Answer Me This! - AMT417: Shotgun Weddings, Oldest Ballet Dancers, and a Collection of Baby Teeth

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

This month, questioneers want to know why shotgun weddings and three line whips are called that, what the deal is with those little fish-shaped bottles of soy sauce, and what to do with a tupperware full of baby teeth. For more information about this episode, go to answermethispodcast.com/episode417. Got questions for us to answer, or feedback about an episode old or new? Send them in writing or as voice notes to [e-mail], or you can call 0208 123 5877 to leave us a message. AMT418 will be out 28 May 2026 and Answer Us Back on 14 May. Become a patron at patreon.com/answermethis to get an ad-free version of AMT417 and a batch of Bonus Bits each month, plus our video livestreams Petty Problems. If you sign up at one of the higher Patreon tiers, you get access to an RSS feed with ALL the AMT stuff EVER, including our entire back catalogue, our six themed albums, the retro AMTs, and every Bit of Crapp from the AMT App. AND you’re keeping this show going! This episode is sponsored by:  Saily, flexible eSIM data roaming plans for when you’re abroad. Download SAILY in your app store and use our code amt15 at checkout to get an exclusive 15% off your first purchase. For further details go to saily.com/amt15. The London Review of Books, the twice-monthly literary mag full of essays, reviews and more by excellent writers. Get a 6 month print and digital subscription for just £12 at LRB.me/answer. Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online empire. 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

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For some clarification, Ollie, on the massage gun you bought in an airport, Isabel must know. Ollie, answer me this. Does your airport massage gun plug into the wall or is it battery powered? Lesbians will be judging you. It is a rechargeable battery with a supplied USBC cable. So I'm not sure which of those two options it is, really. I'd say the battery powered in principle. You know, detachable from the wall.

I think that's what she's getting at. Yeah, but I don't know what lesbians prefer. I don't know if she's saying that you need the strength of it being wall-mounted or whether you need the portability of it being battery-powered. I simply am not a lesbian. Well, you can have to wait another month for Isabel to tell you. It is made by a company called Be Relax Spa, which is a weird name, which makes me think it's not a company for whom English was their first language.

Otherwise, it would be called Be relaxed or Just Relax. Maybe it's for relaxing bees. They've got a stressful life. They started by creating massage products for bees, and then they worked out to humans. You know, it's like All Birds the Shoe Company pivoting to fucking AI. I think B Relax Spa exists basically just as an airport concession. And were people practicing with the massages in there?

Like, to what extent can you test them before buying? Yeah, the one where I originally bought it, there were sort of comfy leather padded things you could be. put your face in and the assistant would gun you. So God can't see your shame. We are now doing every month episodes called Answer Us Back, where we include your feedback about recent and ancient episodes of Answer Me This, because there are a lot.

And we heard from many of you about World Book Day costumes, and that stuff appears in the most recent episode of Answer Us Back. Yes. But we also love getting your questions. So please remember to send us those. I think some of you are shy. Yes, please do send them. Answer me this podcast at Googlemail.com.

This is the first question today, Helen. It is from Kelly, who says, on a recent trip to the supermarket, whilst I was finalising my choices for the Great British Institution that is the Meal Deal, pioneered by Boots in 1999, fact fans. Whoa, later than I thought Boots was on that.

I could do it. The whole ten minutes on the meal deal another day, but that isn't the question that Kelly is asking. I got to wondering about the history of the little soy sauce fish inside sushi trays. Yes. Helen asks me this. How did these come about? Who designed and invented them? And most importantly, how do they get the soy sauce in there? In my mind, I'm imagining a production line of thin needle syringes all filled with soy sauce and at the end someone screwing all the little green caps on by hand. You know, I'd never thought about that, Helen, but I suppose there is a sort of ship in a bottle aspect of this. Yeah, and actually it's surprisingly elusive information to find. I've only seen them with the little red caps on. I wonder if that is different manufacturers. depending on where you are. What I really wanted was to find a factory video of these being made.

Could not find one. A lot of the information online about this is dominated by one thing, which I shall get to. A couple of speculations about how they get the soy sauce in there. Possibly, yes, production line with very thin nozzles squirting it in. Not sure about the hand-screwing of the snouts, but maybe because a lot of factory stuff that you think would be automated is humans. Oh, that's grim because most of them get, I don't know if this is your experience, but not only do they get thrown away and they're never used again because they're single use.

I literally throw them away when I get them because I don't need it. I've got soy sauce in a bottle at home. It just goes in the bin. How depressing that someone, a person might have screwed that on and spent time on it? There's more depressing things about what you've just said, Olly. But again, I shall get to that. The other method that I saw only a 13 second video about was someone demonstrating putting thousands of these things snouts off in a kind of big container, drenching them in the soy sauce

and then putting that container into a vacuum chamber and after a few seconds of bubbling the air is forced out of the little plastic things and soy sauce fills them up but I don't know if that is what happens in the factories so I don't know why they're hiding that from us So it's suck the air inside

sucks up the soy sauce around it potentially in this big box The vacuum sucks the air out of the little plastic things and then when you release that they suck in and release it of course they suck it in yeah oh wow that's so cool I want to watch that 13 second video, please send it to me.

Okay, but it's frustrating because it talks about it as if it's an introduction to a longer video, which I could not find. You say it's frustrating. It sounds satisfying to me in the way that popping bubbles is satisfying, you know, like with bubble wrap. It's that kind of feeling. Yeah, okay, I think it would do that to you. Yeah.

Who designed and invented these? They're called shoyutai, which means soy sauce sauce bream, because they're shaped like a bream. They were invented in, I believe, 1954 by Osaka-based culinary equipment manufacturer Terrawo Watanabe and he also made pig shapes and gourd shapes so that you knew

which food you were supposed to serve them with like pork cutlet or fish If it was like pork would it have like barbecue sauce or Ponzu or whatever I don't know if it was like slightly different sauce or just the same but people were like

well you can't have a fish with your pork cutlet that's confusing The reason why he came up with these was post-war they would have like little ceramic or glass containers of soy sauce for a portable soy sauce option. But these were expensive at the time.

Getting rid of them, created shards of glass and ceramics. So he thought, what would be small, light, and resellable with the little snouts, and disposable? And that's what he came up with. And I was so excited the first time I ever got one

that I kept it for ages. Oh, that's nice. But what did you possibly do with it? Just worshipped it. But here's, What may make you change your ways about throwing them away, Ollie. They're hard to recycle because the machines can't really handle them because they're so small. And it means that these are like some of the most common waste in seas, like the most common plastic waste.

So they're actually like quite controversial now. These are now banned in South Australia because they are a single use plastic. In South Australia, they have banned many different single use plastics. There is a company called Holy Carp, which has made. a fully compostable soy sauce fish from sugar cane waste, which composts in four to six weeks, and you can fill it from a big bottle of soy sauce. But to me, it's a bit hideous, and it also looks like it would leak, but it is by that company Heliograph that makes those soy sauce sauce fish lamps that I get advertised relentlessly online. Wow, okay. I mean, you're in a very

different information bubble to me, literally never seen. Well, you'd probably like them. They're a bit kitsch, quite cool. But one of the useful things for a soy sauce fish that you have used the soy source from, Olly. So maybe you shouldn't throw them where you should keep them and then donate them. In 2015, there was a public health campaign from the British organisation, Gay Men Fighting AIDS. And it's because these little fish can measure a safe dose of GHB. But do you have to put it in the liquid immerse it and then suck the air in, just like you did in that video? If you're doing one source fish, you can just like push the air out and then like it'll slurp up what you feed it.

How do you wash it out though? Hasn't it got a bit of soy sauce remnant still in there? Then you're mixing fish with drugs. Well, you can rinse it first. It's using the same method. And they were like, these are good because small, standard amount. So we know what we're dealing with if we need to know how much GHB someone has used or other liquid drugs. And if you have one in your bag, probably no one would think twice about it.

People would just think you're going out for sushi. Right, exactly. So they use them for this safe dosing campaign, which has been copied in other places. as well. So now the problem in South Australia where these are banned is they're like, well, this was the perfect thing for the safe doses of drugs and harm reduction and therefore maybe what you should be doing, Ollie, is sending all your soy sauce to South Australia. Yeah, I'm not sure that's that environmentally friendly an idea either. Let us address this question from Alexis in Australia, who says earlier this year, I started

taking ballet classes for the first time as an adult. I've been enjoying it so much and going multiple times a week. I expected it to be a very stressful environment, but adult beginner ballet classes are pretty low stakes. We've all fulfilled our potentials and those potentials are not professional ballet dancers. And it seems like you need to start as a child if you actually want to be a professional ballet dancer. Olly, answer me this. Are there any professional ballet dancers who began learning as an adult? And what is the oldest known retirement age of a ballet dancer? Okay. Just to deal with the men first, to give perhaps male listeners some hope if they want to get into ballet dancing.

Sir Matthew Bourne, no less, did not dance until he was 22. No way. But he is basically famous as a choreographer and a director, isn't he? I suspect as a dancer he was just sort of okay. Like he did cast himself in his own shows, but I presume cast himself in character roles where he didn't have to do the difficult technical stuff and obviously easier to get the gig when you've created the show.

But he did dance to a professional standard and is a really well-known name in the world of ballet. So he did and he was 22. In terms of women, I mean, Misty Copeland began learning at 13 and people were like, you're kidding, she's past it. Stop embarrassing yourself, old women. Get up, wait, grandma. What's considered the sailing then?

But basically 11. He's CEO started at 11 and that is considered old as well. Misty Copeland is pretty much the oldest you'll find that got to that kind of level of standard where people have heard of them that don't follow ballet. You basically want to be getting into it pre-puberty and basically when you're three or four. It's actually not about learning the moves.

People think, well, you know, what can a four-year-old learn that they can't learn when they're 10? It's about the spatial awareness, apparently. So it's just getting the air miles in of spending hours being aware of your body, training your body, and being aware of spatial awareness, that you can then build on that knowledge so that by the time you're 10 and you're ready to learn the complex stuff, you've got seven years behind you of the groundwork. That's the issue. Or you're already psychologically broken, which means you are adaptable for the ballet taking over your team.

and early adulthood. There is, I mean, this character thing that I alluded to with Matthew Bourne, that is an option for women as well. You can potentially at the age of, say, 30, say, I'm going to be a character artist in a dance company. And that's a bit more like acting, less technically demanding, playing, supporting roles. But the thing with that is, then you are obviously up against every retired ballet dancer who's still got 20 years of experience.

You're not going to get the part, basically. They want those parts. Yeah, but maybe they don't have character. Great point. I mean, in very specific circumstances, playing The Wicked Witch of the West and a tour of East Grinstead, maybe. But generally speaking, there's going to be an ex-professional ballet dancer who wants that part. I don't know how many venues there are in East Grinstead. It might be more of a residency.

Precisely. I have some inspiration, though, for Alexis. From Australia, the dancer Eileen Kramer. Eileen Kramer didn't start dancing until she was 26. Her mother took her to a concert. And the next day, she got in touch with that dance. company and after three years of training, so when she's in her late 20s, joined it. It was more of a kind of interpretive dance company, but then she toured with their ballet

company for years and years and years. And she was still dancing until the year she died, which was 2024, at the age of 110 and seven months. Wow. I'm not taking anything away from her story, very impressive. But, I mean, at the risk of doing a Chalemet, I would venture that maybe interpretive dance isn't ballet dancing. That is its own thing. No, but she toured with their ballet company.

Sure, sure. But it's not the same as being the Bremma ballerina, is it? That's all I'm saying. But I also wonder just whether the nature of ballet training shifted over the 20th century. Like you had sort of Russian and French schools coming to influence how it was done in, say, UK and other places. But it doesn't mean it was always quite as like prescriptive as it is or was in certain decades. Yeah, of course. The thing with dancing as well is that not only, Only do you have to be young to get into it, but also you get this thing at the other end, obviously, which is you have to retire early, or much earlier than other professions too. So, on average, dancers retire at the age of 35, which is where you get the, I think, delightfully

campphrased dancers die twice. Our friend Ellie made an amazing radio documentary called The Dancer Dies Twice. Oh, that was the BBC Radio 4 seriously one, wasn't it? It's really good. Very often for women as well, it's having children, which means their bodies can never be what they once were, but also you get to the, all the usual stuff, your joints start to give out and that kind of thing. Although I did learn that Sadler's Wells has its own resident company of older performers

called the Company of Elders, who are in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Cool. And they do a festival of work by matured dancers. Can you imagine the amount of tumourite being passed around backstage there? Just a lot of, that smell of deep heat. Yeah, which I think is kind of inspirational. And just finally, to answer the question on, because your example, from Australia was inspiring, but as I say, not a ballet dancer.

I'll give you Sylvie Guillaum then, the amazing French dancer who was at it until she was 50. Okay, I've got one better. The Cuban prima ballerina, Alicia Alonso, was 74 when she retired. Hell yeah. Again, she did a Matthew Bourne in that she had her own dance company, so she cast herself. She was extraordinary anyway, because she was partially blind. She started losing her sight when she was 17. So she'd always danced in an adaptive way.

so as she got older she carried on adapting the dances to suit her. So then obviously she was able to do things but actually it was kind of because she'd always been the star who adapted the dances to suit her. But nonetheless, she's a proper famous ballerina if you're into ballet and she was 74 so she wins. Okay, jackpot. If you've got a question,

email your question to answer me this podcast at Googlemail.com to answer me this podcast at googlemail.com To answer me this podcast at googlemail.com To answer me this podcast at Googlemail.com. Answer me this is sponsored by the London Review of Books. Which is a phenomenal publication with an incredible range of subjects in it. So you'll go from like 3,000 words on Cicero to 3,000 words on Britney Spears.

Oh, yeah. And they're both treated seriously and written by, you know, great writers. Which I think is how we like to do things as well, just vacillating wildly from pop culture to something ancient through something serious or moral. I agree. I think the variety is reflective of our style. And also unlike us, the LRB has tote bags. Oh, such a good tote bag. I mean, I know I shouldn't say subscribe to the LRB so you get the tote bag. but I mean, I looked like the coolest intellectual on the beach.

You are. I'm sure you're the coolest intellectual on any beach, Ollie. I love a paper magazine and more and more the rarer they get. And in this sort of fast-paced world that we're in now, that kind of lean-back experience I am all here for. And it's simultaneously luxurious, but also to the point. Yeah. This life can be yours as well,

because you can get a six-month print and digital subscription to the London Review of Books and a free free. tote bag for just 12 pounds. That's right. Subscribe now at LRB.m.me slash answer. That's LRB. dot M.E. forward slash answer. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sip. Play. Post. Taste. View and enjoy. Via rail. Love the way. Ellie has been in touch. She says, I've been listening to answer me this since I was 13. You've provided me with decades of enjoyment and comfort.

So thank you. Oh, very welcome. Thank you, Ellie. Answer me this. What would you do with 52, this is very specific, with 52 baby photos. It really depends of which baby and why I have them. You'll be pleased to know. There's more information.

Okay. Every Monday since my son was born, so they're photos of Ellie's son. I have taken a photo. of him next to his orange-stuffed dinosaur toy, with a paper note saying how many weeks old he is and the date. Aw. Milestone cards. Parents will be familiar with this concept.

Initially, I took these to send to grandparents living abroad, but I've continued for my own enjoyment long after I stopped sending them. That's nice. My son is now nearing his first birthday, says Ellie, and I will soon have 52 very similar baby photos. Yep. I fully appreciate how boring baby photos are. for everyone except the parents and grandparents.

But I think these being a full set that track his growth next to his toy. Archaeologists of the future will wonder how a human baby developed week to week. Put them on a par with Richard Linklator this, I'm telling you. Oh, yeah. Make them marginally more fun to show. But Helen answered me this.

What can I do with them? Because I took them largely for my own interest, they're not very good quality, and the signs are rushed, so they wouldn't look good hung on the wall. The best bit about them is they allow for comparison. Yep. So I want a form where I can easily see how he grows and changes over the year.

Ideally, I would also like to be able to bring them out or send them around at his first birthday. Do you have any ideas? And do you think I'm deluded by parenthood into thinking anyone except me would be interested in this? I don't want to speculate about that. Very judicious. Before having kids of my own, I used to roll my eyes at parents who forced me to look at photos of their alien-looking babies. But hey-ho, I have lived long enough to see myself become the villain. That's fine, Ellie. It's your turn. Do it. Come on. Who could object?

Listen, I do have opinions about this. And one of them is, I want you to keep this going. I want you to keep this going forever. You can change to monthly maybe at some point, especially after he's like three and the week-by-week changes are less evident. And then maybe you could do annually because I love that when you get like a 30-year-old that is like recreating their birth photo every time. Also, I disagree with you saying they wouldn't look good hung on the wall because you already have so many of them. And when you have a large amount of very similar things, it kind of raises the whole standard, I think, because the human eye is attracted by similarity in patterns. So actually, like those hung up in like a big grid could look really cool. Oh, could look like an Andy Warhol Popper, couldn't it?

Basically. So it was the same image, just slightly altered in each frame. Or you could do a flick book would be cool. So, no, I thought that would have. That was my vote. I was going to say flipbook. My instinct too. Like I read it.

It was like, Flipbook. Like, it's shouting at you. Like, it's a portable format. You see the animated stages of the baby. But I've looked at the pictures she sent. It won't work. There's a slightly different background.

Slightly different perspective. The dinosaurs are a different place in each picture. So. If you could send to the baby's face in each, it would be okay. Then if the background changes, it matters a bit less. As long as you have a central view of the face that is consistent.

Obviously, we know how AI is changing photography even now. Imagine by the time he's 20. You know, I'm sure you're right. You could probably do all sorts of things these photos and that's kind of the point, isn't it? About digital photography, you literally don't need to decide what to do with them. Just keep them for the very minimal cost of Dropbox forever and then worry about it when you need them. I know that you're getting to the end of this year and it's a big year in your life and it's tumultuous and it's been a journey. But also, like,

in a year's time you can decide what to do with these. You might have more perspective on it. That would be my advice. I know what Stacey Solomon would do. Yeah? She'd cut them all out and then she'd stick them under a sheet of perspex to make a fucking horrendous table. A table, no. It's what she always does. Every episode of sort your life out is like, I've had an idea. I've taken this thing you don't want and I'm going to put it under a sheet of Peresmate, make a lovely table.

You're like, oh, God. Not only did I not want that. I don't want to be looking at it every day, putting my drinks on it. It's weird. What are you doing? No. No. And also Perspex gets scratched up.

So lots of reasons not to do that. I mean, all the things in those makeover shows, you're like, yeah, that's kind of fun for the one day that you've revealed it to them. But come back in a year's time. You can get your own fabric printed by. the yard so you could arrange these sort of like a slightly varied check pattern that repeats and get some fabric printed and then I don't know make a cushion make a bathrobe whatever I mean in terms of actually like having hard copy printed versions of these photographs if that is what

you're doing I do think actually but you know I'm very ruthless about this anyway when it comes to compiling my photo so I still have hard copy photo albums and I'm very precise I only have four pictures per double page spread those four pictures represent an event a big event like someone's wedding or 50th birthday or something, I'll go to two sets of four page, you know, so you get eight photos. Generous, yep. But the best bit of the process for me is that curation, getting the event of 16 photos down to four or eight photos.

That's the fun bit. And I do think if you actually laid them outside by side, you could probably just pick three best ones. Yeah, but honestly. Presumably there's some amount of like artistic and intellectual effort involved in what you're doing, because if you're being that kind of crystalline about it, you're like, okay, I really need this to say something. I really need this to represent.

something. With her, she's got 52 similar photos. So how is she supposed to choose? Maybe she's like overwhelmed by choice because she was like, well, it's not better or worse than this one. So how do I decide? I think it will be. I think apply, you're right, at a creative eye, you know, add some artistry to it. Look at the photos dispassionately. It's not your son

anymore. Find the best angle. Find the one that looks good. If it's not her son anymore, maybe she won't give a shit at all. Well, that would be the best way to see it, wouldn't it? I suppose. And you'd really have the distance to understand. Did you do anything like this for your children? Yeah, because so between the ages of

0 and 1, they do nothing. They don't love you, they don't know who you are. They don't love you. It's just really hard to gauge. They're indifferent. They don't know. Like, they can't see. You know, they fucking scratch themselves in the face when they're born. They're that stupid. This is a thing you can do is take a photo

and send it to the grandparents and it's an activity for that hour of the day. It's like, let's get the baby in the position where, you know. So it's actually quite nice. I mentioned the milestone cards. it's a pretty classic gift for newborns. It's a pack of miles since. So they're actually pre-printed.

There's one week old today, two weeks old today. And it's a bit silly because you can make your own. Yeah, but a lot of parents are really fucking tired. It's a sort of nice gift that isn't edible, I suppose, or isn't like a teddy or, you know. And I guess you can give them to someone else afterwards as well.

But yeah, we did that. So we had a packet of milestone card, so we did every single one. But they're all digital. I mean, we haven't printed any out. They're nowhere in the house now. You have more meaningful things when they're older,

don't you? That's the thing. They don't even look like themselves, so they're about four. Did you do it for both children or just the first one? Because I've noticed a lot of people's interest sharply drifts after the first child. You certainly have a lot of competition for your attention, let's put it that way. It's not that you are less interested in the second child,

it's that the first child is also there in demanding your attention, but with words. We did do it in the second one, but just less frequently. Probably once every two months, that's a milestone. Well, that's nice because me being the mistake third child, you know, I'll ask my mum what my first words were and she can't. remember. Oh. I wonder if there are things from your babyhood that mean something to her that you just

are not even aware of. I think her knowing that it would be the definite last time. That's meant a lot to her. Because it's not the things, it's not the things that you think it's going to be. The stuff that, the stuff that resonates with you is stuff that like, like, for me, it's the art that they've made at school where they've applied their own artistic eye to it. You know, even if it's shit. I'm just like, I've got one right here.

I'm literally, so I don't pin it on the fridge. A brave interpretation of the assignment. Exactly. So, like, this is just today's. And that's what I mean, it's not special. What am I looking at? Exactly. What are you looking at?

But kind of interesting and abstract. I mean, just guide me through, like the plaque on the museum wall. I don't know. I don't know. Oh, it looks like a river. There's trees. Yeah. Maybe some animals by the riverbank.

Possibly a tent or building. A little forest. Yeah. I thought it was people camping, because that looks like a tent here. Yeah. Down by the beach, maybe. here. Well, that could be a beach or it could be a bull green. Exactly, yeah. Well, this could be a U-Bend, couldn't it?

It could be anything, but I think it's a river. Thought-provoking. And I said to Toby this morning, I said, oh, what is it? And he was like, what do you mean? And I thought, what have you drawn a picture of? And he goes, what do you mean? And then I said that. I said, well, it looks like people camping and a river and the beach. And he laughed and he was like, it's a megalosaurus.

Of course it is. Oh, shit. It's a megalosaurus. Oh, that's a very minor element of the whole conversation. position, I'd say. Not in his mind. But, you know, the artist has a different priority to the viewer. And in a way, it's a specious exercise to ask them to explain because they've expressed what they want to say in the picture. And after that, it's not their problem. Exactly. But the point is pruning is important. I have drafts of their artwork all around me as I sit here now.

I'm constantly replenishing and filing, i.e. throwing away probably 14-15ths of what they create. But the stuff that remains is the good stuff. So do you just get rid of the old good stuff once it gets superseded by stuff that is more good or less bad? The stuff that's gold-winning good stuff, so it's been through a lot of curation and process and pruning, that goes in a folder marked Harvey's art or Toby's art. It's one lever-arch-sized folder, and it can contain perhaps 30 bits of art.

So once that gets full, do I create a second folder? No, I think I reprune the first. Okay, I'm really impressed. I think maybe then what you're suggesting to Ellie tacitly is at the moment these photos still have value, possibly in the future they weren't. So the true answer is to just biff this decision down the road. Yeah. Not make it now. Yeah, that sounds like the kind of thing the Dalai Lama would say, isn't it? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Well, here is another question of the souvenirs of childhood.

From Sandra from Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, who says, my husband and I have been quite happily acting as stand-ins for the tooth fairy for our seven and a half-year-old for the last few years, and we'll continue to do so for her and for our three and a half year old once it's her turn we now face the dilemma of what to do with all the baby teeth curate, get the best baby teeth yeah, just save the one true fang each

our children think the teeth were picked up and carried away by the tooth fairy currently the baby teeth of our eldest are packed inside a tiny somewhat broken and patched up Tupperware container and hidden inside a drawer of our bedside table tossing the teeth in the garbage or the compass doesn't seem very real

respectful, what, to the compost or to the teeth? Sandra also wonders, can one cremate teeth? If so, is that something a local funeral home would do? Getting a cremation is expensive, so you need to smuggle them into a corpse. Yeah, I know that in the UK, at least, they do have to do the whole body. That's one of the things they insist on, or whatever's left. Otherwise, it's considered mutilation to remove any part and cremate that. So they wouldn't have the ability to just accept teeth.

You could throw them into a medical waste bin in a hospital because that probably gets incinerated. You can cremate teeth, but if they don't burn up, a crematorium will usually grind them up a bit. Well, that's the thing. Because you could throw them in your own bonfire, couldn't you? But I don't think you would get hot enough. Like, it's an issue even in cremation ovens. All right.

Pop them in the George Foreman Grill. Sandra says, after living in rental homes over the last two decades, we have finally managed to buy a home with a yard within the last year. So the option of burying the teeth in our garden is one possible avenue of dealing with this problem. But if some enterprising soul or two are inquisitive girls, for example, or some kind of hypothetical law enforcement officer were to come across these baby teeth buried in our garden beds, then my husband and I might be in hot water for some reason. Oh, come on. They're very small. They're never, they're just like soil bits.

Leaving aside the very, very narrow possibility that a law enforcement officer would give a shit, I think if your children found some skeleton bits, I can say from experience, that's fun. Yep. Really wind them up. We found a sheep skull once in our garden, and it was like a month's worth of entertainment pretending what that was. Well, what Sandra now mentions is so incredibly eldritch that even though she says that she really doesn't want to do it, I want her to do it. She says, I really don't want to do what my mother did with my old baby teeth. She used to be a dental technician before giving birth to me and therefore had a working knowledge of how to arrange teeth inside some kind of mold of a human mouth.

So she placed my baby teeth in a plastic model of a human mouth and mailed them to me across the Atlantic a decade later. So this is inherited trauma is what this is, isn't it? Like this whole thing about what do I do with the baby teeth? What if someone digs them up? This is because you're still recovering from that appalling experience of not even knowing they were coming your way. Your baby teeth remounted inside plastic. Inside a human mouth. She labelled the package as a gift from the tooth fairy.

Oh my God. To my knowledge, the customs officer did not question the contents of the parcel. Are you allowed to mail bits of human? I don't know. I don't think you are. Pretty sure you're not. Anyway, says Sandra. Ollie, please answer me this.

What do we do with all the baby teeth? There are at least a total of 40 looming in our future, including the 11 or more we already have squirreled away. Okay. I mean, obviously, like I say, you're... Plastic mould. Plastic mould. You've been dramatically affected by what your mother did to you. But just to outline...

Never mind the... plastic mould bit. Mailing body parts in the post is bad. It's bold. Regardless of Providence, that's not an item people typically put on display in a tasteful home. So I think, don't do that, you're right. You're so boring.

There is someone who makes like plush animal toys with real human teeth in them for a bit of creepiness. Maybe you could send them to that person. I am reminded Helen of your button jar and do wonder about the percussive potential here. Yeah. Could you make a homemade egg shaker and only reveal its true contents in the future? Honestly, I think that's worse than just disappearing the teeth. I fully support my mother disposing of our teeth and never mentioning them again. Like, why would you keep them?

They're not a particularly good souvenir. Are they? What do you do with them? When we did the first one, I had the thought. I am now a collector of teeth. Is this something that my children are going to want to see in 20 years' time? I don't know, I'm tired, I'll put it in a leather pouch

that some headphones came in once. I did that for the first, I think, two or three teeth. And then when it got to tooth number four or five, I was just like, this is weird. I don't want to do this, and they're going in the bin. Yeah?

So I threw them away. Okay. But you're good at binning things, evidently, compared to a lot of the people that write to us about what to do with these things that could so easily be binned or not accumulated in the first place. Actually, we had a cat that died

last year, got hit by a car, and the vet said, would you like to keep some of the fur from the cat? When I took the cat to the vet to have its corpse removed. And I said, yeah, I guess. Like, I was kind of shocked and a bit bereaved. And I was like, is that what people do? Okay, they didn't know. I see they gave me this little test tube with the name of the cat on the side.

And since then, I've put it in a drawer and I'm like, that's just, I don't know, what am I going to do with that? Like, am I going to sniff it? Am I going to put it on the mantel piece? Like, it's just fucking odd. It's like what Hannibal Lecter would have. Well, you've just got to let go at some point and grief is hard, but I don't know if that kind of souvenir is really going to ease it

or just create a problem for you in the present and future. I mean, if you have loads of the fur, so you can recreate a software out of it, that's maybe a bit different. Doable display like we suggested to Ellie with her photos. Here are my 52 dead cats furs. I mean, I suppose in a sense, the real question here is, what does the tooth fairy do? Some traditional answers to what the tooth fairy does with the teeth she collects.

Are these from horror films? No, this is actually from the Colgate website. Okay. Send them up into the night sky to become stars. Right, how do you do that? You're the tooth fairy. Sorry. Use as bricks for their white tooth fairy castle.

I mean, that is some sharp object shit. Or grind the teeth to make magical fairy dust for all the fairies. No, gross. Ferry dust. Fairies could be grossly. These are things people tell their children. So you could try any of those, see how you go. But I mean, the children seem to have no.

no attachment to the teeth and no interest. So anything Sandra does is really for her or to play a prank on them. Or, I don't know if your mother is still alive, but could you send them back to her? Maybe you could stick them in the plastic mould alongside yours and do double sets. Then it's the souvenir that you could really pass on, isn't it? You could all have a go. Oh, stunning. Pass it down from generation to generation.

Why are all Yao's fan sites just about one thing? The only way is up is not the only song she sings What about abandon me One true woman, all good thing going A single from 96 You should make your own Yaz site to fill in the gap Since you seem to think all the current Yaz sites are crap

Go to Squarespace.com, build your Yazite And put YazS back on the map The Only Way Is Up Thanks very much to Squarespace for sponsoring Answer Me This And for being our one stop shop for Buildersight and running our website. Maybe this is an option for memorialising your children's old teeth and photos and shit. Just make a beautiful gallery on Squarespace and send your family the link. You can password protect it. And then you don't need to worry if you're showing people

things that don't give a shit about because they can opt into the shit giving. It's certainly an option for people running all kinds of businesses, not just personal portfolios. I found out today 14 million entrepreneurs worldwide use Squarespace and have apparently made $36 billion, or just $30 billion, if you take away the $5 billion we've made from AnsmeetthisStore.com. It's a large amount. Yeah. So you probably know someone who uses Squarespace for their website. You don't even realize.

You've probably bought something from a Squarespace website, not even realized it was a Squarespace website because it just looks like a good website. We Squarespace website have us are legion. Head to Squarespace.com slash answer to use the two-week free trial. And then when you're ready to launch, you can save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using our code. Answer. May we take this moment to remind you listeners that we love to take questions from you not only via email, but also with the sounds of your own voices, the resplendent sounds of your own voices. And you can record voice note, but you can also get in touch the old-fashioned way by dialing this number. as Ben has done.

Oh shit. I only found this number because I'm behind on your podcast and I just heard you say it's been cut off. So I was just ringing it to test it. Shit, sorry. Ben in Branktree, bye. Sorry, Ben, but thank you. Who else has left us a message?

Hello, it's Dan and Sydney here. I was at dinner the other night and I used the phrase shotgun wedding. My son asked me what that meant. I said that it means that the father of the bride needs to get this marriage done quickly, so he's got a shotgun behind the groom forcing them to get married quick. My friend who was at dinner said, no, that's not what it means. It actually means that the wedding is taking place really quickly,

as quickly as firing a shotgun. And my other friend said, no, that's not what it means. It means that the bride is pregnant and that the baby is riding shotgun on the marriage. So please, can you answer us this? What does a shotgun wedding actually mean? The baby called shotgun, that's ridiculous. I'm glad that we've been asked, though,

because, to be clear, everyone does know what it means, right? Colloquially, it does mean, as you say, the bride is pregnant, therefore, according to traditional norms, the couple should get married as soon as possible, so the baby isn't born out of wedlock. That is what it means. But I've actually never really thought, why is it called shotgun wedding?

and I suppose as far as I've thought about it, I must have just thought shotguns are quick, like bullets are quick, into a quick wedding. That's what I thought, or like a race. You know when they start a race with the fire of a gun? Yeah, start a piss. That's what I'd imagined. Same.

And yet, when I heard you say this thing about, oh, the father of the bride has a shotgun, like forcing the groom to get married to his daughter, my instinct was, Dan, that sounds like the sort of shit I'd say to my son when he asked me a question I don't know the answer to and I just make up something. It sounds about right. But it does appear that there is some evidence that the first time, you know, back in about

1929 that we see references to shotgun marriages, it did tally with an era in which, you know, talking Wild West era really, tail end of that, right? Conservative fathers might be intervening in such a way. There are newspaper articles from like 1880-ish saying that a wedding was held with a double barrel gun present. What? in newspapers of the time. I mean, why would they say that?

Because presumably the family were doing it because they were like, it would be a scandal in the shame of people. Yes, yeah. So why would you hint? But it does appear to be like not completely ridiculous and the examples that are given for shotgun marriage in Webster's and on dictionary.com do suggest

that it is a father pointing a literal or figurative gun at the groom's head. So I'm shocked. I thought that sounded like nonsense, but that does appear to be quite likely, one of the reasons it is called a shotgun marriage. Well, we don't know it was at the groom's head. Could have been pretty much any part of the groom

and still have been an effective threat. Indeed. I learnt a term today, knobstick wedding. I've been to a few of those. Which was a British term. I don't think there's a non-bleak origin to any of these. Knobstick refers to like cudgels or clubs. So it was similar to the gun where it's like the threat of a weapon.

But it was actually used as well in the 18 and 1900s after the 1733 Bastidy Act. And that meant that parishes were fiscally responsible if a child needed to be raised. So they were like, fuck this. We don't want to have to pay out for these children. Therefore, we are going to force errant fathers with violence if necessary, or we might bribe them with money to marry women that they have got pregnant. or that we can say they got pregnant. They coerce people into getting married

that were already married to someone else. And it wasn't even a moral scandal thing. It was a financial thing. And there were some legal cases where couples or at least one member of the couple had used this in order to get money since they were being paid to marry. They're like, I'm going to fuck with this system.

And I think, well, you know, to be fair, the system is there to be fucked with. That's your line and you're not deviating from it, even going back 250 years hence. And then like in mid-1800, they sort of tailed off because they just sent people to workhouses instead. Riding shotgun, by the way. We're not going back to that George Ezra question we had several years ago, are we,

but a song that goes, I remember. I don't even remember exactly what we said or what the question was we were answering. Oh, I do remember. It's about the yellow and green, wasn't it? But every time I hear George Ezra on the radio, I sing the version that we had lived on that episode, which is, I've been to Vanuartu. I recommend it to you.

It's just really stuck in my head like anywhere. If you want to hear such musical classics, then patreon.com slash answer me this. You can access our entire back catalogue. Anyway, I don't think we've done the question. Why was it called shotgun? Riding shotgun also comes from sort of Wild West-type era, and it's from those sort of horse-drawn carriages that were transporting money across the States.

Oh, okay. Before the Postal Service, Wells Fargo and all that. And the likes of WIRE-Urp, like Hardman, would ride a shotgun because you sit in the front when there's precious cargo, gold or whatever, and you wave your gun out the front to make sure no one nicks it. That's what riding shotgun is. So this is quite interesting. Okay, wouldn't that give away the fact that you had a cart full of gold?

There's a risk. There's a risk they're going to get a shot in the head. Helen and allie, answer me this. This is Robin Jess from Sydney. We were just discussing three-line whips, and we know what the phrase means, but we're wondering where it comes from. And is there a one line and a two-line whip?

I suppose we'd better, for people who don't know what a three-line whip is, explain what it is before we define why it is. Yeah, I mean, we'd have to explain a whip with no lines, which is basically a bully MP in Parliament that bullies other MPs into doing what the party wants. Right? The expression, whip has been around in politics.

From 1740s, I think, is the earliest example they found. It's derived from hunting where a whiper-in was an assistant to the hunt who stopped the dogs from straying by threatening them with a whip so they went back to the main pack. The type of background of people in British Parliament for most of its existence. Would have got that reference. Yeah. Yeah.

And still will, really. But every week, the whips in today's parliament send out a letter called the whip to the MPs with the details of upcoming parliamentary business, listing what votes are taking place, ranked in order of importance by the number of times they are underlined. So one line. Right, okay. Means that we would like you to be at the vote, but it's non-mandatory. Two lines is like, you really should come.

Like, we're not going to force you to vote a particular way, but it would be good if you came. Three lines, it's like, come or your career will be absolutely fucked. Yes. So that's a three-line whip. The lines in the document are the three lines of the three-line whip. Whereas I had assumed it would be like a whip, like a cat and nine-tails with three tails. Exactly. Just as you made allusions to the connections between the English and staff.

establishment and hunting. As we've discussed before, there's a long established connection between the English establishment and the BDSM community, isn't there? I just sort of assumed someone somewhere had a paddle. Do you know what I mean? And you had to call him black rod. I thought it must come down to that, but no, apparently. No, that's incidental.

Okay, okay. Yes, yeah, it's definitely still happening. But, yeah. You know, sometimes coincidences just are. Sure, okay, fine. Also, for people who don't know anything about British Parliament as well, we're saying that we do have votes on conscience as well. Things like equal marriage and assisted dying where people have religious objections and things like that.

The government can say, forget the whips, vote with your heart. But that's rare. Like most of these things you're being told what to do by the whip. And also occasionally an MP has to miss a vote and the whips will be like, okay, I'll organise with another party's whip that their votes would cancel each other out. Yes, okay. So what's the point of us being there because we both disagree? So yeah. Yeah, exactly.

It's like, okay, well, you can't make it. And this one would have voted the opposite way to you. So we'll just make sure that, you know, it's recorded. as like nothing. I've often thought that just in my own house. Like when I live with my parents and I was like, well, they're going to be voting Tory. So if I just persuade them not to go out, I don't need to go and cast my vote.

Yeah. My mum would have voted for Brexit, except my dad was voting for Brexit for reasons she thought were incorrect. So she didn't vote for Brexit to cancel him out. Right. My parents had some rogue political, uh, vibe-based habits, let's say. Here's a question from Jack from London who says,

Since the answer me this hiatus, 0% alcohol drinks have become increasingly popular. Which is weird because you'd think people would be turning to the full strength stuff to get them through our absence. Ah, true. I remember in early Answer Me this days, you would drink non-alcoholic beer and the only one available to you at the time was Bex Blue.

Yeah, dark days. Whereas now non-alcoholic booze is so widely available that it hasn't made me drink less, I'll be honest, but what I often do is I'll pair, I'll have a non-alcoholic beer apatif before the real beer. Yeah. Two beers for the sobriety of one. Almost all of these products, says Jack,

and especially 0% beer, use the colour blue on the label as visual shorthand to show that the drink has little or no alcohol. So please, Ollie, answer me this. How did the colour blue become synonymous with 0% alcohol drinks? And what was the first brand to use the colour blue in this way? Well, it was obviously a tribute to Tinky Winky, who was the Sober Teletubby.

I thought it was a tribute to three colors blue starring Juliet Binosh. It's like, look, don't have a booze, have an affigato like she does. I hadn't actually observed this that blue was a popular label choice for 0% beers. Have we checked? Because, yeah, I mean, Beck's Blue, obviously, it's in the name. But in my non-scientific survey of non-alcoholic drinks, I have not noticed a strong color correlation personally.

So I hadn't either. I was ready with a riding shotgun style, that sounds nonsense rant. But then I did check. And not only is blue the most common colour for 0% beer. Basically all the top sellers have blue on their label. The only one that doesn't is Nanny State by Brudrog is green or some turquoise, even that's a bit blue. Oh, is it like the Walker's salt and vinegar crisps aren't blue, whereas everyone else's are? like they flipped salt and vinegar and cheese and onion just to fuck with people.

Yes. Yes. I think actually is that because like Brew Dog was trying to be a disruptor, wasn't it? Trying to be independent looking. Whereas actually like if you look at the main brewers, they are all. And I just had not noticed, but you're absolutely right. San Miguel, Corona, Lucky Saint, Moretti, Guinness, Australia are all blue in their 0% incarnations. And in my head, I was thinking, well, hold on.

Fine, Asahi, you can be blue. But my choice, Cobra. I know that's not blue. I know that I struggle when I'm in my fridge at home to identify which are the aperitif zero alcohol cobras from the real cobras. So therefore the label must be yellow, red and green like cobra. No, Cobra Zero has the word zero in blue on the label I've just never noticed before. So they are all blue.

Wow. Okay. So thanks Jack for educating me. It does, I think, originate with Bex Blue because that was kind of the progenitor and calibre, which was always blue as well. the original land worst. Do they still make Calibur? I haven't heard that name for a long time. In hell.

But I think why did Bex Blue and Calibur choose Blue in the first place? I think the answer to that is because it's actually sort of when you think about it often the colour on the supermarket shelf that is the diet version or the low sugar version. Think about Ribina Light or Low Sugar Ketchup. Where it says low sugar or zero something is in blue. and that is because when people are making brand choices about their full fat brand, the original brand in any family of brands, they don't choose blue and they don't choose blue

because blue doesn't look warm, cozy, inviting. The colours that you want for a brand you're going to bond with, like a ketchup or a cobra, are not blue. But then once you've established your brand identity by putting the blue spin on it, it does subliminally indicate to people, oh, it's the health version. And that's basically why they do it. Right.

Which is astonishing. Yeah, it's like, I think mid-20th century where supermarkets were like, why is our meat not selling when it's just in this white counter? And it's because people want to buy meat that looks red. And so if you make the background green, the red pops more and looks more red. And that's why you still have like artificial grass next to meat now to make it look more red. Oh, good fact. Yeah, you do get green trays with steaks at Desco. We're all just like prey to the most simple tricks to make us buy stuff.

I find consumer psychology sort of for sure because it's like, However disparate we think we are, we're all just animals. Just trainable, like little dogs. Actually, this fact of customers thinking that blue is healthier. I mean, not blue WKD. That's not healthy. Well, I was on a cocktail mixing blog, you know, for mixologists. And it was saying, be cautious if you're making blue lagoons, blue margaritas or blue Hawaiians.

Because a lot of restaurateurs aren't happy to stock them on their cocktail menu because they're known to suppress appetite. Oh. You have a blue cocktail and something about it makes you not want to order olives. Do you what I mean? You're just like, oh, I'm done now. Something weird about the blue color.

Is it because blue curassau that is in a lot of those drinks is very sweet and that might damp down your olive palette? Is it because it looks like you've been drinking harp egg and that will put you off eating anything? Yeah, just like, is that toilet duck?

I don't want pizza nil. Bom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum bum, bum, bum, bum, Helen Ollie. Answer me this. Don't ridicule me and don't take the piss. Give me a clue to what I'm asking. Then in your awesome knowledge, I'll be basking.

What's in summer? I'm so alone. No one to email. And no one to phone. Where can I get new friends from? Answer me this podcast.com. There's more to life than finding. the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the

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Keep exploring at nespresso.com. Here's a question from Natalie, who says, Helen, answer me this. If Crystal Palace, home of Answer Me This, of course, formerly, Earthplace, I've answered me this, for sure. Is named for the Crystal Palace. What was it before the Crystal Palace? Well, it was more than one thing, actually. Technically, the Crystal Palace itself was put on a piece of land called Penge Place.

The rest of it was called Sidnam Hill, which is still part of the area. And then it was part of a general area called Upper Norwood, which derives from the Great Northwood, because basically the whole of like the Southeast England was covered in ancient oak forest and then a lot of that was used for shipbuilding in medieval era. But there is some of it left. Like our last flat in Crystal Palace looked over the treetops that were full of birds of these ancient oaks. That was really cool. But the reason why there's so many problems with the names, one of which is that Crystal Palace was then and now, like on the edge of other places. Like it is where four different boroughs meet and then a fifth

is like very close, which causes some confusion. Whereas Martin Scorsesey to make a film about these five boroughs. Gangs of Cyddenham. The Crystal Palace arrived there in 1854. It was moved there from Hyde Park after the Great Exhibition of 1851. I didn't know that. Oh, you didn't? The whole thing, a palace-sized structure was moved from Hyde Park, pain by pain.

Basically, yes, it was the biggest glass building. I didn't know that. I thought the exhibition was in Crystal Palace. I think they were like, well, we've got this hugely expensive. building now. We don't want to just like put it in the recycling. We should do something with it. And at the time, there was space there because this wasn't such a populist area. Until the early 19th century, the roads weren't very good because it was covered in forest. It's very hilly there. It's like one of London's highest points. So they were like, oh, it's a bit impenetrable.

There was even a hermit living there till at least 1802 called Matthews the hairy man, living in a cave. He's your ex-flatmate, is he? I didn't know about Matthews the Harryman. That's interesting. There was also a very long-standing traveller encampment, hence the name Gypsy Hill for part of the area. Surprising lack of renaming campaigns for that, because that is the G-sler now. But that was there long enough for Samuel Peeps to have written about it in his diary in 1668. But I think maybe the presence of those people would have

given some connoisseons to the Georgians and the Victorians are like, oh, it was dangerous, all scary. But gradual building happened there. And then it really popped off in the 1850s when the Crystal Palace arrived because then the area got railways so that people could go and visit this like hugely popular for a few decades tourist attraction. It was like the Epcot Centre of Victorian England. And the station, I think the first station was 1854 and the next one was like 1860s and they were called Crystal Palace.

And they're beautiful, may I say? Yeah. Like as a visitor, because obviously, so again, especially for people not in Britain listening, you were trying to follow this. Yeah. Even in London, people are like, where? So Crystal Palace remains known as Crystal Palace as a suburb of London. Yeah.

The station is still called Crystal Palace. Yes. The actual Crystal Palace to which Helen refers that was relocated there from Hyde Park burned down. Burned down in 1936. So there is no palace. So people get there and they're like with Piccadilly Circus, like that Waynesworld thing, where's the circus? Great question. Where's the palace?

There isn't a palace, but there is a station worthy of being called Crystal Palace because it's a really beautiful Victoriana thing. There's a lot of signs of the palace, not the palace itself, but there's very, dinosaur sculptures and gardens and things, which used to be connected to the palace. Yes, fink sculptures, stuff that is left over from the 1850s. Yes. But now is surrounded by park. So I think because the stations were called Crystal Palace, that would be what people called that place, because the place itself as a neighbourhood, didn't really grow up until

after that had happened. So it's hard to get a precise date, but that's what I would attribute it to. But, I mean, it's far from unique, obviously, in London, you know, a city with so many centuries of history to have a train station named after a thing that isn't there anymore. I mean... Oh, yeah, Elephant and Castle. Right. We covered on the show years and years ago.

I mean, long enough that I can't remember. Of course. Garden? I mean, Tuffinal Park. Where's the park? Wembley Park. Where's the park? Park Royal?

No park. And nowhere near a royal palace either. Like, this is not unusual. That one, apparently, Park Royal comes from a showground that was opened in 1903 and shut down three years later, but they never changed the name. Jeez. Wow. It did well for itself then.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. After three years merely. Which makes me think, why didn't they call North Greenwich Millennium Dome? Because I know that that was only going to be open for a year, but that basically is what that train station's for the O2. I know you now call it the O2, but it should be cool. It even says on the signs that North Greenwich for the O2 because they know that no one says, I live in North Greenwich. Like, it's just for the O2.

It should be, so much cooler if that station was called Millennium Dome, I say. I don't know because Millennium stuff isn't cool, is it? No, I think that's what makes it cool. In a kind of stranger things, it's been long enough way. Yeah, yeah, totally. Do you remember the time when they were trying to rebrand in London, the district of Bloomsbury, to Midtown? I do remember that.

Hey, London doesn't really have a Midtown because it's not shaped like New York. It's polycentric. But also, Bloomsbury is quite a well-known neighbourhood name already. Why wouldn't you just keep it? The reason I remember that is in my corporate event-speaking life, I was hosting an event for the Midtown Big Ideas Exchange, which was like a load of academics sitting around talking about city planning.

And I was hosting a lecture that they all did. There was a hashtag on the wall behind me. And I thought, is it my place to point out that it really looks like it says midtown, big idea, sex change? Or should I just not say anything? I chose not to say anything. It's a great idea. The midtown's been asking for a sex change for years. Once I'd seen it, I was like, I'm sitting behind a sign that.

sign and said Midtown Big Ideas Exchange and none of these people seem to know. So that's why I remember that. Yeah. Well, classic. Susan-Anal Bum party. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, God, that was good. I learned a couple of facts that piqued my interest. So I didn't know that the reason why they had the great exhibition of 1851 was because Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, was not popular.

So they were like giving this project that will make people like him. Interesting, because then after he died, obviously, everything got named after him for about 50 years. So that project never stopped, did it? I heard recently that the area around the Royal Albert Albert Hall was originally going to be called Albertopolis. God, the arrogance. Which again, I think, is cool. Like, cooler than South Kensington for the Natural History Museum. True. We're going to Albertopolis. I also learnt that the Crystal Palace Stadium, which hasn't been in use for the football club for like over 100 years, but... But it has been used by us for a variety of shit videos. And some of Ted Lassow filmed there. I didn't know that that stadium was almost...

blown up by suffragettes deliberately on the eve of the 1913 FAA Cup final. Yeah, they go everywhere. But their plot was foiled. Okay, good fact. Thanks. It's okay. It's okay. None of it makes a case for why the place you'd be called anything other than the Crystal

Palace. I think the Crystal Palace is the thing that that area is going to be best remembered for. It's tremendous. Why would you possibly object? And also, if you take that away, then you get into all the weeds again about all the other things it's called because it's so many other places jammed together. Not our problem, Ollie, not our problem. Well, listeners, if you have problems for future episodes of Answer Me This,

then we would very much appreciate you sending them to us in the form of writing or voice notes or a voicemail. Our contact details are listed on our website. Answermethispodcast.com. And remember, we also have a live streaming video series, which is exclusive to people who pay for it at patreon.com slash answer me this. Yes, so if you've got a problem that you think is too trivial for the show, it's not. We'll deal with it there. You know, maybe there's a gift you don't like or, you know, someone's being weird about a wedding.

These things come up a lot. Your flatmate's a bit of a jerk. Send it to us for that. Yeah. And one of the things that's great about it is that the people who attend the stream help solve the problems, contribute their own solutions and their own problems. You know, it's a good time. We all hang out. It's very pleasant.

Yeah. And so even if you miss the most recent one, you can catch up now at patreon. com slash answer me this. There are lots of other excellent reasons to patronize us at patreon.com slash answer me this, one of them being the continuing existence of Answer Me This and keeping it free for everyone to listen to you. Yes, we are an independent show. So by supporting us, you are literally supporting us.

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the high rollers get all of that plus our first 200 episodes as well. Holy fucking shit. Which you can also buy separately by the way at AnswerMe This Store.com if you want to. You don't have to join us on Patreon. Why kick yourself in?

in the dick. You can get it for less money at Patreon. We also have other pods you can listen to, don't we? We do. Helen, what is coming up on the illusionist? Well, what is just out on the illusionist, Ollie's an episode you might be interested in, A, because it contains our old friend John Grindrod. Oh, yes, I like him. Who writes about sort of architecture, but like normal architecture that people actually live in rather than just the big fancy buildings. He writes in a fun way about things that sound drab. That's what I'd say about him. Really fun. He has a great new book out, which is about queerness in British suburbs. And so he's talking to me about why the word suburbia has the connotations of being like a bit flat, a bit conventional and monotonous.

And there's mention of Letchworth in it, your local Garden City. The world's first roundabout. Does he get onto that? I mentioned it, yes, because, I mean, it's an accolade that deserves celebration. So that is available at the allusionist.org and the pod places. But I'm also a guest on a new episode of the science fiction sitcom pod. We Fix Space Junk. So listen to the word wrangling episode of that.

Wow. Okay. What, did you play a version of yourself or are you being real and there being in character or what? They kind of wrote a thing for me where I'm someone who has a ranch for words, like a horse ranch, but for words. Well, you know, you've made it as a podcaster when you get to do a fictionalised cameo version of yourself. Fuck yeah. What about the Oli Man Rancher pods? Yes.

Well, yes, I do five of them. You can find out about all of them at Oliman.com. But to flag one in particular, local elections are just around the corner in England. So I've done an episode of The Modern Man looking at how AI deepfakes can be exploited in political campaigns. I spoke to a lady called Cheryl, whose likeness was used to discredit the Labour Party because she was seen saying something racist

while she was out door-knocking for them. But guess what? She never said it. She couldn't go into work for three weeks until she could prove that. She had death threats. It's still on her teaching record. She's appearing on Panorama this month,

but she did my show first. She's never done a podcast interview before and she did us. It's a really great listen. The episode is called My Deep Fake Nightmare. And yeah, the show is The Modern Man. Just search for The Modern Man, M-A-Double N, two ends to find it wherever you listen to stuff. Martin.

I make a weird experimental podcast called Neutrino Watch, which is generating a new episode every day. But it's the old episode every day. There's a format and then the episode changes. So there's like a song, but the lyrics change or there's an episode which is made up from all of the best bits of the manisphir, which is the quiet pits when no one's talking. I mean, what I admire, Martin, is that despite it being an experimental format,

you've really nailed the elevator pitch, though. Yeah, I don't really know how to pitch it to someone. Yeah, that's clear. It's just like weird. No, but I think your audience would like weird. And I'm going to have some new music at scene, but in the meantime, check out the old music. That's at palebird.combeard.com.

And on the stream, it's apart from Spotify, he's like. We will be back with an answer us back, your feedback answered by us in the middle of the month. That's right. And then we will be following up with a brand new episode of Answer Me This on the last Thursday of May. Bye!