Answer Me This! - AMT399: Ginger Beer, Cheetahs' Pet Dogs, and Ball Pits

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

In AMT399, we find out about tuning church bells, cheetahs being given pet dogs, Olly getting lost in SeaWorld, how pickled onions inspired soft play, and which ways you might be most likely to be killed by a ball pit. We also have a Big Announcement ahead of episode 400. 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 episode 400, as well as your precious AMT memories - whether our answers to your questions helped or hurt your life, whether you made any friends through the podcast, whether you started your own podcast, the weirdest place or oddest thing you were doing while listening to the show, we want to hear it all! 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: • Wondrium, the streaming library of tutorials, lectures, documentaries, how-to videos, travel, craft and much more! AMT listeners get 14 days' free access to the whole library 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

When wishes don't come true, do wishing wells issue refunds? Answer me this, answer me this. Am I wasting my life watching Columbo reruns? Absolutely not. Time well spent. Heaven and lonely, answer me this. This is Answer Me This episode 399, which means the next episode is episode 400. That's how maths works. Yeah, it's how sequential numbering such as we subscribe to that system works that's right the one before it was 398 the one before that was 397 i could go on you're gonna go all the way back to one and that's the

episode bye of course you have to pay to hear and count backwards from 200 to one all of which may lead some of you to be wondering what are we going to do for our 400th episode? It's a natural question at this juncture. Well, I feel a lot of emotions to say that episode 400 will be the final episode of Answer Me This. There you are. You've said it now, Helen. How do you feel? I feel really strange. I feel really, you know, I'm going to miss our listeners a lot and researching these questions they've dug out of their incredible minds and learning stuff. We're aware that for some of you, we're just a podcast that you occasionally dip into. Yeah, just some noises.

And then for others of you, this will be like, you've been listening for 15 years and we have been constant companions in your ears. The fact that you care about this show is what has made this show historically work. It's your questions and your sharing of the show that has kept us going so long, frankly. And the last Zaltzman family dog, Juniper, lived for pretty much the time span of this podcast. And she was a breed that is not expected to live a long life. So when she got beyond about 11, we were like, wow. And she died at 14 and two thirds.

And it was still lovely to have her around, but it was also like borrowed time. I don't want the podcast to, you know, wheeze and shit itself to death, even though in some ways that would be an appropriate way for us to go out, given all of the excremental questions we've received over the years. But it is is also we've been doing this since 2007 how many of

you have been doing the same job since 2007 that's it we were in some ways we were different people and it's been fun sort of charting that in the last few years as well how we've changed and humiliating um but there comes a point where if not episode 400 then when would we have carried on to episode 500, bearing in mind we're only making 12 a year now? Probably not. 400 seems like a nice time to start. Bear in mind we're going to kill it at the end of 2016.

So it's had four and two-thirds years longer than originally planned. And I think good ones. But to contextualise this, 2007 is when the TV show Gossip Girl started, and that show is just about to relaunch with a whole new generation. That's how long on to me this has been carrying on with the same generation. Yes, although if you're thinking, all right, time for a reboot, no, we don't want the show to carry on with other people. And no, although it would be lovely for you to send us some money,

you starting up a crowdfunding campaign now will make no difference to this decision. It isn't financial. Well, let's see how much money sure i mean if we get to 10 million then we could we could consider also the archives will stay up available and none of you take the name and do your own podcast all right fuck off we've got prior use claim on that so episode 400 on the 5th of august will be our last, or at least until the reunion special with James Corden in 17 years' time. No! So what we want from you for next episode is, as ever, questions. Yes.

If you have an urgent question that we haven't answered for the last 15 years and you need answered before the show ends forever, send it now, otherwise you have missed your chance. We would also like you to record yourself just telling us your Answer Me This memories. When we answered your question, did it make your life better or worse? Yeah, did we say something on the show,

even if it wasn't in answer to one of your questions, that has influenced your life in any way? I know people have been listening for so long, they may have made choices about their career or their university or their marriage based on things we've said. It'd be great to hear that stuff. I really hope that's not true. Also, did any of you start a podcast because of hearing this podcast? And if you just generally have an obituary for the show, you know, an epitaph. Wow. Wow. A eulogy, if you will. Tell us how you would like the show to be

remembered, how we will be remembered in your hearts. We'd love to hear all of that, preferably in your own voices. It'd be nice to get as many of your voices onto the show as possible. Yeah. You know the contact details by now. They've all been committed to song in your brain forever. It's too late now if you don't know them. Did you meet anyone via Answer Me This? Make some friends united by podcast.

What's the weirdest place you listened to Answer Me This? Or the weirdest thing you were doing while listening to answer me this? We want to know it all. We would like to still answer questions as well. So if you are sitting on a doozy, please do send it in. And the deadline is the end of July. After the end of July, we cannot promise that email address is going to be properly monitored anymore. So this is it. End of July. Send it now. I mean mean part of the point is for us not to monitor the email address anymore and if you must take to twitter you might as well use the hashtag amt400 now so that people can work out what is going on eventually yeah pre-game yeah and we're hoping

that uh episode 400 when it comes out on august the 5th will be a celebratory life-affirming moment. You want the feeling of like you stage dive and you're born aloft by a crowd of affectionate people and you do a kind of victory lap around a stadium and then you're delivered safely back to the stage. Not that they put the crowd parts like the Red Sea and you just fall six feet and dislocate your shoulder again. Crack your coccyx. Yeah anyway we're going to get on with the show now but if you're feeling emotional at the moment, thank you. Thank you for caring.

Yes. And if not... Here's a question about Noel's house party. Hi, Helen and Ollie. This is Sean in Glasgow. I just dropped my phone. I've been thinking about, I remember when I was a kid,

I used to watch Noel's house party with my wee gran and grandad. And there used to be this point when ah it was like people used to be in the living room and get a surprise because they'd appear on TV I think it was called like NTV or something like that and I was just like thinking about it just it popped into my head and I thought how did they do that like I mean I mean I get doing it now because like cameras can be tiny but how did they manage to do that in like what i think was like the 80s and 90s where like tv cameras were huge you didn't

have like digital broadcasting over internet and stuff how did they do that how could people have ever not noticed a camera in the living room thank you very much love you thank you sean so for those who don't remember um n tv indeed sean was the name of the feature on noel's house party when noel edmonds used to look down the barrel of the lens and click his fingers in a kind of the star of the show could be you moment and they would go live to a viewer's living room they were always watching noel's house party by happy coincidence of course all of britain was yeah a surprisingly huge amount of britain was so that's maybe not so extraordinary there was a point helen when a quarter of the country were watching noel's house party on a saturday night

essentially everyone watching telly was watching that shit and it was quite visually compelling idea which you can still see in antidex saturday night takeaway is the obvious uh influence but i mean goggle box as well the aesthetics of Yeah, the compelling idea was here are real people like you in their sitting room, you know, they might be scratching their ass, they might be eating something off a plate that doesn't look particularly appetizing, and suddenly bang, they're on telly in their tracksuit. And the way they did it, Sean, I mean, Sean says, Oh, they didn't have small cameras in the 90s. But they did. It's just the technology isn't as good as it is now so yeah I mean it's true that now you can get a GoPro or a smartphone that's got a lens in it that's so tiny

you really could hide it anywhere and anyone could do that but in the 90s if you were the BBC with money no object for this hit show then you could do that too you'll have heard of lipstick cameras they were around from that era and that's how they used to film formula one back then oh wow you know that footage where you'd see a car mounted camera that existed from the 90s panasonic made them they were hugely expensive they're about the size of a paperback and that is what they used to film noel's house parties ntv section did they disguise it as a book you're on the right track they disguised it as a vhs tape ah was Was it a VHS tape of Noel's house party? Because that would be very meta.

Well, no, because that would have aroused suspicion, wouldn't it? Unless you're an absolute superfan. What they do is they send the production team down to the sitting room that was going to be pranked. Someone would have been nominated in any case by their friend or partner who would be in on it. So there would be a mole on the inside. Yeah, and they'd make sure that the victim had gone out for the afternoon. And then when the production team turned up, they'd take a lot of Polaroids, because this is the 90s,

of what the sitting room looked like. And almost everyone back in those days would have a VHS machine under or on top of the TV, so i.e. within the eyeline of the TV, so it would look like Noel was talking to them. And then on top of the VHS player, they'd have a couple of unboxed VHSs lying around. That's just what everyone had. So they would replace one of the vhs player they'd have a couple of unboxed vhs's lying around that's just what everyone had so they would replace one of the vhs's they'd take the label off or make a

repro label of one of the vhs's and put their dummy vhs tape on and it was out of the record tab on the side that the lens used to poke out oh wow that's a nice uh trick yeah and then there was always a second camera that was obviously harder to hide it would have to go to plant pot or whatever because you'd always get a wide or a profile angle because no one would get them to do a dance routine or whatever or get the neighbors to come around you know so they needed a second camera that was harder because you really didn't want to alert the suspicion of the person who's going to be pranked and most of the time you can tell they genuinely didn't know because they're looking you know they really were like scratching

their ass or picking their nose very often when it cut to them which was part of the time you can tell they genuinely didn't know because they're looking, you know, they really were like scratching their ass or picking their nose very often when it cut to them, which was part of the fun. And then it did involve sometimes paying neighbours to drill through their home to get the cables into a transmission van somewhere. But they, like I say, money, no object. How's that legal? People were like, yes, for Noel's house party. Fuck yes.

My street's going to be on MTV. Yes, go for it. There are a few people that just did not enjoy the prank. People who just did not play along. I would understand. I think most people, it's hardwired into the British psyche, isn't it? That if you're being humiliated on national television, you just do play along. I would hate it so much and just want to hide.

But it is somehow more conspicuous not to go along with it than it is to go along with it, which is annoying. It's manipulative. Yeah. Just do it. If you hate it, do do it to like to an adequate level and no one will remember make a fuss you know everyone will remember whenever someone would call up the radio they would always have to tell them to turn their radio off in the background

because you get the the sound feeding back feedback loop yeah if the family were watching noel's house party at home wouldn't that then pick up this is why it'll be a shame to say goodbye to this show, Helen, because it's that kind of question you've just sort of instinctively tapped into a really fascinating nerdy area that I have researched. And yet I thought, you know what,

that's too geeky, I won't mention it. And then you asked anyway. Yes. So I do know the answer to that. Oh, gonna lie back and enjoy this. To prevent feedback loops, the TV that the victim was watching on would be relaying a fake version of bbc one that the engineers had retuned it to they would use this well remember

everyone was watching analog telly back then so it wasn't that you don't have the risk you have now of like are they on virgin are they on sky are they watching through the internet none of that are they going to channel hop no because they would have to get up and change they didn't have remote controls in the 90s i didn't the feed of noel's house party would actually be a dummy feed that was being relayed by their household aerial so the engineers would take the real version of bbc1 the off-air feed from the household aerial on their house but uh when the moment came to go to null they'd be looking at the version that was the two-way with um the satellite truck around the corner so that's how they eliminated any possibility of that but back in those days there was not much of

a delay anyway like it was it was half a second or something it wasn't like seven seconds but to minimize that kind of feedback issue yes fake version of bbc one there you go incredible here's a question from paul who says my niece has had a child and named him kaiser okay kaiser william interesting choice so helen answer me this why has kaiser become a popular name i can't see into the minds of the several thousand people who have called a child kaiser the last few years because since about 2017 it has been in the top 1000 names for boys in the US. 2018 it was 1013th out of 6164 names for boys in England and Wales. It's sort of hovering around the 800s in the US ever since then. And is there any other meaning? Because I looked up in my little Oxford dictionary that I have on my desk and it says Kaiser, noun historical, emperor,

especially of Germany or Austria. Is there any other connotation? I mean, that's really it. It was a German borrowing of the word Caesar, which meant emperor. And then the etymology of Caesar is pretty fuzzy. There's sort of speculation. Oh, did it mean head of hair? Because Caesar was born with a good head of hair, blah, blah, blah. Does did it mean head of hair because Caesar was born with a good head of hair blah blah blah it doesn't mean blue-eyed because Caesar was born blue eyes but basically it is emperor and I do think there have been a bit of a rise in kind of grandstanding royal sounding names like the name rain r-e-i-g-n is that a name yes a name one of one direction called his child that did he or middle name that but name? Yes, a name. One of One Direction called his child that. Did he?

Or middle name that. But if your child's middle name was going to be William and you called them Kaiser, that is a bold choice, given that probably, you know, the most associated name with Kaiser in a lot of people's imaginations would be William or Wilhelm

after the last emperor of Germany. But there might just be aesthetic reasons for it. The shortening is kai which is quite a popular name yeah kai but kai exists as its own name anyway that's not short for kaiser always is it no it isn't but i suppose if you wanted to give them a name that is longer than kai that you would generally call them kai but sounded kind of official because it is then you might go for it but also two syllable names ending in ER have been popular. So I think a lot of times you get aesthetic patterns. So for a few years, quite soft names like Eleanor, Lily, Olivia were popular. You've got those L sounds and those vowel

sounds. And evidently at the moment, there's these kind of hard consonant names ending in ER that are doing it for people instead there was a very popular tv show called teen mum on mtv that i imagine you haven't watched and one of the stars janelle evans named one of her children kaiser and that popularized the name although who knows why she did it i mean i think i've said this before but the rules that we held true to were if your child was lost in the park would you feel embarrassed shouting it out could the person be the ceo of a company in the future or would it sound ridiculous the emperor of a company more like and could you difficult to imagine this your own children but could you imagine a romantic partner in the future being amorously turned on by that name you know could

you say it during sex without it being ridiculous uh those those are valid rules i think yeah those are good rules uh that's thoughtful kaiser is the name for a bread roll maybe people are very into that and they find it sexy and powerful turn me on what does your name mean martin is it something warlike martin is like from mars yeah it's like mark god of war god of war which doesn't seem like your nature either highly inappropriate yeah i don't know why you call someone that if you wanted it to say something about them unless though you wanted them to be like It doesn't seem like your nature either. Highly inappropriate. Yeah, I don't know why you call someone that if you wanted it to say something about them, unless you wanted them to be like a soldier or something.

Well, this is it. It's one thing to call your child Martin, even knowing that it means, somehow, anciently, God of War. The equivalent with Kaiser is to literally call your child God of War. That's why it's weird. You know, it's the language that people use now to mean kaiser they use the word kaiser that's why it's odd it doesn't you know you don't have to look it up you know it's only a few steps down from furor basically isn't it you just wouldn't

a few years ago on the illusionist i did a mini series about names and i got an email from someone called adolf right from south africa and he was, it was all right growing up with it because Adolf Hitler kind of played differently here. Yeah, I can see that, but still a name about which you'd have an opinion. I think that's the thing you don't really want. It's hard not to. That much character forming going on with your children. Exactly. I did meet someone whose surname was Adolf

and they were a genealogist. So they had lots of complex feelings about it. I think they wanted to reclaim it to an extent. Isn't it like a big kind of medical insurance company in the state oh yeah it is oh well that's all right then that's i wanted to call my child prudential prude got three kids we've got some life prudential and uh churchill how do you think you would feel if when your children are older they were like i don't like my name oh i think i'd be okay with that i found it weirder when when my dad turned around to me and told me he didn't like me calling him dad. There's one day he just suddenly said, from now on, I want you to call me Stan.

I mean, he was having a midlife crisis, obviously. From now on, I want you to call me Stanley. How old were you? About 15. I just couldn't do it. 15? Yeah. Wow.

So he would have been 50. Yeah. And he was just like, he didn't like the idea of a teenager calling him dad, I think. It would make him feel old. But I mean, it's just like, you're dad, you've always been dad. You don't really get to choose that,

I don't think. Well, you choose it before the child's born. Yeah. Somehow it should be the children's prerogative what they call their own parents. Whereas, you know, you feel like when it's the parents choosing for the children, they get to choose for the first 10 years of their life.

And if the child hates it, then actually it then becomes the child's prerogative again yeah there's a lot of power isn't it choosing your child's name whereas when you're a child choosing what you call your parent is like one of the few powers you have little power yeah exactly powering up i'm putting dad on your gravestone there's nothing you can do about it if you've got a question then email your question if you've got a question, then email your question. If you've got a question, then email your question. 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. 10 minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a question from Joe in Seattle who says, Helen, answer me this. If I fell into a ball pit the size of a swimming pool, would I die? Huh. Well, I assume that Joe is phrasing this to imply

that it's a very big and deep ball pit rather than just a small backyard swimming pool yes but air pockets still apply don't they i mean that's the aerodynamics of ball pits yes exactly you could still breathe even in a deep one i mean i've i've lied at the bottom of a small ball pit and i haven't died that's good news did you have to be rescued though by a lifeguard it's part of the fun i mean i remember as a kid in a swimming pool holding your breath under to see how long you could last horrific thinking aboutific, thinking about it as a parent. But, you know, in the ball pit, I think that's pretty safe, isn't it?

Like, there are gaps. Yeah, although I can imagine that if you're in a very deep ball pit where the balls came up to the top of your head or more, getting out of it would be really challenging. So it's possible you could starve to death. Well, that's a longer term proposition than asphyxiation. That's several weeks, right? I've not actually ever been in a ball pit what well because i i was a bit too old for

soft play soft play came in after i was a teenager we just had hard play that would injure you before and as an adult i've not been to one of these like adult instagram experience ball pit things i've been in a ball pit yeah when i was a kid i'm 43 i mean you weren't you're not too old for soft play helen yeah that you're you're right that it wasn't as common as it is now. Yeah, that's just your parents told you that soft play didn't exist for five years. Play didn't exist. Fine. So I don't know how deep they tend to be.

I sort of associate them with being maybe like waist height on children. Yes, although, I mean, you know, I now have a not yet two-year-old. His waist is low to the ground. He's never been in a ball pit, come to think of it, because of COVID. But when he gets in it, he's going to love it. And he, standing up in the big ball pit at the local leisure centre around the corner from us, would be up to his face. So I don't think asphyxiation is an issue, because otherwise they wouldn't let you do that, would they? Yeah, and there are other ways that you can hurt yourself in a ball pit.

I think apparently the main way is just people colliding with you. Like if you're hiding under the balls, say, or if there's a slide going into the ball pit, I think a kid did die. Here's someone who's never been to a ball pit if there's a slide going into the ball pit. Of course there's a slide going into the ball pit, Helen. We're talking about joy here.

If you're ball pitting around at the bottom of the slide and someone comes down the slide, that is a collision hotspot that has been fatal. But that's about slides, not ball pits, isn't it? Like hanging around at the bottom of a slide is fatal anyway. I mean, there's a lot of urban myths about, oh, my child died because there was a rattlesnake in the ball pit. Or my child died because there was a heroin needle in the ball pit.

And these stories seem quite widely circulated, but not verified in the ways attributed to a newspaper that doesn't exist sounds like moral panics doesn't it right exactly which is interesting because ball pits uh were designed as part of the kind of soft play revolution which existed because people thought outdoor playgrounds were unsafe so they were created to be a safer playing environment so it's interesting that they sparked people's paranoia that they're unsafe. I think it doesn't necessarily matter what the safety level is of a thing. People have natural fears

and they'll channel them into whatever's available. Yes. And you can always be like, oh, there's probably been a heroin addict around here. Oh, a rattlesnake. In comparison to the fear of abduction, which was basically what in the late 70s people were worried about

in playgrounds yeah it's a an unlikely thing to happen isn't it like landing on a heroin needle inside a children's play attraction yes i would have thought and then that killing you yeah this report i read which was supposedly first person for a mother she's like my child died of a heroin overdose because a bit of needle had snapped off in his foot i'm not sure that would make you overdose on heroin might get might overdose on tetanus but yeah so it does seem like the biggest hazard from a ball pit is filth because of uh you know especially if it's a child ball pit there might be quite a lot of bodily excretions in there. I wouldn't actually make that distinction. I mean, the adult ball pit is usually taken alongside alcohol, isn't it?

So actually, I'm not sure. I'm not sure there's any likely to be less piss in an adult ball pit or less partially bathed up Heineken. Yeah, definitely vomit, maybe a little bit of diarrhea. And manufacturers do recommend cleaning the balls once a week. However, do they? No. Although, Bally Ballison, the ball pit bars in London,

which have been around for the last five or so years, they say, we have a ball cleaner called Gobble Muffin, which is kind of a machine with a big pipe, who sanitises and cleans 18,000 balls per hour. That is a lot of balls. Our balls get a lovely clean each and every week and we've got the test results to prove it and i've also heard of people putting all the balls in a net and taking them through a car wash or an industrial dishwasher do you know where the

first soft play was in the world helen i have seen it attributed to a play park in ontario correct the children's village yes in ontario Ontario Place, Toronto which was created by an Englishman actually who moved to Canada called Eric McMillan. But it didn't have a ball pit in it. So he essentially invented what we know as soft play by creating that attraction architecturally. But it didn't have a ball pit in it. His first ball pit

because he did invent the ball pit in as much as you can invent diving into some plastic balls was at Captain Kids World in SeaWorld San Diego which opened in 1976. Have I told my anecdote on the show about being abandoned in SeaWorld? I don't remember. I remember you talking about crying to see the whales dance.

Yeah, I'm not sure whether I have. Is this a story about you actually a child of a killer whale and the man's picked you up, found you in a floating crib? Forgive me if you've listened to our archive more recently than we have, but none of us can remember if I've told this story before. But when I was about seven, I got lost in SeaWorld. And it was because I went into Captain Kids World. I went into the ball pit and I was so amazed by the soft play. I'd never seen one before. and i just had a um a watch for my birthday you know i was dyspraxic and clumsy and like a terrible child for any kind of practical task but nonetheless my parents were trying to train me in it so they were like right we're gonna go for a cup of coffee

over there oliver look at your watch when the big hand gets to three come and find us over there right and they left me in the ball pit and And I was diligent. I did keep checking my watch because I was a responsible-minded child. But I had absolutely no way of working out where they'd gone. Like, I just had no sense of direction. So I could not find where they'd gone. And I wasn't really paying attention because I was so excited to get into Captain Kids world. So three o'clock came. And I was like, oh, shit, I don't know where this coffee shop is.

Walked around for like five or ten minutes trying to find it. And it's a big disorientating place. You know, music coming out the bins, you know, smells diverting me everywhere, candy floss. What in garbage. And then I just did what seemed like the obvious thing to do when you're eight years old, which is I thought, well, what would I do

if I was separated from me at SeaWorld? I'd go and watch Baby Shamu again. So I went like to the side doors of all of the shows and tried to spot my parents which is impossible anyway in a crowd of like 10 000 people and of course they weren't there they were like shedding buckets of tears with the customer service department trying to get their child back from abduction but uh a tannoy announcement went out which obviously i was oblivious to and i was just walking around for about an hour and then one of the seaworld staff spotted me crying and said have you been separated from your mummy and daddy and i said yes and she said come with me and there they were

and uh then we left there was there was no more fun after that oh no what an emotional journey from peak to trough so far yeah so uh captain kids world was nothing but trouble for me um sorry i'm sure that that's not what eric mcmillan intended no i read him talking about how when he was a child growing up in um post-war manchester i believe and the kids would just play out on the rubble they would just be turned out to play outside for the whole day and he was like and the kids would just dismantle the wrecked building they would just like rip it apart brick by brick yeah Yeah. Wow. That's really interesting.

So he really went to the opposite side of the softness spectrum. Yes, but still with the same tactility. Isn't that interesting? True. And that's, I think, what's behind some of the revival as the world's become more digital in adults doing soft play. I think it's partly nostalgia, obviously, and it's partly Instagram. I get that. But it's also just the fact um it's partly nostalgia obviously and it's partly

instagram i get that but it's also just the fact that it's something tactile rather than looking at a screen it's holding a thing jumping in a thing feeling a thing but i do think instagram also has a lot to do with it because often the ball pits are like all yellow or all glow in the dark oh that's fun it does sound fun do you know what inspired eric mcmillan to come up with specifically the ball pit, though? A pit full of balls. Well, now you've said it's like a Blitz reference. I'm a bit concerned.

There's some like undeterminated bomb. That's what made him. But it was a container of pickled onions. And he was looking at it going, wow, what would it be like to crawl through this? And then thought... Imagine diving into a bath of onions. Wow, visionary. crawl through this and then thought imagine diving into a bath of onions yeah visionary so it would have been amazing if the prototype ball pit had been filled with 40 000 onions rather than balls

the onion pit i'd be kind of into that i'm trying to build a website to bring tourists to rad lit but when i open it up on my smartphone or tablet, something goes wrong and it just looks a bit shit. Unlike Hertfordshire itself. Well, try building that website using Squarespace. On desktop and devices it will look simply ace. As well designed as Hertfordshire with all that lovely green space. County of Opportunity and Stevenage. Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of Answer Me This.

And providing you with an opportunity to build yourself a website as easily as you might, I don't know, flip a pancake if you're an American or order a sausage if you're a Brit. Brits flip pancakes? Not as readily, I don't think. It's not such a widely available thing. Just once a year on Pancake Day. Exactly, yeah. Less practice, isn't it? It is tricky. Yeah. I'd say actually setting up a Squarespace website is a bit easier than flipping a pancake because

there's always at least the first pancake that gets absolutely trashed by that. Whereas Squarespace, not an option to trash. Well, the other thing that's great about Squarespace is they provide you a lot of data as well. So if you have a a website like I have a personal portfolio thing oliman.com I looked there the other day at like you know who's referred to my website and how many hits I get on certain days it's really interesting really granular like I can see that most of my visitors are on mobile for example so that then impacts how you might design your website or I can see that most people come to my website from searching for me on google not from me reading out the url on a podcast or whatever so that makes you think as well about it but that does make a lot of sense that people

would be like well i can't remember the url but i remember i wanted to look it up so going with the google option yeah but it does change the way you think about web design and they help you with all that so like also another thing is the average visitor to my website apparently spends an average of 1 minute and 14 seconds looking at my pages. So that's quite interesting. You then think, okay, well, there's no point to me putting a clip up that's an hour long. There's no point me putting up more than two paragraphs because people on average aren't going to read it. I really think about that. Why don't you put up a tab with a gallery of all the glamour shots of you? I'm a bit frightened to see whether that would get traction. Anyway, you can go and play around with the two-week free trial that we are

offering you just for listening to this show. Head squarespace.com answer and then when you're ready to launch you can get a 10 discount off your first purchase of a website or domain if you use our code answer here's a question from jay who says when i was a child i read all of the famous five books first in spanish then in english los cinco famosos i even bought the whole collection at a jumble sale in england one summer when i was there learning english when he says the whole collection i doubt it i mean there are like 85 books of the famous five are there that's a literal car boat full of books isn't it yeah it's quite interesting because blighton originally conceived you know a bit like harry potter uh i think there are six or seven famous five books based on the

idea that it's set in the summer holidays rather than in a school year but the point being the same every summer as these kids grow up they have an adventure so it starts when they're 12 or whatever and it would end when they're 18 because then they're not children anymore except the books were so popular that she then wrote like another 50 and so actually chronologically i mean of course none of the events in the book are really possible anyway. But it couldn't have all happened when she said it did, because that would be an entire summer holiday packed full of adventure with no time for term time. They were permanently 14, basically. Well, Poirot as well, Agatha Christie wrote those, I think, from the 20s to the 70s.

And some of them do reflect current events like war or post-war. But in the ITV adaptations, it's always the 1930s. Yeah, it's like The's like the simpsons isn't it goes back to square one at the end of the episode i mean that's how to write if you're going to write a book that you think has more mileage than like one sequel just don't be too specific about how much time has passed that's my advice just have no character development or plot arc who needs it maybe she's uh managed to split timeline so she's like well in one version of their 14th year, this is what they were doing. And in a parallel universe, this is what they were doing.

Quantum mechanical reading of the famous five. Well, Jay's question is not about the quantum mechanical reading of the famous five. Jay's question is, Ollie, answer me this. What is the deal with ginger beer? It was very funny to read, also in the translations, that those young kids, maturer for their age as they were, were drinking something with the word beer in its name.

What kind of drink was that? Ginger beer still exists, Jay. It does. I drink quite a lot of ginger beer. You are a ginger beer drinker, aren't you? Yeah. In fact, I remember being in a shop in Peckham and there was a guy who was looking at a ginger beer

and I was like, that's a good one. And he was like, oh, I can't drink it because i'm i don't drink alcohol and i was like no it's it's it says beer but it's not got alcohol in it and he looked at me like i was fucking with him i was like no no no it's it's and it's hard to explain because i guess there's root beer which is another non-beer beer but apart from that like most beer is alcoholic right but some of them are fermented from a yeast aren't they because my brother rick tried to brew some ginger beer and uh during the fermentation it exploded yeah so ginger ale although this doesn't really help in the sense that ale is typically an alcoholic drink as well but ginger ale is just carbonated ginger it's just a soft

drink ginger beer although also a soft drink and not alcoholic has been fermented with yeast that's why it's called ginger beer and And to complicate things slightly further, there is a tradition that kind of goes in and out of fashion and was recently revived by Krabby's, the brand, of having alcoholic ginger beer. But then that would be labelled alcoholic ginger beer because usual ginger beer isn't. Yeah, it would be sold on a different shelf realistically as well, wouldn't it? So what the famous five are drinking is basically a sparkling ginger drink. And the reason that that was of such appeal to kind of eight-year-olds in the post-war generation was it was an aspirational thing to drink, like in the summer holidays.

All of Enid Black, and she's so clever, isn't she? Like tapping into a fantasy for a child of like a freewheeling life where you get to go on adventures and have fun and whatever. An Aryan freewheeling life. And there's so much lingering detail on the picnic very often yes midnight feast and picnic very important yes and it's because i think that's the like it's hard for a child to imagine i'm going to go rampaging around a lighthouse and capture a hostage but it's it's probably easier for them to imagine imagine we snuck out at midnight we're still in an era where there's rationing yeah she wrote the first one in 1941 wow so full-on war yeah so it's you know ginger beer is the thing you can make at home or people did then um so it's something that actually you

could you could have a day to yourself as a child say let's go to the woods and drink ginger beer that's the thing you could do and pretend you're the famous five i think that's it really but you see the same thing in harry potter's a very good Harry Potter podcast called Witch Please that has a whole episode about food in Harry Potter and about how the feasts are really, I mean, they're magic, but they're also kind of sumptuous. And that comes from J.K. Rowling essentially aping Enid Blyton. That sort of sense of plenty, you can eat as much as you want,

you can have as much ginger beer as you want. Well, it's butter beer in Harry Potter, isn't it? Which they've now replicated at the theme parks did you have it i have had it yes so basically cream soda with coloring it is exactly creams i wouldn't even use the basically it is cream soda with coloring in it yeah no thanks it's fine like in situ um i mean i've had it twice so i've had it once at the wizarding world of harry potter in orlando and it was delicious because the temperature was like roasting and i was dripping with sweat and it was incredibly refreshing then i had it at the Harry Potter backstage tour down the road from

where I live in St Albans there just not necessary like you know I would have been fine with a cup of tea because we were in Britain so I think context is important but yes it'd be very nicely themed so ginger beer was popular in Britain because it was sort of a product of the empire really in that it came from a mixture of of the spice trade with the Orient and the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. So it was considered quite an exotic drink to the Victorians. And so it became like a trendy drink to have. And all those years later, it was still a choice that was redolent of English society, having ginger beer. Jay is expressing shock at the notion of children drinking something that even has a word in common with alcohol.

But British children were drinking alcohol. Maybe not as much at this point, but 19th century, I think we've talked about this on the show before, like in David Copperfield, they'll drink gin, they'll drink beer because the water was not clean, so they put alcohol in it. Had faeces in it, yes. All sorts. Yes, yeah. Mmm, all sorts.

That's right. And actually, although ginger beer does recur frequently, and it's right to point that out, and that's why parodists did, actually the phrase lashings of ginger beer, that's one of the first things, if you Google Enid Blyton, people will say, oh, lashings of ginger beer. Virtually every broadsheet article about Enid Blyton's history and her questionable views and everything, lashings of ginger beer will be in the headline but actually lashings of ginger

beer she never wrote in any of her books she did mention lashings of something else and ginger beer came out frequently but that was actually a parody that was the comic strip thing five go mad endorse it in the 80s that came from that like it's not a thing she actually said my goodness so i think that helped sort of solidify the ginger beer trope as something people say that enid blighton lingered on but actually i don't think she did any more than scotch eggs for example lashings of eggs paradise for you isn't it martin lashings of eggs well i've been reading a lot of enid blighton actually to harvey because he likes it it is interesting that the the row that there's been recently about um i don't know if you saw but english heritage added some footnotes to enid blighton's page to cover her racism and xenophobia

yes um which i think is absolutely fair enough and you do have to self-edit as you go along reading the story looking out for dodgy words yeah and attitudes i think as we have learned from the retro answer me this basically any piece of culture from any point in the past you have to have footnotes even the beginning of the show probably but what i do take objection to in what english heritage have written on their website is that they've mentioned these faults in her writing but then they also say uh you know she was criticized during her lifetime and afterwards for her lack of literary merit and i just think that is an unnecessary footnote to a plaque because you know yes she was but i mean still now in 2021 i have proof that a five-year-old is enthralled by a lot of what she wrote.

And it's because it's exactly at their level. It doesn't resonate in the same way to an adult as when I read... Like I read Charlotte's Web to him recently and moving from the Magic Faraway Tree to Charlotte's Web, it really is night and day. Like E.B. White's a proper writer,

beautifully written, like creates an incredible sense of the American countryside. He didn't care about any of that shit. It's just like, has he got a slide in the tree and he'd be like like every page something cool happens and he's just in it you know and i know i wouldn't call that a lack of literary merit it was the snobbery of the time female author phenomenally popular even measured against authors since and so they have to be like well it's not good though is it it's

not good just kids like it and everyone's buying it's not good because every genre apart from literary fiction is looked down upon in this country isn't it yeah whether it's like fantasy or science fiction or romance or crime like those are all considered like you know generic and and not worthy of merit i don't agree with it but i can see the logical argument an adult might be wasting their intellectual time by reading true crime rather than poetry. Like I said, I don't agree with it, but I can see why someone might think that. But it's a snobby position, isn't it?

But when your mission statement is to get children to read, like anything, just get them to read anything. I mean, it's just, obviously, if they like Enid Blyton, they should read Enid Blyton. But yeah, obviously the new versions where they don't use racist words and they don't call everyone Dick and Fanny is preferable. I mean, actually, the other day I was reading one of the original books which i got

an antiques fair to harvey and it was a book of short stories and he just thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world that there was a boy in the story called willie i mean it was like the most hilariously transgressive thing he'd ever encountered and just that was it like half an hour of laughter honestly like after he'd gone to bed in the lights route i could still hear him laughing have they renamed all of the characters called fanny because that might like knock him over for weeks yeah finds one of those i can't remember what her name is i think it might be winnie so anyway in the in the faraway tree dick is definitely rick now and i think fanny is vulva yeah And I think Fanny is to this URL. Facebook.com slash Answer Me This

or Twitter.com slash Helen and Dolly. But please don't follow us in real life. thank you to our sponsors for this episode of answer me this wonderium which is the new name by the way for the great courses plus so you've heard us talk before about the great courses plus and all the programs experts and episodes you can find on there yes they have all migrated over to wonderium but there's even more on there helen that's right they've got a load of videos uh by craftsy about loads of different crafts things so i I did watch several episodes of a thing instructing you how to sew big projects on small sewing machines. But I'm imagining that is not your flavour, Ollie.

So I'll tell you about something else I watched. They have a really interesting collection of archive documentaries. Right. I started watching The Atomic Cafe, which is a 1982 non-narrated documentary. It's like a compilation of archive material, news, public information films, propaganda basically about nuclear weapons oh i'm already there some of it

is quite funny but it's also like oh my fucking god because you've got these um arrogant men of the 1940s and 50s going brilliant science weapons uh intercut with like horrific footage of the aftermath of hiroshima you've got them being like very glib about doing nuclear tests on bikini atoll and they're like the people are very welcoming of us like nuking their island yeah yeah and the guy's saying i'm not an atomic playboy and these tests won't make a hole in the ocean where all the water will come out and they won't destroy gravity but they did destroy bikini atoll because they had to be relocated for 20 years and then they were allowed to move back and the land is

poisoned so they had to leave again so just all these like american men being like this is fucking brilliant science weapon it's just this pageantry of power it's interesting as well just how recent it is i always find when it comes to nuclear history like you know the government published the government published that pamphlet, didn't they, in the 1980s about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack in Britain. I don't know, it's in our lifetime that people did think that might happen. The filmmakers were like, we did it now because nuclear weapons are not popular amongst the public. They're very sick of war. Yet Ronald Reagan is amping up the nuclear campaign. And so I think what the film is intending to do

is to be like, well, look, this is what they were saying about it. This was officially released stuff. And this is the reality. And here's how this sort of propaganda worked. Yeah, I love a bit of archive. Love it. All right.

Well, to check out those exclusive documentaries, including Wondrium Originals and Collections from Craftsy, like Helen mentioned, you can get a 14-day free trial of unlimited access to Wondrium if you sign up now via our special URL, wondrium.com slash answer. That is W-O-N-D-R-I-U-M dot com slash answer

for a two-week free trial. Well, talking of learning new things, Rachel from Carmarthen says, I have decided to take up knitting. I've watched loads of instructional videos, but so far the only thing i've achieved is the urge to stab my husband every time he asks me how i'm doing so helen answer me this how do i get started with knitting or get away with murder i did read a ruth rendall short story about this woman who, she was very big into knitting. Her husband became increasingly frustrated by the noise and basically by something making her happy.

So she inserted a very thin needle into the side of his skull. So he died from a brain hemorrhage. Anyway, I should say, Rachel, there is actually a 36-part course on knitting on Wondering. Wow, 36. But Helen, give us your knitting 101 well it's difficult for me because i learned when i was really really young i learned when i was like four or five from my grandmother and i think it's a lot easier when someone does show you even though most of the visuals might be the same as a video you can see the three-dimensional thing of what your hands are supposed to be doing because really knitting

there's like two things you have to pick up how to make a knit stitch and how to do a purl stitch and then the rest is combining them so i would suggest if you have a grandma handy i'm afraid i can't lend you mine because they're both dead or even a local craft group they might be having irl knit sessions now or someone who will give you a tutorial online for like an hour I think you could get it because then they could be like oh this is what you're doing wrong get into some of the knitting groups on Facebook and I think that'll be good and then start on small items like knit a bunch of different squares you can sew them together later into a blanket or scarf or something but then you learn tension and different stitches don't use needles that are too small or yarn because that'll make it hard for yourself and then i would suggest to make some

toys that's how i got back into knitting as nada i was watching 24 on box set and knitting dinosaurs so you learn how to like shape things and then you have an item quite quickly so you think oh i did that that's cool whereas if you want to start on a jumper that's going to take you months yes probably so start simple and work your way up to a garment it's interesting when you say keep things simple as well because uh i as you know do not have a lot of experience with crafts generally not my thing um hand-eye coordination not my thing aesthetic appreciation of anything not my thing but um i was at center parks the other week and they have this pottery painting studio thing. And I wanted to make myself a salt cellar, are they called?

Like, you know, when you have a little pot with flakes of salt in it, one of those. All you have to do is paint it. And I wanted it to match my kitchen, which is themed blue and yellow. So the tiles are blue and yellow. The chairs are blue and yellow. The picture frames are blue and yellow. So I thought, well, if I paint it blue and yellow, that'll match. It doesn't matter how bad it is.

What if you can't find it in there? There are other colours. There's just a blue and yellow. That'll match. It doesn't matter how bad it is. What if you can't find it in there? There are other colours. There's just a blue and yellow matching scheme. Anyway, I painted it blue and yellow and I should have stopped. I should have fucking stopped. But you know, you look at it and you think, yeah, but it's just not that impressive, is it, that I did that? All I've done is paint it blue and yellow.

I know I'll make the knob black and that fucked it. Because I just put too many and then the colours bled through. And actually it'd just been blue and yellow it would look really nice so keep it simple right i mean good for you for having ambition ollie how are you gonna learn if you don't try it and risk failure at least knitting you can undo it whereas the pottery painting you could smash it i've got it though i mean it's imperfections actually remind me that i made it i suppose that's its strength do you feel proud or just annoyed and disappointed? It's a memory rather than any sense of satisfaction. It's more just like, oh yeah, I remember I went on holiday and did that. So I suppose it has a purpose. Yeah. I think that's also a lot of the purpose of craft.

It's not just to have the thing because realistically you can buy a jumper much more quickly and cheaply, but you have the experience of making it. And once you get it, knitting, it's very relaxing pottery painting for other people might be relaxing but for you is stressful because you're thinking about the consequences of living with the decisions you make in the moment yeah i just want a good salt seller uh that's why there are professionals professional salt knob painters there are do you remember knobbers yes yeah yeah the knobbers were very impressive and i went on a tour of the emma bridgewater factory in another lifetime and we met a load of knobbers yeah their

job was painting the knobs on teapot lids but it was incredible because like they did it in a split second it's amazing this is a process known as knobbing amazing here's a question from d from adelaide who says ollie answer me this is it true that zoos give cheetahs pet dogs and if so why do the cheetahs ever end up attacking and eating the dogs this seems like a disaster waiting to happen it is true wow wow and it's gosh and it's habitual by the way it's not just like sort of one zoo that was looking for a publicity stunt or something it is absolutely normal behavior particularly in north america to give the cheetahs pet dogs and the reason for that is because uh despite what d says that it

could be a disaster waiting to happen and the cheetahs might attack and eat the dogs they have very specific needs for their prey like they don't see um adult size humans as prey and essentially they they're shy cheetahs like the reason that they're the fastest animals in the world is because they're built for flight not fight so the issue is when you put them in captivity they can't run anywhere so if they feel intimidated and scared they can't run so what having a dog by their side does is basically sort of ground them it's very similar to what dogs do for human beings essentially like it grounds them like gives them someone to talk to like share their feelings with that it makes them feel more relaxed and have less anxiety but it has to be done at the stage to

avoid the issue that he's referring to there i mean no cheater on record has ever killed a dog that they've been buddied up with but it has to be done when the cheater is a cub and the dog is a puppy okay yeah that's amazing what kind of dogs are there they're like daxies or like st bernard so they can kind of they don't look like a tasty morsel no they're i mean like i say because they're puppies and cubs next to each other they just sort of learn yeah cheetahs are slightly i mean this is a real generalization but cheetahs i mean obviously they are cats but they're a bit more like dogs than other cats so like they have non-retractable claws for example like dogs um so if you bring up a cheetah and a puppy next to each other they don't necessarily distinguish i mean it's hard to know what they think in it but they don't necessarily distinguish

each other have you asked a cheetah well they're very private as he said as being any different from being from the same litter so they are just emotional support for each other so no it's like house dogs like labradors and stuff retrievers that's very cute i hadn't i'd never heard that before yeah like once you disappear down the cheetah hole there's a lot on youtube of it because obviously because it's cute oh like you just wonder whether actually it just started because someone wanted a photo shoot of a cheetah cub with a puppy for a terrible grandma calendar in a shopping mall and then they were like oh they're actually getting on also the other reason is conservation because they're more relaxed they're more willing to

procreate with other cheetahs and obviously that's important for zoos that are committed to sustaining the life of the species so that's another reason um is that they team them up with puppies they're more likely to want to get off later of course people are thinking well how do we make cheetahs less miserable in zoos rather than thinking don't put cheetahs in the zoo yeah yeah should well but some of that's conservation isn't it some of it is like an abandoned they're abandoned cubs or you know cubs that are injured and then can't you know fend for themselves in the wild some is lots isn't i mean there's difference in like a wildlife refuge versus a zoo which is more like a burlesque of animals i think that's true but also i think a lot of wildlife refuges will want to bring members of the public in to advertise their work and bring

in revenue and awareness of cheetahs and stuff. I mean, zoos are always, you know, caught in this bind, aren't they? They do do valuable conservation work with the money they raise. They do bring an exhibition of exotic animals to people that never would have seen them otherwise. But there is a trade-off in the welfare standards. Since inner-city zoos exist, I suppose the cheetahs might as well be as happy as possible. The world's moved on.

And I don't know. I feel like people... Bits of the world have. I feel like a lot of people going into zoos now because they want to look after animals. Well, you say bits of the world have moved on. Yeah. I mean, in the UAE, it is still, I wouldn't say commonplace

because you're talking about the ultra rich who are there. But it is not unusual amongst the billionaires of the UAE to have a pet cheater, which is something that was, again, I wouldn't say common, but more common in Western celebrities, Hollywood types, you know, about 80, 90 years ago. So there was the silent film actress Phyllis Gordon was photographed walking her pet cheetah around Earl's Court. There's an amazing photo of her going shopping with this thing on like a metal chain walking it like a dog i wonder if she also had a dog to keep the cheetah calm uh she didn't seem that

bothered about keeping the cheetah calm she was walking down the street in central london but yeah maybe um josephine baker used to have one as well she used to take it walking down the chancelise wow i do feel better about that than zoos than the sort of the old-fashioned zoos if only because there was the slight chance that the cheetah might literally eat the rich at some point. And that sense of jeopardy is quite exciting. No, again, you're playing into cheetah prejudice, Martin. I know you're making a point, but no. That's why they were good pets.

They are actually... They never turn on the whip hand of the master. They are more suitable pets, yeah. They don't really go for... They might go for children, but they wouldn't go for an adult. They're just too scared. Well, eating a rich child is also acceptable. Five Star Hotel

It had an omelette station A multitude of pools But 30 quid for parking WTF Four Star Hotel There's ethernet, not Wi-Fi like it's 1998 But there was a swim-up bar in the rooftop pool Three Star Hotel

A bit more down to earth They did still have a pool But it was full of kids Two Star Hotel A lot more down to earth they also had a pool but it was full of dogs one star hotel there's a body in the pool answer me this holiday all the fun of traveling with none of the stinky toilets or frightening food out Out now at answermethispodcast.com slash albums. Here's a question from Sebastian in Oxford who says, I live opposite a church, St Barnabas in Jericho, Oxford. I'm afraid the only church that I remember in that street is

the one that had a bar in it. Well, they've all got communion wine. Which chimes, he says, every quarter of an hour, as well as whenever there's a service. Oh, it's the Catholic one. That's beautiful, that church. Yes, it's got that. Right by the canal. It's got that Italian Campanile.

Yeah, that's a cute church. I normally find church bells quite pleasant, he says, but this church's chimes sound somehow out of tune. I don't know if this is simply a sonic illusion because some of the bells are missing, and bells are definitely missing because some of the melodies have gaps in them, or whether it's because some of the bells

have actually grown out of tune. Helen asked me this, can a bell go out of tune with time? And if so, can it be tuned back? Well, if we're talking about bell-shaped bells, which in St. Barnabas's case were not, bells can be retuned, but they can't be tuned back to the note they were. They'll cast the bell out of metal, and then it seems to be a very exacting process of

using a circular lathe to carve thin layers off the bell until the note is right. What did you say? It can be tuned one way but not the other? Yes, you can get the note lower but not higher. Okay, but why can't you add to it? You would have to make a new bell, basically, whereas shaving off more layers is possible, but it's also difficult. Also, bells get cracked and they'll mend the cracks

and that might change the tuning a bit as well. I did go quite deep into various bell maintenance advice sites. They've all got serif fonts, so i think they're all pretty old websites yeah but if i was a bell ringer i'd be looking for that kind of common group identity you know i'd be pleased to hear the thoughts of fellow bell ringers from around the world oh yeah a lot of them were like if your bell is doing this leave it right if this is falling apart leave it it's basically like if your bell's fucked well it's going to be fucked for another 200 years so leave it sebastian says he doesn't like the sound of these bells,

but I presume some people that live near that church would say that's the sound of the bell. Like, you know, a bit like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or something. Like it's, you know, we've all got used to that's how the bell sounds. It's quite evocative. Sometimes people probably would rather leave it slightly out of tune. Well, okay. In the case of St. Barnabas, it doesn't have those kinds of bells. It has 10 tubular bells and a victorian mechanism for playing out

a tune on them however the mechanism from what i have been able to find is they say erratic which means it's fucked and they have not been able to mend it so apparently it misses out quite a lot of the notes or plays them like in at the wrong time so maybe that's it maybe it is that some notes are missing so the intervals become unpleasant without that context i think it's also possible that if they have replaced the bell they may have replaced a bell with slightly wrong note bell that can happen since it is so difficult to get the precise notes i did see on their website they have an appeal to get a new organ in 2022 but i did not see anything about getting the bells repaired so either it's probably just too expensive or they're settled on this people

like it like i say yeah they're used to it exactly sorry sebastian you're stuck with that every quarter hour of your life martin well done for getting through this episode in which we've had ball pits and bell ends um my ex-girlfriend was a campanologist really yeah i only saw her play once i think it might have been on christmas day no that's not the punch line that you set them up like a bob munkhouse gag well i'm just i've got a real deep reverence for um well that brings us to the end of this episode of answer me this penultimate episode of answer me this so remember what we said at the beginning this is your last chance to ask us a question on the show and we also want your

reflections on the last 15 years and what this show has meant to you yes your amt memories and you can write them up and email us or you can record your voice and email us that recording and our contact details are on our website answer me this podcast.com and halfway through the month we will have a retro episode of answer me this the last ever retro episode of answer me this uh you need to subscribe to our free feed to get it though apart from google podcasts for reasons for the complex yeah subscribe somewhere else and you'll get that uh and also you can check out our other podcasts ollie what's cooking? Yeah, The Retrospectors, my new daily show, which is all about the things you never knew you never knew.

Every day, a 10 minute trivia bomb will land on your pod feed. There are now over 50 episodes for you to enjoy. Coming up next week, we have The Invention of the Bikini, which is related to Bikini Atoll that you mentioned earlier. Sure the world's first bread slicing machine and the final episode of el dorado the set of el dorado is now used for paintballing that makes sense helen what's going on in your world well veronica mars investigations like answer me this is uh hurtling towards the end although that is dictated by veronica mars the tv series uh not making any more itself. So that is at vmipod.com. And then on The Illusionist, the most recent episode is about mental health terms,

especially the ones that we sprinkle into everyday conversation. But what are we really saying when we say that? So that's at theillusionist.org. And then the pod place is air muddin'. I've just launched a new podcast called Neutrino Watch. It's at neutrino.watch. It's a sort of fiction podcast,

and every single day the audio changes slightly. So it's a daily podcast, but not as you're used to. So I do dip into that. And I also make a podcast called Song by Song, which is going through every Tom Waits song in chronological order. So if you're a Tom Waits fan or just like music, head over to songbysongpodcast.com. Or if you're Tom Waits.

Or if you're Tom Waits. And actually, how many songs of Tom Waits' catalogue do you have left on that? I can't remember how many we've got left. I think we're about to hit episode 300. You're lucky you didn't do Shakespeare's Sister or something. The podcast would have finished a long time ago. I think if we ever did it again,

it would be like someone who died young. Oh, all the bleakness. Or started really really late or just doesn't put out many records and yeah yeah seal yeah sharday who's like the terence malik of uh popular music i don't know and uh rejoin us on the first thursday of august 2021 for the final episode for historic final episode 400