Answer Me This! - AMT402: Tall Ships, Branston Pickle and Bagpipe Lung

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Can you bloody well believe it? New AMT in your ears in the year 2025?? Well, it's real! In AMT402, listeners ask about roller derby names, baked bean beans, shopping on planes, and the danger of bagpipes.  For more information about this episode, visit answermethispodcast.com/episode402.  Got question for us to answer? Send them in writing or as a voice note to [e-mail]. Next episode will be in your podfeed 27 February 2025.  Our patrons will be hearing from us before that, so to become one, go to patreon.com/answermethis.  This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. To build an online home for your side hustle, or front hustle, or underhustle, go to squarespace.com/answer, have a play around during the two-week free trial, and when you're ready to launch, 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

Could Claudia Winkleman's fringe win its own BAFTA? Answer me this, answer me this Was a Bud's life based on a story by Kafka? Answer me this, answer me this Heaven and only answer me this Hello listeners, yes, it's real, Answer Me This is back in the year 2025 And don't we look exactly the same as we did in 2007 don't answer that hi how are you it's a podcast they can't see us array for audio thank you so much

everyone for being um to use a word from our early days whelmed about our return i'm not saying people are overwhelmed because i think they're coping yes but what whelmed suggests indifference thank you for your positive non-indifference. I think it's Whelmed Plus, isn't it? It's Turbo Whelmed. Turbo Whelmed. Thank you for being Turbo Whelmed. Thank you for being not indifferent, but different.

There are a pleasing amount of people for whom 2025 appears to be marginally less bleak as a result of our return. So thank you for sharing that with us. Including us. Yeah. Wow, I enjoyed going through our inbox and I rarely like to go near an inbox but i was thrilled to see your life updates your myriad ideas and questions what a treat

and thank you martin the sound man for joining us again even though you live in a flat with helen so you kind of had to be here. Hi, hello. He could have just stayed in the toilet the whole time. Who's to say he isn't? Well, I am simply a gog. To answer some questions again, it's been nearly two years. I'm ready. Hi Helen and Ollie, welcome back. This is Miri in Manchester. I'm planning a trip to the Pencil Museum in the Lake District for my birthday later in January. I'm really excited and hope it's everything I've dreamed it to be. But we all know that what really makes a trip to a museum great is the gift shop. So Helen and Ollie, answer me this. In your opinion, which museum has the best gift shop in the world and why? One of the things that gives me joy in life is a museum gift shop. And often I don't even progress to the museum. You're only human. went to the um van gogh exhibit um at

the uh oh god what's it called the national gallery right the big one in trafalgar square the one with the paintings yeah the big shed full of paintings it was a big blockbuster exhibition and i was sort of lucky to get a ticket and i went in the evening. And it was the first time where I thought actually, I know this is a very, very shallow compliment, but I did think, do you know what? The exhibit is better than the gift shop. I was in the gift shop and I thought, it is now absurd to buy a reproduction of that painting I've just seen. Because that painting I've just seen spoke to me, it was amazing to look at. And these repros on tea towels and aprons look laughably inadequate. That's a good experience to have.

It was a nice realisation, yes, that art means more than just consumerism. This isn't purely decorating something I'm going to draw my saucepan with. I guess it's just the vividness of his colours, you know? So, like, it's so eye-popping when you see the real thing that then when you see it printed on anything, it looks ridiculous. Although that said, I mean, having read the biographical notes as I went around, if only Vincent van Gogh had spent a bit more time in the asylum painting flowers directly onto aprons and beer mats,

he would have evidently had a more successful career. I would have just been doing some occupational therapy. Yeah, but there are some sensational museum gift shops out there. I think what I want in an ideal gift shop is not reproductions of the thing in the museum, but interpretations of them, or objects that if you like that, then you'd like this. Yes, yes.

An algorithmical gift shop. So my mind immediately goes to the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota that Martin and I visited in 2019. I think you may have mentioned that on our last episode or definitely the one before that every single episode since i went there in 2019 has explicitly or implicitly been about the spam museum in austin minnesota it's a free museum the gift shop is uh it does contain spam you can get a 12 pack all different flavors of spam didn't get that but i did get a bandana with Spam printed all over it

and a Spam slicer that I've never used because I don't eat meat anymore. Is it branded? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, fine. Well, then it doesn't matter if it has no practical purpose because then it's a reminder. It's a bit like we went to Germany for our summer holiday last year

and the best souvenir that I bought this wasn't exactly a museum but when they have a tourist gift shop that's so comprehensive it might as well be a museum in and of itself we went to this extraordinary cuckoo clock shop nice and we got a cuckoo clock oh amazing and every hour it goes off it reminds me of my summer holiday which is actually really nice doesn't need to do anything more than that I don't need to take pleasure in the way it looks just that little thing is like, oh yeah, that was nice when we were sitting around the lake and not working.

So once an hour, it's like holiday, holiday. Exactly. Does it automatically turn off in the night or do you have to do that manually? It's a good question and one that is of pressing concern to my wife because we do sleep above it and it doesn't turn itself off in the night.

And I don't mind because when it does wake us up at three, I think, oh, holiday. And she thinks, fucking hell, throw itself off in the night and i don't mind because when it does wake us up at three i think oh holiday and she thinks fucking hell throw that thing in the bin set it on fire sometimes you don't want a memory of a happier time sometimes it's an intrusion that ruins your sleep but um that's cool uh martin got from the spam museum a cap that he still wears it's a bit discolored now but it does say Spam on the front in yellow embroidery it's relict

I was wearing it in we went for a cup of coffee in San Francisco and someone walked past wearing was it a Spam hat or the same cap? someone walked past wearing a beanie from the Spam Museum it was a beanie that's right hold on hold on hold on

you were in San Francisco yeah where's the Spam Museum? Austinanie that's right oh hold on hold on hold on you were in san francisco yeah where's the spam museum uh austin minnesota that's very far away yeah that's like wearing merch from a museum in prague when you're in cardiff or rather a museum in cardiff when you're in prague because i think there's probably more tourism to prague and our friend was like oh yeah you got the same hat i said did you get that in the spam museum and she was like yeah and i was like that's really cool. And she didn't want to have a conversation about spam with you? She didn't seem that keen to be spam spotted.

It's interesting. She was friendly, but she had a business. You know, what she thought was, oh, God, there's a weird spam guy. Like, he's spotted that I'm wearing a spam hat. Now he wants to talk to me all about spam. But I didn't. It was a friend that pointed it out. I wouldn't have even noticed.

Yeah, I mean, I know that. I know that from your perspective, you could have equally felt the same thing. Oh, no, there's a spam stalker wearing spam gear walking past me. Oh, no, this is a mistake. But she doesn't know how you feel. Maybe it happens all the time. She's like, yes, I've been to the spam museum.

That's the 12th time today. Here's a question from Katie from New Zealand who says, I'm so glad you're back. Yay. AMT was the first podcast I ever listed to. Now, she means listened, but given that the question that's about to follow is an article one, I think it's an amusing typo.

She says, in my past, I used to be a professional traditional tall ship sailor. Wow. I don't know off the top of my head what a tall ship is. Is it something you were aware of, Helen, before researching this question? It was. And also Katie included three photos of the tall ships and they're very beautiful

with tall masts with loads of sails on them. She continues. Sometimes this comes up in conversation with new people and understandably, many don't know what a tall ship is. I describe them as, quote, the pirate ship looking ones. And that always does the trick. However, I'm not a fan of describing my ships in this way. My ships. As I'm not so keen on pirates after having had a scary run in with actual armed pirates on one voyage. We've discussed before the yawning gap between fantasy pirates like in peter pan and actual pirates plus she says sometimes this then leads people to jokingly ask if i've ever met pirates while

sailing which means i can lie and say no or tell the truth and potentially drastically change the mood of the conversation that's what they deserve if they ask it's not what she deserves is it no you know she doesn't want to have to do it every time. No, fair enough. She says, I'd rather avoid that whole business. So, Helen, answer me this. How do I succinctly describe tall ships without mentioning pirate ships? I've tried referencing old-time Antarctic exploration ships or the Master and Commander movie to dubious success. Using the term square rigger hasn't worked.

I'm not surprised. And I'd rather not mention Captain Cook, Columbus or any of those guys. Reasonable. Sailing ship. What do people picture when you say sailing ship? Oh no, then I'm thinking modern. Oh okay, fuck it. I was in Southend this summer and they had on the pier what was advertised as a historic Spanish galleon. And even though I couldn't tell you what a modern Spanish galleon looks like, those three words in combination were enough for me to get the idea.

Yeah, and I know that a galleon is not precisely the same kind of ship, but... Yes, and she knows that, and that would be problematic. She continues. Surely there's a better way than pirates, though. I've attached some images of a few of my past ships for reference. Your brilliant thoughts are greatly appreciated. Yeah. Show them the pictures.

Get out your phone and show them a picture. Keep it as the background for convenience or print one out and laminate it because they're beautiful. It's interesting to see. And immediately I think people will be like, oh, yeah, I recognize that even if they don't know anything about them. And then you don't have to compare them to other cultural products which you have found limiting and misleading.

Because how many people have watched Master and Commander recently or seen an Antarctic exploration ship of the past? You could say, like a ship in a bottle type ship. Oh, very good. Why don't you carry around a ship in the bottle? You'd be like, yeah, it shrunk because of the seawater since i worked on it but katie sorry to get angry at you because you seem great but if you don't want people to talk about pirates don't bring up pirates yourself because then you're putting pirates in their heads lead by giving them some information about what

you used to do in such a way that gives them several avenues for follow-up questions rather than them scrabbling around for anything they know about ships and the only thing they know is pirates like give them funny facts about your daily life was there something weird about the toilets or the beds people love hearing about that shit no but that's stressful as well isn't it like desperately trying to pounce on them before they say the word pirates is hard. No, no, it's not stressful because she's going to prepare this and it's just things she wants to talk about. What do you want to tell them? Just lay the groundwork. The thing is,

when people are reaching for pirates, they're reaching for drama and that's not drama she wants to give. So the examples that she does give do have to be equally dramatic, I think. If she goes with your advice, it needs to be like, I'm going to have to make one up because I don't know anything about tall ships. Did you know that polishing the mast in the morning took 10 hours? Yeah. Oh, it really hurt my knees. That's what I'm saying.

The very quotidian stuff will be fascinating to people and that will keep them away from pirates. And if they do say, like a pirate ship, just say no and shut it down. Or, here's my suggestion just say yes like in muppet treasure island oh because then you're thinking of kermit the frog in a charming little sailor's outfit and who doesn't love that you're not thinking pirates even though treasure island is the same if you say treasure island you're thinking pirates if you say muppet treasure island you're thinking kermit another option if you don't particularly want to chat at great length

about what you did or what the ship was like, ask them if they've spent any time on the sea and then they'll just tell you about their cruise or whatever and you might be bored, but it's probably not going to end up in pirate chat. Yeah, well, unless they're like, yes, actually, I was a pirate. We captured this woman in New

Zealand once on a tall ship. Well, then finally your chance for revenge helen and ollie it's joe from bristol here welcome back i've missed you not a huge amount has happened in my life since your last episode apart from i have listened to pretty much the whole answer me this back catalogue 392 episodes so i only had eight to go and I wasn't sure what I was going to do with myself when I ran out. So I'm glad you're back. My question is, why is the duty-free trolley on an airplane still a thing? I've never seen anyone buy anything from their collection of chocolate multi-packs, aftershaves and cancer sticks. Does the extra weight being flown around the world

really pay for itself? And how can the carbon footprint be justified when you can buy exactly the same shit at the airport? So Helen and Ollie, answer me this. Will there ever be a day when those poor stewards can rest their tea-scalded arms and not drag that trolley up and down the cabin mid-flight? Great question. Have you ever bought anything for one of these trolleys, either of you? I never have. Have I? I often buy things on the duty-free trolley. Is that because you're bored? Yes. I mean, it's something to do, isn't it? To look through the catalogue.

It's up to, what, eight minutes of fun? And then you're trapped. You're a captive audience. One of the things you can do. They're coming past you anyway. You're inconvenienced anyway because you can't walk to the bogs whilst they come in. Why not buy some aftershave? It isn't true to say that the prices are exactly

the same as in the airport. I drink Bombay Sapphire. I frequently get it for about three pounds cheaper on the plane than I would have done in the airport, and I don't have to lug it up to the plane. But in terms of the economics of it, let's put it this way. The likes of Ryanair and EasyJet would not still be selling duty-free stuff on board unless it was profitable. You're right that the trend is that a lot of big national carriers have stopped doing this because there's not a huge profit in it and it is kind of cumbersome for their carbon offsetting propaganda. But it does make a profit, otherwise they wouldn't do it. And basically what you can put that down to is if you're on a low

cost carrier where your seat might say only be worth 20 pounds of profit then how big is the trolley it takes up like three seats worth so that's 60 quid it only needs to make 70 pounds and it's made more profit than having sold the seats and if you buy the bombay sapphire do they then hand it to you or do you have to wait until you get off the plane because you're not allowed to drink it on the plane are you as i found out to my cost no they want you to drink those stupid miniature bottles even though you just have bought a perfectly serviceable three liters of gin why would they not want someone drinking three liters of gin when they're trapped in a metal tube with them exactly baffling what is the best thing you have bought in an airport or on a plane i can tell you on a plane the best thing I've ever bought,

but you're going to say it's ridiculous and it is ridiculous. This is why I think shopping on a plane is not ridiculous, because you have the license to spend 10 minutes thinking about a ridiculous purchase that otherwise in real life you'd be like, I don't have time for this. I'm not going to weigh up the pros and cons of this. This is clearly absurd. What I bought was some beach powder. Tell me what that is. Do you mean sand?

Like talcum? Yes, Martin, it is. It is a talcum-esque product. For getting sand off you? It is specifically for removing sand from skin on the beach, yes. Yeah. Oh, that's useful. Yes, it is.

Not ridiculous. It actually works. Okay, I'm glad you think that, because I think a lot of people look at it like, why didn't you just bring some talcum powder? Those people have not had sand on things. Right. I haven't had sand stuck to my feet as I'm trying to put shoes on to exit the beach. And I'd seen it on Dragon's Den and I thought that's fun.

And then I had the opportunity to actually buy some and I thought, you know, that tub of beach powder that's going to last at least a decade and it's only a tenner. I can afford that. I can afford a pound a year to have some fun with a novelty product. And do you ever get in trouble travelling with a big tub of white powder? It's pink, I believe. Oh, I remember reading that planes would save

a small but significant amount of fuel if they stopped handing out free newspapers on planes. And it is many years since I've been given a newspaper on a plane, which is good because it was almost always the mail, which I don't want. Yes, I really struggle when the only free paper is the mail. I quite like it when it's a business-focused one,

you know, like when they have Condé Nast business traveller and you're like, yes, I'm going to pretend to be that guy. I'm going to read about where I can stay in the Maldives for 10 grand a night whilst I'm on this plane just to live in a fantasy. But yeah, my fantasy doesn't involve reading the Daily Mail. I already live in suburbia. I'm sure that we have some flight attendants listening and I would love to hear their views on this question because just picking up on what Joe says at the end, will there ever be a day when the flight attendants can

rest and not drag this trolley up and down? They don't seem to get a lot of rest on a lot of flights anyway there'll just be some other thing they have to do because passengers it's like having a plane full of toddlers i mean obviously there's huge safety elements of their job right that's why they're really there is not to sell you perfume but to keep you safe actually there's a safety element keeping everyone in their seats isn't there because you're keeping the weight distributed across the plane you're stopping interactions between people that can turn nasty etc and so actually again i think that trolley coming down the aisle which you then can't walk past for half an hour keeps

everyone in their seats for longer which is actually safer i think just so much about the airport and air plane process is about being compliant rather than about safety so yeah that would track with my theory there wake up shape in this life we all have questions so why not email your questions to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com Answer me this podcast at googlemail.com So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday, we bring you the real story of the mutiny on the bounty. On Tuesday, the anniversary of the day somebody invented the meatball, but who?

On Wednesday, the iconic British car that ripped off an iconic American car. On Thursday, how American airlines invented air miles. And on Friday, the UFO sighting that gripped colonial America. We discuss this and more on Today in History with The Retrospectors. 10 minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Time for a question of books now from Barbara on Patreon, patreon.com slash answer me this, who says, Ellen, answer me this. How do authors get paid if a library buys their books? Do they get paid for the one book, or is there a bonus the more times the book is borrowed? It really depends where they are, because about 35 countries have something called a public lending right, which is the right of authors to receive payment for free use of their works in libraries.

The first one is, I think, from Denmark in 1946. Quite a lot of European countries have got them them and outside of Europe it's more rare. I think it's just Canada, Australia, Aotearoa, New Zealand and Israel. And authors have to register. I remember this when we had the Answer Me This book out in 2010 and I think I was too lazy to fill in the form. It's not automatic. I think about 20,000 authors have signed up for it in the UK. I'm laughing because I did fill out the form and we have made no royalties so you wasted no time there hey but you you've been able to buy a house and i haven't so that's probably the difference definitely with the the royalties ransom me this book because because what happens is you need to you need to have made a pound before they bother

sending the check and answer me this has not been borrowed from libraries enough to make a pound i think it's nine pence every time someone borrows it. So fewer than nine people have ever loaned our book. It's gone up. It's 13.69 pence. Oh, there we go then. I think probably libraries don't like lending out books that they know are exclusively going to be read in toilets. That might be a problem.

Or be kept because they're so fucking awesome. That could be it. That could also be it. Yeah. So the PLRs work differently depending on where they are. And by the way, it only pertains to the country that the author is in so like if a british author has a very successful book in australian libraries they're not getting paid for that but yes they do get the royalty if eligible for the purchase of the book in the first place and then a fee

it's calculated in different ways wherever it is so in britain it is for each time the book is borrowed until fairly recently it was a small sample of libraries yeah it's kind of rubbish so if your book was only available in some regions you were getting nothing even if it was really popular there if those regions weren't in the sample or if you're like like irvin welsh is massive in scotland but no one's reading him in cornwall you Right. A couple of years ago, they have tried to update that a bit because it was unfair and discriminatory. But I think the maximum an author gets is £6,600. Right. And most authors get less than 100 quid. Or in our case, less than a pound. Yeah. In Canada, it's like some extraordinary equation where it's not per lend, but it's like

which proportion of libraries in the sample have a copy. And then the author gets a proportion, as do the other contributors like the illustrator. And then the longer the book has been in the scheme, the payment gets less. So it goes from like 100% in the first few years to 50% after 16 years or something it's still not that much though is it six thousand six hundred pounds per year i mean it's it's right that they changed the law no and in canada it's like four and a half thousand dollars which is more like three thousand pounds if you're actually a big best-selling author you know if you've written a massive book six thousand pounds is a tiny report you know you might make 500 grand out of

a massive book right so i guess you have to say, it's sort of the free publicity thing, isn't it? Most people who are borrowing the book from the library wouldn't pay for it. So I'm supporting the community, but also then they're more likely to buy my books in the future because they've read one or tell their friends about it or give it to someone else who might like my stuff. It's a marketing thing, isn't it? As much as anything. Yeah. Well, also, if it's really popular then they will sell a lot of copies to libraries and they will get the royalties for that yeah so that's just as if they'd sold a book anyway but then it gets read more here's another question of books

from sigpig in bavaria i've just been leafing through the first few pages of a couple of new books on my reading pile the dedication pages caught my eye and got me thinking. Ollie, answer me this. Must a book be dedicated to a person? Does it always have to be a different person if the author has popped out several books? What if an author has no friends and can't abide any other person, alive or dead, to whom they can dedicate a book? No, no, it's your book. You can do what you want. I don't think we had a dedication in our book, did we? did yeah who was it too it's dedicated to the question is okay sorry you guys forgot you could choose not to dedicate your book to anyone and actually authors do sometimes dedicate their books to audiences whose existence is almost conceptual i mean it's one thing i was saying to

our audience that know us from online you know sometimes you see dedications to like the children of the future everyone who dreams big that sort of crap so no you can write whatever you like you you could dedicate it as a diss if you could that committed to not liking someone yeah my favorite one of those actually was uh pg woodhouse in heart of a goof do you know this one no uh to my daughter leonora without who's never failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time quite good i mean that's sweet another good diss is um e cummings the poet dedicated his self-published book no thanks to the 14 publishers who had

turned it down and printed their names in the shape of a funeral urn oh that's the kind of pettiness i enjoy it's not exactly a dedication but i do remember dennis potter talking about how he named his cancer rupert because of how much he disliked rupert some other kooky uh dedications uh professor peter t leeson in his 2009 book the invisible hook the hidden economics of pirates had this unusual dedication anaya i love you will you marry me she did oh that's nice when did that proposal land then was that when like the proofs turned up at the house right i've got the i've got the galley proofs of the book do you want to check it out and that was how he did it that's that's not that romantic you know you're right

that's practically what would have happened yeah and then actually he could have taken it out couldn't he if she'd have said no i mean it'd be awkward otherwise like when the paperback comes around he could have kept it from her and then it would have been like the book launch which would have been awful i mean can you i just can you imagine being like i have launched a book and and will you marry me it just sounds like the height of preposterous arrogance another fun not fun one uh gloria steinem dedicated her memoir to the doctor who gave her an illegal abortion in 1957 cool important that's pretty and this i think wins the award for biggest brown nose dedication uh edmund spencer in the fairy queen in 1590

i won't read all of it but you'll get the idea to the most high mighty and magnificent empress renowned for piety verity and all gracious government elizabeth by the grace of god queen of england france and ireland and of virginia defender of her faith her most humble servant edmund spencer doth in all humility and it carries on present and consecrate to live with the eternity of her fame you're like all right we get it you like the queen well or you've got to suck up to the queen to have a career yes well this is this is the truth isn't it like the history of dedications actually comes from having to repay your patrons because they've put money down for you to do this job and so you'll say you're actually saying this is for you because you've

given me the money to allow me to write it that's why people started doing dedications at the first base usually to a monarch yeah you've got to be effusive allow me to write it. That's why people started doing dedications at the first base, usually to a monarch. Yeah, you've got to be effusive, or it's not going to cut through. Although you may think that a monarch might get a bit sick of everyone just grovelling to them. Oh, totally. Perhaps a bit of negging would be amusing for them for a change. Yeah, I'm sure Elizabeth would rather have read The Bitch Queen.

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for sponsoring answer me this yes this time of year people often think this is the year i'm gonna jack in my job and i'm gonna become a judo instructor or whatever. Squarespace is a great way to market your side hustle and get your passion project going. Or your front hustle. Any hustle. Yeah, sure. Your back hustle. Your under hustle. They don't judge.

No, and you can do a members only area as well. If you want under hustle content only for paying customers. You can make a beautifully designed website using Squarespace in a laughably short amount of time. Yeah, it is really such a doddle, which is nice because the hustle isn't. The hustle is often a bit of a pain, but this part of it is not. You can do it in a few clicks and then just see. Like one of the things you can do is you can add acuity scheduling to your Squarespace website, which allows you to accept client bookings.

You don't need to have any clients yet. You can just put that on your website and see if someone clicks it. And if they do, it'll look like you've got a proper setup there. You know, you can manage your appointments. You can accept their payments. You can send automatic reminders. And that's a great thing about Squarespace. It's just like, see what the market takes you to.

If you want to try out Squarespace, go to squarespace.com slash answer for a free trial. Then you have two weeks to build a website for free. Have a go on their features. Choose yourself a template from their award-winning designs. And then if you like it, you can keep it because when you're ready to launch, use the offer code answer for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Here's a question from Annie from Canada, but currently living in California. She says, as a Canadian living in America, I'm looking to return to Canada for some possibly

obvious reasons. And this means that I've been working on organizing working interviews, meaning I'll be traveling back and forth to Canada a fair bit. Now, my current workplace is this very wholesome thing where every morning we have a meeting and I have to say what we did over the weekend, what we're looking forward to, stuff like that. So Ollie, answer me this. What do I say when I spend the weekend interviewing for new jobs? My current job does not yet know that I am planning to leave. So do i suddenly stay weirdly quiet about my personal life should i make up an elaborate web of lies featuring a spreadsheet and planned social media posts of course make life really hard for yourself by living a double life no that isn't what you do

yeah just tell them the other stuff you did that weekend like the thing you ate or you went to visit your friend yeah if her concern is that she thinks that she can't hide from her fellow workers that she traveled to canada she does have the perfect alibi for that in that she is canadian yeah i mean it doesn't seem that weird that a canadian would frequently visit family and friends and also most californians that you're speaking to probably haven't been to canada so that you just tell them something about your hometown or the town you went to. Oh, yeah. There was a moose riding tournament.

Something that reads really Canadian to them. Yeah. We went to a Tim Hortons. We played some ice hockey. Had to tap some maple trees. We participated in an assisted death. Whatever. There will be reasons people go to Canada.

Just say them. I fucked a bear. Right. It's hibernation season, Martinin they're not going to buy that because i always find the expectation of recruiters that you have the time to spend hours in their recruitment process but then you have to somehow keep it secret the stress of that it's like a task on the traitors anyway it's super stressful they can't expect everyone to be good at it the important thing is so you're not actually saying the words to your current employer that you're looking for another

job. What happens is if you then get the job, I've always felt that it's sort of like the end of a murder mystery. Like for the people around you, they can be like, oh, that's why they were acting weird. Now I see. So actually like you're worried about like, am I going to come across as weird? Probably, but they probably won't say that to you. And then if you leave and you get the job, they'll say, oh, that's what you were doing. That's what you were doing on January the 20th when you couldn't tell us what you were doing on the weekend.

We thought you were having an affair. I don't know that they're going to think about it that hard. If you're going back and forth to Canada a lot and you need an explanation for that and you don't want to pretend that a relative is ill or something just say i've been going back to help out a friend who's been going through some stuff and it's private to them so i can't really talk about it and that's fine i've got a friend who's been away for a lot of weekends recently for that reason allegedly and i'm like yeah okay

i'm not gonna pray and i think people in california would understand the boundary there yeah i suppose what's clever about that as well as if you've laid some groundwork then if there's actually a day you need to take off work and you need an alibi you can blame your fictional friend yeah and your fictional friend's new baby and your fictional friend's elderly dog right because i had this situation once actually when we started doing answer me this i was a researcher on the culture show at the bbc and that job i'd got whilst working in a different job i was at itv being a researcher in a much lower rent show and i didn't particularly enjoy it and i knew someone who worked at the culture show and i'd been like harassing them for months being like if anything ever comes up please let me know please let me know and and she said look you're not supposed to know about this because it's only supposed to be

available to internal applicants but i know they're not going to find an internal applicant that's good enough so why don't you email the producer and just say if you don't find someone i'm interested so i tried that waited nothing happened for ages and then suddenly it was like sure can you come in tomorrow and i was like oh for fuck's sake how can i do that so as it happened what i was supposed to be doing that day was leaving the office by myself i was supposed to be making sizzle reels with a photographer called morris i was like okay i can pretend that i'm with morris all day even though i know my producer will know that that's only two hours work i'm gonna have to pretend that that took all day and then then I'll actually go to the BBC and participate in a full interview process

and somehow get the stuff in the can with Morris that will look acceptable. So, of course, what it looked like was just I was really shit and incompetent at my job that day to my producer because it was like he was calling me at 11 and I was not answering the call because I was in the interview. And then it got to like two and I answered the call and I was like, oh, hi. He was like, you're not back. I was like, oh i mean it's just i've just got here and he's like right we're in north london i mean it only takes 40 minutes i was like oh really oh i haven't had any phone service and i was like i have to pretend to be a dick in this situation but then you knowing

the satisfaction that okay when i tell him he'll be like oh that's why that's why okay i looked incompetent at my job but i was actually being doubly competent i was actually being extraordinary at my job i was getting a job done on top of doing another thing so your your double competence cancelled itself out right exactly yeah but also if you're gonna leave anyway then um do you really give a shit about them thinking badly of you? As long as you get that job. Hi, it's Stephen Chicken in Yorkshire. Welcome back, guys. Really looking forward to some hot AMT action.

Hotness is at your discretion. Hi, Helen and Ollie. I'm so glad you guys are back. I just wanted to say that I am super excited about your return. This is Charlie from Letchworth, now living in Brighton. A massive welcome back. Although it doesn't really feel like a welcome back for me because you've frankly never left my headphones over the years. Hello, Helen, Ollie and Martin the soundbag,

as I assume he is now called forever. I'm so excited that Answer Me This is back. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. The last few years have thrown up many unpleasant surprises, so it makes the surprise of your return all the more pleasant. I've already signed up for the Patreon and I'm hoping that you get enough support to make this resurrection permanent. It's Joe from Cornwall here. I have no reason for calling you whatsoever. I'm just checking this phone line to see if it's still active after nine years. Happy to see that it is. Hi, Helen and Ollie. It's Craig from Townsville in Australia.

Really glad to have you guys back. My name's Sarah Rose. I'm originally from New Zealand, but I now live in Stockport. And I'm still curious about a question I originally asked in 2009. This is Kirsten calling from Vancouver, Canada. As soon as I say Helen and Ollie, my brain goes, Helen and Ollie, answer me this. I don't want you to dance or kiss.

Welcome back. Welcome back. Lots of love. Love you guys. Bye. Before we play you the next question, content warning, bagpipes. This is Sarah from San Mateo

and I am so happy that Answer Me This is back. My daughter recently started playing the bagpipes. This is Sarah from San Mateo and I am so happy that Answer Me This is back. My daughter recently started playing the bagpipes and we wear earplugs while she's practicing, but I've noticed sometimes the dogs get alarmed. Are dogs particularly sensitive to bagpipe sounds and should we be putting some kind of ear protection on them thank you so much sarah if you're wearing earplugs the dog's hearing is much more sensitive than human hearing no wonder the dog is not enjoying this loud piercing instrument yeah dogs are alerted to loud noises and this one is a particularly violent pitch for them our family dogs used to howl as well when my brother played the harmonica. These are shrill noises for them.

You can get ear protectors for dogs, such as Mutt Muffs, or the Rex Spex Ear Pro, developed by the military, for dogs that were put into a lot of loud environments like helicopters or big kennels full of other military dogs or shooting ranges. What do they look like? They look kind of like if you put a really tight sleeve over your dog's head. So it doesn't look like the kind of thing every dog would tolerate having put on it. Like a snood for dogs?

Like a tight snood, yeah. So not headphones? The mutt muffs do look more like headphones. They warn that dogs' hearing can get permanently damaged if exposed to prolonged sounds for long enough because there are these hair cells in a dog's inner ear the stereocilia which can get fatigued and if the dog is subjected to really loud noise for a long time these get fatigued so much that they don't work anymore the dog's brain doesn't get any more sound information from the ear I however don't think that being in the same house

as your daughter practising the bagpipes is likely to damage the dog's ears, but it is likely to damage your daughter's ears. People who are practising bagpipes in an enclosed environment for more than 15 minutes wear ear defenders, and that's adults, children even more so, because the

decibels are so loud if you're inside particularly as loud as a chainsaw i don't want to fear mung here but this is actually a really common problem for bagpipe players there's a lot of health problems that come from bagpipes the most famous is bagpipe lung oh i was just about to say i would have thought that that would be the benefit because like swimming you're taking big breaths oh no that can actually particularly in young players like the hyperventilation and increased intrathoracic pressure can make them faint and some of them it can cause them lung problems it's worth it for such a beautiful sound though you've got a sacrifice for your art but bagpipe lung is not that bagpipe lung is you're blowing hot, germy air into a bag

and it can make them mouldy. So if you don't clean your bagpipe bag relatively often, then it can give you a disease that has killed a bagpipe player at least once. There are electronic bagpipes apparently. Oh no, thanks. It looks like they're not blowing into them. Or the drones and things have been generated electronically. You can practice your playing but not your breathing, I guess, if you're doing that.

Hello, this is Verity from London, and I use she, her pronouns. Helen and Ollie, answer me this. Do ginger shots actually do anything? I have become a devotee of the old ginger shot since it started appearing on supermarket shelves. But I fear it might not be doing anything except making me feel smug and my throat feel warm. There's some value to smugness and throat warmth in itself. Oh, I think shelling out money so that you feel smug is the reason that a lot of print publications still exist. If it's a placebo, so what? I think this is much undervalued in our society. If it makes you feel good, then it's a placebo, so what? I think this is much undervalued in our society.

If it makes you feel good, then it's worth it to you, isn't it? Whether it's scientifically or medically, it's doing anything. If it makes you happy. Exactly, Martin. Cheryl had it right. Helen used to be big into these and then she stopped. And I think it might have been because I was slightly teasing her for her shot habit. And every time we went to a supermarket, I'd be like shots shots it was for a couple of reasons I I love the ones

from Pret-a-Manger which is like a little square bottle with like a little spicy juice in it I don't like buying plastic bottles yes if I can avoid it so I rarely get myself one and also just a lot of them are shit like they're deliberately disgusting tasting not the Pret one the prep one's great but the other ones that have like black pepper in i'm like you've made that taste disgusting so people think it's important so it's healthy yeah yeah yeah but it's not what would be an appropriate container for that that's not a plastic bottle then well i could just make my own at home but it's not the same well or they could do it at the counter like a bartender get me a ginger shot you know in a little shot glass they could do it at the counter like a bartender. Get me a ginger shot, you know, in a little shot glass. They could spray it directly into your mouth from across the counter.

Like Tom Cruise. I take Benicol for cholesterol. And I take that because I do believe that there's a medical benefit to it. But it is a daily plastic bottle. And I know that you can recycle them, but I feel... But most of them are not recycled. I don't want to be doing that. Why don't they sell benicol in a two litre bottle and i can make my own shots at home i don't understand like it's off yogurt surely it doesn't need to be preserved

in an airtight container i get through seven shots a week so i could buy a big one but you can't buy you cannot buy a big benicol theanger juice shots, I enjoyed them. I like a drink that's a bit fiery, but they did make me feel more energised. Like if I was really tired, two spicy juice shots. I don't know whether it's just psychological or because it's quite an invigorating flavour to drink a fiery drink. Ginger has been considered a health-giving ingredient

for millennia. I don't know how accurate up-to-date scientific research is, but there is fairly consistent demonstration that ginger does work for lots of things like nausea, pain, inflammation, that kind of thing. But the point is you could shave off a little bit of ginger and stick it in your tea anyway, right? You don't have to have the shot.

Oh, yeah. The shot is marketing, isn't it? Yeah, I suppose it's an intense amount of ginger rather than a pleasant flavouring in something else. Here's a question from Anya who says, I live in Germany, but I always stock up on typical British foodstuffs for the whole family when I'm back in the UK. This includes Marmite, crumpets, Lee and Perrins, custard,

chocolate Yule logs, wasn't expecting that one, Bisto gravy granules stuffing mixture and also branston pickle yum so helen answer me this what actually is branston pickle and where does it come from well for people who have never encountered it before branston pickle is a dark brown, sweetish, tangy, spiced, savoury chutney. I think in US English, pickle means pickled cucumbers, whereas British English uses pickle to mean also things like this. There's more like chutney or American relish. It contains vegetables in variable proportions, 52%. Carrot, rutabaga, which is Swede in British English. So it's interesting that it's listed as rutabaga on the British ingredients. Onion, cauliflower.

Sugar, barley malt vinegar. Water, spirit vinegar. Tomato puree. Date paste, brackets, dates, rice flour, close brackets. Right. Salt, apple pulp. Modified maize starch. Colour, brackets, sulphide, ammonia, caramel, close brackets.

Onion powder. Concentrated lemon juice. Spices. Colouring food, brackets, roasted barley, ammonia, caramel, close brackets, onion powder, concentrated lemon juice, spices, colouring food, brackets, roasted barley malt extract, close brackets, herb and spice extracts. That's it. Same recipe as when it was invented in 1922. Oh, I thought it was going to be older than that. Cross and Blackwell at the time was like a vinegar preserves,

oils, like ingredients company. Anya asks, where does Branston Pickle come from? Originally, it came from the village of Branston in Staffordshire, where Cross and Blackwell had moved their factory from Soho Square in 1921, because Soho Square is in central London. There's not much room for expansion there. So Soho Square Pickle would have a different ring to it, wouldn't it? Very.

So in 1921, Cross and Blackwell bought a machine gun factory which had been commissioned during the second world war but finished after the armistice and has never actually made machine guns and then it didn't last long there either in 1925 they moved back to london and it fucked employment opportunities in branston so much that people boycotted the products but in their brief time in branston they started making branston pickle from a recipe attributed to mrs caroline graham and her daughters evelyn and ermine trude don't get many ermine trudes nowadays do you you don't i i maybe haven't had it in the right recipe is what i would say charitably you don't really put it in a recipe it is just to go with cheese and occasionally ham

well then okay then i hate it okay if it just goes with cheese i don't like it is just to go with cheese and occasionally ham well then okay then i hate it okay if it just goes with cheese i don't like it every time i come with an open mind and i'm like no i definitely don't like this why do i keep making myself eat it well i'm impressed that you have tried many times you've gone above and beyond you like a pickled onion though wally don't you i'd love a pickled onion oh i love it sad because Barry Normans have been discontinued. I heard about that. The younger generation just don't know who Barry Norman is, do they? They're probably getting their pickled onions from Justin Bieber.

I didn't know who Paul Newman was until I was about 30. I still like the Caesar dressing. Yeah. I'd also say that it's pretty fun to watch the documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward that Ethan Hawke made. Even though a lot of it is frustratingly not well made because he was doing it over lockdown on some really fuzzy zooms. I'm like, get it together, Ethan Hawke and your film friends. What the hell?

But anyway, if you're watching any film about a salad dressing magnate. It's the best. Until Scorsese does that Lloyd Grossman biopic. Oh my goodness. When? DiCaprio to star. Jason Schwartzman could do it. Here's a question from Ewan from Aberdeen who says,

Ollie, answer me this. What type of beans are baked beans? I'm taking this to mean, really, that there's a Z on the end of that question and we're talking about Heinz beans. I assumed. Let's start there because they're the market leader. Those are navy beans, which are a type of haricot bean.

Well, OK, the name of this kind of bean really pisses me off, right? It's navy bean in the US. So that's US centric because the US Navy served those beans. Haricot bean just means bean bean. They're also called white beans. Loads of beans are white.

They're called Boston beans. That's are white they're called boston beans that's boston centric what does this bean got to do to get an interesting name hold on hold on there is an american leaning to all beans because beans come from the new world in that area point is there was an american idea of beans and and boston beans was pork and beans wasn't it and the heinz bean was pork and beans boston beans trying to be sold here in the UK, which they then took the pork out of because of World War II rationing. And then it turned out that Britons preferred the vegan product to the one with the sausages in it. And ever since, we've been having it on things that people around the world find improbable.

Any Haricot bean will serve as Heinz-style beans if you want to make your own at home, which you can do with stock Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, cider vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder and cornflour. But really, why not just buy a tin of beans? It's a lot cheaper. Not here, probably. No, not here. It's a luxury price here.

It's like $5 for a can of beans. But what's funny is it is an indigenous dish, like baked beans or like beans in maple syrup, which is the more kind of canadian way of having it so it's funny that it's not more popular i guess you don't know where things are going to take off do you for some reason the british took it to their hearts like tea it is astonishing how popular it is here when you think about it yeah 50 000 tons of beans navy beans whatever you want to call them are shipped shipped annually... That's such a disgusting thought. ...to Liverpool and delivered every day to the Heinz factory in Wigan in two-ton bags.

Sad news for Miri from earlier. The Baked Bean Museum of Excellence in Port Talbot, Wales, shut down in 2023. That is a shame. There is a Heinz History Centre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So maybe they've got a gift shop with beans products. Good news for Miri. You can buy Heinz bean-related merchandise directly from their website. That's not a museum, though.

That's different. Merch isn't museum. I know, but you could very much pretend you'd been to a fictional museum of beans by buying a bespoke personalized birthday tin of beans how much do you think they charge for that oh so it says martin's beans on it and it gets delivered to your house and it is a can of heinz beans how much i'm gonna guess if it's in the uk eight quid yeah not including post yeah martin i'm gonna say oh oh i think like a tenner including postage it's six pounds 49 i think that's actually

really good value for a branded thing like there can't be much profit in that for them can there like taking the time to write your name on it that's a bargain and some of this hampton court was henry the eighth's home The O2 Arena was the Millennium Dome. Wasn't it? I went to see you in your room, but it had been turned into a Wetherspoon, so I ordered a two-for-one curry and a macaroon, but they don't sell macaroons.

Do they? I just ate both curries, and now I regret that. Here's a question from Sandy who says, My daughter had her bat mitzvah three years ago. While cleaning our house recently, I came across some cards and even a gift that she received that we did not send a thank you for. Nobody has made any comments about our lack of thank you cards, even though we would deserve such remarks. So Helen asked me this. Should we send belated thank you cards or let sleeping dogs lie?

We have no excuse for being so late. Other than disorganisation, maybe people have forgotten all about the lack of a thank you card by now, you think? Perhaps sending the cards will remind the gift givers that we never sent thank you notes in the first place. What should we do? Ollie, answer me this. I never sent out the thank you cards in return for our wedding presents in 2011. What? Do you think it's too late now? I'm outraged. You've just reminded me

that I never received a thank you card in 2011 after your wedding. And we had such a big plan for it too. It's so elaborate. Because our honeymoon was a road trip and our wedding present was people contributing money to that. And as we went on the road trip,

we had a whiteboard that we would like take pictures of in different cool locations with a letter on it. And I was supposed to make collages of people's names as the thank you cards hard work i know hard work very silly for me to commit that because i'm always over committing and under delivering yeah and also two weeks after we got back from honeymoon my mom

was in a very serious car crash which um really took up a lot of my time for some weeks and months after yeah so are you asking seriously did i notice no i didn't notice that you didn't say because you would have said thank you on the day and you would have probably said thank you when i next saw you and that would be enough i mean aren't thank you cards really for people that you don't see i mean isn't that the point so who cares i think um that i've not kept an account of people who have thanked me for a wedding present yeah i mean this is a question about the statute of limitations isn't it this is a question about the statute of limitations isn't it this is a question about how long is too long it's past it's done i it's totally done i mean i feel if you think of things in seasons yes exactly that's what i was going to say i was

going to say the end of the next consecutive season so if the bat mitzvah is in the spring then by the end of the summer the thank you cards need to have gone out yeah even the end of the calendar year i was going to say in that particular example, maybe a Christmas card or I suppose a Hanukkah card in your case at the end of the year, then you can say, you can remind people that that's the thing that happened in that year. Maybe send a photo of the event as the card or something. But even then, when I get one of those, I'm like, stop making yourself the hero in my story.

Your event wasn't that important to me. Do you know what I mean? It's like, you've missed the opportunity to send the thank you card stop lingering on it so yes you've definitely missed the opportunity and nobody cares that's that's my view at the same time fixating on a small social infraction that i committed one two or ten years ago is something that i definitely do so i understand the compulsive desire to flood the postal service with thank you cards you know three years later. But I don't think it's necessary.

OK, I'll tell you what's much more mortifying from my perspective. Something that happened this year went to the wedding of our good friends, Becky and Neil. And I don't know if this has ever happened to you. They had one of those digital, I sound like a really old person. One of those digital wedding lists. You can't just go to John Lewis. You have to click a button. On a computer?

But the digital wedding list, which we were aware of and had bookmarked, they shut that wedding list two days before the wedding. Oh, shit. So like everyone else, we left it to the last minute. And like, you know, on the way to the wedding, we're like, because they had a digital wedding list, like if they hadn't, we would have got them a present.

But because they had a digital wedding list, we were like, oh, we would have got them a present. But because they had a digital wedding list, we were like, oh, we'll fill in that thing. And it was a link to their honeymoon pot as well. That was an option. Like we could have just given money. But the link had gone down. It shut because the wedding, in inverted commas, had started because they were doing some pre-wedding events.

No. And I was like, they fucked up there. Like you don't. They really did. You tell it to shut down like a month after the event not the two days before and anyway having realized that we then had lost the opportunity i was like this is really embarrassing what are we going to do we've got nothing so we got them a card a physical card and in the physical card we said really sorry we missed your wedding listing let us take you for

dinner to your favorite restaurant um when you get back from your honeymoon. Very nice. And of course, they never contacted us after they got back from their honeymoon about that. Ah, yes. Honey man wins. No, no, the opposite. I owe them a wedding present. And then when we've seen them socially,

I've been like, hey, we should do that restaurant thing. Give us a date and we can buy it. And they're like, oh, don't worry about it. No, no, I owe you the wedding, but we need to take you to dinner because it is bothering me and making me anxious well i think this shows that for some gifts are of the moment and for others they are a debt an obligation never gets cancelled out absolutely also getting a 16 year old to write thank you cards for a

present you gave them when they were 13 like there's nothing that they're going to still be using or like so i mean it would be insincere anyway the best thank you hi helen ollie and martin the sound man i'm so glad you're back this is karen from denver last time we spoke back in 2016 i was just finishing up my first semester of med school and now i'm a board certified pediatrician. But more importantly, I'm also gay now and as is my right as a lesbian, I've joined my local roller derby team. Lovely life update. I love the tone of voice which said, oh and I'm gay now. Wonderful. Pediatrician, gay, roller derbist. Part of the culture is choosing a roller derby name that's punny or fearsome or in a lot of cases dirty so helen and ollie answer me this what would your roller derby names be thanks bye i mean you're gonna have to

explain this to me i don't know what a roller derby is really i mean it's roller skating right at a roller rink but where the teams come into it well because there's two teams competitive right they go round and round very fast and um there's more rules i'm massively simplifying because there's two teams. It's competitive, right? They go round and round very fast. And there's more rules. I'm massively simplifying it. There's more rules than they go round and round really fast. Surely not. If you were watching it, that's what you would take. It's people going round and round really fast.

It's a very exciting sport. I did go once because I made an illusionist episode about roller derby names in 2019. And I interviewed some roller derbys. Is it particularly popular with lesbians? Is that a trope you're aware of? Didn't ask everybody. The tradition with names, but not everywhere, is a pun, often one that is something to do with the sport,

so about wheels or something like that, or about violence. So like Lucille Brawl. That's a good example. Which I got off derbyrollcall.com, like Lucille Brawl. That's a good example. Yeah. Which I got off derbyrollcall.com, which is an automatic registration of every roller derbyist's name

that they can get a hold of because generally it's the etiquette not to use one that's already in use. Right. Oh, wow. Okay. So the ones in the US and UK tended towards these puns with violence, but then other countries, it was just like a funny word

or a variation on their own name or just like, hell yeah, or something like that. There's something that I read that was quite, maybe Helen knows this, that I thought was quite interesting. It says in the, well, a couple of things. First of all, in the heat of roller battle, they'll be shouting like a shortened version of your name. So like if there's someone on your team called like Smasharoni don't call yourself smashtastic or smash brother because then they'll just be saying

smash and you won't know who they're talking to it's gonna be abbreviable yeah exactly another one like if it's two words they might not pick the word you like so the example i gave was you're in trouble you're gonna get urine shouted at you for the rest of your ollie derby career that's inevitable anyway as a man with a regularly dislocating shoulder i'm not going to realistically be going anywhere near a roller skate ever again but i suppose i mean this isn't very imaginative of me i haven't given this a lot of thought but i mean obviously my name has a pun in it so i'd be crazy not to go with you know man of steel or a superhero type flavor i think using the ma double n i think we're going to use ollie

because it's like a sort of skateboarding thing where like you flip up or something yeah that's skateboarding i know i know don't bring a skateboard to a roller fight it's true that's it that is what they say in roller derby i really struggled with this because i thought it ought to be easy because there's hell in my name and that is quite a popular yes yeah hellfire roller derby trope but then the good ones have been taken can i just throw it in the ring helen wheels it's got to be done already helena handcart was one we came up with early in the days of the show yeah that is quite good i do really like that but um you don't want to be called cart though when they abbreviate it down i don't mind it i think probably someone's using it already but also it's not that shoutable is it

so many syllables and it's not very strong sounds. I don't think it's going to carry across the reverberance of that room in my theoretical role in Derby career, which will definitely never happen because I'm scared. Okay, well, mine are, if you're interested, Dirty Martini. Oh, that's good. There is a Dirty Martini in Liverpool

or as in like a leftfield choice, Scrambled Eggs? Which isn't a pun on my name, but I feel like it goes into my egg thing, and it's just like whipping around the track, like someone whipping up some eggs. So I'm quite... Either of those. I don't drink alcohol,

so Dirty Martini is more of an Ollie name, honestly. This strikes me as a fun thing for you guys to chip in on. If you have an idea... Yes, please, anoint us with names. For either Helen's roller derby name, or mine, or indeed Martin's, you guys to chip in on if you have please give us an idea anoint us with names for either helen's roller derby name or mine or indeed martin's please send your suggestions to the very same place you can send us a question and you can find how to send them by voice or email along with a lot of other stuff upon our website which is answer me this podcast.com thanks very much to all of you who have patronized the

show at patreon.com answer me this it's extremely good of you there's already a community of around 600 people on there which is brilliant if we can get over a thousand people on there that really is a sizable community so we'd really appreciate it so if you can afford it patreon.com answer me this we've really enjoyed your comments we've really enjoyed your comments. We've really enjoyed your encouragement. It's wonderful. And you will be rewarded. And of course, the three of us have other stuff going on as well. I do three other podcasts.

You can find them all at ollyman.com. But just to pick one for you to highlight, The Modern Man with two Ns, like a roller derby name, is my monthly magazine show which is itself celebrating its 10th birthday in october in each episode of the modern man we test out trends interview people about their life stories and answer sex and relationship questions so to give you a sample this month the trend is smart telescopes the interview is with a master chef star who opened his dream london restaurant and then had to close it down and the sex question is should you put botox in your bum if that appeals

to you the podcast not necessarily the botox then search for the modern man with two n's wherever you get your podcasts well i'm on a little break from the illusionist at the moment so that i can do this but uh all of the back catalogue is there at theillusionist.org and if you want to listen to the episode about roller derby names it's called Alter Ego oh I should have listened to that in preparation for this

and then I'd know what one was there's 10 years of the show for you to catch up on there's Tranquillusionists which are specifically to help you de-stress and fall asleep and stop your interior monologue from screaming for a while

and there's episodes like recently Martin and i hung out with the science fiction author mary robinette cowell who converses with her cat via buttons programmed with human language that was cool and we find all of that at the illusionist.org and in the pod places oh the other exciting thing that's happened since uh we've been on a break is that uh sam payne and i finished our eight-year mission talk about every Tom Waits song one episode at a time. Is Tom Waits still alive? He is still alive. So you say you've completed. There's a chance

isn't there Tom Waits could record another song and then you'd have to do another episode. He might put out more music, yeah. He's certainly done a couple more films since we finished the podcast, although they've not been released yet. So yeah, if you're interested in that or you're just Tom Waits curious check out Song by Song podcast on your podcatcher of choice

remember as well you can buy our first 200 episodes our best of collections and our exclusive albums at answer me this store.com uh we get more money if you buy it from us directly rather from apple or amazon so do that and the date for your diaries for the next edition of answer me this because we're scheduling episodes for the last Thursday of each month this time round, is going to be February 27th. And also March 27th, because February being four weeks long. Right. Oh, wow. That's a good fact, isn't it? Yeah. Managed to squeeze in additional fat right at the end there.

It's an adequate fact. Little children know that about February. I've got better, is what I'm saying. I've got better stuff to give. Bye!