Answer Me This! - AMT397: Meerkats, Albatrosses, and Dog Mayors

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

In AMT397, questioneers want to know when meerkats got so popular, why you'd wear an albatross around your neck, what you do when your friends think you're a pennypincher, and whether Mary Shelley had sex on her mother's grave. Find out more about this episode at . For more AMT stuff, head over to answermethisstore.com, 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 . Tweet us @, and follow us on Facebook . Hear our other work: Olly Mann has a new podcast, the Retrospectors, which you can find along with his other shows at ollymann.com; Helen Zaltzman makes the podcasts The Allusionist - theallusionist.org - and Veronica Mars Investigations VMIpod.com; and Martin Austwick's music is available at palebirdmusic.com, his Tom Waits podcast Song By Song at songbysongpodcast.com, 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

Where are the roller coasters at Nomadland? Hustle it is, hustle it is Just how well do you know the back of your hand? Hustle it is, hustle it is Heaven and lonely, hustle it is Excited to announce that Ollyman has some thrilling news! Yeah, well exciting news for you if you like listening to Ollyman. If you don't, this isn't exciting news. It's just news. Well, it's if you like listening to ollie man if you don't this isn't

exciting news it's just news well it's news you want to avoid that's all news for me if you um feel like you're not getting enough of me by having a monthly slash fortnightly version of me on this show there is now a daily version of me you can put in your ears every day daily dose of ollie man imagine waking up to these pipes every day it's called the retrospectors and it's a kind of on this day in history idea so um it is a history show but it's kind of a history show for people who don't like history like it's not going to be uh you know this is the day hitler became chancellor we're not doing that you're just picking the fun bits like when they invented sherbet dib dabs exactly picking

the fun bits is right so we're doing you know this is the day cats opened in the west end that's the show ollie man's version of history the real important stuff exactly so if on this show uh you are a fan of the sort of quirky stuff i like to dig up you know the invention of glow sticks for example or um how children's shoe shops used to have x-ray machines in them then this is the kind of show for you so every day 10 minutes you can fit it into your daily routine on your 10 minute commute from your kitchen to your home office uh we discuss a kind of quirky moment a curious moment from history that happened to happen on that day although i must say uh it's not particularly topical so if you don't listen to it on the day it came out that's fine just binge uh it works pretty well, I think, that way too.

So it's sort of like one of those tear-off desk calendars where it's got an interesting fact for each day to brighten your time. Yeah, and an interesting, you know, adjacent fact and an adjacent fact to that. I mean, part of the joy of podcasting, as we know, is going down little Wikipedia holes. So, I mean, we often start with a fact that seems like the fact we're going to be discussing, like the first ever Grammy Awards. And within a few minutes, we ended up discussing which came first, Alvin and the Chipmunks

or Chip and Dale, the Disney Chipmunks. Whoa! Anyway, it's really fun. And events we have coming up on the show include the last ever witch trial in America, which was in 1878, amazingly. I'm sort of surprised it wasn't in the 20th century. We talk about the launch of hitachi's magic wand which most people think of as a vibrator these days but genuinely appeared to be created as a personal massager that's a vibrator ollie

yes i suppose it is um and much else besides you can find that at the retrospectors type the retrospectors into the very app that you're listening to this podcast on now and you'll find it. And click follow or subscribe or whatever. And if you don't remember the name of the show, just go to ollyman.com and I'll put a link up there as well. It is a proper like trivia bomb. It's a fact blast. It's 10 minutes where you learn a lot. Did you consider calling it Fact Blast? We considered calling it virtually everything you could imagine, but like every name to do with anything to do with this day in history on this day you know blast from the past all of the obvious ones they've not only have they gone but there's like 10 podcasts

called that did you consider mansplain with a double n i feel like this is genuinely like an entertainment show if you're a fan of you know no such thing as a fish or how stuff works or this show then this is a show for you so that is the retrospectors the latest addition to the man repertoire of podcasts for your daily pleasure get it now for your daily pleasure ribbed for your pleasure here's a question from robin who says i must qualify my question by stating that i'm a bit of an old fart i'm in my late 60s and have been listening to your podcast since about episode 10. Wow. Thank you, Robin.

I mean, I'd go as far to say you weren't an old fart, Robin, when you started listening. You've been listening since episode 10. That's, what, 2007. So you'd have been mid-50s. So, you know, mid-life fart then. I would argue that people in their 60s are not old farts. I think old fart is more of a state of mind than age. I agree that robin says i'm just watching a tv program about meerkats and something is puzzling me that i hope you can answer as a kid i liked animal programs zoo time

with johnny morris being one that springs to mind however i have no recollection at all of meerkats appearing until my own kids were watching animal programs in the 1980s. Yeah, Johnny Morris didn't have a funny voice for meerkats. That's why he could only do lions. So, Ollie, answer me this. Were meerkats invented in the 80s? Or did they used to be called something else? Or did they get signed up to a good agent in the 80s, getting them more airtime? It's true. I also don't recall seeing meerkats at the zoo when i was a kid in the 80s yeah what were the popular things then penguins penguins were definitely high up the list yeah i mean obviously the big cats are the big attraction at a zoo but not really for a kid it's the

interesting thing that's like my my son harvey's now five meerkats are his favorite and he's never disappointed because they're always there we went to drayton manor last weekend as soon as you enter the zoo you see the meerkat enclosure is that do you think because of fucking compare them meerkat which i think has been around for about 12 years now well obviously it's tempting to point the finger at uh sergey and alexander and their uh pr overlords certainly give the finger to the pr overlords of an insurance uh website I object to like advertising things becoming beloved. The Compare the Meerkat campaign was born primarily of the unpopularity of meerkats online. Or at least compared to car insurance comparison keywords.

Oh, Jesus Christ. I mean, like virtually every animal is like not relevant to car insurance, unless it's like running over cats what happened is the marketing agency noticed that the search word optimization price for compare was 12 pounds per click whereas meerkat they could get for five pence per click so that whole campaign i mean that's why it worked is they threw loads of money at it because that's the money they would have thrown at just trying to monetize the word compare and they instead created a market around meerkat it was pretty clever stuff uh but yeah no meerkat it was pretty clever stuff but yeah no meerkats were already growing in popularity before that yes well robin is right about the 80s because in 1987 david attenborough presented wildlife on one on the bbc and

apparently that program meant the british public was suddenly much more aware of meerkats i haven't seen it presumably there was some gorgeous meerkat shots with a thoughtful raspy voiceover. And then a few years later, he did a follow up meerkats divided, which must have been capitalising on the fact that he had stoked all this meerkat interest. Well, I think part of it once people get to grips with how meerkats work, that makes them popular is because we were talking last episode, weren't we about how there's a danger of anthropomorphising too much with certain species. In terms of meerkats, they really do have social structures, don't they, that are similar or at least relatable to the way that humans behave. Yeah, they're communal. But you can monitor their behaviour, you can see why they're

angry with each other, you can see when they're working as a team, you can see why they're hiding from each other. It's not always so obvious watching other animals. Do you think they were also popular because there's a meerkat in The Lion King, which came out in 1994, why they're hiding from each other. It's not always so obvious watching other animals. Do you think they were also popular because there's a meerkat in The Lion King, which came out in 1994, but then not all animals from The Lion King became popular, like warthogs didn't become a kid's favourite, did they? Hold on. Are you saying that the animal that isn't Timun or Pumbaa, I forget which, is a meerkat? Timun is a meerkat. I have not actually seen it. I mean, I literally saw it yesterday. And he doesn't really read as a meerkat.

That's interesting. You know, you think about how vividly drawn all of those animals are, like the opening sequence famously of The Lion King and how they capture all the essences of all those African animals. Actually, funny. Maybe because Tibum and Pumbaa are just like a unit and you see them as like a funny vaudeville act. You don't really notice that they're animals at all.

He's a wisecracking meerkat. Circa the period that I was working at this morning at ITV, I know that meerkats were already something of a big deal. 2005, 2006. Yeah, I don't know if I've told this story on the show before, but there was a, like, I think it was a Nat Geo program called Meerkat Manor, or it was on Discovery or one of those animal channels on Sky, Animal Planet, whatever. And it was surprisingly popular.

It was the one animal documentary that when it was on would beat Channel 5 in the ratings, for example. Wow. Yeah. September 2005 was the premiere of Meerkat Manor. There we go. Thank you, Alexa. So yeah, when I was working at this morning, it was my job to produce an item about Meerkat Manor. I can't remember who we had on the show, the director or something like that. But also along with the job of producing the item was i had to script the pre-roll gag so people forget this but uh with the comic chops of philip and fern as it was back then one of the things that we used to do on this morning to keep people tuned in uh after jeremy kyle is we'd have a little kind of comedy gag before the show started

before the titles kicked in is this why you made us do those in the first 70 episode of answer me this and i really hated them i know helen i know how to produce a show luckily most listeners uh came in after that but robin will remember so there you are so as well as co-scripting shit jokes for my own podcast i was co-scripting shit jokes for icv so like if you produce the item you had to write the pre-roll gag that was how it worked so like i had the meerkat thing and i needed to think of a joke to do with philip and fern about meerkat so what we did was it was a sketch where philip and fern were sitting down on set fern was reading a copy of broadcast that's a way of implying to the audience something about insider stuff or tv ratings yeah i wonder like how much the trademark of the broadcast industry really reads to the

daytime itv viewer you make a valid point but nonetheless it's it's still comedy shorthand i think and she looked up and she said god this meerkat manor program's doing well before you know it they'll be asking us to have meerkats on this show next and then you go back to the wide angle and philip scofield has turned into a meerkat that's the joke as if the intervention of the producers has decided that she'd be better with a meerkat co-host anyway that was considered good enough to put to air um so we had to film it and i got a meerkat costume i can't remember from where and then the day came and of course there isn't anyone on the staff to play a meerkat that's not a job oh so it fell to muggins here

so wow you managed to get a meerkat costume at short notice that fits a six foot three person that's impressive but the problem with me wearing the meerkat costume is that i was then legitimately wearing a meerkat costume about an hour before we went to air because we pre-recorded that sketch at about 9 30 show started Show started at 10.30. And from memory, the first guest was Andrew Lincoln, the actor. Egg. Yeah. And I had to go and brief him, like tell him what was coming up on the show. You know, are we going to be asking him about that difficult time in his life when XYZ?

I was still wearing the meerkat costume because I didn't have time to change. And I do remember him looking at me as if to say, dude, you could have come in three minutes later not wearing a meerkat costume. You're obviously trying to grab a load of attention here. This is not appropriate. Do you think he wondered if he was having a hallucination? Were you wearing the head?

I wasn't. No, I was carrying the head next to me. Should I have changed? But I was really sweaty. Like being under hot lights wearing a meerkat costume is sweaty. I didn't want to go in there covered in sweat either. Right, right right i was just kind of grateful that it wasn't like an item about orphans in rwanda or something that at least it was a showbiz item that i then had to prep dressed as a meerkat you could have put a jacket on over the meerkat costume formalize it that's a

great outfit yeah probably more warm but you're already very warm uh here's a question from kaylee in winnipeg canada uh who says a few times i've heard ollie mentioned the phrase an albatross around your neck don't know if i was referring to myself at the time uh well from context i imagine this must mean an obvious burden helen answer me this where did this extremely strange phrase originate well it comes from the rhyme of the ancient mariner which is a poem by samuel taylor coleridge about well it's an ancient mariner telling the story of how he kills an albatross even though it is thought on his ship to be very unlucky to kill an albatross because albatrosses are lucky they are the sail sailor's friend. Although in truth, sailors did eat them.

The sailor's friend, like fisherman's friend in that sense that you eat a fisherman's friend. Oh, good point, Martin. You don't have to shoot one though. And it is a bit unlucky to eat a fisherman's friend. I can vouch. Unless you've got a very heavy cold, in which case they're great. But if you have any taste sensation remaining, I would say stick clear. That's all they should have done actually as a COVID test, isn't it?

It could have saved loads of money. S a fisherman's friend can you taste it then you haven't got covid not scientifically accurate everybody just saying and the sailor and his ship are punished for killing the albatross because the ship is just stuck on the ocean which is very calm so it's not moving anywhere they run out of water drink. There's another famous phrase in the poem, water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. And the other sailors blame him for killing the albatross and force him to wear the dead albatross around his neck as punishment, which I would have thought is a punishment for everyone

because that would stink. But I thought he'd eaten it. How could he wear it around his neck if he's eaten it? He didn't eat it, he just killed it. The poem starts at a wedding and the ancient mariner is this old boat dude who goes sidling up to a wedding guest to tell him his story and the wedding guest is just like god i'm i'm wedding i'm trying to be entertained here i don't want to hear bullshit

about boats the wedding guest reminds me of you helen in the original text the mariner gets as far as there was a ship and then the wedding guest interrupts nay if thou's got a last some tale mariner come with me wow it's the wedding guest interrupts nay if thou's got a last some tale mariner come with me wow it's the wedding guest like i've got to go to the bar exactly and he's even harsher in the later edition uh the mariner says there was a ship and the guest says hold off unhand me gray beard loon ah that's my display name it's a good put down helen for you to remember next time someone starts telling you about their yacht. Unhand me, grey beard loon. Anyway, then the mariner's punishment is to watch all of the other crew die.

And somehow he lives on. He lives on long enough to tell people at a wedding about how he killed an albatross. And that was a real fucking mistake. He's now forced to wander the earth telling the story of the dead albatross as a warning not to kill albatrosses themselves. But that's not really a burden is it i mean of course it is having a burden having a big fucking bird around your neck it's a burden for everyone else listening to the fucking story the wedding guest apparently the next morning was

a sadder and wiser man that's a hangover isn't it yeah exactly but it's funny isn't it it's come to mean burden but actually it's it's a bit more complex than that because it's kind of punishment isn't it like yeah it's like retribution right because millstone around your neck would be a burden albatross around your neck is like cosmic revenge for something you did you've deserved this burden this burden is owed to you now you wait 14 years for a question about the romantic poets and then two come along at once here's one from jemma says, I recently came across the information that Mary Shelley lost her virginity on her mother's grave. It was a graveyard smash. Oh, if this is true, how did that come about?

And who with her future hubby, Percy Bysshe Shelley? Where is this sexy grave? Ollie, answer me this. Is Mary Shelley a Randy Mare who lost her cherry on her mother's grave? I'm not qualified to say, but I can confirm that it seems undisputed that Mary Shelley did lose her virginity. And yes, it was to Percy Price Shelley on her mother's grave,

or at least in the cemetery where her mother was buried. And they used to meet at her grave. Yeah, which is in St. Pancras in London. Yeah. But I believe Mary Wollstonecraft has been disinterred since and moved to Bournemouth. But the grave is still there, it's just empty. So if you're feeling horny... Yeah, you don't have to worry about what Mary thinks.

Oi, keep the noise down! But I think there are a few important qualifying statements here, so that we kind of understand the context. So he was married... Yes, to another 16 year old. Which was normal at the time. I guess. And he was only 21. Yeah. So they had to meet somewhere that was secret. And she, as an unengaged female, couldn't really go about meeting men, particularly married men. So she needed a reasonable cover story about where she was going. Cemeteries were kind of public spaces then. They didn't have many public parks, as we've talked about before. They were landscapes. They were beautiful compared to a lot of the developing,

encroaching city. And so it was a normal thing to go for a walk through a cemetery. That wasn't weird, especially when so many families have been so blighted by death. You'd have six siblings and four of them would die or whatever. That was was pretty normal so it wasn't unusual at the weekend to take a walk through the cemetery and it was a place they could meet without anyone questioning either of them why they were going there if they found out well she went there all the time because her father had a sort of non-macabre attitude towards death and because her mother died when she was 10 days old and she never knew her this was her place to commune with her mother she would go and read her mother's books there and her father was like this is how you have intimacy with dead people you go and spend time

with their graves he taught her to read by tracing the letters on her mother's grave because her mother's also called mary and it was the church where her parents had got married four months before she was born so it was a meaningful place to her where she went regularly. Also, it's not surprising that she's a bit of a live one because not only did she do things that we know still, invent sci-fi with Frankenstein, but also, as you say, she was the daughter of celebrity liberals. William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft,

that's like being the daughter of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. So that'd almost like be an expectation that you'd be open to the natural world, you wouldn't be ashamed of your sexual urges, you know, you would have a different attitude to inherited wealth to everyone around you. So that all of that kind of comes into it as well. Also, her parents were not into marriage, as evidenced by the fact they married just four months before their child was born. I think probably because it was such a tremendous amount of hassle to have a child out of wedlock then. But I think they had fairly progressive attitudes to sexuality.

Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley had a lot of extracurricular relationships. I mean, he was also sexing with Mary Shelley's sister, which is maybe keeping it a little close to home. It's worth mentioning that William Godwin did disown Mary Shelley for having it off with Percy. So eventually, I think he came around after like 10 years. Well, after Percy was dead. Yeah, despite the fact that he'd written books about the institution of marriage being outdated and all the things he said. Actually actually she was right to be cautious about telling her father that she was having an affair with a married man because he did not like it when it happened did you ever hang out

in a cemetery uh i seem to recall eating a kfc bucket in a graveyard at some point in my teenage years i don't remember what i was doing there or how i got there that's the saddest thing i've ever heard it was a tribute to the fallen it's the the circle of life. Yeah I think if I were to have a grave which is not my posthumous wish I wouldn't mind people eating a KFC bucket on it. Maybe I'd put a nice seat on it instead of a gravestone or a sex couch for teens. I got celeb spotted at my own father's funeral whoa that's not a good time it doesn't happen ever so it was really weird that i mean it happens if i'm in a place where i know that there's lots of podcasts but if i'm at a podcast festival that happens or possibly glastonbury or

something but it doesn't happen generally what happened i don't remember that in jewish cemeteries it's very much in and out because you've got to be buried quickly yeah Yeah. You know, some days if there's been a lot of deaths, they have, you know, you get a 25 minute slot and then the next guys are in and they're waiting outside to come in when you're on the way out to the plot. Um, and so,

you know, there's a little queue outside the chapel and, um, a mourner coming out of the session just ahead of me, spotted me and said, I know you. Oh, no.

I knew straight away from the way he was saying it that he didn't know me and what he meant was he knew me from watching me do paper reviews on lorraine or whatever i was like oh yes hello he goes i listen to you on lbc i was like oh thank you he goes what are you in for oh and i was like well that that would be my father's death he died three days ago how did he respond to that i think he would have just said i wish you long life that would be the knee-jerk jewish reaction that's the thing you say to someone who's just been bereaved but i mean the face said oh have i just put my foot in it yes actually you know he hadn't he wasn't to know you were at a cemetery though exactly striking up

a jolly conversation at a funeral is something you should approach with caution i suppose that's the point yeah at least it stopped me from having to engage on, what do you think about that Nigel Farage then, eh? We didn't get that far. 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 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 Rihanna and Owen, who say, Ollie, answer me this, which actor has played the most US presidents on film and TV? The actor has to play different characters, not simply the same president in multiple episodes or films,

but they have to have played a mix of fictional and real presidents. A cursory Google didn't help much much and in our desperation to get an answer without any of the hard work of actual research we are turning to you that is what we have built this empire upon yeah people being too lazy to google but not too lazy to email yeah this was 40 minutes of my evening the other night i'm never going to get it back so let me tell you what i've learned very excited the easy fact to find if you were to have just Googled it, which is always square one, even for us. We're only human. The actor with the most presidential feature film roles.

So the technical answer to the question, who's played the president the most, is a guy called Sidney Blackmer. And that is because he played Roosevelt in six different films from 1937 to 1948. They weren't sequels. They weren't made necessarily by the same people he was just like oh you need a roosevelt i know a guy so it's like if you need a blair you get michael sheen yeah so so that's sort of the technical answer the usual question who's played the u.s president the most but um owen and rihanna's stipulations do kind of make this more complex and interesting so if they hadn't specified specified that they're looking for the person who's played a mix of fictional and real presidents, but had stuck to stipulating that they played a variety of characters, i.e. who has played the most fictional presidents, then I would have plumped for Ronnie Cox,

who played President Tom Kimble in Captain America, the President in Martians Go Home, President Jack Neill in Murder at 1600, and President Simmons in Nadia's Promise. All fictional presidents. Wow. I find that interesting, by the way, that the one in Martians Go Home is only credited as the president.

It's interesting in how many IMDb entries the role is just called the president if it's a fictional president. That doesn't surprise me because they can just say Mr. President. Yeah. Or Madam President if they're being radical, which they rarely are. I wonder if any of the presidents had doctorates or they doctor presidents. Yeah. That's a different question. Carry on. And it would be, I guess, in some of those films, maybe even just like a behind the

shoulder shot of someone answering the phone saying, yeah, Newcombe. You know what I mean? It wouldn't be, there wouldn't be a scene. In terms of playing multiple real presidents, there aren't so many. And I suppose that's because obviously you've got to look like the guy you're playing. And it is obviously always a guy. So the most honourable mentions there would be John Voight,

who's played Roosevelt and Washington. And the most lauded would be Anthony Hopkins because he got Oscar nominations for playing both Adams in Amistad and Nixon in Nixon. Wow. But since they have stipulated a mix of fictional and real, the most famous contender might be Nick Nolte, because he's done real in Jefferson in Paris and fictional in Graves.

But in terms of quantity, I'm going for... Are you still listening, chaps? Yeah. There was a lot of qualification. Riveted. It's actually a semi-famous actor, though. Beau Bridges. Right.

Beau Bridges has played three fictional presidents. President Paul Hollister in 10.5, President Hank Landry in Stargate SG-1, and President Ralph Warner in Homeland. But he has also played Richard Nixon in Kissinger and Nixon. Oh, okay. So there you are. He's done only one real president.

As I say, it's rare to play more than one real president. Yeah. But his three fictional presidents gives us a tally of four, which is nearly as many as the five that Ronnie Cox has played. And he gets a bonus point too, as far as I'm concerned, because his dad, Lloyd Bridges, played the president in Hot Shots Part Deux. Drain the swamp.

And his brother, Jeff Bridges, got Oscar nominated for playing a fictional president in The Contender. So the Bridges are like the Kennedys of presidential acting families. But none of those films are particularly great, are they? That's the intriguing thing. I guess the people who do... I mean, probably Anthony Hopkins' ones are the best. But even then, Nixon and Amistad are a bit dry.

I haven't seen... How's Frost Nixon? Frost Nixon's great. Although it very much feels like a play that's been turned into a film. Which it is. But I think Frank Langella might be one of the best real president performances that I've seen. Daniel Day-Lewis is obviously amazing in Lincoln, but the film is dry as fuck is it yeah i was just thinking about the gregory it's in who plays president logan in 24 who's like the corrupt president not dennis haze but

the good president but um he looks a lot like nixon and presumably if he's going to play any presidents it's going to be the nixon or fictionalized n. Like, so maybe that's the thing as well. Like you can't play that many real presidents because if you physically resemble one, don't physically resemble the other ones. Well, the good thing about playing Nixon is that if you develop your jowls, then you can also do Churchill, can't you?

I think John Lithgow might have possibly done both. We have a question now that is linked in the sense that it's sort of about politics yay it's from dd who says i've seen many occasions especially in the usa in which animals have been appointed mayors running unopposed yes loads loads not just as mayors either in 2015 a crawfish ran for president although you have to be over 35 to run for president and i don't know how long crawfishes live so ellen answer me this have there been any instances of animals defeating someone electorally i first found out about

these thanks to my veronica mars investigations co-host jen Jenny Owen-Youngs who told me about the current dog mayor of Idlewild, California, Max II, who is a golden retriever. He took office at 11 weeks old after Max I died. Two of the deputy mayors are related to Max II, so dodgy, isn't it? And he's mayor for life, which a lot of them are. You think, well, that's a bit corrupt, but obviously dogs' lives tend to be shorter than human mayor's lives. So he hasn't actually defeated anyone. He's inherited his title. Yeah. Coronation. Yeah, which is worrying.

I do think at least golden retrievers have a good temperament for this kind of office. But the question was, has an animal ever defeated someone? You said a crayfish ran for president. When's an example of an animal defeating someone in victory? In 1938. A time when nothing of significance was happening in the world. You might as well run an animal. A brown mule named Boston Curtis was elected committee man for the city of Milton in Washington. It was running for the Republicans, but it was a jape by the Democrat mayor of the time, Kenneth Simmons, who wanted to prove the point that voters didn't know or care who they were voting for.

Ah, so it's satire. Yeah. Boston Curtis didn't do any campaigning. He didn't have any public platforms and the Republicans didn't give a shit. They were like, yeah, sure, I'll vote for a Republican without even thinking, is the Republican human? What does the Republican stand for? So yeah, that is an instance of an animal beating a human. I don't know how it went. I think if we're honest, we've all thought about that. Like, I mean, as it happens, the day this episode is being released is the day of local elections across the UK.

I believe really it's important to go and exercise my democratic right. But sometimes where I live, there is not a candidate who I particularly like or who particularly represents my feelings on an issue. And I don't want to spoil the ballot paper. So I do. I mean, that's the point of the party system, isn't it? You do just in the end, just click for the party that you like the most

out of the ones that are on there if you haven't done your research. Would you vote for a cat if there was a cat as your protest vote? Well, that's my point. I wouldn't necessarily know that it was a cat, because all that it gives you is the postal address of where they live. It doesn't mention species. Often the animal elections are because the office of mayor is not super important in

that location, and they're doing it as a fundraiser. Right. So it's a charity thing. The town of Rabbit Hash in Kentucky has a mayor called Wilbur, who is a French bulldog. Also in line to play Nixon. They have never had a human mayor, but they started having mayors in 1998 in order to fundraise. And in 2020, they had the election on the same day as the presidential election. They raised $22,985. same day as the presidential election they raised 22 985 and anyone from around the world can cast a vote in the rabbit hash elections as long as you pay a dollar see knowing that there's a fundraising component that makes a difference because i've always wondered when i've seen these things it's

kind of a funny you know viral moment to share on the internet isn't it but i've always just thought for the people that live in that town for those poor fuckers that live in the town like it's almost like kind of putting on your road sign as you drive into the town isn't it uh you don't have to be mad to live here but it helps you know we're all a bit crazy and i was used to think well yeah but people actually do live there you know and they're going to need public services and their kids will have special needs and they'll get disabilities and they'll need to park somewhere and uh you know your fucking hedgehog mayor will not know what to do in that situation yeah but i mean a lot of these towns are really really small it's not like the mayor of san francisco is likely to be canine yeah these are like a few hundred people i mean london didn't

fucking have a mayor until pretty recently no and that's a very large place but once you've carved out a budget and you've said i mean london is a good example you know this is going to be i think the third or fourth largest position of state in this country in terms of budget at that point it's inappropriate to run an animal surely so i guess it's just how much power these animals have um i wonder if anyone's ever had some real purse strings to pull also wil, Wilbur didn't run unopposed. There were 16 people running for mayor. Well, not people, dogs. Mostly dogs, but also a donkey, a rooster and a cat.

I wonder what those pre-election debates look like. Probably very cute. I mean, I must say, if I was opening a supermarket or, you know, putting an extension wing on my museum, I would be more happy to have a golden retriever turn up wearing a mayor's outfit than a mayor. I'd have to entertain with a three-course meal and pretend it was important. Yeah, you'd have to have a conversation with them rather than them just going, maybe throw a ball for them symbolically. Because the only point is to get a picture in the local press. Well, the picture's better with a

golden retriever. And then to be able to put a plaque saying this was opened by the mayor of such and such, which you would still be able to use. So yeah, might as well be a dog. There's a town called lajitas in texas which has had animal mares ever since 1986 when a goat called clay henry beat the human incumbent mare and also a wooden sculpture of a native american and a dog called buster the goat won by a landslide sounds like quite quite a tightly contested election. Well, it's now a dynasty because six years later, Clay Henry was succeeded by Clay Henry Jr. And then Clay Henry Jr. was headbutted to death by Clay Henry III, who is still alive and still mayor. The first Clay Henry

was a real boozer and the public used to be allowed to feed him beers and he would sometimes drink 35 bottles of beer a day. Oh, my God. It sounds more like the medieval Kings of England than the presidency, actually. But it's not all animals, either. In 1967, apparently, a foot deodorant powder won a mayoral election in Ecuador. What?

I suppose the other point to an international audience is to say, look, this really is a democracy. We can run anything we can do, you know, we have freedom to take the piss out of this. And if people vote for it, that's what they get. Like, so you can satirize kind of the weaknesses of the system. But you're also saying to people, look, in this country, we're allowed to have a sense of humor about democracy democracy because it's so embedded and it really is free look I suppose that's part of it although that's not at all true about American high politics is it it's kind of true about British politics and that you can stand a

candidate but a national election you would never have a chance in America of getting a sausage into congress would you I was very excited that count bin face recently followed me on twitter wow the count bin face actual count bin face well you can't tell who's behind the bin I'm excited that Count Binface recently followed me on Twitter. Wow, the Count Binface? Actual Count Binface. Well, you can't tell who's behind the bin. I'm an influencer, you want to be who I am. You envy everything on my Instagram, but it's all stock photos. My life's a total sham.

I can't even do yoga. But I'm a real health expert. I use Squarespace. All my photos and advice are all in the one place. And I built a store so you can buy into my taste. Eight dollar smoothies. Thanks very much to Squarespace for sponsoring Answer Me This and for making it so easy for you to set up and run a website for your campaign to get your goldfish to be mayor. Martin, I've actually found an ideal Squarespace website for you. Okay. Eggshopnyc.com

Oh. They are an egg-based restaurant. I looked at their menu to see what kind of eggs you can get, and obviously you've got your Benedicts or whatever. But they've divided the menu into three parts, sandwich, burrito, or cruiser. What's a cruiser? That's a really good question.

There's this amazing carousel at the top of all of their food. It looks really enticing. It's porn for you, isn't it? I told you, yeah. Is there a contact page so you can send them a form asking what an egg cruiser is? Anyway, the templates on squarespace are so good it is like having your own web designer on your team but you don't have to pay them for their time no if you've already spent all your budget on the egg designer yeah yeah uh try it for yourself by going to squarespace.com

answer and take out a two-week free trial so you can play around with your gallery of eggs and when you're ready to sign up you can a 10% discount off your first purchase of a website or domain if you use our code ANSWER. Here's a question from Darren in Toronto. Darren says, for most of my life, I have been told that I'm stingy when it comes to chipping in money for dinners or a round of pints or joint gifts for family and friends. I will admit, as someone who never had a lot of money growing up, and into my poor student years, I was a penny pincher. That's a great phrase. I love penny pincher as a phrase. It's so kind of Victorian, isn't it, somehow?

And when I would put up the money for something shared, I would often hound the other participants for their share. However, I have, for the last five years or so, really tried to erase my reputation of being a cheapskate. I will always pay for a shared meal up front. I will generously tip. I will always get the first round in. And when an expense for something that is not paid up front by me, I will pay my share within minutes of the purchase.

The opposite of a penny pincher. He's a dollar spreader. It's not as good. It's not as good, is it? Now that I am in a position to pay my way, I genuinely like to go above and beyond when I can. All right, Darren, we get it. If we went for a meal, you'd pay. Fine. Often letting money that is owed to me by friends in lesser situations slide. But I still get cracks and jokes from my friends about how tight I am

with money. I try to shrug it off, but to be honest, it's really starting to get to me and make me feel hurt. So Ollie answered me this. how can I get my friends to stop treating me like I am some miser? Oh, I feel your pain, Darren. Exactly. If you just said to them what you've just written to us, they'd probably stop. If you said, I'm actually quite hurt by this because I'm trying really hard and I used to have no money and I used to be a poor student and now I'm not and I'm trying really hard, they'd probably stop. But more broadly than that, I'm trying really hard and I used to have no money and I used to be a poor student and now I'm not and I'm trying really hard they probably stop but more broadly than that I'm curious how long you've known these friends right it does seem like friends you've had since childhood you're more likely to have a friendship based on jokes of cruelty that's right and actually that's

not necessarily in itself a problem if everyone's on the same page so you know whilst they're calling you a penny pincher what are you calling them like if you have a mutually reciprocal relationship based on roughly the sort of in jokes that you had when you were 15 i think that can work even if you're not happy with the one that's been assigned to you i think the problem can be when you know they're still slagging you off for that you've changed yeah and you feel like you're not being equally labeling of them as uh humor goes i think a lot of people feel kind of trapped in a past version of themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When the friendships don't evolve with you as individuals.

But that's almost inevitable if you don't spend much time with each other. Yeah. You know, if there was a time in your life where you were intensely always around each other, that's your collected experience, isn't it? It's just unfortunate in this case that Darren's kind of embarrassed about it. But there's no reason to be embarrassed about the fact you were poor Darren no I suppose it's just if you felt that you were sort of needlessly penny pinching that you might now feel a bit ashamed correct me if I'm wrong Martin but I sort of see some of this in Martin's behavior where

when he was a student which was for a long time because he did a PhD he didn't have a lot of spare cash yeah and when he did have an income when he started his career then he would be a lot more generous as a sort of like balancing thing even though I don't think you owed anyone anything Martin it took me some time to adjust as well like just to realize that you know you've got money so like even for a while after I was working I was still very very careful about money i think it's pretty frustrating if people are still treating you that way that must be quite annoying if you're like well i've really made an effort here even if you feel like you're being doubly shamed for like basically being poor and then being shamed for not being generous when you are being generous

that you know maybe just stop paying for things and buy their own fucking drinks that's true if you're never going to combat the stereotype just run with it or just be generous to the people who don't do that right yeah don't go out for dinner with your friends that treat you mean we'll do that go out for dinner with them sure but don't buy them dinner use it yeah absolutely that's a good point pick over the bill because in a sense their perception would only be changed if you sort of suddenly gave away 95 of your income to a stranger you know there's there's no way of overcoming what they think. Probably still take the piss. The only thing is that we don't have any evidence

except for what Darren has told us in this email. So there's just the possibility, but please forgive me, Darren, because I don't know, that when you say, I will generously tip, I've been with people who think they're being generous when they're in a tipping culture that is like 15% to 20% and they tip 5%. They don't get why that's a problem. Which I'm not saying that to you, but if that is you, it could be that your version of generosity is different to other people's. But then when you talk about like the process of paying your fair share upfront,

you know, letting other people's stuff slide, that is really frustrating. The thing that I do when I go out with the same people, I'm talking pre-coronavirus, obviously that hasn't happened for two years now. But when I go out with the same people regularly, I buy one meal, they buy the next, and we don't actually talk about how much it costs. I mean, so long as one isn't in Burger King and the next one's in the Ivy, then it doesn't really matter. Because one of us is paying for the experience, the other one's company and and some entertainment you haven't got this issue about splitting then are you talking about when you go out with one person because i think if it's a group that gets really complicated and also really expensive i think it's fine if it's the same group but yes i suppose i'm talking about

up to three or four people that are always the same it does get complicated otherwise you could say i think we should do this thing where i pay this time you pay next time here's me paying for the whole thing by the way it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable when you say yeah but if he's trying to prove a point that just they'll be like well that doesn't compensate Darren for that meal you didn't pay for in 1996 I wonder whether post-covid I mean this all seems like a distant prospect at the moment because I can't remember when I last went out for a meal with other people right but I wonder whether post-covid like dining practices will be different last went out for a meal with other people. Right. But I wonder whether post-COVID, like, dining practices will be different. I wonder if, for a new generation, like, the stuff about it seeming anal to chase up particular amounts of money

just won't be penny-pinching because it'll all be done through technology. So, like, if an app just tells you that what you owe is £21.66 and you're splitting it across a digital currency, it's actually... Well, there are those apps for splitting. I know. So that's what I mean. So like the Darrens of the future probably won't have to worry about this. It'll all be sorted out. Well, also this summer,

I can imagine a lot of socialising will take place in like public outside space where you all bring your own picnic and you don't have to struggle over bills. You know, there might as well be some positives out of COVID, Darren. And I hope one of these will be yours. Hello, I'm Wilson. and I hope one of these will be yours. Hello.

I'm Wilson, the ball from Castaway, and here is my song about my favourite balls. Football, rugby ball, volleyball ball, tennis ball, zoe ball basketball netball handball debutante ball bowling ball baseball big sweaty ball answer me this sports day a marathon of fun and games out now at answer me this podcast.com slash albums thanks to the great courses plus for sponsoring this episode of answer me this and providing everybody who subscribes to their excellent service with a world of knowledge i've been

watching cooking across the ages oh yeah which is so much fun it's taught by a guy who is professor of history at a californian university but instead of filming the whole thing in an academic style, he's filmed it in his kitchen. Oh, cool. And it's not like a Nigella Perfect kitchen where it's not really his kitchen. This is definitely his kitchen because there's like bits of sauce everywhere. And it's all kind of ad-libbed culinary history. So he's read his stuff. He's written loads of books about culinary history.

But what he does is he makes food. So he does pasta from Renaissance Italy. He does spices from medieval France. And the episode I was watching last night is America's Can Opener Cookbook, in which he revisits the Can Opener Cookbook from 1951 by Poppy Cannon and recreates some of her food. So there's like a tinned meat jambalaya and a frozen sherbet cocktail the one that made me want to barf was a canapé which is tinned crab cream of mushroom soup grated cheese and melba

toast it's the combination of the tin crab and the cream of mushroom soup i think which would be uncomfortably close to the texture of vomit yeah it's also just like the idea that you might take a quite upmarket ingredient albeit in a say, you know what would make crab taste better? Tin soup. It's just weird, isn't it? No, Campbell's cream and mushroom soup. People are always putting it in stuff. Pies, casseroles.

I wouldn't put it in a pie, but with crab. What he talks about, which I found interesting, was that there just wasn't a stigma on canned food in the 50s. No. It must have been pretty exciting to be able to get some things that would not go off for years. Yes. It was trendy. It was the convenience of being able to prepare really quickly yeah that seemed modern

and progressive it's not like now where people are like oh you've made a microwave meal why didn't you cook it from fresh well also now you have fridge freezers domestically which in the 50s was not guaranteed are you not tempted to try any of these dishes well no because he wasn't that's the weirdest thing about it because that's the things of underlines that it is very much a lecture rather than a cookery program is he makes all the dishes but then there isn't the shot at the end where he goes delicious it's too risky the history of cooking and cookbooks is such an insight into social history i mean he'd say this wouldn't he because he specializes in this subject But he says the best way to understand a culture is to look at their cookbooks. You understand so much more about what

people did in their downtime and what people did when they wanted to impress people than you can from other historical accounts. Yeah. And what was aspirational at the time. And I guess you can literally then make it and taste what they would have tasted, you know, which is part of the thing, isn't it? With historical experiences, people always want to recreate the smells and the sights you can't really do it but you can with food yeah but just also remember in the 50s people smoked a lot so maybe that dulled their taste buds enough to make some of those recipes uh tolerable anyway you can try the course yourself and many many others so many by getting a free trial at thegreatcoursesplus.com

slash answer and answer me this listeners will also get 20% off annual membership at thegreatcoursesplus.com slash answer. Hello, Lyndon from Huddersfield again after all these years. Helen, Ollie, answer me this. How long are you supposed to keep your coffee in the cafeteria? Because some people tell me two minutes,

some people tell me ten minutes. I'm like, I don't really know. I mean, I personally go for about the length of a song on the radio. Three and a half minutes. Yep, yep. obviously that doesn't work if they're happening to play hotel california at the time or anything by jim simon but just the solo american pie as a general layman's rule i find like if the radio's on i wait till the song's finished then the coffee will be ready but if you look at pro websites or coffee manufacturers the website for example they do tend to recommend

three to four minutes so yeah my man in the street version which i originated myself is is pretty solid i think what i find a bit frustrating is that they recommend always they recommend the water to be hot but not boiling right i'm just like who lives in that world like it's like with the hot water bottles isn't it i'm put boiling water in here like what else am i going to put in here let's be honest mushroom soup yeah going to put in here? Let's be honest. Mushroom soup. Yeah, exactly. Good specific heat capacity. Who boils a kettle, then lets it cool for a bit

before they put it in their French press? Well... Oh, no, I do. So tea's the opposite, right? For black tea, you have to... Tea's got to be boiling. Yeah, you want the water... You literally want it to go click,

and then you're immediately pouring it into the cup or into the pot. Your glasses are steaming up, or it's not good enough. Whereas with a coffee pot, you can boil the kettle. If you're making your coffee and you haven't quite finished it when the kettle boils, you can wait 30 seconds, a minute, and then pour the water in it and that's fine.

By all means. Be laissez-faire. Take a relaxed attitude. Play it easy. That's fine. That's why people drink coffee right to chill out. Yeah. You can get those kettles that boil to different temperatures.

Well, not boil, obviously, unless it's 100 degrees, but they'll do 80 degrees. So maybe that's what they're talking about. Well, it's a thermodynamic unless it's 100 degrees, but they'll do 80 degrees. So maybe that's what they're talking about. Well, it's a thermodynamic spread, so some of the water will be at 100 degrees. It's not like every single molecule is at 85 degrees. But I've found that teas where they're like, put 70 degree water on it. I've only had tea that has been bad

because the water has not been hot enough, never the other way around. Here's another question of coffee on the phone lines. Hi, Helen and Molly. It's Matt from Solid Health. Just grinding coffee this morning. In countries where it grows abundantly is there an application other than those who've been drinking it by the way and my big bean because obviously just a bean in it well it's not actually a bean it's more like a berry you can understand

why he'd think it's a bean though because you buy coffee beans so that's what it's called but the beans come out of a wider greener thing thing, don't they? Like a pea pod. Yeah, well, it looks a bit like... They're called cherries. They're not related to the cherry either, but because they have that kind of soft outside. And they look a little bit like a round grape to me. Horticultural nymocletal is so confusing, isn't it?

It is. Constantly, is it a pulse? Is it a berry? Is it a fruit? Is it a vegetable? Is it a droop? Is it a droop? Yeah. Is it it a droop yeah is it even a nut no it's coffee i think it was called bean just because it looks a bit like a bean some people do eat or drink the berries which will give you that caffeine buzz

if it is a caffeinated strain of coffee not all of them are the cherry is a sort of fruity flesh around the bean before the bean is roasted so that stuff is usually just thrown away but people are trying to make the coffee cherry juice into a thing or they make it into flour somehow yeah i've seen a thing where you can turn used coffee grounds which is part of the same process obviously into yarn and then you can make that into active wear that's amazing there's shit loads you can do with used coffee grounds. Yeah. Exfoliants, fertilizer, slug repellent, worm attractor. Yeah, it's odor absorbing apparently. So it works well as hiking socks.

Just going to pat coffee grounds onto my feet. That'll work. Yeah. Also, it's in skincare because the fruit is high in antioxidants. So that's how they're trying to use it. However, they're really cultivating coffee to sell as coffee. Yeah, well, fair enough. It's a popular product. It is a very popular product. And it's quite vulnerable as well. Like a lot of it doesn't work. And it's also very,

very water intensive. It's something like 147 litres to grow the beans for one cup of coffee. I've realised recently, I mean, this is making an obvious point. And I know it's how all addictions work. But I've realised recently that one of the reasons I like coffee, it's not just the taste of it, it is that I'm addicted to it. And different strengths of coffee do have an effect on like, the reason I enjoy a particular is because I'm feeling the withdrawal of not drinking it, and then I drink it. And my wife, we've subscribed to one of these coffee bag companies that send you them in the post. Supposedly it has more ethical packaging and less of a supply chain and all the rest of it. To me it tastes good, but to her it was giving her a twitch in her eye. Oh, wow. The strength of the coffee is just so much stronger than anything

in a supermarket that it was actually making her eye twitch. It is actually quite powerful stuff, isn't it? A lot of people drink six cups a day and don't really think about it. Well quite powerful stuff isn't it a lot of people drink sort of six cups a day and don't really think about well like caffeine doesn't make martin stay awake at night he's caffeine proof in that way or it doesn't make him any less asleep than he is during the day anyway that is the problem yeah this conversation actually reminds me that there was a gizmo that i tested a few years ago when i used to have a gadget column it was a beans to cup coffee machine but instead of it being the beans that you put in that have been roasted and then it grinds the

beans and then puts the water through and gives you a cup of coffee you got sent in the post direct from nicaragua what you're describing as the cherry basically um i suppose they've taken the fruity bit off but you got a green stem like a pod you got a raw bean you got a raw bean and then you put that into the machine you press a button you have to wait like 40 minutes it roasted the beans in the machine all at the touch of one button then ground them then made you a cup of coffee that seems worse than buying roasted beans that have been roasted by a professional you don't have to worry about them going off yeah when they last long and then you can just use them in any other coffee device that's right i mean my feeling on it in the end was this is a

really interesting first iteration of a device but this is not a consumer product the heat involved in actually cooking the beans in the right way was quite intense like i was worried my kitchen was going to catch fire it was like a bright red light coming out of this thing no but the audacity of the concept was quite compelling if one day this like evolved to the stage where it is as simple as making an espresso that would be an incredible product like if you could take a raw bean and turn it into coffee in five minutes but i mean we were not at that stage yet well that brings us to the end of this episode of answer me this however we would like your questions for the next episode of answer me this via email or voicemails attached to emails or you can call our very unreliable

phone line if you must our contact details are available on our website. AnswerMeThisPodcast.com Where you will also find links to follow us on social media and to the Answer Me This store, where we sell our first 200 episodes of the show and also our six exclusive albums of material you will never hear on our free feed. What would be good for this season?

Maybe Answer Me This Sports Day? Wimble sports are impending. They're actually happening, I think. A bit about the Wimble sports in there. There's a little bit about athletics as well. I suppose that's happening again. There's also Answer Me This Holiday, where even if you're not going anywhere, you can be transported.

Much cheaper than a holiday as well. So do check those out obviously by uh buying those products you are helping support your uh local friendly independent podcast as well and don't forget to listen to our other work as well such as ollie man's brand new show yes do it now for god's sake yes search for the retrospectors on your podcast app i think if you like this show you will like the retrospectors i'll also put a link on ollie man. I think if you like this show, you will like The Retrospecters. I'll also put a link on ollyman.com where you can find all my podcasts listed.

Helen, tell us what else you've got in the podverse. Well, on Veronica Mars Investigations, we have reached, or we are about to reach, season four, the final season that really angered the fans. So looking forward to getting to the things that made them really fucking pissed off. And there's The Illusionist as well.

A couple of really interesting episodes recently about cakes and censorship and protest. So there was one about cakes being renamed as protest and then there was another which was newspapers being censored in Brazil printing these fake cake recipes to get the word out there to the readers that something was afoot except instead the readers were just making cakes that were a load of shit so you can find that on the illusionist which is at the illusionist.org

martin you make podcast too uh a podcast i make called maddie sound explorers uh which is a science podcast for kids with a new piece of music every episode. Just got nominated for a British Radio Academy Award. That's exciting. Mazel Tov. That's a stamp of quality. I'm sure your eight-year-old doesn't care whether it's been nominated for an award, but it is a good show. And you can listen along.

It's designed to be listened to with your kid. With your kid's favorite TV person, Maddy Moat. Yeah, absolutely. designed to be listened to with your kid with your kid's favorite tv person maddie moat yeah yeah absolutely uh and also make a podcast called song by song which is about the music and film of tom your kid's favorite musician sounds a bit like the cookie monster so do check that out song by song podcast.com and halfway through the month you will get a retro episode of answer me this in your feed with a little commentary of remorse from us. And we'll see you with a fresh new Answer Me This on the first Thursday of June. Until then,

bye! Get the retrospectives.