Answer Me This! - AMT398: Wedding Rings, Edamame, and Straight To Video Sequels

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

We're settling a lot of couples' disputes in AMT398. Potato in tacos: Y/N? Did all animation used to be worse, or specifically just in Disney's straight to video sequels? And who's from the biggest village? 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 innovative new podcast Neutrino Watch at neutrinowatch.org, 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: • Manscaped, a full range of grooming products for your furry parts. Get 20% off plus free shipping with the code ANSWER at Manscaped.com • 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

How many mini milks must I munch for maximum milk? Are silkworms pissed off that we take all their silk? Rebecca in Worthing has never sent a question to the show before and yet here it is, opening an episode. Life isn't fair. Wow. Just going straight to the show before and yet here it is opening an episode life isn't fair wow just going straight to the big leagues it's like opening glastonbury maybe she'll headline next time she says my partner and i grew up in different villages which we were both under the impression had the title of the biggest village in england wow so. I like the idea that that's actually a title, you know, like a heavyweight champion belt. Yeah, you all have to wear those belts

around the village until you move out. We've spent our lives, she says, telling people we grew up in the biggest village in England. Mine, says Rebecca, is Cranley in Surrey, which even has a sign. Signs must be true. I suppose it gets to a point where if the sign's big enough, it might just edge you into biggest village in England, mightn't it? Through its sheer dimensions, like a billboard. Is it not by population rather than metalwork? Wait, we've not even got to the end of the question yet. Sorry. My partner's village is Lansing in West Sussex. Yes. But there, they don't have a sign there, Helen. They just seem to rely on local word.

Don't need a sign. They trust each other. We had to agree to disagree, says Rebecca, until it popped up on a YouTube channel when a presenter told us that Ringmer in East Sussex is the biggest village in England. Answer me this. Is it population size or something else that determines a big village? And when a small town, what is the biggest village in England? The answer to your first question means that the second question cannot be answered because there is not really a definitive way of saying a place is a village or a town. Now there are historically some markers, so a hamlet became a village once it obtained a church. But beyond that, the criteria are very fuzzy. Does it have a town council or a parish council? So if it's a village, it might not really

have much of a council at all. A lot of villages don't really have local governance. The parish will cover multiple villages. But you could have a village that has a parish council and yet is bigger by population or area than a town. Or maybe at some point in the last millennium, the town was given a town charter. So then any village could say, well, we're the largest village. Well, not one that's like seven people, but any biggish village could say, well, we're the largest village. Well, not one that's like seven people, but any biggish village could say, well, we're the biggest village because it can't be defined. But why would you want to say that? Why would you want to be the biggest of a thing that is sort of defined by being quite small? I think that's right. It's like being a jumbo shrimp. Yeah. If anything,

it would be more of appeal to the kind of people who want to live in villages for it to be England's smallest village. And then there's like a whole list of towns slash villages that claim to be the largest village and some of them are like well I saw Wendover saying it's the largest village but it's had a town charter since 1464 therefore it's not a village. People get really het up about it but it doesn't have a town council so it is a village. Okay but who are the runners and riders though? Oh my god so many. Is Cranley or lansing in with a shot uh how do you want to measure it population or area cranley apparently it's basing it on area but the population according to the 2011 census is only 11 492 that seems like a lot for a small village sorry of

course we're talking about big villages well wait for this ollie, Olly. Ecclesfield in South Yorkshire has a population of 32,000. What? But its area is smaller than Cranley. I don't think area counts for anything. That's just like there's a load of empty land, isn't it? That's like you're in the countryside and that's most villages. Now, Lansing is kind of in between Cranley and Ecclesfield because it does have an area that is less than half that of Cranley. Yeah, but Cranley's got the sign, Helen. Cranley's got the sign. But Lansing's population is 18,810. Oh, and then there's a village on the Isle of Wight that claims on its own website to be the largest village in Europe with 3,688 population in nine

square kilometre area. Dream on on maybe these signs were all printed before the internet and so you didn't have as much communication between villages as to what dimensions they were i suppose to an extent villages are somewhat categorized by their attitude though aren't they you know in the same way that people still talk about places in london as you know highgate village hamstead village just where all white people live but what it means is that there's still some independent shops and a deli and you know some sense of community vibe that's what people mean they don't actually mean that it's a village at all so if the if village can be transposed as a word and put into those kind of urban environments then you can say that

something has a village character that's actually enormous can't you you could build a city that feels like a village also some people will define a village as to whether it is surrounded by countryside, but there are villages that are parts of conurbations or have been absorbed by them. Like a lot of London used to be rural, and then the city spread out from the centre. Well, my village is defined by Royal Mail as part of the nearer town. How do you feel about that? I do omit the name of the larger town from my address when i give it to people because i'm a proud resident of the village and i know that the mail still reaches me so you don't put a village near town yeah no need you know the post people

have had postcodes for many years now they know where it is they do they've got google maps now and everything hello we've been doing some credits field so we're currently eating a nice little asian bit of food and we're eating these edamame beans edamame edamame beans thank you and i've always eaten with the skin on them and my girlfriend's just been like popping them into her mouth and i was like oh shit which way is it so how in the hell are answer this. Do you eat the edamame beans or do you eat them with the skin? Thank you. I'd say one should pop them all out individually and eat them that way. But actually, I personally, Lyndon, if you're interested in how I eat my edamame beans,

I do eat them in their pods. And I don't care who sees me. I swallow them whole, even though it takes a long time to digest. Well, that's probably good fibre for you. I would be inclined, except I do find them too fibrous. Yeah, I'm a quick eater and it makes the starter last longer. That's basically why I'm doing it. I see. I can't pretend I enjoy the taste. It just paces me, you know? In my youth when I wasn't really allowed sweets, but if I'd managed to get hold of cherry drops,

the boiled sweet in a little paper wrapper, I would suck it through the paper wrapper to make it last longer. Don't eat raw soybeans though, of any kind, because they can cause acute nausea, gas, abdominal pain, diarrhea or vomiting. Whoa! Which isn't what I want with some sashimi. Hi Helen, it's Lyndon again. Currently sat outside with my girlfriend eating tacos and a conversation came up because she brought out mashed potato so hello and all a quick one answer me this does mashed potato belong in a taco yes or no yes uh i've definitely had potato tacos and there's a recipe called tacos de papa which means potato tacos and some of the recipes have them in little cubes that have been crisped up but some of them do have

mash so yes well done mashed potato can belong in a taco it's also used often in vegan tacos why not as well who are you harming with your potato taco i mean linden's from huddersfield where they're no stranger to a chip butty i mean it's just that isn't it this taco de papa recipe that i read is a deep fried crunchy taco shell stuffed with mashed potato shredded cabbage tomato onion mexican cheese and garlicky tomato sauce which sounded fantastic to me i'd be happy to die that way i think a taco is essentially a sandwich really isn't it as opposed to what i'm saying and in the same way as really and we've talked about sandwiches a lot on this show over the last 14 years.

First and foremost, it's a convenient way to pick up ingredients as a handheld meal, isn't it? Putting between two pieces of bread or in this case, one rolled tortilla. Anything goes. Like I understand some people are a bit funny about some flavour combinations and that's fine. You do you.

You know, like dessert tacos are not for me. I had a crispy tendon and lychee taco in a fusion restaurant in Las Vegas and I'm not sorry. Yeah, that's very nice. I had a crispy tendon and lychee taco in a fusion restaurant in Las Vegas and I'm not sorry. Yeah, that's very nice. I must say the ramen tacos, you know, where they actually make a taco shell out of dried noodles.

It looks good on Instagram, but I imagine it would taste like eating packaging. I've seen a ramen burger where the bread is replaced by two ramen bricks and I fear for my gums. Right. Much as I love noodles in nearly all contexts. It's like eating Autolands, isn't it?

Yeah. Have you ever had one? Autolands, no. I've got a question. Email your question. To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com. To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com.

To answer me to 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 10 minutes each weekday wherever you get your podcasts here's a question from rich in bristol who says after trawling through disney plus my girlfriend what a troll god the problems we're dealing with today

can i put potato in a taco are there too many cartoons to watch it's almost like we're here to reassure not worry rich says my girlfriend and i finally settled on Return of Jafar, a childhood favourite of the sequels. Return of Jafar, it is. From the outset, the animation quality is noticeably bad, and it's divided us. Oh no. I think all animation used to be this bad, but the classics have all been remastered.

My girlfriend thinks this straight-to-video film didn't have the budget for better quality animation like the cinema release so ollie answer me this who is right this whole theme is couple disputes wow didn't realize that just happened you're both right oh that's nice because whilst the classics have indeed be remastered, especially the early Pixar stuff, because it was made in 2K, but people still think of it as, rightly, as a pioneer in computer animation. So they're expecting those breathtaking,

exhilarating graphics they remember from the cinema. If they saw the VHS upscale, they'd get a bit of a shock. So they have gone through the stuff that people really expect the big thrills from and remastered it. But at the same time, the straight to video material like The Return of Jafar indeed did not have the budget of the cinema release in the first place. But I would say mostly the lack of quality does come from its original state. I mean, you've got fond memories of this film because you were a child when you saw it. But actually, the department that made the director

VHS sequels that Disney released during this period wasn't even based in Hollywood. It was mainly based in Australia. And it was mainly TV animators. And that was partly to kind of just keep, I think, the sense for the people who worked in the original Disney Burbank studio that they were still at the home of animation. And these guys were doing the knockoffs for Woolies, you know. The reason that the direct-to-video Disney phenomenon happened was because when Disney put out a big film like The Little Mermaid or something, there would be in Woolworths a VHS called, you know, The Littlest Mermaid. Or, you know, if they did The Lion King, you'd get The Lion Prince. And people's grandparents who didn't know the difference because they didn't watch cartoons, you'd get The Lion Prince. And people's grandparents who didn't know the difference

because they didn't watch cartoons, because back then cartoons were actually for children, used to buy the wrong VHS for Christmas for their grandchildren. And that was a business. So Disney were like, we'll muscle in on this and do something a bit better. We'll take our TV animating studio and do effectively like feature length episodes. So there was an Aladdin series, you see.

And Return of jafar was originally imagined as an hour-long special to kick off the series and then they thought well let's let's see what happens if we release this direct to video like aladdin had been such a huge hit they're like what's the worst that could happen this should fly and indeed it did it turned out to be a money mountain return of jafar from a 3.5 million dollar budget versus the movie's 28 million dollars made 300 million dollars on on vhs i guess because uh the product had like quite a big margin then and also just lower costs because i mean for example robin williams didn't do the sequel dan castner letters doing the genie but kids don't know the difference and like the songs you know so there goes those amazing menken and ashman songs you get in the

film there's just some slightly hokey copy ones a partial new world but that's the disheartening thing now watching my son harvey imbibe this stuff is he doesn't know the difference so you know one night i will sit down with him be like right harvey this is a treat we're going to watch one of the best cartoons ever and i'll show him i don't know something really classic the jungle book or beauty and the beast right and it's beautiful and clever and detailed and iconic and then the next night he's like can i watch zerby derby what's zerby derby oh i'm sorry sorry i. I wish I could not know. It's this awful Canadian vaguely edutainment-y show where a Burke does a voice track on a remote-controlled monster truck.

And he loves it. He does not know the difference between that and an Oscar-winning iconic animated film. Well, you're not going to like Return of Zerby then. Well, actually, I was looking back through some of the sequels that Disney did release as a consequence of the Return of Jafar being so popular. Because actually, story-wise, I don't know if you remember the end of Aladdin in the Disney film. I don't remember whether I saw it.

Really? It was such a huge moment for me that I can't believe that one could ever not remember having seen it. I've also not seen the Lion King whatever I was too a bit too old when it first came out but also my family didn't really have Disney stuff so I saw some of the old old films at friends houses on VHS before I was 10 and after that just no Disney I mean to be fair as I hinted at earlier like I do watch kids films and enjoy them and family films but I am a proponent actually of waiting until you have children in the room. So at some point, you will have some children in the room, borrow some children, and then watch it.

That is the best way to watch it. Don't watch it as a grown-up by yourself. Okay, cool. As a grown-up with children in the room, I have seen Frozen and Moana. Yeah. It's just the gap between my own childhood and my adjacents to other people's childhoods

that is the Disney lacuna. Well, okay. So the end of Aladdin, what happens is jafar is locked inside a lamp so the baddie is condemned to potentially sort of endless amounts of time trapped in a lamp ha ha ha you know the good guys won but actually what's unique about the aladdin myth obviously is at some point all you have to do is find that lamp and rub it and then the baddie's back so it's kind of got a built-in sequel like it piques your interest doesn't it as a kid you're like okay so we might be going a thousand years into the future at some point jafar is going to be the most all-powerful genie in the world so let's watch that movie you know

so it kind of makes sense to make a sequel to aladdin in that sense and of course you've got the source material of arabian nights with lots of things to talk about like you know a lot of arabic children's stories that you can riff on. What's weird is what it engendered afterwards. So they made a hunchback of Notre Dame too. Um, how did that go? He's already shown that beauty's on the inside. Like, what else is there to do?

Like, he rings some bells. He's come to terms with his looks. I don't know what his character journey is in the second one. That's the plot of the first Shrek, really, isn and they made shit loads of shreks that's true i think shit loads of shreks is the name of the reboot but the point about the hunchback of notre dame is it's like it's it's trying to draw on a classic of literature for for it's reassuring a grown-up audience it's okay you can put your kids in front of this one whereas victor hugo i reckon would definitely not be behind hunchback of notre dame the most curious one

which i did actually see the other day or kind of see you know in that way that when your kids are watching you drift in and out the room and try and get tasks done um so whilst i was on a cardo i saw bits of the lion king one and a half so they did a directed video sequel of the lion king and it was so popular because obviously lion king was massive that they then did something wasn't even pretending to be a film it was like in the style of almost beav, and it was so popular, because obviously The Lion King was massive, that they then did something that wasn't even pretending to be a film. It was like in the style of almost Beavis and Butthead, Timur and Pumbaa re-watched The Lion King, but this time from their point of view

and retelling the story and commenting on it, like Gogglebox. Wow. It's like Tom Stoppard wrote this. Yes. Well, you know, people often say The Lion King is Hamlet. It isn't, but it does have, you know, an uncle deposing a king, and it does have a slightly reluctant monarch in waiting.

But people have said, you know, if the Lion King is Hamlet, then this is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, basically. That's what it is. But Harvey was obviously not enjoying it on that level. There were just a lot of fart jokes in it. So are they going to make a live action version of Return of Jafar with Will Smith recast as someone less expensive? I don't think so. But I think what you're hinting at there is what's happened, isn't it? I think when John Lasseter first became chief exec, he felt that it was just a bit cheap. This department that was churning out video stuff, like the films are obviously cheap, they look cheap,

they feel cheap to grownups. And although they make a quick buck like for a lot the long-term strategy of disney ip it wasn't the right move to keep churning out like they were doing bambi 2 and shit like um so uh i think that the strategy the alternate strategy that they came up with was these live action remakes instead um because then at least you're you're embellishing the original story you keep the original songs you keep interest in the original film everyone has to buy it again yeah yeah so i guess that's what they're doing now instead but i wonder then maybe there's like a stop motion version you know maybe they'll be like we're going to turn this into a book we're going to turn the arabian nights into a cartoon into live action back into a book yeah yeah it's the King, but they're in a castle in Denmark. And everyone's speaking in iambic pentameter.

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And one day there may be an award even your show can win. It already did. Fuck you both. Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of Answer Me This and also for making the life better of Jason from New Jersey who has emailed to say, I just wanted to say thank you for promoting Squarespace. Our pleasure, Jason. We were paid.

Must disclose. A few weeks ago, I was reduced to tears while trying to build a website on a different platform. I won't name names. Good, because we're contractually prevented from naming those names. But I felt pressed just trying to write words. That is annoying. Yeah.

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who are paying you to say they're the best actually are the best, but they are. It is so easy to use Squarespace to build a website. And I know exactly what you mean, Jason, because when I was putting together AnswerMeThisStore.com, which is where we sell our back catalogue, I had that thought process. Like, I don't know what to write here, really. Like, what is there to say? You know, it's our old shit.

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then head over to squarespace.com slash answer to use the free trial. And when you're ready to launch, get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using our code answer. Here's a question from Trevor and Sarah in Tucson, Arizona. They say we've been married for nearly a year. And one of the biggest headaches of our wedding planning was finding wedding bands that we both liked. Lucky you because a lot of people the biggest headaches of our wedding planning was finding wedding bands that we both liked. Lucky you, because a lot of people's biggest headaches of wedding planning is a massive fallout with family that doesn't resolve for decades. Yeah, or in the last year, planning the whole thing and then not being able to do it because the government says so. Planning the whole thing and it drives you apart and you break up. By the way, I should say in the context of this question,

when they say wedding band, they don't mean Abba they mean rings yes thank you for clarifying so helen answer us this how long have wedding rings been around they've always been around their circles what i'm here all week waka waka all right dad how long have wedding rings been around providing headaches for people surely peasants didn't wear precious metals on their fingers and also did other cultures come up with different symbolic jewelry or clothing to indicate to the world that you're married? Yes, loads. Because I think in a lot of countries, the wedding ring is a fairly recent addition thanks to the Western wedding industrial complex. Like a lot of wedding, inverted commas, traditions are capitalism, like diamond engagement rings. That was De Beers

selling their sparkly carbon. Or just Hollywood portraying a lot of the American ones or the ones that West Coast Americans aspired to then made that something that people all over the world wanted to do. There's sort of like Christmas as well. You see the Dickensian style Christmas just reiterated so much in culture. It spreads way beyond its own boundaries and the tradition's relatively young. Like Mickey's Christmas Carol, to refer back to our last conversation, a great direct-to-video disney hit oh you stand by that

one what about the sequel mickey's boxing day not so good for instance the uh the sindor that's the the red dot um on hindu wives foreheads and the hairline to indicate that they're married. You've got Orthodox Jewish women who cover their hair. You've got the bangles that Punjabi brides wear for, I think, a year. Amish men can only wear beards after they're married. I don't know whether that means you have to wear a beard after you're married, because what if you can't grow one? Right. You've got Maasai wedding necklace.

You've got a South Sudanese dinka wearing goatskin shirts to indicate they're married. Berber gold nose rings. The talit for some Jewish men, the prayer shawl. That's after marriage. So yes, lots and lots. So actually, something like the Hindu one, for example. I mean, obviously, looked at from a modern Western perspective, that seems kind of even more unpleasantly kind of proprietorial, I suppose, than a ring.

But at the same time, it does take away what Trevor and Sarah are saying they find difficult finding wedding bands they both liked like at least then if you're doing it you're doing it aren't you there's not there doesn't seem to be many designs it's a dot right whereas it's the choice of the ring that is proving a headache for them right well I think actually it would have been worse in the past because I think people have become a lot more conformist in their wedding jewellery thanks to the wedding capitalism. Because wedding rings, I think they've found that Neanderthals had forms of wedding rings made out of things like twigs, grasses, rushes, and they might have been around wrists and ankles rather than fingers and then egyptians had wedding rings made out of bone ivory leather hemp i think it was the romans because they were like very into

romance rituals around marriage who got into metal rings although they're often made of iron even though gold is more of a precious metal than iron iron was still pretty valued there and they were very into magnetism yeah so they would magnetize these rings before the betrothal ceremony oh that's cool yeah i think it's cool because then you sort of like jumped together yeah um i think they also thought it protected against disease but the roman laws um prohibited lower class people from wearing gold rings. Hard to enforce. Even people who did have gold rings often wouldn't wear them every day. They would only wear them for special occasions, and then they would wear an iron ring for their daily ring.

Part of the point of the rings was not just to symbolise that you were married. It was a wealth exchange. They would be accompanied by other gifts often as well, like coins and clothes. It's also these days a classic male online story, isn't it? You know, Helen Zaltzman seen without wedding ring as she shops for ice cream. Here are some intrusive photos that have no news value, but the absence of a ring is justification for publication. In COVID times, all the hand washing means a lot of us are not wearing wedding rings because things get gross over there. Exactly. Although actually, I'd never take mine off and i never thought i wanted a wedding

ring well you didn't want a wedding you didn't want a marriage that's right but now i've got one i really like the ring it's just like a really nice kind of worry bead type thing that i can play with yeah they are good for like a fidget spinner yeah but romantic or whatever yes i bet that people listening who are married but don't wear wedding rings are sick of getting questions about why they don't. Well, speaking of which, I mean, you're threading us into our next question, which is from Laura,

who says, I did not take my husband's name when we got married for fuck the patriarchy reasons. So Helen asked me this, what is a polite answer that I can give when other married women who did change their names ask me why I didn't? I've got nothing.

I don't know that that question is super polite. So I don't think you have to be that polite either. I mean, an obvious question is to ask them why they did change their names. Yeah, but then that would be interpreted as more antagonistic. They started it yeah yeah but the question is motivated by oh here's a married woman who didn't change her name i've not encountered that before i'd like to know more about why so you're doing something that's less heteronormative that's why they're interested whereas you're going back on their question in

their face you're absolutely right logically it's the same thing but it immediately turns it into something more confrontational doesn't it because to me this is filed with the why don't you have children question, which is very frequently asked, whereas why do you have children isn't, even though everybody originally had no children and everybody changing their name upon marriage was an opt-in. Well, also in many countries, so in many Spanish-speaking countries, Laura, in France, Greece, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Malaysia, and Korea, it is the custom to keep your own name.

Great. So you could answer with that. Like, if you don't want to go into it, you could be like, did you know? And then list some of those. Did you know in those countries, you don't change your name when you get married? So it's not that unusual. Yeah, but then they might be like, well, you're not in any of those countries. So why did you?

Oh, yeah. But then they're being antagonistic, aren't they? So you flipped it back onto them. Then you can say the thing you said. I think you could have an interesting conversation about what was important to you and the question asker. You can exchange those views about what it meant to you to do it or not do it.

I think in any case, asking people how they chose their names usually produces an interesting answer. But I think by the fact she's asking us, it seems like she doesn't really want to necessarily get involved in a conversation about it all the time what i thought was a practical solution might be because it's possibly true but doesn't go into all the fuck the patriarchy stuff if you don't want to have that conversation all the time is you could say i like my name and i didn't want to change it yeah you know it still fits the fuck the patriarchy reasons overall in your own mind but perhaps it's true that if your name was smell fart you would have taken the opportunity to

change it so you know you're just putting that out there let them will come up with their own reason as to why you did it it's none of their business well you could say my spouse's uh surname is uh shipford so I'm an answer me this fan I listen with my nan She is not so keen She finds it too obscene I follow them on Twitter Though Ashton Kutcher's fitter I want to take things further Just one step short of murder I want to look like Olly Mann I want to smell like Olly Mann I want to feel like Olly Mann I want to taste like Olly Mann this episode is sponsored by manscaped grooming products to make your personal topiary as tidy

as you want it. But I must say it was the ball trimming product, Helen, that I was grateful for this weekend when I was in the kids pool at Centre Parcs. Oh God, I know that you're supposed to get your balls out there to show everybody how clean shaven they are, Ollie. Covid now at Centre Parcs, what they do is you have to turn up wearing your trunks. You can't get changed in what they call the subtropical swimming paradise anymore, which is fine, obviously, when you're dry. I just cycled there in my swimming shorts, but I had not considered the journey back

to the chalet afterwards. You need to invest in a caftan, mate. So I had no underwear. I had wet swimming shorts. So I just put my shorts back on commando style. And honestly, I was so grateful wearing linen shorts on a bicycle that I was neatly trimmed down there because it would have been an absolute shit show

if I'd have been cycling through centre parks for 20 minutes back to my chalet. Hair would have got caught in zips. It would have been chafe central. So I thanked Manscaped that day. You can get 20 20 off and free shipping by using the code answer at manscape.com that is 20 off with free shipping at manscaped.com and using the code answer trim your chesticles with the besticles hi helen o, it's Joseph in North London. Recently, videos of cats sitting in taped squares on the floor have been going around the internet again,

as they do every couple of years. Helen and Ollie, answer me this. Why do cats do this? Why do they like sitting in tiny tape squares on the floor? It is a mystery. It's essentially swaddling behavior. That's what's motivating it. So it's, you know, when kittens are born,

they're in a litter, they are very close and huggy with their mum and their siblings. And small spaces mimic that even when they're older and want to spend all their time by themselves and killing things. They still naturally gravitate towards and this is why cardboard boxes are always immediately occupied by cats they always gravitate towards small spaces where they can feel like they have their own little private hidey hole in some cats some of the time a taped square on a piece of carpet or hard floor is enough to trigger in their imagination the sense that they're in a

small space even if the walls aren't actually there that they'll go to it oh jealous but uh there could be a sense of confirmation bias basically so like when you observe this in your cat if your cat if you try it at home and your cat does it you take a picture and post it up on the internet if you try it home your cat doesn't do it it's a shit picture isn't it right so like you know where are all the photos of people who tried it and it didn't work it's hard to say you know exactly how many cats really do this if you had a grid all over your carpet as well where would the cat go right would it just be overwhelmed by choice so this is why i was about to try it last night with alvin just to see whether you do it because um our kitchen

floor is well suited for duct tape because we have tiling um but then i thought actually looking at the floor it's a whole load of different um tiles you know it's that style of like different mismatched square tiles actually there's like 100 squares on the floor already so i wouldn't be able to tell really whether he wasn't interested in my square because the whole thing squares maybe the grouting would need to be thicker to make him feel secure within one of those squares why didn't we think about the cat grouting but it is interesting that it does seem to be a thing so there was a study of rescue cats being rehomed

in holland um and they gave boxes like i think actual physical boxes like cardboard boxes rather than squares on the floor but still to some of the cats and then some of the new cats that came into the rehoming center they didn't give boxes and after a few days they established that the cats that had had a box were evidentially provably less stressed than the cats that didn't oh so mean just give them a box yeah i wonder also how long the cat is uh satisfied by the feelings that the tape can give them or whether it wears off pretty quickly compared to a box i tend to find that any space the novelty wears off fairly quickly with alvin so like it's it's it is the newness of it that draws him to it initially and then you get two days of hard use and then he goes back to his favorite places and forgets all about it again for

a couple of months that's pretty typical behavior unless there's a chance to kill something obviously and then you've got a different scenario oh yeah during lockdown one of the things that i've been doing is feeding the birds increasingly and another thing that i've been doing is letting the kids bounce on an old trampoline and those two things don't go well together oh because if i forget to clear the trampoline away at the end of the day alvin then hides under the trampoline so that he can kill the birds when they come in for the food so i've really got to remember to move the trampoline and the other day i did move the trampoline he was really pissed off because he couldn't kill anything and so he jumped onto the bird table and we have a bird table with like an arched roof so it's a self-contained unit as if

that somehow disguised him in camouflage it was the most hilarious thing i've ever seen it's like a cat tail coming out the side of this bird table and his ears over the top it was the worst disguise ever like it's the equivalent of me trying to hide on like a motorbike it's like our dog tash who was very coy about taking a shit so uh she would hide her face in a head so even if you could see her whole body doing a shit blushes would be uh in in the hedge she'd be spared the embarrassment maybe she just didn't want to see us to put her off her game and never thought of that before. Yeah, don't blame her. Here's a question from Gemma who says, Helen, answer me this. How did the police place a value on street drugs? When you see headlines saying police seize haul of drugs with a street value of 100 grand,

how is that value calculated? Weight is an obvious part of the formula, but where does the base value come from? And does this get updated with any regularity? Yes, it does. I read a very interesting document provided by Police Scotland in response to a Freedom of Information request about this very thing. So if Answer Me This is not a suitable repository for your questions, Freedom of Information request might be. The value of street drugs is based on a number of factors, purity, availability, the amount purchased, the frequency of business, whether the drugs are paid for at the time or later, and the relationship between supplier and user. And they get a lot of this information from intelligence sources and informants. They're gathering this information in lots of different geographical areas, and they're re-evaluating the purity and the prices using all of this different information

twice a year. So it is updated quite a lot. I mean, it's not just a sort of sensational fact for the headline, is it? I mean, the context that she gives, which fair enough, I think we can all identify it. We read in a newspaper, oh, value of 100 grand, that's interesting. It is interesting, but that's not why they've calculated the number, is it? It's not just for the press release. They've calculated the number because presumably in court it's relevant. You have to quantify their crime somehow. The value is for the press release.

I asked my sister-in-law about this because she used to be a criminal barrister. And she said that figure is just for the media or to impress a jury or for proceeds of crime financial orders but for sentencing they tend to be sentenced on the weight of the pure drug and bear in mind that the drugs are often cut up to 80% to be sold and the greater the value of drugs the higher the sentence so it is sort of relevant to the sentencing because selling like £100,000 worth of drugs is a more serious crime than, you know, a couple of thousand pounds. Yeah, I mean, it's the impressing the jury bit that I was talking about, but that's no small thing, is it? Like if you're then in the deliberation room, you're going to think,

yeah, but he had 100 grand's worth of cocaine in the back of his car. This obviously wasn't a small scale operation. Like those figures do percolate,'t they if you're in the jury room the distinction between like how much you have well like whether it's sort of just over the amount that you would have for personal use or whether it is like you know a truck full i don't know whether the gradations in between would be as influential for you in the jury room but also you're not sentencing on the jury but yeah it is the the price that people would buy drugs out from a dealer not the price the dealer would pay for the supply not wholesale yeah not the wholesale price but sometimes you do see both figures are so like i've seen news stories which actually appear to

calculate the street value based on the wholesale value not the calculation that you're talking about so it will actually say like 2.1 tons of high purity cocaine were recovered with an estimated wholesale value of 50 million pounds if cut and sold on the street this hall would have an estimated value of 134 million pounds that sounds like yeah someone a journalist has gone into like a cocaine calculator with the wholesale value and then tried to just work it out well it's probably a more specific figure isn't it the wholesale value because then tried to just work it out. Well, it's probably a more specific figure, isn't it? The wholesale value, because it hasn't been cut yet. And maybe some of that would be cut 20% or maybe 80%.

But that's going to result in a really different number, isn't it? Of the street value. I mean, it's a biased market, isn't it? I suppose that's the other thing. So there are variables as to who it would have ended up being. Like, obviously, cocaine is probably worth more on Kings Road in Chelsea than it is in Cardiff, isn't it? So that's a concern as well.

There was a record set this year for the biggest ever haul of cocaine in Europe. Yeah. worth more on Kings Road in Chelsea than it is in Cardiff, isn't it? So that's a concern as well. There was a record set this year for the biggest ever haul of cocaine in Europe. Really? Yeah. Under the radar news story whilst we were worried about other things this spring. Wow. 23 tonnes seized in Germany and Belgium in February. Bloody hell. It was coke that was hidden in tin cans, but they were meant to be filled with putty, I guess like sort of builder's putty or something.

And then that just led me to, I think, a more interesting question, which is what did they do with 23 tons of putty? Where do you hide that? Oh, good point. Is there a storage unit somewhere that's just full of putty, like something out of Ghostbusters?

You know, open the door, there'll be a wall of putt. Is there a sub-business which is just manufacturing empty tins that look like they may have contained putty? Yeah, or maybe, yes. Please send us an email, we love to keep in touch. If you send us an email, we'll like you very much.

It's rsermithispodcast at googlemail.com That's rsermithispodcast at googlemail.com. That's answer me this podcast at googlemail.com. So please send us an email or we won't know you're there. And if we like your email, we'll read it out on air. Here's a question from Alice in Eastbourne who says, I have a lovely photo of myself and my friends, which was the last one taken before one of our group sadly died. The photo is by far the best one of all of us together, and I'd love to display it.

However, right in the centre of the photo is my ex. It ended very badly, and I don't want to look at her mug when I'm enjoying the picture and the great memories of my late friend. So, Helen, answer me this. Have you any suggestions on how I can display the photo short of putting a sticker over my ex's face? I would get an artist to make a new piece of work incorporating the images of you and your friend and the other friends that you want to be preserved. But they take your faces and then go to that you want to be preserved but like they they take your faces and then go to town with like some kind of different landscape or abstraction we've got a group of friends who where for the last six and a half years we've had a regular kind of book group

but for listening to podcasts and when martin and i were going abroad they made a tea towel with like portraits of each of the people in pod club put together and so they'd found these photos of us on instagram and got an artist friend to draw all of us and i really love it it's really nice they've also made us christmas baubles with the same image on and it looks like us but it's also been removed from the original photo context i think that works a treat also i mean these days i would say making a composite photo using an app is so easy that i can't believe that you'd struggle with it alice you're saying that's the best photo of you all together but I mean you could cut out digitally the people in the photo you want and make them part of a bigger Instagram layout with other photos of you couldn't you? I

mean that would take about five minutes like why not do that? I thought you were going to suggest that you were like just photoshopping an unusually large vase of flowers over your ex in the middle of the photo or a tower of profiteroles or something there's actually a more elegant solution than that if you want to pay money i've discovered a website called editmyex.com wow is it like um eternal sunshine they're based in the uk um and it costs about six pounds 99 which seems like quite good value i think you're getting an actual artist to do some photoshop for you And the results on their website look really good. And they promise you your money back if they can't make it work. I can't vouch for it. I mean, as far as I can tell,

it was really just a press stunt for a website that already existed called Photo Repairer. And their kind of prior pitch was, you know, those old war photos of your granddad, we can colorize them. And then as a sort of side hustle press stunt they came up with this website edit my ex and it went viral and went everywhere um so now they actually do run edit my ex.com not as a press stunt but as a real thing as well well it's very smart obviously the examples they show on the website would be the good ones wouldn't they but there's for example like someone on a beach and they've they've edited out her ex husband and they've put the c behind her and you can't tell. People have been doing this forever, haven't they?

My mum used to do this old school with a pair of scissors long before Photoshop existed. Every photo that was on display in my parents' house had a visible tear down it because she was never happy with the way she looked in the light in a particular photo. So what she would do is kind of montage together the best shot of each person

who had been sitting around the table in a series of photos in the old days where you took a 24 roll camera film and i sometimes used to think you know if you could cut out your grandma's head and put it anywhere why have us sitting in the italian restaurant at all why not just be on a landscape of jupiter well i agree also particularly if the photos were taken before digital cameras so a lot of them were shit because you couldn't check and then take it again. So there'd be a lot of sealing. I mean, I still have old school photo albums, which I do still diligently keep. I don't know why, because I've now realised that the British Library

is not going to one day build an annex in my honour. But for some reason, I do keep all of my... I don't even know if you know that I do this, but I've done it ever since we were at university. Do you remember my photo albums at university? I don't. So I've always had these do this, but I've done it ever since we were at university. Do you remember my photo albums at university? I don't. So I've always had these, like you still get them at WH Smith.

So I made a wise choice when I was 13 because they still exist. Are they all matching? They're all matching, yeah. Oh my God. Did you buy like 80 of them when you were 13? No, I just relied on the fact correctly so far that they will continue to make these things.

And it's the 7x5s. I get matte prints. What I do is, and I enjoy the curation process. That's it, I suppose. It's not even about looking through it. What I do is at the end of the year, I get all my photos and I choose the best two or four, so half a spread or full spread of any event. And that's all I allow myself.

Apart from like my wedding day, I don't allow myself more than four pictures for each event interesting so it makes it really good because then when you look back at it 20 years later there's not too many of people that you aren't friends with anymore you know you've chosen the what you thought at the time were like the iconic pictures and they usually stand the test of time really well and uh yeah I've got like buckling shelves full of them and I never look at them and I don't know why I do it I've got a miniature suitcase of photos under the bed because I've just been unpacking my stuff and I'm like well I don't want to open it. I don't want to look at them. I don't want to throw them away. So under the bed till the next move I guess. Yes I mean leave them there for a future ancestor to throw

them away. I mean that's the thing isn't it? That's what I know I'm doing. I didn't even have children to throw my photos away. I haven't planned. Well, here is the end of this episode of Answer Me This. However, we will be back in a couple of weeks due to the reshuffled schedule of the Answer Me This is this month. So we need your questions and we need them imminently. So please send us emails or voice memos via the contact details that are on our website answer me this podcast.com and we do many other podcasts on the internet as well helen what is hanging in zolt's world ah well veronica mars investigations is hurtling towards the conclusion of season four veronica

mars and the illusionist uh just released an episode about the word dude which has a surprising history does it yeah yeah you would not think. It's completely flipped in meaning. It used to basically mean a sissy. That is interesting. Right, it is. So go to theillusionist.org to listen to the rest. I have spoiled it a bit.

Oliver, which of your several podcasts is brewing currently? What do you think, Helen? Anyone's observed my social media. Oh, Daily Podcast. Recently, you may have noticed that I have been rather hustling my new daily podcast, The Retrospectors.

Thank you, everybody who's already tried it. If you haven't, please try us out now. As soon as this show is finished in your ears, go to your podcast app, type The Retrospectors,

R-E-T-R-O-S-P-E-C-T-O-R-S. It's a daily popular history show. It's just 10 minutes a day. Recently, we have covered the first Englishman to be deported from America, the invention of Hawaiian pizza, and the genesis of the crazy frog. Actually, if you enjoyed our Jafar chat earlier this episode, you will enjoy the episode that's coming out the week that this does on the history of celebration florida which is the town that disney built absolutely fascinating story about new urbanism the retrospectors go get it uh martin i've just started a daily podcast have you i have it's really hard to describe it it's an it's called neutrino watch it's an experimental fiction podcast every download is different there's about six episodes on the feed but every day each of those episodes changes a bit right so actually

here's a good example one of them's a music episode so it's a piece of music that every day has a different name and is a different piece of music but it's that you just get you go to the same episode either you like delete your download and re-download it or you stream it on the website and you get a new piece of music so that's that we're doing all kinds of different fun interesting experiments that i don't think people have really done with podcasts before so if you're into slightly odd constantly changing media neutrino watch is for you for people that thought the tom waits podcast was just a little too mainstream um but as helen said we will be back with a brand new episode of Answer Me This on the first Thursday of July.

Bye!