Answer Me This! - AMT396: The Addams Family, Voodoo Dolls, and Snooping In The Bathroom Cabinet

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

In AMT396, questioneers are concerned about crabs eating their babies, The Addams Family, and whether their voodoo doll of their office nemesis worked out a little too well.  Find out more about this episode at . For more AMT stuff, head over to , where you can get our six special albums, AMT episodes 1-200, and our Best Of compilations. Send us your questions for future episodes: email written words or voice recordings to [e-mail]. Tweet us  Facebook 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 Four Thought at ; and Martin Austwick's music at  his Tom Waits podcast Song By Song at , and the music'n'science podcast Maddie's Sound Explorers, hosted by Maddie Moate, at . This episode is sponsored by: • The Great Courses Plus, the streaming library of courses on topics from piano to mystery-writing to formal logic to Italian. AMT listeners get a free fortnight 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

Has Adam Duritz finished counting all the crows? Has to be this, has to be this Did you know P.G. Woodhouse wrote Anything Goes? Has to be this, has to be this Heaven and glory, has to be this They all want me, they can't have me So they all come and dance beside me I think we can all admit to being a bit aroused now

The man-carena. In our conversation about the macarena last episode, we were commenting on the irony that the macarena is a comparatively unsexy dance, given that it was inspired by a flamenco dancer. Kevin from New Mexico has reached out to say, I want to point out that the flamenco is not a sexy dance. Flamenco is a rich and complex art form that includes music, singing, hand clapping, percussion, as well as dance. The principal expression is not sexiness, but rather grief, sorrow and defiance against an oppressive world. Otherwise, I enjoy your show from the high desert of New Mexico. Very beautiful place. I mean, can it not be sexy at the same time as prioritising all those other things?

I mean, I do know about the other things because I have read a whole book about flamenco. A whole book? So I get that it's meant to be more than just someone clapping in a dress that's got a lot of frills on it. We're just saying, on the matter of sexiness, flamenco is sexier than the Macarena. I mean, just because the principal expression, as Kevin puts it, may not be sexiness, I don't think that's a claim I was making. It doesn't sound like something I'd say.

My dance vocabulary is essentially limited to, you know, is this the bit we do the twirl? So I imagine that we're just making the point. Flamenco is sexy, and it's also about those things, I think. I'd say defiance is often sexy We've also heard from Jennifer about the conversation we had in episode 394

about things that get big cats high Jennifer says I have been most fortunate to work at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia This experience allowed me to learn all kinds of fascinating things about many types of creatures did you know ollie that lions love the smell of calvin klein obsession perfume i didn't because here they used kate moss in their adverts rather than tony the tiger that's because tony the tiger would have ripped kate moss to shreds the excitement of the

obsession although it's it's got to be obsession for men, apparently. I wonder how they found this out, like whether it was just a very unfortunate day when a keeper went in wearing obsession and got attacked by a lion. Now that is the commercial I want to see. I don't know. Shawn Mendes in a lion's cage. Shawn Mendes being killed by a horny lion.

Wow. I mean, it's not that surprising in a sense because obviously all perfumes trade on pheromones and wild sense of nature, as we've discussed before. And in Obsession for Men, it is a civetone, which used to be scraped from a civet's perineum. And a civet is a mammal that a mammal that lions naturally uh are interested in eating so right i mean it's now made in labs rather than being scraped next to an anus but it's

the same smell i'm sure i've said it before but i'll say it again who found out that things out of perineal glands and anal glands and whale stomachs smell good once you process them for perfume who was the first person to put that on their neck? I wonder whether people got sprayed, though, by those animals, you know, in a territorial way and then realised that it didn't smell unpleasant. I mean, that's not completely unbelievable, is it? Couple of millennia later, let's market this with Christy Turlington on a beach. Well, apparently, this is so well known,

this obsession for men attracting big cats thing that some wildlife photographers actually smear it all over their cameras um so that the cats come and get their five seconds of fame on telly they don't warn you not to wear obsession when you go to visit zoos do they i've never seen that no but i guess you're behind bars uh well obviously the the cat's technically behind bars but from the cat's point of view so i mean if they get close to you that's a good thing isn't it from a spectator's point of view and normally if they're allowed to get that close it's behind glass isn't it rather than bars even here's a question of source now from james in lincolnshire who says yeah not that kind of source uh and answer me this what is okay sauce often found on chinese takeaway

menus and why is it called okay sauce surely it can't be just because it has a mediocre taste my um very limited research he says suggests that it is not for example the initials of the creators of the sauce but i haven't been able to find a definitive answer at all what's the deal yeah i haven't uh found a definitive answer either just put that out there straight away i have seen some bullshit answers which are like oh it's called original ketchup that's what it stood for which um like og but for ketchup which i think is bullshit but also it wasn't the original ketchup because ketchup pre-existed that uh some say oriental ketchup which it's not it's it's british it's manufactured uh and always has been in

britain yeah i i understand that people do connect okay sauce with chinese takeaway but actually i don't really like i just think of okay sauce as an inferior hp i mean is that wrong they're both just brown sauces aren't they this is the thing apparently the brown sauce market used to be very regionalized in britain and then about 30 40 years ago hp kind of obliviated the competition i don't know whether that was just because of the spread of like national supermarket chains something like that but before that there were a lot of sauces that were kind of like this where it's got that kind of tangy fruity slightly sour taste yeah hp sauce got the tamarind okay sauce it was like raisins spices shallots why are you talking past tense well because even

though it's been around they think since the late 19th century it sort of stopped being sold in britain mainly and unilever bought it and manufactures it specifically for export to Asia. Right. And do they think of it as a British source then? Which is weird because we now think of it as a Chinese source because the Chinese like it. It's something quite a bit confusing, isn't it? So I don't know whether they think of it as a British source or maybe like they think of it in the same way that we think of like curry sauce you get in a chip shop. Yeah.

Where it's like inflected with curry sauce from, i'd say it's most like a chinese curry or a japanese curry sauce but it's probably not going to pass as one of those if you took it back to those countries yeah so maybe in china it's sold as an anglo-chinese thing you know in the same way that you can now get tikka masala in india and they think of it as a british thing yeah so i don't know whether it was like exported to Asia and then exported back effectively for the takeaways here, because it is in a lot of recipes, or whether it's just like, only the Chinese takeaways here are still buying it. I don't know. Okay. So that's what it is. And that's why the Chinese have it. But you can't work out why it's called okay. I imagine it's called okay, just because that's a phrase.

Yeah, exactly. And we covered this in early Answer Me This, and the book, that there was this trend for humorous misspellings. And this was a humorous misspelling for all correct, spelt with an O and a K. I think it was, even though it had been around since like first half of the 19th century in the US, I don't know how quickly that kind of slang would have come to Britain. So maybe it seemed like very new. It's trendy, isn't it? It's a bit like naming a source after a hashtag now, isn't it? I mean, you wouldn't do that because those things pass so quickly. But as you say, back then, maybe trends took 10 years to fade.

But also, I don't think OK was mediocre then. I think it was like, you know, sound. Yes, good. Yeah. Not fine. I'm not sure people think of OK magazine as mediocre. I mean, they should but i don't think they do you know it's as a brand it doesn't mean average does it kind of yeah like

you say it means like this is a reasonable product yeah this is this is positive yeah it's like fine used to mean good rather than just like well not terrible yeah also okay really fits very well on the label of a slender bottle it It really does. Like HP does. Yeah. And a sachet as well. Whereas, you know, Heinz tomato ketchup is a stretch, isn't it? You said Heinz. You've changed. I did. We bullied you into it. Oh, God, the guilt. It's like you and penguins. So if you want to get OK sauce and you're not in a Chinese takeaway, you now have to go on to Amazon to get it, basically. Do you? Because it's not in the supermarkets.

Do you have any products that you have to buy online that you're kind of, there are staples of your cupboard? Yeah, there's a vegan black pudding I really like. Oh, this is exactly the information I wanted. Go on. This would probably go great with the OK Sauce. The vegan black pudding is by the real Lancashire black pudding company. Free plug for them. £2.29 off lancastersmokehouse.co.uk.

Buy two, get one free. There we go. What is in it though? What's in vegan black pudding? Is it pulses or something? How do they... It's uncannily like black pudding. So it must be the blood of vegetables.

What about you? I do buy Amora Dijonais from the internet. Oh yeah. Have you ever had that? No, I don't think so. But I'm not really in the market for mayonnaise. Right well as you know I'm something of a connoisseur. I mean it's my number one or number two lubricant and it's made by Unilever so it's an absolutely mainstream product in France. Yeah. So like if you go to the, this is a problem isn't it? You try it

once and you're like oh god that's so much better than what we have so on holiday in france i just it was one euro for a pot in france i got this stuff and it as the name suggests is half dijon mustard half mayonnaise and you can get dijon is here i think helman's do one but it's not as good and you can't just add some dijon mustard to mayonnaise yourself yeah i've done that too but no because because it's a commercialized product it has how can i say like if i try and make it myself it's a bitized product, it has... How can I say? Like, if I try and make it myself, it's a bit too sophisticated. You know, if you want just the instant hit, vinegary hit, you know, the sort of kebab shop thing, it's a cheap sauce. If you want the cheap sauce taste,

the only way is to buy the Amora Dijonais for £7. That's what it costs here. That's the markup on it when you buy online. But I do spend about 40 quid a year on that and also um as you know i'm not a big fan of tea but i do like murrow's welsh brew oh yeah you do which is in the supermarkets in wales so again you try it in wales you think great can't get it in an english supermarket so i have to order that online too uh here's a question from julie who says i was talking to a friend who admitted that when she's in someone's house and she uses their bathroom, she will almost always open their medicine cabinet.

One good thing about lockdown is this not happening. She says, it's very interesting and you can learn a lot about a person. Yep, that's right. Accessing the medical records would do the same. This, of course, led to a discussion about whether this behaviour is an invasion of privacy, or if you invite someone into your home, should you assume that your bathroom is a semi-public space and be prepared for a guest to snoop around a little bit? If I invite someone into my home, should I assume that my armpit is a semi-public space and be prepared for my guest to snoop around in it a bit?

So, Helen, answer me this. Do you think it is okay to look around in someone else's bathroom cabinets? No, no, I don't like it. I wish you wouldn't. If you're like, well, they invite them into their house, I'm just going to go and look through their underwear drawer. You're just not expecting that when you're inviting someone around. It's interesting how people have such vastly different kind of moral spheres. I don't really think it's acceptable to have a shit in someone else's bathroom everyone looks through their cupboards yeah although sometimes you don't have a choice well the choice is to shit on their carpet or shit in the bathroom sometimes it's unavoidable but i mean i have been known in the right circumstances you know if there's a mcdonald's

next door to go do the shit in the mcdonald's like that's how much i think i just don't want to do that at someone's house i think the point is with house is that the things that are out are things that people are happy for you to look at and the things that put away yes it's not necessarily there is anything in there that's exciting it's just it's not fair game like your friend is saying i think the only exceptions are if i'm staying with someone and i need to find like where the next loo roll is then I might open their bathroom cupboard but that is it I'm not interested to I surprised myself actually I would have thought that I would be a super nosy person but I'm utterly uninterested in what people

haven't voluntarily told me and I don't know whether this because I would dread someone reading my diary if I kept one or rifling through my stuff or whether it's just like that's all the information I want really is how they filter it to me so even if you left your diary on the table in front of me I wouldn't feel like I wanted to open it yeah but don't you do that thing where you're in a supermarket and you're at the checkout and you look over and you're like why is he buying 10 loaves of bread everyone does that don't they no don't give a shit what about a kitchen Helen yeah again not looking in people's cupboards. But if you know, we've just had an interesting discussion about stuff we import.

What if you saw, you know, someone's spice drawer on display? Would you be? Would you check it out in the corner of your eye a bit? It's different, isn't it? If it's on the counter in labelled glass jars versus in a cupboard, like you do often have to go into someone's kitchen cupboards. I think there's gradations, aren't there, of privacy when you go to someone's house. You don't want to, like, oh, I wonder what's in their bathroom cabinet. Oh, their depression meds, great. Like, that's not the kind of thing they necessarily want to share with someone they've invited into their living room. It's like, oh, they're clearly on their period at the moment.

They haven't got very many tampons. Oh, they've got piles. These are bits of Through the Keyhole that I would like to see, to be fair. I just think unless someone has absolutely no signs of personality in their home, how much is it telling you that they have dental floss? Having said that, I find this whole idea odd of like poking around someone's bathrooms. I must say, when we got our bathroom done about three years ago, it was part of the tour. So that's, I know you're saying like, if you're displaying it, it's different.

But like we were encouraging people to poke around in our bathroom cupboard because it's got a touch sensor led built into it it's amazing it's a miracle how does it work it's got a built-in plug for your shaver oh my god i know wow that was very much part of the tour when we had that put in because we were excited about it you know maybe that's the secret then to have all the hidden stuff on displays so people are less tempted to poke around and then you've got a second bathroom cabinet behind the public bathroom cabinet the decoy cabinet yeah a little medicine safe so the other thing you could do is lace your bathroom cabinets with terrifying things for someone to find like joke severed fingers yeah and then what could they do about that like if they spotted

something sinister like is it reason i mean obviously if it's a dismembered head you they sort of have to report it like and their embarrassment that they were poking around in your cupboards is secondary yeah uh to uh the concurrent murder investigation you're saying what are you supposed to do about it that's on the person snooping you know that's what they've got to live with this knowledge they went after it and now they can't handle it if you've got a question 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 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 Duffy from Northwood, who says,

Ollie, answer me this. Are the Addams Family supernatural or just an eccentric and gothic-themed family? Hmm. This is actually a toughie because as the lyrics of the TV show famously tell us, they're creepy and they're kooky,

mysterious and spooky, they're altogether ooky and they're also neat, sweet, petite, strange and deranged, but they're not actually witches and vampires. Like, that is not specified.

Just got the look. But then you think, hold on, they have Thing in the house. Thing is a disembodied hand with the mind of its own, which I'd call pretty fucking supernatural. So which is it? If you're not a creature constructed in the style of Frankenstein's monster,

why would you have that look? Because Herman, is it Herman? You're thinking the monsters. Oh, wait, that's the monster. You're falling into a trap that I think reveals some of the answer before we fast forward to 1960s television uh when the monsters went up against the adam family in the ratings and are still confused now as martin has just evidenced let's go back to 1938 uh when the adams family were created by the cartoonist chas adams for the Yorker. For 26 years in The New Yorker,

the Adams family were just a single panel cartoon. They were very popular. Right. But they were archetypes. And the joke was basically, they're eccentric and they're morbid. They're what we'd now call gothy. Eccentric and they're morbid.

They're dirty and they're sordid. But they're not supernatural. Very clearly clearly if you look back at those cartoons from the new yorker they're not raising people from the dead they are a satire of the all-american family so the joke is like it's a single panel cartoon so the joke is just let's subvert the things we all see as the all-american family's behavior so like dad doing a bedtime story will be doing shadow puppets on the wall of bats. Or the little girl, and note that I'm not using the word Wednesday yet, the little girl will come out and say to the mother,

note that I'm not using the word Morticia yet, the little girl will come out clearly having had a fight with her little brother and the mother will turn around and say, well, go and poison him back. You know? So the joke is just like, what would the all-American family do?

Well, what if you were really seriously gothy and weird? It's a way of talking about people who aren't white picket fence America, isn't it? Although you've still got a family that is heterosexual, cisgender, they're rich enough to have staff. It's a tight-knit family, right? So it's not subverting the family unit. It's just like the things that they're rich enough to have staff it's a tight-knit family right so it's not subverting the

family unit it's just like the things that they're saying to parent are not considered anodyne and they didn't have names like they weren't called morticia and wednesday and fester they for 26 years didn't have names then uh the monsters gets commissioned and the monsters are supernatural because the monsters as well as doing the same joke let's satirize the all-american family are also parodying the universal monster films so the monsters are actually like filmed in black and white to look like the universal monster films parodies of frankenstein as he was in the Universal films, i.e. the monster is Frankenstein, Dracula, etc. So they are supernatural. And then the Addams Family comes out on telly in 1964, the same year.

And so the Addams Family TV show gives them all names, obviously, because it's a sitcom. So suddenly you get the names, you get more detail on the relationship, the characters are more fleshed out, and you get this confusion where even though the Addams family are just kind of kooky and the monsters are genuinely otherworldly, plot lines and motifs and the way they resonate in the public imagination get confused between the two. I mean, no wonder because they started airing like within days of each other. Yeah, I mean, it was a good idea. The fact we're still talking about in 2021 suggests that they had a good concept in 1964 for a TV other. Yeah. I mean, it was a good idea. The fact we're still talking about it in 2021 suggests that they had a good concept in 1964 for a TV sitcom.

Yeah, but to start within a week in September 1964, both of these shows started airing to be conflated in our minds. And they got cancelled in, I think, the same week as well, extraordinarily, a few years later. May the 12th, 1966 for the Munsters. Adam's family ended a little earlier, ended like a month earlier in 1966.

So they were always kind of seen by the public as the same thing. And in that sense, the Adam's Family TV show isn't really the Adam's Family panels. And in fact, the editor of the New Yorker, after all those years, stopped the Adam's Family cartoons from appearing in his magazine whilst the TV show was on because he saw the TV show as like the mainstreaming of this satirical idea and he didn't want the New Yorker to be associated with that

it sounds like a Gen X teen I love it mainstream man it's not what our publications about so is the TV series canon then well if I'm going to adjudicate on this, I would say it's reasonable now that there is some sense that the Addams Family might be supernatural because of the TV show, because of the film. So until the 90s, the Addams Family had largely been forgotten about. Everyone remembered the theme tune,

but it wasn't really running anywhere and the Munsters had won. The Munsters was the more popular rerun. But when they decided to make the movie, then the film there are events that happen in the film that although it's not explicit that they're supernatural you could only really survive them if you were some if you had some sort of contract with the devil basically when you're not going to die so the movie used so many motifs from the TV show and then became canon in the way that our generation thinks about the Addams Family

that I think now we can say that they're a bit supernatural, yes. And in fact, Scott Rudin, who was the producer of the movie, didn't have the rights to the TV show. He had the rights to the theme song, which he got MC Hammer to remix. The door with the baby, baby, baby. That's it. Baby.

Very good. And the original characters. but of course that got really complicated because the characters didn't have names so they used the names from the tv show they used a load of ideas from the tv show then they got sued once the film became a hit and they had to give a load of money to the guy who created the tv show shit uh and thing as a character is in the film and that clearly didn't exist in the comic so it was it was i mean they settled out of court but i mean i think they would have lost if they'd have claimed that you know that the ideas in the film came from the comic strip because they just clearly didn't well also things specifically wasn't a disembodied hand until the films but before that in the tv series

you only saw the hand because the idea was the creature was too monstrous to see all of. Yeah, and also it's expensive to do a disembodied hand in a black and white sitcom, isn't it? Well, I've never tried, but I assume. And in the TV show, it was played by the same person who played Lurch, the butler. Side fact that I found interesting, The Addams Family, 1992,

is the biggest selling pinball machine of all time. Really? Yeah, I've played it. I went to the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas for The Modern Man and I played most of the machines there. And it was my favourite, actually. I didn't realise it was the most popular of all time. But it's partly because of the technology in it.

Right. It has a thing that comes and collects the balls. So that's really cool. And it has dialogue from the film. I suppose it was released at exactly that kind of sweet spot where arcades were still a thing, so there was money to be made, so budget went into developing pinball machines. But there was still sort of a monoculture,

like the web hadn't come along and fragmented everything. So you could have a big blockbuster film reflected in a pinball machine. It was an event playing the pinball machine. It's basically the last and best of its era. So it is based on the film and not on the comic strip or the tv series it is yes clearly based on the film but it's got the music from the tv show because of course you can't i mean you can't now do any version of the adams family that doesn't start that was apparently the reason that scott rudin decided to resurrect the franchise as a movie was because he was driving around with

some mates and they started singing the adams family theme song 30 years after it last been on telly and everyone knew every word he's like that is impressive there's something powerful in this i could not hum the monsters theme tune to you i'm afraid even though i did watch it when i was a kid yeah i think that's right i have to take word it, Marty. It's coming back anyway in 2021. Adam's Family or Monsters? The Adam's Family, yes, on Netflix. There's going to be a new live-action TV series adaptation

directed by Tim Burton, really stretching his muscles from all those clichés we've said so many times. Because Tim Burton turned down filming the first Adam's Family film because he was busy filming Batman Returns. I mean, you would, wouldn't you? It's such

a lazy choice isn't it true i mean he's been mooted for director of every version of the adams family for the last 30 years but it's going to be following wednesday as a student so it's a kind of high school comedy as well as being about the house right and she's going to use her psychic ability so like i say a bit supernatural to solve mysteries in it. That doesn't seem like quite enough of a stretch compared to other things that have been on screen since, like other kind of supernatural teen things. It's the Addams Family though, isn't it? I mean, we're in a world where just the name,

like anything with a strong name, you could make and people will watch it because viewing figures are quite small for things compared to things that have no brand. And that's it, isn't it? It's just traction, I suppose. It can be anything. Why don't they do one where the monsters move in

next door to the Addams Family? Be like Alien versus Predator or when all the Marvel and the DC superheroes join up. Yeah, I mean, I'd watch the pilot. Just to see how they matched up the theme tunes. There was apparently an Addams Family musical on Broadway. What staggers me is it was the most performed high school musical in 2018 and i've literally never heard of it wow yeah came to

the uk once with les dennis in the cast that might be why i never made it to the west end is cousin it meant to be supernatural or just a weird just unshaved yeah don't know everyone's got a weird cousin yes i don't know after my commute when i find the time i can always send a question to the question line inquiries are wanted as a part of the plan a la helen or holly or martin a sound man Support for Answer Me This comes from The Great Courses Plus, to whom we offer our enthusiastic thanks. Great Courses Plus thanks. You can learn anything.

You can learn to speak a new language, how to play chess. What have you been doing, Helen? Well, I've been watching the new great courses plus course outsmart yourself brain-based strategies to a better you because i'd like to meet a better me i thought there was something about you today that was just somehow better like i was trying to i was trying to put my finger on i was like you're just indefinably just a better person today but i can't think what it is because you've done that leave me alone so far i've watched the part about procrastination which um i was having a particularly bad problem with the last few days although it is a constant

companion of mine yes she's your dark passenger there were some tips that i had meant to do anyway where it's like write down the tasks you've got to do but break it into small tasks each of which can be completed in a session yes but they suggested and this surprised me sit quietly and think about the task you have to do for 15 to 20 minutes what i mean i sometimes only have 15 minutes to do the task well i mean that's probably not the kind of task they're talking about then like if the task is you've got to go and like fill your car up with petrol just going to it but if it's like a big piece of work that you've got to do or something because usually procrastination isn't doing nothing it's like a big piece of work that you've got to do or something because usually

procrastination isn't doing nothing it's usually doing other things that engage you more than the thing you've got to do and it's avoidant so yes by spending the time not doing anything you're less likely to get into the avoidant activities and also you know you've had enough time to think about the task which reduces your anxiety about the task because you've kind of processed some of that already because uh procrastination a lot of that is anxiety if i do the task will i fail will i prove to myself that i'm bad i felt very seen right so it's turning procrastination into percolation isn't it it's like letting the idea drift around it's like sleeping on it but it whilst you're awake yes exactly and then i watched the module about multitasking but i was

also reading some of my open browser tabs at the time so i was like yes you need to study this more because you clearly have a problem people who have hundreds of open browser tabs have a problem with multitasking well actually one of the great things about the great courses plus is that it also has an app um which means that you can walk around with it on your phone you can listen to courses as well as watch them so if actually you are distracted visually by lots of things going on you don't have to sit and watch the video you can be doing other things whilst you're listening and sort of learn through osmosis as well when you want yes and right now you can get a free trial of unlimited access for which you can sign up today through our special url thegreatcoursesplus.com slash answer.

Don't wait. Don't procrastinate. Do it now. Redeem your free trial at thegreatcoursesplus.com slash answer. Hi, Helen. Hi, Ollie. Hi, Sam and Martin. I'm not going to give my name just in case the person I'm about to talk about also listens to your podcast. But I'm going to call her Big Deb. And Big Deb and I worked at the same office. And Big Deb was a very unique individual, very loud, very obnoxious, very opinionated, abrasive. She had a cackle that could just send a shiver down your spine. And I think she had a few personal hygiene problems as well. And just to avoid her,

I would start taking my lunch later and later and later. So she and I would not be in the single lunchroom at the same time. So I'd end up eating my lunch at three o'clock some days. But I also had a very good friend who had to work right beside Big Deb. And this friend was getting completely stressed out because it was a very toxic sort of atmosphere being around Big Deb. And the company we worked for was small, family run, very loyal. So no one ever got fired. I mean, you'd have to set, you know, a bomb off in the building or do something really drastic to get fired. So it seemed like Big Deb was there to stay. So just for fun and to cheer up my friend, and as a joke, I made a voodoo doll to represent Big Deb. And I took some white muslin and little tiny

letters that I put on a stamp pad and painstakingly stamped out all these words all over the body. Things like, you do it, I'm busy. That's not my job. I've got banked hours. I'm leaving early. No overtime for me. I love bejeweled that kind of thing because those were things that Big Deb would always say and then I cut the fingers off a small knitted glove and stuffed them

and put a little pink bead on the end for nipples and sewed on these enormous pendulous tits on this voodoo doll and put a few dressmaker pins in it and gave it to my friend to cheer her up. And we had a good laugh about it. And that was that. However, two weeks later to our surprise and complete shock, Big Deb got fired. She was brought into a meeting room. They closed the door.

We heard bellowing and And then she was gone. And that was it. But we were completely shocked that this had happened. So needless to say, I've had a bit of a niggling guilt going on. And I need some help with this issue. So Helen and Ollie, answer me this. Do voodoo dolls really work and if in fact they do does big deb's firing from her job does the responsibility of that now fall upon my shoulders amazing

honestly it is not often that we get a call that's more than one minute long and our hearts are filled with delight when we press play this is this is the exception that we get a call that's more than one minute long and our hearts are filled with delight when we press play. This is the exception that proves the rule. What a masterpiece. Incredible delivery. Just kept on giving. There's a lot to unpick. I have this image of this doll as like the Venus of Willendorf,

like one of these prehistoric icons of womanhood. Now with the pendulous tips with the pink nipples. I guess we should probably just tackle the question head on because the question is straightforward in a way do voodoo dolls work yes or no is there scientific study is there any evidence to suggest that they do it's complicated because voodoo dolls well firstly they're not actually to do with voodoo dolls, well, firstly, they're not actually to do with voodoo, the Haitian religion, the diaspora religion. There's a lot of religions going back millennia that use effigies. And a lot of them are supposed to be positive effigies.

They're meant to be for protection. They're meant to be for health. They're meant to try to make sure a society doesn't starve or die of illnesses. But of course, some are used for curses. But the most similar thing seems to be these objects in the Central Africa region, like Hongo, called Enkisi, which are... They don't have to be dolls. It's just that the physical object is like the vessel for the meaning that you need.

So it could be a shell or something, but they are often in bodily forms. And these ones tend to have like a little kind of window in the belly where they have packed medicine, although that's sort of a term for like significant objects, and then they'll seal that in with glass. It's like the worst Build-A-Bear ever. But these things are only meaningful because you make them meaningful and then they wake up the spirits in them when they need something by poking a nail

into them so they're not to harm that which the effigy is of it's not that they really wanted to kill someone when you see one of these dolls with loads of nails in it it's just they really needed that thing to do the things that or you know or to represent the things that they had invested in it it's not targeted on other people is it by the sound of it right the thing is because all of these objects are attached to a belief system i don't think you can just kind of come in with no belief system yes and expect them to work i know that that is often how it works in a horror film where someone will like find a mysterious amulet and suddenly like they're a witch from like some kind of ancient witch culture yeah right but it becomes something else doesn't

it it's a bit like when people try and borrow principles of buddhism isn't it and turn it into kind of positive thinking and you know meditation mindfulness exactly which is its own thing but it's not buddhism so i guess that's the thing isn't it a voodoo doll does it cease to be a voodoo doll when it's separated from its meaning right so what is your belief system around this doll and if you hadn't made the doll but big deb had still been fired would you then have thought well i had all these bad thoughts about big deb did i manifest this right it's your guilt exactly because you hated big deb for a long time anyway right exactly you were putting a lot of negative energy into big deb and actually you've you've managed quite cleverly actually to almost circumnavigate your own responsibility by creating

the beauty doll it's just that it's backfired on you the doll has become the object of your guilt because you made your guilt into a physical object i mean i guess what you didn't do or at least you haven't told us about it if you did is confront big deb and make big deb feel bad i think if i was big deb and i found this doll with the pendulous tits, I would feel terrible and I would remember it for the rest of my life. Something for the bathroom cabinet if you want to piss off your friends. But presuming Big Deb didn't, this was a way of you and your friend managing your stress and constant aggravation. And also because you can't really tell someone, especially someone who you think is never going to be let go by the company, so you're going to be trapped with them in a working environment for perhaps decades.

You can't really ever tell someone, look, we find you loud and obnoxious and you smell. I mean, those are things that you can't really change, really. So, I mean, you can ask someone to tone it down in specific instances, if it's been particularly annoying and singing or something. But I mean, there are just some people who just rub you up the wrong way. And then you're trapped with them in a workplace. We haven't heard what they did to this voodoo doll, whether they actually stuck it with pins.

The correspondent wrote a lot of things on it. Yeah, but those are just things that the person said. That wasn't like to cause the person or the doll harm. That was just to identify the doll as being related to Big Deb. In the sort of popular Western understanding of a voodoo doll, typically it's shown as like if you stab a pin into someone's leg they get a leg pain if you stab it into their torso they get like a bad liver or whatever so it's a very specific linking of like the physical object and the ailment yeah

it's basically acupuncture with malice isn't it so how would you manifest someone losing their job on a voodoo doll like how would you represent that i mean stuff it with a p45 you've got the creativity to actually with the voodoo doll get that person fired i'm impressed you could test it by making a voodoo doll of yourself and like sticking a pin in the knee and seeing if you get a bad knee or rubbing the knee and see if you get a better knee if you've already got a bad knee since a lot of them are supposed to be used for healing why do people making voodoo dolls never do control experiments yes it's interesting i mean martin

what you're outlining there and you are accurately kind of describing how voodoo dolls are portrayed in hollywood films is that the hollywood representation of voodoo dolls is essentially sort of a vehicle for racism isn't it like it's a way of of having a baddie of color who's doing an evil thing because you tie it into a religion or tradition that only came from native peoples or from african countries it's not how it works it's a misunderstanding isn't it or deliberate misunderstanding maybe because there was quite the trend in mid-20th century hollywood horror films for voodoo dolls you know having all these powers the u.s government did issue a public health warming in 1958 saying that these dolls could be lethal but it is coincidence isn't it like if big deb had remained you wouldn't think the voodoo doll

worked maybe someone else at the company complained about big deb to management or maybe management were like you know what big deb's not working out maybe because it's a small company you don't actually see that many people uh leaving so it seems like an anomaly but maybe it's a small company, you don't actually see that many people leaving. So it seems like an anomaly. But maybe it's just, you know, the rate of people being fired from a company reflected in a small company. The act of making the doll, although it was obviously therapeutic for our caller, was probably misplaced. And that's why she feels guilty about it now. Yes. As you said, she hadn't really thought through how that person might feel if ever they saw it. But also, it's just, it's one thing when you're sitting around having a drink to laugh at the person's expense when

they're not in earshot about all the things you hate about them but to actually spend the time to create an object that represents those feelings feels like you're crossing a line yeah but i can see why you would do it like you say early like if you were like well this is someone that until i leave this company i'm going to be sat next to like my whole working life a day we do get so many questions about annoying co-workers and annoying neighbors and annoying housemates i think it's just other people are annoying in large doses yeah hell is other people therefore we resort to some not very nice behaviors to channel our stress but hopefully not to make that other person feel bad directly but then we have the guilt the thing is it doesn't have to be someone who's got you know an entirely horrendous personality all the time it can just be a little thing about someone that

when you're stuck with them in an environment you you find irritating on a daily basis oh imagine that that you then amplify i used to work with a guy who's just the thing that really just annoyed me and looking back on it now i think god he was 40 and he was unhappy with his life that's what this was the thing that annoyed me was i just started with my first job in telly and i was so excited to be there you can imagine and he was just really miserable that's the thing that annoyed me about him but it's just like he sucked the energy out the room and I had to sit opposite him. And I just used to think, why are you here? Like you obviously are hating this, but you're making everyone else feel bad all day long because you're unhappy.

That's depression. I worked for like two weeks with someone who used to sing Bad Day by Daniel Powder a lot. And I remember that like 15 years later just two weeks with this person in the 90s I hired a 12 person web team to build and run my websites and I realized my tech dream then the dot-com bubble burst and I had to drown them in a stream why didn't I just sack them?

but now thanks to Squarespace you can do it alone and build a lovely website for tablet or smartphone enjoy it now cause in 10 years you'll be replaced by a drone just like terminator 3 thanks b2 squarespace for sponsoring this episode of answer me this and for making it so easy to build and run a website yes actually the running the website bit is something that we don't talk about very much. Yeah. Everyone's just about, how do I start things? Not how do you maintain it year on year on year.

That's right. But that's the thing. We've had a Squarespace website for many years. AnswerMeThis store.com is where we sell our archive. And you can see that it's beautifully designed using Squarespace. But there are loads of features like under the hood that if you want to, you can add on. So for example, you can do now really quite sophisticated email campaigns from right within your Squarespace dashboard. Because once you've got everything, all your templates stored in Squarespace, they can automatically generate emails that use your website title and logo at the top. You can drag elements from your website,

showcases of your products and galleries and stuff like that so instead of spending like hours re-uploading all the photos it's just a case of using the same elements again in a in an email that is just as pretty basically as the website is this is useful because i have a mailing list for the illusionist which i've used precisely once because it did take me all day to format it and if i can just port over stuff that i've already formatted game changer jobs are good and try it for yourself you can get a two-week free trial at squarespace.com answer and then when you're ready to sign up you can get a 10 discount off your first purchase of a website or domain if you use our code answer

here's a question from live who says I just saw a video of a red crab feasting on the newly hatched babies she's just laid. Helen, answer me this. Why do animals do this? Eat their young, having just spent so much energy creating them? Well, having spent so much energy is part of it. They don't do this unless they're really, really hungry.

Studies have shown that they basically have to starve the mother crab for her to eat the babies and even then like the likelihood isn't increased as much as you would think you know if it's a choice of like dying and not being able to take care of any of the young and them die then they'll eat a couple of the young see i hadn't realized that it was to do with their own survival i guess i thought in as much as i've thought about this at all i thought that it was the darwinian thing of survival of the fittest in terms of killing off the kids that aren't going to make it yeah they're not going to make it so i might as well eat them as opposed to i need to eat something for my own survival so i'll eat the

weakest yeah i definitely think that's it as well that um if you have young that are not going to make it i think also they're more likely to eat larvae than when the crabs have developed like crunchy shell yeah well it's tastier isn't it you have to boil a crab really to make it taste nice i don't know i mean a soft shell i'd imagine when they're babies they're a little easier nicer at the caviar stage though i should think some things in wildlife documentaries you watch them you think oh this must happen all the time but it's like on the documentary because it's unusual yes i think this video is like viral because it is unusual i've definitely sometimes seen in nature documentaries it presented as it's all instinct, this birthing thing,

and they haven't thought this bit through. They're just hungry. Some crabs are eaten by their young. So there's that, like some of them will give up their own bodies for the sake of their young. I was reading about why cats eat their kittens because that seems to be like a lot more documented. And some of that is like,

if there's a kitten that's been still born or is born disabled the cat will eat those kittens to protect them from predators i suppose it's like if they're going to die anyway i'd rather they lived on inside me and also i got the energy of their kitten flesh yeah still grim though isn't it it is really grim and also just um if the cat needs nutrients in order to feed the rest of the young then they might eat like one or two kittens but also cats um are highly susceptible to stress and anxiety apparently particularly after just having given birth so say if there's a lot of noise or like too many people in the vicinity that may make the cat like very nervous and defensive and and think these kittens are being exposed to predators

and i need to protect them by eating them okay it's fascinating isn't it i mean i guess a lot of our queasiness comes from anthropomorphizing animals which is something that you know over the course of this show we've proved time and time again you should probably try and avoid doing because they're not humans yeah but it's just hard you know with creatures that you relate to it's different with a crab isn't it with a cat it just so underlines the fact that they're from a completely different kingdom to us well i suppose we think differently about mammals versus um uh creatures that lay eggs like crabs might be like oh they've had like 300 babies in this litter rather than like you know ones that have already got faces when they're born and

don't have to hatch here's a question from darren from ashville north carolina who says the other night i was half watching an old war movie i was mostly texting with friends so i wasn't totally paying attention uh but when one of the paratroopers jumped out of a plane it sounded like he said geronimo yes probably did so helen answer me this did people used to say Geronimo when jumping out of a plane? And if so, why? Yes, they did. It was a practice that allegedly started up with American military in 1940. There's a couple of explanations. One of them is that they had this platoon that was testing out parachutes and they were very nervous about it because it was a new thing to do for them. Yeah, I'm going to generally be quite nervous if parachute tester was my job description so allegedly the night before they went out on the piss and they went to the cinema and saw a western film featuring uh geronimo the native american leader depicted in it there's a film called

geronimo that it could well have been right and so one of them was like tomorrow when i jump out the plane i'm going to shout geronimo uh to sort of like pluck up courage basically or the other explanation is there was a popular song at the time called Geronimo that the troops loved and they agreed to shout it however it started it definitely caught on as a practice a bit when people were jumping out of planes Gerononimo was a very major Native American leader of the Apaches. He spent the last 23 years of his life as a prisoner of war. And I was a little confused as to why he would be associated with jumping or falling. There was a bluff in Oklahoma where he was kept captive as a prisoner of war and where he's buried.

It's a steep cliff and it's known as Geronimo's Bluff. And there's this story that one day he was being pursued by the army and leapt off the bluff on horseback. And everyone was like, shit, Geronimo made that jump that everyone else would be killed doing. And that while he was doing it, he shouted his own name. Which is where I think, did he though right was he doing that so the army knew who like had just dicked them around but was that sequence depicted in the film geronimo because then the innocent explanation that they went to see that film you know even though it's not exactly a nice thing to

make a joke about yeah works doesn't it the film is about trying to capture him and i haven't seen it so i don't know all of the things that happen in it but like all these things most people who shout it now like you know if you're jumping off a cliff um you know on holiday into a ravine if i am yeah yeah yeah sure well i've done that on a stag do for example i had no idea that jeronimo was a native american leader i had no idea where that came from it's just a thing people say isn't it here's a question from satwant who says, search engines like Ecosia say that you can search the web to plant trees. Airlines ask you to pay an extra pound or dollar when booking a ticket to plant trees to offset carbon. Ollie, answer me this. Do all of these trees really get

planted? If so, where are they on Google Maps? The difference between vast swathes of deforested land being reforested slowly is not going to necessarily be visible by satellite on google maps anyway but yes is the answer you can actually see photos of uh like barren areas of burkina faso for example which are now really verdant and there are before and after photos and those are the photos that ecosia and the other tree planting organizations say they have contributed to. In the case of Ecosia, the search engine, so the idea is every time you search, they take the advertising money that's through ad display, and even more if you were to click on an ad that Google takes as profit, they take and reinvest into tree planting. So

that's the concept. But they're not a public company. So although they are a provably philanthropic enterprise, and the money goes to a a trust you can't scrutinize their accounts you have to take their word for it but they've been going since 2009 and they are said to make over a million euros per month and that doesn't appear to be going anywhere other than planting trees so yeah they claim to have planted more than 100 million of them it's a useful app it's a useful browser i use it yeah i'd love to use it but the problem is because I kind of am a professional Googler in a sense. I feel like I need it to truly be as good as Google. And it isn't quite because it's built on Bing, isn't it?

So it's fine. But if I was using it all the time, I'd feel like I'd have to cross-reference everything with Google, which seems like making more work for myself. But with that whole thing where you add a pound to your flight booking. Yes. It's going to take a lot more pounds to plant enough trees to offset the carbon of a flight. Yeah, that's right.

So, for example, a 12,400 mile round trip, which would be something like Edinburgh to Phuket, would require the planting of 19 trees to be fully offset. That's not that many. Well, it depends. I mean, each tree costs, let's say, a tenner. So that's £190. It's not a many. Well, it depends. I mean, each tree costs, let's say, a tenner. So that's £190. It's not a dollar, is it?

So you'd be better off probably if you were really serious. I mean, there's the whole question about whether offsetting works at all. We'll get onto that in a minute. But if you were really serious about offsetting the carbon that your flight had generated, then you'd probably be better off giving $20 yourself to a tree planting charity than $1 to an airline who are doing it for public relations. And even from the airline's point of view, they'd probably be better off investing in greener planes. Because the whole calculation doesn't actually take account of what flight

you're taking. If the plane's 50 years old, it's a different calculation to a new plane. Well, also, there's all the crap that's on the plane. So some airline companies have made the decision not to use single-use plastics anymore. So it's all like compostable forks, whereas some of them produce just a hell of a lot of landfill just with the shit on the plane. The plastic on the plane, at least, is made at ground level before it's taken up into the air. Because the other thing about planes is they don't just emit carbon. They spew out a load of toxic shit, not just carbon. And they're spewing it out into the atmosphere at height.

Which again, can that ever really be reciprocated by planting a tree down on Earth? I mean, probably not. Plant some trees 30,000 feet up in the air. Exactly. Obvious. Some scientists reckon you'd have to plant 1.5 trillion trees to offset the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution began. The problem is you can't remove all the carbon that's the industrial revolution began the problem is you

can't remove all the carbon that's in the atmosphere now and store it yeah all of the carbon that's previously been released it goes some way but it will never solve it but but that's not to say that this is i mean it is pr bullshit for the airline companies but at least it's better than a kick in the tits like i mean it's not it's not sure is it it's it's not nothing it's just that it's not the solution the solution is not to take the flight at all it's a bit like i used to feel like this when i um worked at itv daytime and i used to have to try and hawk the calendar that we used to do with like oh it's dr chris steel surrounded by snakes it was sold to the audience as like a fun charity calendar but it cost something like

10 pounds and of that something like 50p went to charity yeah and i always just used to feel uneasy about the way we marketed it as a charity calendar because although it's true that by selling that calendar itv probably gave like 100 grand to charity if they took all the money that people had given them and all the money it cost to do the photo shoot and just gave it to charity they'd be giving millions yeah so it was just like i just felt really uncomfortable about it i'm often suspicious about that where they're like 10 pence from the purchase of this 20 pound bracelet goes to yeah that's not enough well you still think that's nice like that's a nice thing for an owner of a company to do with their private money it's nice washing though exactly nice washing

do it but don't tell me about it just do just let's just assume that everyone who's making ridiculous amounts of money might give some away to philanthropic causes but don't make it the reason to buy that thing or maybe give some of that money towards a government as a proportion of your income or profit that would be another way to do it i don't know if it's going to catch on indeed well here we are now at the end of this episode of answer me this but to make next month's episode of answer me this we need your questions in the form of text or voice that you email us and our email address is on our website answer me this podcast.com also on the website you can find links to follow us on facebook and twitter and to the answer me this store where you can buy our first 200 episodes,

although they have temporarily disappeared from iTunes. I know, I'm aware of it. We're trying to deal with that. But anyway, you can buy them from our website regardless, and we'd rather you bought them from us direct rather than give Apple a cut for doing fuck all. And you can buy our six exclusive albums of enjoyable content there too.

And we also make other audio content. Ollie, what's happening this month in the extended manverse? Yes, I do five podcasts. You can discover them all at ollieman.com. And in the current edition of The Modern Man, which is my magazine show, the episode is called Mr. and Mrs. and Mrs. because in it I meet a throuple, two ladies and a man who met online for a threesome initially, just a sex thing, and then developed that relationship beyond the bedroom into an actual committed relationship. So two of them are now married to each other, but if they could legally three-way marry each other, they would. And it's an open relationship, and they have just signed the deeds on a house

together. There's a lot of logistics, which is just fascinating to hear about. So you can find that at modernmanwith2ends.co.uk. Helen, what's in the Zalt's verse of podcasts? Well, I appeared on someone else's podcast recently, Anthems, which is a very good podcast. It's like short essays by different people each day. And they asked me to choose a word, and I chose the word tourist. So if you search the Anthems feed, you can hear what I have to say about that.

And also on The Illusionist, there is a story about how to do protest through cake. Excellent. Apart from just throwing it at people, right? In design. Oh, no, no. It's you eat it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You throw it down your gullet into your stomach. And Martin, last night I watched Tom Waits in a film and I didn't realize it was Tom Waits until the the end and that's the second time that that's happened he's so chameleonic which film was it seven psychopaths bram stoker's dracula it was bram stoker's dracula yes it was oh you watched bram stoker's lives for the master i did i really enjoyed it but it's i sort of underestimated the extent to which it is essentially a comedy. But, you know, if you see it as basically carry on Dracula, then it's quite a laugh. Anyway.

So I do a Tom Waits podcast. I was on it critiquing Bram Stoker's Dracula featuring Tom Waits. I must go back and listen to that. A lot of people love it. Lucky you, if you do. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't love it. It's three stars, but I'm just saying i enjoyed it for itself you know

i was watching it at midnight after a few glasses of wine the visual design is really cool yeah like it looks amazing because they did lots and lots of stuff with practical effects and obviously like cgi was at the point where it would have looked really really shit at that point yeah people insult keanu reeves's performance in that but i think to pick on keanu reeves in that film is rude i disagree i think he's definitely the worst thing in it. Wow. Gary Oldman's butt hair would like a word. It's called Song by Song, the podcast,

and you can find it at songbysongpodcast.com. I don't know whether that answers me, this listeners know, but I actually write a lot of music for podcasts and there's a podcast of some pod friends of ours, Charles Adrian and Lisa Finlay, called Rom-Com Rewrite, that I just wrote a theme song for.

It's a really fun show where they talk about rom-coms and sort of like rebuild them and talk about how you'd make them better if they're bad and even better if they're already good. In the meantime, stay subscribed to Answer Me This to get a retro episode from The Vaults dropped into your feed halfway through the month in which our current selves look back with fear and pity on our previous incarnations and we will be back next month with a fresh answer

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