy bentham before i'd heard of martin i think partly because when i was six my best friend at the time lived on a farm named after jeremy bentham he lived on the farm called jeremy Bentham. He lived on a farm called Jeremy? No, Bentham. Oh right, that makes more sense. Anyway, I was just representing those who were wondering. Caitlin continues with these several questions. Helen, answer me this. Is this true? Aren't there health implications to wheeling around

an old dead body? Was this in his will? Are they legally bound to do it? Isn't this one of the most selfish requests a person can make regarding their remains? I mean, really? And who the hell can pay attention in any meeting that his body attends? What's the deal with Jeremy Bentham's body? Okay, well, the deal from what I've seen with my own eyes is that in the corridors of University College London, there is a wooden cabinet with the seated figure of Jeremy Bentham. And it's essentially Jeremy Bentham's skeleton

in some clothes and a wax face because things went a bit wrong with his head. So it's sort of like a representative of the corpse of Jeremy Bentham with corpse bits. But as far as I know, they don't move it. Martin, you used to work at UCL. Did the corpse of Jeremy Bentham attend any of your meetings or lectures? He didn't come to any of mine, which I know sometimes takes us as a bit of a slight.

But it looks like a pretty permanent installation of Jeremy Bentham. And also, probably if you move him, the whole thing is going to fall apart. No, that's not true. I mean, they move him to clean him frequently, and they've moved him to MRI him and do sort of different kinds of analysis on him. Yeah, but he's not getting wheeled out to meetings, is he? He's getting wheeled for maintenance. They've just moved him to a new place. He's in a kind of a wooden...

Imagine like the TARDIS. He was in a kind of TARDIS. Like a big dark wood wardrobe. Yeah, like Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe style. Now he's just in a kind of glass box, which is a little more sleek and modern. The only meeting, as far as people know, that Jeremy Bentham has attended was the final

council meeting of sir malcolm grant who was the provost of the college until 2013 so potentially he only goes to one meeting every 150 years yeah just keep his hand in i mean i do know university dons who are alive who have that kind of rate so i guess it's consistent there was definitely rumors like his head got stolen by King's College when there was a rivalry between UCL and King's College, which is another London university. So what happened was they failed to preserve his head. They were trying this method to desiccate it and it didn't work. So then the head just looked really grim. So they substituted it with a wax head. So do you think he thought that it would

look like a skeleton? Because as soon as you said skeleton, it sounded a wax head. So do you think he thought that it would look like a skeleton? Because as soon as you said skeleton, it sounded a lot less freaky weird than talking about someone's remains. It's a skeleton inside clothes, so it looks kind of like an automaton at Disney. It looks like a wax work. It looks like the kind of thing you'd see at Madame Tussauds if they had Hall of Philosophers or something like that.

Yeah, you can't see his bones, you can't see his skin, it's all covered in clothes. It was his plan that his body would be what is called an auto icon and it would be preserved in this way after he died. I'm sort of curious as to why Jeremy Bentham would have wanted to be an auto icon because he left quite specific instructions in his will about how his body was to be prepared and how it should be sitting in a chair and which suit it was going to wear and things like that but not so much about the why part of the corpse thing was more to troll the church because i think at the time there were a lot of fees associated with burial and bentham i don't i can't quite remember whether

he was a full-on atheist or just broadly anti-church in his philosophies. So in part, it's considered a troll of the church that he was like, I'm not going to give the church any more money after I die. It's choosing the suit that I would find particularly difficult as well. I mean, I know people tend to get buried in some clothes. I guess the decision is the same whether you're on public display or not. Well, it's different, isn't it? Because if you are not on public display,

then you'd be like, well, he loved that pair of pyjamas. Put him in those pyjamas. I think the thing with suits is just they don't change that much, so the style doesn't look that out of date, even if the suit is 100 years old. So it's probably a good plan. Yeah, I think I'd go suit. And also, would you be concerned about underwear and things like that?

Least of my concerns, I think. Well, it depends. I mean, if it's a sort of a record for like future historians to be like, oh, this is what people actually wore and this is what the material was like. And there's sorts of things that you can't get from just photographs here. Maybe I'd wear the socks and shoes and pants. Would they be representative pants? As in, you know, ones that you would have worn on a daily basis,

i.e. already in a pretty hideous state by the time your body is being stuffed into them. I have pretty good pants. Or would they be a clean pair? I wear clean pants. What are you trying to say? Like, everyone's got pants in their drawer that they really like wearing that are 10 years old. Would you want those to be the ones that are still... No, I'd get ones that are close to the beginning of the cycle and the end. Okay, well, put that in your will.

I'm going to have to be very specific, otherwise Ollie's going to put me in some dishcloths. I've got a question then email your question to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com answer me this podcast at googlemail.com answer me this podcast at googlemail.com. It's a meanest 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. Question from Jim, who says, whilst recently re-watching Ocean's Eleven, I couldn't help but see lights everywhere. Ollie, answer me this. How many light bulbs are there in the whole of Las Vegas? So I assume he's including just all the domestic areas,

which are just normal homes. This really sounds like a Google interview question, doesn't it? How much would you charge to clean all the windows in Seattle? Yeah, I mean, I think it's crucial to define what he does mean by Las Vegas, because even if he does mean all the suburbs and everything, it's the fastest growing city in Nevada. So it would be really quite difficult to get that statistic. 2.7 million people in the metro area.

Right. So without doing exponential mathematics, he's already making it impossible to answer. Do you count the Neon Museum as well? That would excuse the statistics. So i've actually assumed the opposite he is watching oceans 11 i've assumed he actually just means what tourists think of as las vegas which is the strip and and possibly fremont street that is basically like an add-on to the strip because fremont street has been recently redeveloped there is a statistic that. So we can do some exponential mathematics to the rest of the strip from there.

How exciting. So there are 12 million lights. They are LED lights on Fremont Street. The strip is, I'd estimate, about twice the size of Fremont Street. It's not as dazzling because the whole point of Fremont Street is you go there to see a light show.

But nonetheless, I think, reasonably conservative mathematics, bearing in mind the huge size of the hotels and casinos so within each hotel and casino there's obviously hundreds of thousands of light bulbs in all the rooms and everything and also electronic billboards and shit right uh so i think reasonable to say take the fremont street number and multiply it by three and then you get to around 36 37 million i mean what's a few million between friends you might be talking 40 million but that's the kind of number of light bulbs in Las Vegas. Well, in the tourist bits of Las Vegas.

In the bit that most people listening to this think of as Las Vegas. There is more to Las Vegas than that. Shout out to Herbs and Rye and Clark Terrace, where I had the finest steak of my life. Nonetheless, I'm going to say 40 million. If there's 2.7 million people in the metro area, and let's say, for the sake of argument, that they have four light bulbs each in their domestic situations as well so that's not even counting that's very conservative okay how many light bulbs do you have at home i don't have a home okay none you're a bad example i'm thinking like if you're sharing

a home with your storage facility 10 okay to make it mathematically easy 10 light bulbs per person because i'm assuming some of them share the light bulbs you know if they cohabit and that's not even the the visiting population in the hotels. Right, so that gets you 20 million before you've even taken in the big hotels. Let's say 30 million domestic light bulbs. Yeah, which added to my 40 million gives you 70 million. Are you including cars? I'm not including cars because that feels like the sort of,

aha, but have you considered on the end of a riddle? Like cars are transient transport. So no, I'm not including cars. Then I didn't even think of commercial premises. So like, if you've got 2.7 million people, all the businesses serving them that aren't even the strip businesses, because if you live there, you don't care.

Aha. But are you including the 39 lamps that are used to create the beam of light emanating from the Luxor pyramid, the strongest narrow beam in the world? That changes everything. Are you? Are you?

Aha, aha. But are you including, Helen, the 89 light bulbs that feature on the iconic Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. Yes, I did include those. Oh, okay, fine. Because nine people live in the sign, so that's their 10 light bulbs. At least you've shown you're working. Do you know there's a guy trying to sell the bulbs

from the Welcome to Las Vegas sign? The used bulbs. They're really less impressive individually than together. They are bulbs that you can buy from I can't remember what the US equivalent of B&Q is, but like a DIY store. Really, like Home Depot or something? Yeah, exactly.

They're not special bulbs? Well, they're special because they've been in the sign, but they're yellow, but otherwise they're just screw-in light bulbs. So you can get yellow screw-in light bulbs from Home Depot. So you could make your own Welcome to Vegas sign or Welcome to Olly Mann's house sign. Could someone just buy a load of light bulbs from Home Depot and be selling them as if they had come from the welcome to Vegas sign? Well, someone could. And that's why this person who, if you go to their website, which is, you know, buythelasvegassign.com or something, gives you a certificate of authenticity. It's a souvenir. It has no practical application. He's honest about that. Who has endorsed the certificate?

In fairness, the people who monitor the sign. So there's a company that are charged with replacing the light bulbs in the sign every week. And they fill out a form and say, yes, we took this light bulb off on the 10th of January. It's an official welcome to Las Vegas used light bulb. Every week? Yeah. Yeah, but you don't want to go to that sign and one of the light bulbs is out. No, but it's just still a very short-lived light bulb. It's probably the least wasteful thing about Las Vegas.

And actually, this guy at least is recycling the bulbs. You know, they have a second life. It seems like a bit of a nails-of-the-true-cross kind of business. I stayed in the Riviera, which was one of the iconic casinos founded by mobsters. Sinatra played there. Liberace opened it, the whole bit. Does this mean by today's standards it's kind of beige and drab? It's demolished. Oh. I found out in the course of researching this question that recently it's

been demolished to make way for an extension to the convention center but it's just so interesting that in vegas they create these huge things and then just like 10 years later they're gone i think also a lot of them feel temporary it feels like it was easier to build a new hotel in like 2000 than to do up a hotel from the 80s so they built it from scratch but it also was built not to last and it is funny isn't it as well that hotels that were opulent and luxurious in 15 years ago wouldn't carry that connotation now people would feel like they're a bit dated it's like so sad how quick the cycle is i must say the riviera was an absolute shit also i mean it would have cost a lot of money to refurbish and it had asbestos and it had a really seedy past as well, which, like I say, is kind of cool in Vegas history terms.

But actually, like, you know, people died there. I'm not sure you know. People expect a level of luxury and comfort and size of hotel room, don't they, as well? Yeah. Which with that floor space you couldn't provide without massively restructuring it. I remember you saying you stayed in the Luxor and it was a bit shabby. When was that? Yeah, that was like over 10 years ago. But the Luxor and it was a bit shabby. When was that? Yeah, that was like over 10 years ago.

But the Luxor only opened in 1993 and it was already shabby when you stayed in it over 10 years ago. Yeah. Well, I think the Luxor is just a terrible design. It's very striking. If you haven't seen it, it's in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid, but it's made of black mirrored glass. And it has this beam of light coming out the top of it. It's a bit Illuminati, isn't it? I know that my baby is the absolute best.

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winning designs choose some that you like and then if you like what you've built and you want to sign up you can get 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain if you use our code ANSWER. Here's a question from Dominic from London who says, on a rare trip to the National Portrait Gallery in an attempt to be cultured and actually visit a museum after living in London for nearly four years. It's amazing, isn't it? Locals do go less than tourists. Because you can go anytime, so you go no time. I noticed something unusual about the pictures within.

They're all portraits. What the fuck? They've all got people in them. Actually, they haven't, have they? Because some of them are portraits of animals, to be fair. Whether it is a group picture or a solo moment, I wondered why the pictures wouldn't look me in the eye. It took you four years to come and visit us, Dominic. Yeah, we're spurning him i think

maybe dominic spent too much time watching scooby-doo and he expects the pictures to follow him around as he walks around the gallery um so helen answer me this why do all slash most portraits have the subject looking to the right or left never straight on it's not never straight on because some of them are straight on i would say from experience which is obviously less than someone who's got a piece in the national portrait gallery but not none it's a lot harder to get an interesting kind of dynamic of someone's face if they're straight on and like get good lighting and stuff whereas from an angle even a slight angle you have a lot more of their lines and planes to play with and the way the light is striking their face and more, it creates a sense of depth in the picture, which wasn't really a thing in paintings until the 14th century.

The Italian architect Filippo Brunellesco stumbled upon perspective while he was overseeing the construction of a building. And before that, paintings were quite flat so dimensions for the work were created by height and width but it all just seemed like on one plane but by like tilting someone slightly you get the feeling that their nose is closer to you the back of their head is further away and that makes them seem a lot more real a lot more substantial but also you as the viewer are observing them now that's the point of a portrait, isn't it? You're supposed to be thinking, who was this person? What did they represent? What do they think?

And there's something disconcerting about someone looking right at you whilst you're making notes on them. Yeah. I noticed this, you know, if occasionally, if you're watching like a paper review on TV or something. There was a lady doing it on Andrew Marr the other day. Where whilst they're reading the papers, they'll look up at the camera and sort of unintentionally end up looking straight down the barrel of the lens do you ever seen that someone doesn't know they're doing it yeah you're not supposed yeah when you're watching at home you're just like whoa stop doing that don't break the fourth wall yeah eye contact is hard isn't it it can be aggressive it's suddenly like dale winton in train spotting isn't it when they're

talking directly to you um and i think that there's something of the genesis of that in portraiture as well. Like you're supposed to be working out what you think about this person. You can't do that if you're worried what they think about you. Yeah. I wonder whether some of it as well is just, that's a very, very specific angle. So if you've got someone sitting for you, you and they have to be even more in the same place relative to each other than you would if you were slightly side on yes i feel like it's a little easier to fudge an angle if something changes than it is head on yeah and also i wonder whether their facial expression is more likely to change as well when they're sitting for you if they're looking at you because they might be responding to you laughing asking you questions getting angry needing the toilet if you have a

live sitter because i guess you know if it's a photo of someone, they could be staring at you head on from the photo. But again, a lot of photos, the face might be slightly tilted and the eyes are staring straight at you. Yeah. And I wonder how much of that, you know, the fact that in photo technology, even you tend not to see direct on pictures comes from the history of portraits being sat for. Like if that hadn't happened first, would there be more photos of people front on? I'm not sure because the same things apply about shadow and light and stuff right i think also i mean going back to what you jokingly said about the scooby-doo portrait eyes following around the room that is a deliberate technique in painting and not that they like

literally move but there is a bit of that optical illusion that can be provided with paint and a lot of painters are capable of doing it and maybe that is harder to do when the eyes are centered yes and it only works when you're right in front of them but if they're on a tilt there's maybe a wider range where it still feels like someone's looking at you yeah i guess when when art galleries were a bigger thing or or when frescoes and stuff drew queues of people to go and look at them not just a select few you wouldn't be able to guarantee a spot in front of the painting would you like you could be up against the back and the sides and you want to make sure that you're still engaging with it something called the ubiquitous gaze the eyes of a painting where it feels like wherever you

are in the room that you're making eye contact with the painting i find even when i'm using facetime that it's quite disconcerting when you are actually looking straight at the person looking at you yeah you end i don't know if you do but i end up moving the phone around so that people are looking at my profile slightly isn't everyone kind of looking at the photo of themselves when they're on facetime though i'm glad you said it why is that why is that because i'm really not bothered usually what people like when i'm sitting in a cafe i'm not looking in a mirror all the time to see what am i looking like yeah right but like you've literally, I'm not looking in a mirror all the time to see what am I looking like.

Yeah, right. But like it's literally like holding up a mirror to your face for the duration of a 20 or 40 minute conversation. So it's sort of hard not to look at yourself, isn't it, in that context? I find weirdly when it's on a desktop computer, I don't do that as much. I guess because the screen's bigger, so the real estate of the other person's face, I can line it up more with my face and I'm not holding it up. It's when I'm holding the phone that i look down at my own face more well also isn't it with a desktop you can be sure of the angle whereas if it's something that you're moving around then you might look like an absolute plum from some angle you're subconsciously checking

yeah yeah how many chins i was on holiday recently in the uae and And from there, you cannot do live video calls because they've stopped that being... Oh, wow. The government have clamped down on you being able to do that without a VPN. Interesting. But what you can do, weirdly, is film a video and then send it to someone on WhatsApp, even though effectively you're doing the same thing,

just not a live conversation. Right, so it's like the old push to talk messages. Yeah, exactly. So my mum wanted to see the grandkids. So I did a video of me and Harvey in the bath. And I was filming it and I was looking so hard at Harvey. It was only after I'd sent it that I thought, fuck, have I put my dick in there?

I wasn't sure. I had to watch it back. Because we were both in the bath and I was holding the phone between my knees, you know. And I was like, that could have gone very, very wrong. But luckily, I was focused on my child. She's seen it all before, hasn't she? She's seen it before, but it's been 30 years.

I still think no one necessarily wants that sprung on them. There's that truly awful portrait, in my opinion, of Kate Middleton in the National Portrait Gallery, where she is face-on. And it is a little bit like in Ghostbusters 2, the big portrait of Viggo the Carpathian. It's got that kind of vibes. Hello, I'm the monk out of 90s band Enigma.

Helen, answer me this. Why, ah, hey, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, oh, why, ah, What was that all about? A reminder at this juncture that you can buy our first 200 episodes. Those are the first five years of Answer Me This work. And also, actually, the first nine years of our Best Of collections. And you can buy those for just £1.99 each. Like one of those little cereal sampler packs where you get eight tiny boxes of Kellogg cereal. Exactly. And then you think, wow, I am going to commit to some Coco Pops. Full size.

What is this miracle website of which I speak? It is answermethisstore.com. That's where to go. You can buy most of our stuff on Apple and Amazon as well, but we get less money if you do it that way they get more they get they've already got more though but even if you do want to use those services rather than buying it from us directly the links to that too are at answer me this store.com so please go there and fill your boots phil from folkestone says ollie answer me

this what is the nationwide building society logo meant to be I can see there's a bit of house in it and the sun perhaps, but the perspective seems all wrong. And as everything is blue, it's difficult to differentiate between the component parts. I agree. I think it's possibly the worst logo on the British high street. How dare you? It's pretty poor.

It's fine. Who gives a shit? Well, well look it's sort of charmingly retro i guess that it hasn't changed for so long but i mean actually genuinely i mean i have an account with nationwide but i thought twice about it i did genuinely think like if they haven't got the money to get a new logo every five years well why would you want that because people recognize a thing there's probably still people reeling from logos that changed in the 90s. I think it's ugly. And I think it's indistinct, as Phil is suggesting.

So if you haven't seen it, he describes it quite well. There is a house. Yes, he's right. It's a house. They're a building society. So of course, it's a property. It's a little house at the front. And then he's right that there's something that looks like the sun, but it's blue.

It looks like a mill wheel almost. Right. Is it a mill house? Well, I always thought maybe it was a church behind for some reason which i know is weird because like how many people are applying for mortgages on churches but the implication it was giving to me was the sense of it being indeed a nationwide thing so there are thousands of villages and towns all around the country you know this is britain little cottage church sun i thought it was maybe that, but it isn't. I've looked back to the genesis of the logo, which is 1987 when Nationwide merged with the Anglia Building Society. If you Google now Nationwide Building Society logo 1987, you will see that the weird circle that became blue is actually green. And in 1987 is much more clearly, I would say, an abstract tree.

A tree. That didn't occur to me. But I also didn't think it was the sun, given that it's inserted between the buildings. So you genuinely thought mill wheel? Well, I thought it was just a part of abstract art, you know. The houses themselves are non-literal. Yes. Look, it obviously tests well because actually they have subtly updated the logo numerous times over the past 20 years but just never the fundamentals so they've kept the basics looking like a 1980s design thing

but they actually have spent millions trimming it in silver and making it three-dimensional and stuff but i just think it's ugly don't you think it's ugly. Don't you think it's ugly? No, I'm fine with it. I think the font they use is ugly, but no one asked me about that. The logo they had before the house logo, which kicked in in 1987, from 1970 to 1987... It was the UKIP logo, basically, wasn't it?

Yeah, it's a triangle with a pound sign in and a retro pound sign at that with the two crossbars rather than the single crossbar. Yeah, that's worse. I'm not saying that's not worse. I honestly have no problem with the current logo i don't have a problem with it but it doesn't make me feel excited well it's a building society they don't want excitement they want you to feel unexcited but safe uh but i think that is exactly what they're intending yeah so i think that's working isn't it you're not excited and therefore you feel safe here's a

question from josh in winchester who says i was looking through old photos today and came across a photo of me and my sister with our heads in one of those boards that you commonly see at the seaside with a painting or a photo of an animal or something on it helen answer me this do these amusing things even have a name sort of they have a number of names but i don't think there's consensus in British English what that name is. Yeah, because most people do just say the seaside thing

you put your head through. Right, exactly. So they are called such things as facing hole boards, cutouts, carnival cutouts, comic foregrounds. Comic foregrounds. I bet that's the industry term.

Like Blackpool Pleasure Beach gets on the phone. Yeah, we need another comic foreground. I think that's what the patent was for in the 1800s in france i think they're called tintamarex what does that mean tintamare means a din or cacophony huh um and then in japanese they're called kawahame which means insert face which works for me that's literally what you're supposed to do do you resist often i mean i find myself if i'm in a waiting area especially and there's one at some point i'm going to be doing that well you need someone else though don't you there's no

point you're just doing it on your own and no one taking a photo of it i mean it would be a great opportunity for someone to steal your phone if you said please take a photo of me whilst i just walk away and stick my head through this piece of cardboard that I then can't run after you through so yeah you sort of need someone else just for that reason trusted photographer yeah but for you what's what's the fun thing about it is it replacing your body with something else the many images of only man that could exist it is it's also the slight tension between the awkwardness that I feel and usually the sort of positive image that's being created on the other side so I'm aware of other bystanders looking at me looking awkward hoping my friend

takes the picture quickly but also I look like you know Mr Bump or whatever I've just put my head through that amuses me I read a theory about the evolution of these things as a form of entertainment and how in the 1800s there was a game from about 1820 called the clothes make the man that could be a saturday night game show now where you'd have these uh figures wearing like different clothes that were uh particular to the era so you'd have like the king you would also have beggars and you'd cut the faces out and change them around. And it'd be like, ah, look how quickly the king becomes a beggar, just with different clothes. So then these things became a bit of a social satire. And then in 1874, the American artist Cassius Marcellus Coolidge obtained the patent for these,

although he didn't invent them, but he did get the patent. And one of the ones he got is basically like a large book that you can hold up in front of yourself, so it looks like you've got a tiny body with your real head sticking out. And he also came up with a number of other things where in early photography you could kind of jazz around with these things. It would look like you were sitting on the wing of a plane, but it was really just you sitting behind a board painted to look like that.

But what Cassius Marcellus coolidge became famous for were paintings of dogs playing poker the the iconic ones i know that you said you're not interested in visual art but those must have cut through even to you yeah yeah in fact i think my parents possibly even had one on the wall at one point but yeah i suppose again there with the dogs you've got living creatures behaving in an unexpected way yes subverting expectations like now you do it with photo filters wouldn't you on a phone but it's it's the thing often of taking someone and putting them in the body of someone totally different like typically people change gender they change ethnicity you know they become a completely phantasmagorical character

that's part of it isn't it put your face in something totally different to you that's part of the fun isn't it i guess if you believe them to be fun, which I'm not fully sure of. Oh, really? What's the doubt? The fun for me is just the anticipation, the prospect of doing that. But the execution and results, little fun. I mean, it's true that those pictures are very rarely the ones that end up above people's mantelpieces. Do you know what I mean? Here's our wedding day. Here's our son graduating from university. Oh, here's that day we had at bournemouth where you pretended to be a pirate you're more likely to have a picture of you sitting around having fish and chips than you are that but at the time it feels like that's going to be the photo so in conclusion is there any one of those names that you think is the one

that is slightly more predominant i mean you've just read out a list of what it could be is there one that you know is the name as far as you're concerned i don't think there's any specific one that is quick to say but also indicates this exact thing yeah because cutouts could be all sorts of different things comic foregrounds i think a lot of people wouldn't know what you were talking about comic foregrounds that's not going to trend on social media these days you need something briefer than that face in whole boards i like the japanese one what was the japanese one kawahame. Insert face. Insert face? Don't trust me on the pronunciation because I don't speak Japanese.

You know, we went to the seafront. We bought some rock. We had some fish and chips. We did the insert face. We went and did the... It sounds all right. But then what if people thought you had things inserted into your face? You went to the piercing parlour.

Yeah. Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum In your awesome knowledge, I'll be basking once in summer. I'm so alone. No one to email and no one to phone. Where can I get new friends from? Answer me, there's podcast.com. Time for a question from Ryan in Melbourne who says, I recognise this issue may be somewhat foreign to you Time for a question from Ryan in Melbourne who says, I recognise this issue may be somewhat foreign to you as happily coupled folks, but it's warm down here in Australia

and seeking to cast off my broken heart of 2019, I have dedicated myself to seeking out some summer loving. Often a great cure for a broken heart. Helen, answer me this. After you've hooked up with someone, what do you say as you're showing them out? Thank you feels too transactional and maybe a little pathetic, but it's all that comes to mind. Well, I suppose one option for you, Ryan, would be to stay over

at their house and then it's their problem when you leave. Surely it's just, I'd like to see you again. Or if you don't that was great well that was fun if it was fun or great that was classic intercourse was the alan partridge one wasn't it i'm sure that would do well i suppose if it was neoclassical intercourse you could talk about that instead i think maybe bye would be better than thank you no but i know what he means because if you've if it's a post-coital goodbye like goodbye can sound harsh thank you can sound desperate you want something that means that was nice and bye well you could do something that that they will know is obviously words more suitable for another

situation where you're like well it was lovely to meet you and that makes it sound more like you've just met at a conference. But hopefully they would find that funny. Using humour is something that, you know, probably both you and I would do in this situation. But that would depend on the hookup itself having been, I suppose, more traditional. Like maybe you spent the night getting wasted with each other and you were referring to a thing that had happened earlier or a thing that someone had said.

If Ryan's using a hookup app but literally has not spoken really to the person that he's saying goodbye to, it's harder then, isn't it, to think of funny things to say? Well, then just kiss them and say bye. Yeah. I put this to our friends at facebook.com slash answer me this

because I imagine that this is a scenario that many of our listeners encounter. So they've supplied some suggestions. Quite a lot of them are just variants on handing them a satisfaction survey or giving them a scorecard or one of those things that you have at an airport when you've gone through security and it's like, hit the happy face if this was a good experience. Michael suggests, ask them to sign the guest book

situated conveniently on the way out which is brave that's a good way actually of finding out whether they want you to be in touch with them again i guess so or for them to find out how many visitors you tend to have yes yeah that could be embarrassing in either direction couldn't it a different ryan suggests it was great to have met you i had fun although he specifies as long as that's true of course what if it's not true though how do you deal with it then where it's like well that was okay well then i think you'd be like well uh thanks for leaving yeah fun isn't that a strong word so even if it wasn't fun i think you can say it was fun you know unless something really grim happened in which case you know what you say is the least of your concerns isn't it but i mean

assuming it was all just sort of like below par, I think you can still say that was fun. David says, thank you for the day. Maybe David's thinking they've had a full day of non-sexual activities. Yes. And then if it's going well, add text me when you're home. Ooh, bit mumsy. Which quite a lot of them suggested. Really?

Megan said, let me know when you get home safe. Because it's polite, but it still conveys that once the other person is home this is done oh does it to me text me when you get home safe suggests that you are interested in continuing the conversation because you want to see them again exactly yeah heather suggests well that was and then insert appropriate word usually fun sometimes interesting let's chat soon okay and then i'd show them the door let's chat soon okay again that still seems like someone that you're showing out of a business meeting you might say let's chat soon okay yeah yes yeah i mean i i today had to return a phone to argos and i did say that in the live chat to uh sukunda you said let's chat soon yeah because i knew that

i had to first phone bt to ask whether they'd recall the product. In a live chat, chat seems like a reasonable thing to refer to. Amanda says, I've had a nice evening. Hope you did too. Yes, yeah, but yes, yes, that's not bad. But the point is what we don't know from this information, because it's contextual depending on the individual, is whether or not Ryan really wants to see that that individual again and that will inform all of these so i think

what's what's useful is to give ryan this you know full lexicon of possibilities and it's up to him to choose the one that's relevant well i feel like it's the hardest one to say something which doesn't suggest oh yeah that's hanging out again or let's hook up again yeah like what's the middle ground which is polite but not just kind of cold and corporate that's that's quite hard a kiss and bye kiss and bye if it maybe give them like a cereal bar or something that was fun by that's what i'd come down to on this i think that's the best one we've heard because it leaves it open for you to decide afterwards when the door closes whether you want fun to mean and so let's definitely see each other again and i'm going to text them or whether fun just means you know that that was diverting but obviously it's not going to happen again you can interpret

it at will i feel like the way ryan has framed his question is that his concern is not what to say in case he wants to see them again yes his concern is merely being polite for a one night thing that was fun bye right that was fun bye mj has suggested take care and many thanks for the in case he wants to see them again. Yes. His concern is merely being polite for a one night thing. That was fun, bye. Right, that was fun, bye. MJ has suggested, take care and many thanks for the sex. The itching should start in a couple of days.

I feel like jokes at this time, especially jokes about STIs, probably not the way to go. But yeah, I agree. Then a lot of people have sex puns like, thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. Yeah, these are all things that people say on the internet but wouldn't actually say so we're sticking with the boring but okay that was fun by that's mine anyway plus kiss if it's suitable don't forget to review like and subscribe yeah mash that like button well further suggestions

are welcome and we'll ask ryan to try them out on different people and chart the results and see which is the most effective and least offensive that brings us to the end of this episode of answer me this so please supply us with questions for future episodes of answer me this and our contact details are on our website answer me this podcast.com and if you want to ask a question in your voice, I would suggest recording a voice memo and emailing it. So would I.

As the easiest and clearest. And we'll be back with a retro episode halfway through the month, taken from The Vaults. But in the meantime, you can listen to our other works. In March, on my magazine podcast, The Modern Man,

I talked to a guy called Nick about internet fraud. What happens when you actually click on a scam email his dad did that and he ended up giving 160 000 pounds to criminals oh shit there's a sting in the tail as well but no more spoilers uh listen to the interview at modernmanwith2ends.co.uk uh helen what's big in zolt's world illusionist i recently did an episode about language around climate crisis which is very interesting and not completely depressing some useful ways forward and then veronica mars investigations we will be starting season two

this month catch up on season one at vmipod.com and the illusionist is at theillusionist.org matting our podcast song by song is podcast about the music of tom waits we're currently covering the early years volumes one and two which is not his nice gentle early folk period so if you're interested in getting into his music that's a good place to jump in and you can find that song by song podcast dot com well that

was fun bye so cold where's my cereal bar bye