Answer Me This! - AMT385: Cold Toast, Intimate Bleaching and Rickrolling

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

AMT385's questioneers are curious about the financial side of rickrolling, Hollywood teeth, novelty lamps and bleached bumholes. 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 , The Week Unwrapped, and The Media Podcast at ; and Martin Austwick's music at and his Tom Waits podcast Song By Song at . Special Flag Correspondent Roman Mars can be found on the podcasts and . This episode is sponsored by: The Great Courses Plus, the streaming library of courses on topics from yoga to mystery fiction to formal logic to dog training. AMT listeners get a free month at . Squarespace. Want to build a website? Go to , and get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code 'ANSWER'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash theiporter to learn more. Did you know that Cyprus has trademarked Halloumi? If I adjust my FaceTime lighting, do I look like George Clooney. Last episode we heard from Seabrand who has a problem with their father's enormous toaster collection. Yes, too long don't listen. Her dad has loads of toasters. She's not sure how to cope with them from New Zealand if and when he passes away. In British Columbia. Correct. You suggested that the family set up a toaster museum. Seabrand has got back in touch to say my dad actually does have a toaster museum in my stepmum's restaurant.

We have corroboration of the toaster museum because we also had an email from Claire in Edinburgh who says, I think I've been to the Northern British Columbia toaster town you mentioned. And she sent some photos because Claire had breakfast at Seabrand Stepmum's Toaster Museum and Cafe. We assume, unless of course there is a rival Toaster Museum and Cafe in a rival British Columbian town. In which case it proves the business model, I would say, anyway. No, I'm pretty sure it's this one. Claire says, from the poster on the wall, it seems that Seabrand's dad is still on the hunt for more toasters.

The photo Claire took of the wall shows there's a sign saying wanted toasters and i think that means he wants toasters not the toasters are wanted for crimes and then there's many pictures of the toasters that he wants so he's specific i read a fascinating thing the other day actually about the history of cold toast being a class thing in this country you know how aristocracy are always kind of like you know they have those special stands to hold their toast in and then they it's not really hot anymore yeah the reason for that is because if you've got people serving you then by the time it comes up from the kitchen it will be cold so actually the posher you were the colder the toast was you had and rich people never realized how nice toast is straight

out of the grill they never had that experience not even grill like toasting fork over fire yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah but but the poor people who were sitting by the fire they'd know the delight of butter straight onto hot toast claire also drops in a little fact that i was interested in so she went on this big three-week road trip around british columbia and also crossed the border into hyder alaska where insomnia the christopher nolan was filmed. I have not seen that movie since it came out in 2002. I remember thinking it did. I'd be intrigued to see it again. I'd be semi-intrigued because I think that was the last time I enjoyed a Christopher

Nolan film. She says, one local restaurant owner had nothing but good stuff to say about Robin Williams and all he did for the town while he was there, but declared that Al Pacino was a poop, which instantly became a family catchphrase. I don't remember the plot of the film, but that al pacino was a poop which instantly became a family catchphrase i don't remember the plot of the film but was al pacino playing the poop in that scenario because he is a method actor isn't he maybe he walked around being a poop because he had to portray a poop he played the poop emoji in the emoji movie that could be true for all i know i guess yeah i haven't seen it to be fair here's a question from someone who for anonymity purposes would like to be known as paula paula says every morning i wake up look

outside and declare it another glorious day in lockdown then i go outside to soak up the glory but i am plagued by my next door neighbor's children screams all day every day now i know i'm being a dick by saying it's annoying after all they're only two and a half years old but if the neighbors were playing loud music all the time then most people would agree that's annoying right my girlfriend is working from home and has to sit with the windows closed as it's so loud so ollie answer me this how do i politely ask them to shut the fuck up does she mean ask the two and a half year olds to shut the fuck up or the neighbours who are in charge of them? If she means the former, then she could

certainly work on a politer version than that. Do I even have a right to ask them to shut the fuck up? I should add that yes, I wear noise cancelling headphones and I can still sometimes hear them. Okay, look, Paula, I mean, two and a half year old children make noise. There's not much that can be done about that that doesn't to to some degree, qualify as abusive. And I want you to know, as a parent, when the shoe's on the other foot, when you're thinking that your child is making the noise that might be obstructive to other people, it can be mortifying. You don't really want to have to think about that when they're running around free and having fun, especially in their own garden. But you do feel those glares of judgment. And what I usually try and bear in mind myself

is I think, well, the person who's complaining, you have been a child yourself in the past, so you have made noise. Oh, I didn't make noise as a child. Because no one gave a shit. They were like, shut up until you're 21. And I do think it's very difficult to really chastise a child for making noise.

Yes, I agree. However, this is a slightly different scenario that we're in at the moment where you can't go anywhere else and neither can they. So I would suggest the following white lie. I would suggest passing your neighbours a note through the letterbox

or chatting to them informally over the fence, don't know what your relationship's like with your neighbours, saying that at a particular time. So for example, Thursday at 4pm. On Thursday at 4pm, I'm doing a really important work call. At that particular time, for that particular hour, because it's a really important call, for example,

would you mind not letting your kids outside during that one hour window? Just because I can hear them in the background of the call and it's a bit distracting. And judge how the neighbours react to that preliminary request. Because it could be the gateway to, oh my God, we didn't realise that they were disturbing your work. How awful. We'll try and keep them quieter all the time. Or it could be, fuck you, don't tell me how to look after my children. In which case, you know, there are different things that you need to look into doing. So that would be my first step. Second step would be, buy the kids a gift,

which has to be played indoors. What would that be? Doll's house? Yeah, doll's house is a good one. Large train set, jigsaw. Something that you don't want lots of pieces outside. And then, you know, it's a generous act that you're doing. The parents will feel that you've given them something to take them off their hands as well, but they'll be forced to be indoors.

I presume also that if it's annoying you, it's probably annoying the parents even more. I don't know, you become slightly immune to it. As long as they're making noise somewhere that isn't in your face, that can be enough sometimes. I suppose you lose like several registers of hearing. Or if you can't silence them, join them. Like my brother's child decided to learn violin from quite an early age. And violin's a tricky instrument, particularly in the first few years. it's hard to make that thing sound nice so during violin practice my brother

would play guitar and the violin instantly like sounded a lot less screechy and painful to listen to because it was like there's some structure to the noise so maybe paula could go outside with like a tambourine or something and put in some beats and if that was a richard curtis film then obviously they'd end up unwittingly becoming a band, wouldn't they? And at the very least, it'll be a cute local newspaper story. Have I told my Gloria Hunniford story? I mean, you know my feelings for Gloria. You've piqued my interest.

I don't believe so. I've not met her, but it's about a time in the mid-90s when Gloria Hunniford got into trouble. I had a school friend who lived next door to gloria hanniford how have you never told me this before when i've told you my lansbury type passions for gloria hanniford shit well maybe i didn't want you to know where she lived i think it was around when we'd finished gcsc so let's put it around 1995 one night gloria hanniford had a big party and there was some really hilariously bad music

at the party so uh my friends and i went into the back garden of my friend's house next door and sang along to it because it was funny and then a few days later there was a lot of upsets in the local papers like gloria's loud party neighbors furious and gloria's defense was not all the neighbors hated it. The ones next door enjoyed it so much, they even sang along. That's great. That was my first taste of fame.

Touched by glory. Well, untouched physically. Yeah. We touched her life in a positive way. No, but that's interesting. It's also just like, for me, just the furtive excitement of a Gloria Hunniford party. What was that?

Like, what was going on behind those doors? Who was there? I'm imagining like Terry Wogan doing lines of coke off Gabby Roslin now Jason Donovan falling over Donny Osmond prancing around with an animal mask on and nothing else it's quite a high fence unfortunately couldn't see anything but uh it was about the most show busy decadent thing uh up to that point in my life and for many years after that's great you're welcome i could end the show here new glory 100 for that anecdote uh right we've had another question now in the tradition of uh what are those seaside face holes called uh it's from um jessica who says i swear this had a proper name like a galvani machine or a tesla machine or a volta machine but the internet

apparently has absolutely been scrubbed of this information and refers to it as a plasma lamp, a ball and a globe. Really suspicious. But Helen, answer me this. What is this mad lightning globe that you touch and the lightning comes to you called? I'm not sure that's an elegantly written question, but I think we know what she means. It's the science museum thing, isn't it? Where you put your fingers on the globe and it goes... Yeah, it's like a dandelion clock made of light and the Innovations Catalogue used to sell them. The Innovations Catalogue. That and a honey food party. I'm happy for today.

Did you ever have one of these lamps? I didn't. I had a lava lamp, which I know isn't at all the same thing, but I suppose they're both kind of basic science dressed up as aesthetics, aren't they? And I felt like the lava lamp and the plasma ball thing we're discussing,

you couldn't have both. I think you only want one novelty light probably in your room so lava or one of those ones it's like a spray made out of fiber optics or when i was at university i had a clock that had a neon ring around it that would flash pink and blue and people seemed really into that like three in the morning this is why i was closetly angry when a few christmases ago my wife bought me the tetris light for christmas you know the one with like the little pieces of tetris style shapes that connect together and through some clever science thing magnets or something they light up as you put them on even though they don't have wires coming out the back of them wow and it's cool and it's tetris and i i'm not a big gamer but i am if i'm, I'm a retro gamer and I do love Tetris. So I see why she bought it for me.

But I'm annoyed because of the novelty light rule. As you can say, you can only have one novelty light. I was ready for another lava lamp. I've always loved lava lamps. I'd created a space for a lava lamp and then she bought me for Christmas the Tetris light. So I had to put that on display and I'm like, I can't have a lava lamp now too.

You can only have one novelty light. So there it is. And I just look at it angrily. You've got a house. now too you can only have one novelty light so there it is and I just look at it angrily you've got a house does that mean you can have one novelty light per room you haven't visited our house since we had it done up but it's very much not a house where a novelty light would be permitted in any room other than my office right I'm surprised that she bought you a novelty light it seems like she's generally tried to curb your kitchen decor indeed and that's the other thing I was like she's wrongly imagined the kind of shit I like like I do want some shit there I want a lava lamp but she's she's thought oh this is the

kind of thing Ollie likes he can put it in his office but I don't like it it's only going in the office. But it does look like the kind of thing that one of your children might love and want in their own room. Yes Harvey plays with the Tetris light already actually go on I see where you're going. So biff it off to there get yourself a lava lamp for your birthday the problem is that it does have a lighting cord that goes in the bottom which he's still just about young enough that he could wrap himself around his neck so i think i've got to wait till he's probably seven odd till he can have it in his room but yes all right i'll schedule the lava lamp purchase for 2022 put it in your google calendar do you know that they cost £80 these days?

Lava lamps? Yeah. Well, I think they cost about £40, 20-something years ago. So is that above inflation? I think that's a steep rise, yeah. I mean, it's equivalent to probably property prices, but it's definitely above inflation for like Mars bars, yeah.

Where are you getting your lava lamps, Foxton's? It's calling given that it's just a bottle of wax with a light bulb under it. It's so beautiful, though, isn't it? I could just watch that all night. I mean, obviously I couldn't. I'd rather have Netflix, but I could if, you know, push came to shove. What about if you just let milk curdle for long enough and then watch

the blobs go up and down? Put a candle underneath it. Beautiful. Anyway, these machines, what are they called? Yeah, well, I found it weird that there's not more that I could find online about these lamps because I'd imagine a lot of people are fans of them or at least they're like, oh, yeah, those things. So the Internet, I feel, has failed us all. Generally, the consensus does seem to be that they're called plasma lamps or plasma globes. And I asked Martin because I thought this is the kind of shit Martin would have had when young.

Never had one but you said that you'd only heard them called plasma lamps and not like galvani lamps or plasma globes yeah i've never heard them called those other things it's a little bit like a van der graaf generator in terms of appearance but those are much much much bigger i think and more dangerous but hold on you've got a phd in physics so what would you call it like if you would if you if for some reason this came up in one of your university classes or whatever, what would people describe it as in that setting amongst physics professionals? It has no practical use I can think of in physics.

Like, it is an ornamental item, you know. You say it's sort of basic science dressed up as ornamentation, but it's really the other way around, isn't it? It's like, it looks pretty, but you wouldn't use it as a piece of equipment so yeah i think physicists would just call it a plasma globe i wonder also whether it was something like nikola tesla invented this thing basically which is why it's sometimes called like a tesla ball or a tesla globe but maybe plasma lamp or plasma ball is the generic. And there have been other attempts to call it a particular thing,

but none of them very widespread. Ground star was like quite a big version of them, but it was still like the ground star plasma globe. As much as Jessica is dissatisfied with the names of these that she's found, apparently Tesla called it an inert gas discharge tube. So that's less catchy, I would say. If you've got a question, email your question to answermethispodcast at googlemail.com

answermethispodcast at googlemail.com answermethispodcast at googlemail.com answermethispodcast 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 Ryan in Melbourne, who says, Ollie, answer me this. How do American movie stars keep their teeth so white? Dentistry. Thanks.

See you next time. I know what he means because obviously Hollywood stars have notably whiter teeth than even rich and celebrity people elsewhere in the world. And that is, I suppose, cosmetic dentistry, specifically veneers but the history of veneers in hollywood is properly fascinating do you know anything about it ellen no please tell me well they basically stick a bit of porcelain on the bottom of your teeth it's the same stuff your toilet's made out of but but i thought that that was a relatively

recent thing naively like i thought that was maybe post julia roberts pre simon cowell but no veneers have been around since hollywood essentially wow it all came out of a dentist called charles pinkus who opened a practice on hollywood and vine in 1929 and wrote in a newsletter at the time the camera is cruel in its relentless exposure of the slightest flaw in the mouth a tooth turned even slightly out of line casts a shadow before it isn't that beautiful then he decided what i'm going to do is file your teeth down to nubs and replace them with toilet he realized there's a vacancy to be the hollywood dentist because in the silent movie days it was all about basically their bone structure and how beautiful they were but in the days of talkies which came about in the 1930s late 1920s people had to open their mouth and talk and it was killing careers um because their teeth just looked shit on screen and um he realized that this was coming down the track and uh actually became the dentist first to joan crawford who

had root decay oh and he capped her front teeth and then James Dean who had no back teeth apparently. Wow. And over time he got loads of celebrity clients so Montgomery Clift, Funny Bryce, Mae West. The big one though was Judy Garland and the reason she was the big one was because of what happens in The Wizard of Oz. So you have that moment where it goes from black and white to technicolor and essentially that is widely credited as the moment that America decided that that was the look the teeth because when it goes color she starts singing over the rainbow and her teeth look magnificent and that was his work those were his early prototype veneers in the Wizard of Oz wow did he give her rainbow teeth no but it was just like it was because it was the moment where the whole audience went, wow, it's colour. That was like, it's like for

the first time they're seeing this huge vision of beauty in front of them, Judy Garland's teeth. And he was then taken on as a consultant by the Factor brothers of Max Factor Cosmetics. What? Their surname was Factor? And developed with them this mixture of pounded plastic and porcelain, which is veneers. And ever since then, basically, that's been the American look. It's about Hollywood wanting to look like those Hollywood stars. But then more broadly, of course, the general public seeing that as the idyll of beauty. It's interesting as well when you see pictures of a Hollywood star that you're familiar with now and then their early career. And you think they look really different.

What is it? And then often it is just their teeth are a completely different shape now. Yeah. So it's like not even really about the colour as much as it is the shape. And there's this whole sub-genre of websites that are just about that. Like typing in a celebrity who's got good teeth now will take you to a website where you see bad teeth, good teeth on a gallery. Most of those websites are actually blogs that are run by the cosmetic dentist industry. So more often than not,

it's like the news pages of some Harley Street clinic or something. Oh, so it's like their propaganda. It's so weird that that's someone's job to just like, you know, write a news article, what appears to be journalism about Barbara Streisand's teeth, but it's actually just a way of getting you onto their website so you get veneers. I used to do jobs like that, so I can well imagine it.

Do veneers stain? Eventually eventually but only after a long period i think they last 10 to 15 years and that's the problem like people say if you get the cheap ones if you go if a dentist says i can do you a veneer at 200 pounds a tooth don't take it because they will stain and they'll fall out right so but if you get the expensive ones then they're like top grade toilet porcelain yes but then the problem is you know if you've gone for the look where they looked perfect, then you've got to keep them looking perfect. And that's when you get the freakish, that's when you get the Simon Cowell thing, isn't it?

He's obviously getting his teeth done every year. And that's when it's like sparkly clean. It's just bizarre. Well, I think the ones who are really good at it make them look natural. So they make them not look the brightest white. They make them look like a shade a human could generate if they had really good teeth naturally.

Like I haven't checked, but i bet tom hanks has nice teeth that look like a natural person's nice teeth but they also do do uh tooth bleaching don't they but the problem with that is that it can make your teeth very sensitive and like they can stain very easily after the process also if you've had any fillings or caps or anything like that those are color matched to your old teeth and then if you put a chemical on them they either stay the same or they go some weird bleachy color that isn't the same as the ones that you're naturally bleaching so you've got to be careful with that because i've done that i've used the bleaching strips um but i've got two fake front teeth because i smashed my teeth out

when i was a kid yeah and so they are color matched to my slightly yellowing british teeth so if i go dazzling white on the others, I've then got Bugs Bunny style, two very clear front teeth at a different colour. You have to tip X them in. Yes, exactly. Can I quote Pinkus for a second time, just because I think this is amazing?

I would love you to. This is what he said in 1948. He was talking about the set of veneers he'd made for Shirley Temple. Losing her baby teeth during the production of Stand Up and Cheer entailed many different types of restorations which had to be constantly changed. Oh God. All this had to be planned so as not to hold up the shooting schedule

as one day's loss meant approximately $15,000 in cost to the studio. Wow. I mean, that just tells you so much about Hollywood, doesn't it? You've got a seven-year-old who's naturally losing her teeth and they created a set of fake veneers and if they were slightly out of line it costs fifteen thousand dollars a day for them to run so what happened to shirley temple is what happened to

shirley temple because of the economics of it that is horrible it is horrifying isn't it when you really think through the implications of what he's discussing there yeah and also people weren't watching on particularly high definition so you would have hoped the tooth scrutiny wouldn't have been as severe but evidently it was fuck off massive screens though it might not have been high definition here's another question of cosmetic engineering i guess it's from adam who says helen answer me this when people get their bum holes bleached how are they doing it is it actual bleach where do they go to get it done how long does it normally take is it painful are you able to go to the toilet afterwards and how long does the effect last what what are they bleaching is it the skin

yeah around your anus anus yeah or like the bottom of your colon the actual bit inside no it's it's not your rectum why do's your anus. Why do they... why? Well, I mean, maybe Adam gives some insight into that, Martin, because he says, I guess I've somewhat thought about this subject in the past as I am a very white, pale gay guy, and imperfections and discolouration show up easily on my skin, so having a brown-coloured crack is not as aesthetically pleasing on my white body. So, Helen, if you answer this question,

and you happen to find any places in Yorkshire that provide this service, please mention them it may be useful for you to know adam that you can get home anal bleaching kits ah if you are doing a home treatment look for peels creams or gels that use kojic acid which is an exfoliating chemical and i think is considered a bit safer and less irritating than previous iterations so basically what this kind of anal bleaching i don't think any of them actually use bleach so some of them are exfoliating so they're just sloughing off dead cells which are hyperpigmented others there's a laser treatment that can break down dark pigment into smaller particles that then are carried away by white blood cells.

And there's some others that break down melanin or reduce the number of melanin producing cells around your anus. So it's not like household bleach or hair bleach on your anus. I think it's just that term is very easy for people to understand what is meant by making your anus more pale. It was popularized by porn. I'm sure you'll be unsurprised to hear. Apparently in the early 2000s,

the adult film actress Tabitha Stevens had her anus bleached to look prettier on camera in the unscripted series Doctor 90210. And that led to a big spike in online searches for the procedure. And then when Kourt kardashian revealed that she'd tried anal bleaching during a 2010 episode of courtney and kim take miami then like the trend was just uh skyrocketing how do you apply it yourself in a home kit it's a great question legs over your shoulders you're asking me as if i've tried it and i have not maybe they give you like a special go-go gadget arm.

Yes. Can you get an attachment? Like those little things you put on your toilet that squirt water at people? You wouldn't want it to go in the wrong place or on the wrong anus. How many anuses do you have? If your mum came over for a cup of tea, you wouldn't want it to bleach her anus, for instance.

The problem is with the home treatments that it is more imprecise than a professional doing it. So the chemicals tend to be less strong than in professional treatments but there's more likelihood that you'll get it up inside your anus or on other parts of your body and it will cause a lot of irritation or you'll put on too much and then you'll end up with a whiter anus than your skin so like santa claus could end up with scarring that causes you permanent problems because anal strictures can prevent the anus stretching properly during your bowel movements and that can be a bit of permanent damage the other problem is that you have to have quite a lot of treatments for it to work oh yeah i think it takes a few treatments to see any difference

and then you have to keep it up you have to do treatments like every few months but the professional ones are hundreds if not thousands of pounds depending on what kind you get i think the laser ones are more expensive so but they're not permanent presumably no no because your skin is getting darkened again and it's not just uh by poos lots of daily activities cause friction like movement walking running uh sweating sex and the friction increases the skin pigmentation so there's nothing really you can do to stop getting increased pigmentation in the first place maybe people should just accept a darker anus yeah uh i mean i have and i'm happy with that decision i have just not thought about what color

it might be down there it's fine i mean live your life obviously like you know sexually be into whatever you're into but I do think particularly the anus is like out of view isn't it like we sit on it you know you can't see your own like it's to actually look at someone's anus like properly look at it not just penetrate it but actually look at it they have to be bending over in front of your face you're choosing to do that at that point or sending you pictures I guess I suppose I'm just glad that Shirley Temple lived in the 20s and we don't know what went on with her you're choosing to do that at that point or sending you pictures i guess i suppose i i'm just glad that shirley temple lived in the 20s and we don't know what went on with her venus

helen how many minutes should i bake a cake for before it gets all burned and dry? Ollie, how many onions can I slice before my eyes start Passages, would you like for your evening meal? If you answer me these, I'll be very pleased. That describes how I feel. Thanks very much to our new sponsor, The Great Courses Plus, which is a library of online courses that you can do wherever you are, which is quite handy at the moment if you want to educate yourself or amuse yourself. So you can choose the subject that you're interested in and just like on a video streaming service, you can pick up where you left off whatever device you're on.

So you can be cooking in the kitchen and carry on listening to the lecture that you started in the living room, which was about Michelangelo's art or whatever. Yeah, or dog training. There's a wide range of subjects available. They've got a lot of courses about literature and language, which I was drawn to. But then I got sidetracked by one called Math and Magic, which is 12 lectures by a mathemagician. Because I have no idea at all about how magic tricks work. And I like the fact that there's a lot of boring logistics behind them i'm very interested to find out more about those boring logistics about shuffling and card counting and stuff like that yeah and the people who are hosting these lecture

series they are genuine experts they're people who've worked with national geographic or the smithsonian or from the math magician institute of math magic i've been watching one called the real history of secret societies oh conspiracy theory well no i i guess i chose it because well for a couple of reasons one because there are so many conspiracies you're never far online are you from someone talking about the illuminati or you know the sinister forces or whatever bullshit they've come up with and i've always been interested in what's the reality behind those perceptions of those societies who are they what do they do why do they exist and then the other reason was because my grandfather was a freemason oh all right so that's how you got this gig

he was the youngest freemason in his lodge i think and he even got married uh to my grandmother in the freemasons lodge uh which is just extraordinary i can't imagine doing that i can't talk to him about it now because he's dead. So I wanted to know more about that whole world, really. Well, there's a ton of different subjects on The Great Courses Plus. There's economics, there's wine, there's science. And The Great Courses Plus is giving Answer Me This listeners an entire month of unlimited access to all of these for free.

Start your free month at thegreatcoursesplus.com slash answer. That is thegreatcoursesplus.com slash answer. That is thegreatcoursesplus.com slash answer. Hello, Helen and Ollie. This is Nick from Boulder, Colorado, and I had a question about stars and flags. There's a ton of flags that have five-pointed stars on them. You've got the United States, Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the U.S., but then you have all kinds of other countries with them. Bosnia, Burma, Kosovo, Syria, Cuba, that all have five-pointed stars. Then you've got a bunch of flags that have the crescent and star, which is a religious symbol. But then Singapore and Turkmenistan have something that looks kind of like it with a crescent, but more stars.

The European Union has five-pointed stars. And then you've got all of your flags with lots of points on their stars. Australia has seven points, I think, although New Zealand has a five-pointer again. Israel has the Jewish star. Then you've got some African nations. Jordan has a many-pointed star. So here's my question. What's up with all the stars?

Why are they so popular on flags? And moreover, why is the five-pointed star such a big deal? A question of flags. I thought I could research this, or I could just go straight to celebrity vexillologist and fellow podcaster Roman Muzz for the flag intel. They're symbolic of lots of things, and so they kind of serve lots of purposes.

And so that's why they're there. You know, like, actually, the US flag is one of the ones that really popularized the five-pointed star. Not first, but it was prominently there. And then a lot of other flags more in the 19th century added five-pointed stars to their flags. So usually what they do well is they kind of represent, like, you know, in the U.S. case, they represent states. If you have island nations they often have flags with the number of stars for the different islands um you know they they tend to

represent uh territories or states or something like that but they do that really really well and is the five point just the optimal number of points where it looks like a star but not too cluttered so it's start looking like a burr if you put too many on yeah i mean i think i think that is the optimal it's like the easiest one to you know symmetrically draw for one thing i mean people know how to draw a five point star really really well um you know so therefore it's kind of easy to to make and cut and sew onto something which is you, actually a concern with flags. And also when it starts to represent each state or something,

like what else are you going to use? Just bullet points? That's right. Poop emojis? I think stars are the way to go. It's a pretty good symbol. Okay, but he hasn't really said why stars. Like he said that they're easier to draw than other things

and that they're an elegant way of uh summing up the constituents of a nation but what would be the nature of the symbol of a star versus anything else well when you think well what else could it be then it becomes a little more tricky because first of all it was something you could see from anywhere in the world that was impressive before there was this amount of light pollution. Yes. And also implied location. So a lot of the flags do have a constellation on to express them. I suppose it's also something of the other world, isn't it? Something supernatural, but also not specifically God.

Yeah, it's quite grandiose in a way. Yeah. But when you look at them points-wise, there is a handy Wikipedia pageipedia page called flags with stars and the further down you go the more points they have and after about eight they do look more like suns which is another obviously universal site but uh you only get one whereas uh other stars lots to choose from but also flags are often kind of made in patchwork. So you have to make these shapes.

And seven points, this seems like a real pain in the ass. Yes. It's a lot of tricky angles. That practical point was the one that struck me as the most convincing, actually. But specifically the Australian flag that Nick from Boulder mentions. The Australian flag has the Southern Cross, which is a constellation that you can see all over Australia and understandably represents the Southern Hemisphere and it points towards the South Pole. So there's five stars in that. There's like four, like a shape of a kite and then a smaller one.

The big stars have seven points, but apparently the little star that is sort of snuck in there is five points allegedly to make manufacture easier and then it also has a seven point star known as the commonwealth star or the federation star and this represents australia's federation and it was like okay six points for the six initial states of the commonwealth of australia and then they added a seventh for Papua New Guinea which is independent now but they kept the seven point because it's like well any other territory that Australia might snaffle in future and then you get a lot of retcon as well with stars where you get a flag where it's like the point represents blah-de-blah and bullshit bullshit but it seems clearly just tacked on at the end hi Helen Ollie andllie and martin the sound man it's lucille from lewisham

recently i noticed that pucker pies pucker teas and pucker notepads all share the same name pucker i'm assuming that they're not made by the same company although that would be fun to find out answer me this what is the relationship between the name pucker. They are not related. The pucker pies originate from 1960s Leicestershire, founded by husband and wife team Trevor and Valerie Storer. The original name was The Storers Homemade Pies. Pucker Pad was founded in 1999 by Chris Stott, so some 30 years later. And then Pucker Teas originated out of Pucker Herbs in 2001.

So again, two years after Pucker Pad, completely separate. They were set up by two guys called Tim and Sebastian. Actually, one of them put an advert saying that he wanted to back ethical businesses and the other one got in touch through the advert. That's how they met. And they're now owned by Unilever. So three completely separate companies. Also, I don't think you can own a particular word that is a word that was around already that you didn't invent.

Well, evidently. You couldn't set up another Pucker Pies, but there's no reason why Pucker Pies and Pucker Pads can't be separate businesses. For internationalists who perhaps aren't clear on this, I think we should say Pucker Pies are pretty much like you get them in the fish and chip shop. They're savoury pies. They're not like fruit pies. Meat or chicken. They are very satisfying. Pucketea is going for a completely different market. They have a mission statement.

They're that kind of company. They say, our herbal creations are crafted to connect as many people as possible to the beauty and power of nature. Very different to the pies. Who shall? And then the pads are neither pie naughty they're just paper well actually they've got a huge range of products i've learned from their website helen but they are mostly stationary related products such as pens and stuff yeah do you think people

use the word pucker as slang that much anymore because my mum used to use it a lot and then i think jamie oliver used it so much that maybe it killed it for everyone. Maybe. The word pucker is one of the many words that came to English through the Raj. So a lot of them are Hindi or Urdu words. These include pyjamas, cot, khaki, bungalow, bandana, cushy and cummerbund, and pundit. I was surprised to know. That's from the Hindi word pandit, meaning a learned man. That's interesting because pundit doesn't really mean learned man now, it no not at all just means gone for hire doolally as well that was a place name doolally or dear lally was a town where there was an army base and sanatorium

where soldiers in the late 19th century were sent before going home and so when ones were mentally ill after getting fevers they were said to have gone doolally pucker was uh from a hindi word for absolute so meaning like a true gentleman or an excellent person yeah so on the pucker teas website they say the reason they chose the word pucker was because in hindi pucker means real authentic or genuine so that that does back up your research does it or fully formed or cooked or ripe which i suppose is right is fully formed in other ways because the pucker pie website says they chose the fun and fashionable hindi derived word for all things properly good okay that is a riff on the same thing isn't it isn't it interesting they put a uh

a fish and chip shop spin by the way that's written on the same piece of intel for me the catch is that i don't find the idea of the raj fun or cute oh it's quite evocative though isn't it it's evocative but not necessarily something good i just think it's kind of like when you watch downton abbey or something and you you know that there's an upstairs downstairs component to the story yeah that's why i don't watch down to nabby because i don't find that fun yeah it makes me very depressed i'm consistent all right lots of people disagree lots of people like can can find something glamorous or they're just not thinking about it without well i don't know i don't think that's true i think you can read jane austen for example

and be aware of the money from the sugar plantations or whatever and still be interested in the love lives of the characters yeah it can be interested but i think it introduces a level of discomfort that means things that are casual where you're like oh here's a fun word you wouldn't necessarily put it on your brand if you're thinking about that but it's still a hindi word anyway so it doesn't have to come from the raj at all does it i mean it could be if it's something that's still used in hindi then it came to english via the raj though that's why we have it because of the british colonialization of india yeah but i suppose the pakati people are probably thinking they're bringing it to english from hindi and disregarding the 50 years of previous use of it aren't they maybe but the thing is you can't necessarily

like you have to be aware i agree like you can't use the word queer now to mean just like odd or strange because it has significant other meanings right i'm trying to build a website to bring tourists to rad lit but when i open it up on my smartphone or tablet something goes wrong and it just looks a bit shit unlike hartfordshire itself well try building that website Using Squarespace On desktop and devices It will look simply ace As well designed as Hertfordshire

With all that lovely green space County of Opportunity And Stevenage Thank you to Squarespace for their support of Answer Me This And for helping really a lot of people Make much nicer websites than they otherwise would have. I don't want to know how to make a nice website. I'm happy to delegate that to Squarespace and then reap the rewards. Yeah, they're like your virtual IT team. They're much less pass-ag

than IT teams I've had dealings with in my previous lives. Yeah, because you just click a button. You don't have to speak to anyone. Although if you do want to speak to someone, if you get stuck designing a website. 24-7 service that's right email live chat webinar they do it all they also play really nicely as well once you get into the more advanced web design stuff with a whole world of third-party extensions so you can take payments through stripe you can do your bookkeeping through quickbooks you can ship products using ship station and it all integrates into the platform that you're using so you you need never go anywhere else. If you want to try out Squarespace, then you can have a play around at squarespace.com slash answer.

There's a two-week free trial. And then if you like what you built and you want to keep it, when you sign up, you can get a 10% discount off your first purchase of a website or domain using our code ANSWER. Here's a question from Ruth in Sydney, Australia, who says, my partner and I love salt. I've always been a big salt fan and his salt intake has definitely increased since being with me. The other night, while eating baked brie wrapped in pancetta,

he posed the question of why salt is so delicious to humans. Yeah, I bet he looked a picture when he was saying it too. We understand why we may have evolved to crave fatty and sugary things due to their calorific content. But why salt? Ollie, answer me this. Why do we have a specific taste, but for something that isn't particularly good for us? Well, we do need sodium, otherwise we die. Right, exactly. So it is natural to have evolved to want some salt. And indeed, it's the only dietary tendency

that is pretty much universal around the world. Like wherever you're from, people do add salt in some form to their food. Right. As to why it is addictive, like why is your partner sitting there with dripping brie and pancetta coming out of his mouth? That's a bit harder to answer, but essentially we develop a high tolerance for it

the more we have. And I suppose you could say that is a flaw because we don't need that much salt. So it's kind of like cultures that eat a lot of spicy food like obviously they can tolerate a lot more spice cultures who eat a lot of salt don't notice how much salt they're putting into things but also if you didn't have salt intake there would be like enormous problems in your body correct yes yeah absolutely yeah it's just knowing when to stop really and that there is evidence that humans aren't very good at knowing when to stop eating salt so for example when they've done studies where patients who have had high blood pressure have been asked

to cut salt from their diet for health reasons once they cut salt entirely they find they can never eat again the things they used to eat that had a really high salt content because going from zero to that is just too much it's like if you drink a lot of diet coke and then you have a coke for the first time you're like fuck this is sugary it's like that yeah or just disgusting you're just a lot more aware of the artificial sweeteners when you go back to those things yeah like i because of lockdown reasons i've started eating pringles recently we had a tube at the back of the cupboard which was from a child's birthday party and i haven't had a pringle for about five years it's just not part of my repertoire and i couldn't believe how salty they are i don't

remember them being that salty they are intolerably salty to me yeah you can retrain your palate quite quickly i think just a few weeks to accept less salt and use other seasonings yeah like pepper or chili or other spices so while salt is essential you only need like teaspoon salt a day which is really not that much. Although some people actually can't train themselves. So apparently there is a subset of people who are the people that have a gene variant that boosts bitterness perception. Oh, interesting. That are the people that arguably possibly end up having heart attacks because they're not eating enough green veg.

So people that have had heart attacks that also have that gene variant they've been studied and it showed that that group are more than twice as likely to eat more than the recommended daily minimum amount of salt but they're no more likely to eat sugar or saturated fat or alcohol than everyone else so there does seem to be some common thing there that if you've got a low tolerance to green vegetables you'll also not notice how much salt you're putting in stuff right interesting another question of food on the phone line this is gail with a question from ripon in north yorkshire i'm wondering why british raisins are covered in oil. You look at the ingredients and they invariably have sunflower oil or palm oil. So they're 99% raisins and then 1% oil. Why is this? I come from California originally and in California, raisins don't have oil on them.

It's not loads of oil. No, you'd expect from her question, covered in oil, she said. Like you'd imagine barrels of raisins with like a layer of oil on, like at Borough Market olives. No, not like that. Hardly noticeable. It's just a coating to stop them sticking together in the packet and also to limit degradation so that mould doesn't

grow on them. Can't all live in California, Gail. It also may be that they are oily in California, but Gail didn't look there. Just when you're abroad, you're a lot more sensitive to other countries' things and thinking, is this different? But you never thought to look at home. Well, I think it is possible that in the production of some California raisins, they do use oil, but they don't write it on the packet. So it's such a small amount that I don't think it is possible that in the production of some California raisins, they do use oil, but they don't write it on the packet. So it's such a small amount that I don't think it qualifies. Or it may just be that food labelling laws are different here. And that maybe in California, you don't have to disclose a tiny amount of coating oil.

Well, also in traditional raisin production, if you've got a farm which is making other things, putting a light coating of oil on them, I presume, would make them less interesting to other animals on the farm when they're drying in the sun because otherwise they'd just get eaten wouldn't they if they were just out? Well I read the highlights of a 1970 paper about insect infestation on oiled and unoiled raisins.

Just the highlights? Why not the whole thesis? Yeah well I'll go back to it later as a treat. They packed some with and some without oil and exposed them to insects and both kinds became infested but after three months raisins that have been treated with oil contained half to two-thirds as many insects as the unoiled raisins and raisins with a double treatment of oil contained one-tenth as many insects wow that's great you've actually found something vaguely academic

that backs up a thing that I just had as a hunch. So hopefully that will be some comfort to Gail. 10% as much insect content. I'm an answer me this fan. I listen with my nan. She is not so keen. She finds it too obscene. I follow them on Twitter. Though Ashton Kutcher's fitter

I want to take things further, just one step short of murder I wanna look like Olly Mann, I wanna smell like Olly Mann I wanna be like Olly Mann, I wanna taste like Olly Mann I wanna look like Olly Mann. I want to be like all your men. I want to be like all your men. Here's a question from Neil from Chester, who says, Today I was successfully a victim to the 2006 craze of Rickrolling. Wow. Having clicked on a link in a work memo.

That is a retro prank. I am surprised people are still doing that. Did you get happy slapped as well, Neil? Oh, no. Neil says, this made me notice that on Rick Astley's official YouTube account, Never Gonna Give You Up has now amassed nearly 663 million views. Yeah, 685,773,021 on the day of recording. Wow, so many people have been Rickickrolled since he sent this in.

That's so upsetting. People often ask us, don't they, how long does it take between me sending the email to you answering it on the show? And the answer is 20 million rickrolls. What a way to measure time. Neil says, answer me this, taking into account YouTube's monetisation changes

over the last 15 years, how much has Rick made off the back of the surprise craze of Rickrolling? And is it likely to have eclipsed his earnings from his actual musical career? Okay, well, it will be unsurprising to you probably to know that, you know, information about exactly how much money he has made is not public domain information. However, the question of is it likely to have eclipsed his earnings from his musical career? That depends how you interpret that question. If you are including the indirect earnings that Rick Astley has made

as a result of the resurrection of this song. Well, like being on the nostalgia live gig circuit. Yeah. I mean, bear in mind, his career was over. He was retired in 2006. He's now a touring artist in usual times with a number one album in the last five years you know he's a big deal again that's all happened because of rickrolling it was on like the bloody bbc new year's coverage this year so like either the last song i heard in 2019 or the first song

i heard in 2020 was fucking never gonna give you up at least he knows he's got the hit though do you know what i mean like i admire the fact that he is putting out new music for people that are fans but also he would never not play that song. You know, he's not going to do a radio head. He's never going to give it up. Yeah. So, I mean, if you include all of that, you know, he's had radio shows, he's gone on tours, he's an artist again,

then obviously, yes, the profits of Rick Rowling have eclipsed his musical career. But, of course, that ties into his musical career. If you're looking, which I guess the question is really asking, at YouTube royalties, well, they are likely to be minimal, even on a massive hit like that, because he is neither the songwriter nor the publisher of that record. And music videos in general are called promos because they're promotional. The whole point of a music video is people don't really make money out of it being played. The idea is that you're selling the song and the album off

the back of the video. So the performance royalty from music video airings is infinitesimally small. But obviously this is the most viewed music video of all time. So it is worth looking at the numbers. The last time a journalist looked into it was after he got to 230 million hits. At that point, they calculated he'd made $12. What? But it is worth pointing out that that was before Vivo existed. So that was before Google had official channels which do give artists royalties. It was someone who had uploaded the video from which Rick Astley had been able to make $12. The main page that Neil is looking at, the one that he got Rick rolled to,

is the official Rick Astley page. He is going to be making some more artist royalty out of that than $12. But I mean, it's probably in the thousands per year. It's probably that kind of number. But then there's affiliated fees as well. So for example, you can buy a Never Gonna Give You Up t-shirt from that page. And obviously he's getting a huge cut of that so it's complicated right it's interesting isn't it how little money you make off youtube or spotify streams things like that yeah well i mean if he'd written the record and published the record it'd be a different story and in fact this was such a huge hit in the 80s that he said before in interviews he became a millionaire age 22 just off the back of having sang it even though he didn't write it or publish it you know stockhaken and waterman who famously

like the hit factory might as well have been called we fuck over our artists like the whole point was just like they're gonna they're gonna create a factory belt of stuff and it doesn't matter who's singing like famously he was the t-boy that was the whole point like he was just some guy but he still nonetheless became a millionaire off the back of this hit so i mean it is a solid gold massive song it's on the radio constantly still, isn't it? Is it? I suppose you have worked at Magic, so maybe. Well, I always found it very difficult on Magic, actually,

because with other artists, you could tease ahead. They call it hook and tease. So you're going into the commercial break, you want to give people a reason to keep listening. So you have to say a thing like, coming up, we'll play whatever quiz we're doing and I'll play one of Madonna's biggest hits from a number one movie from 1994. And then you'll think, oh, what movie did Madonna do a song for in 1994?

You can't tease up, never going to give you up. Because as soon as you say, I'll be playing Rick Astley, like, what the fuck else are you going to be playing? You're not going to be playing Angels on My Side, are you? It's got other singles. Just Angels on My Side. And you're not going to be playing it. That brings us to the end of this episode of Answer Me This,

but if you want to have a question answered in future episodes, then please send it by email or a voice memo attached to the email, or you can try our Skype or phone, but they're not that reliable. But anyway, all of our contact details are available on our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com You can also follow links there to follow us on social media and there will be some exciting Answer Me This news for you in the next week or two.

And follow us individually to hear our other work. Yeah, well, actually, I want to flag up a couple this month, but one isn't hosted by me and one is. The one that is hosted by me is The Modern Man, my monthly magazine show, because we've just done one of our annual How to Be a Dad episodes, which is when I chat to the comedians Tom Price and Stuart Goldsmith about parenthood, about all being dads. We've been doing one of those per year since 2015. So you can follow

our whole journey from being pre-dads to being now the fathers of four-year-olds in lockdown. And that's what we talk about in this episode. How do you explain the pandemic to a four-year-old what games can you play at home that kind of stuff uh so that is at modernmanwith2ends.co.uk um but if you enjoy hearing me talk to tom price on that episode i've just been a guest on his podcast uh which is called my mate bought a toaster which is uh where he interviews a guest based on their amazon purchase history uh so i'm proud to say that my episode of that is the longest one he's ever done. He's done 40 episodes. Mine is 57 minutes going through my Amazon history. It's partly because I joined Amazon in 2000.

So I had 20 years worth of purchases to look through. It's fun. You can find that wherever you get your podcast. Just search for My Mate Bought a Toaster. I was onart goldsmith's podcast since you mentioned him oh the comedian's comedian and my podcast the illusionist is coming back this month uh so find that at the illusionist.org and also veronica mars investigations is powering through season two of veronica mars a pace and uh you can find that at vmipod.com

and we did a special recapping the 1995 BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice, which is like getting the notes to pass your GCSEs without actually having read the book. You can listen to the podcast I make about Tom Waits. We talk about every Tom Waits song in chronological order, and that's called Song by Song. And also, if you like music,

I've just been releasing remastered versions of my old music, and you can hear all of those at palebird.bandcamp.com, or wherever you get music, Spotify, Apple Music, all of that stuff. Remember as well to subscribe to this show, Answer Me This, to get our retro episode in the middle of the month. Each month, we re-release, just for one month only, something from our archives. And if you would like to buy something from our archives, you can do that too at answermeliststore.com. And then return here for a fresh new episode

of Answer Me This on the first Thursday of next month. Bye!