Answer Me This! - AMT418: Prop Cigarettes, Charlie Chaplin’s Moustache, and Condom Machines

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

What would you do with a copy of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? One questioneer needs any answer other than 'read it'. AMT418's questioneers also wonder how they film club scenes in Jersey Shore, what the Hitler Moustache was called pre-Hitler, what’s in prop cigarettes, what to do about your neighbour’s golf noise, and where all the decanters and pub toilet condom machines went. For more information about this episode, go to answermethispodcast.com/episode418 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. AMT419 will be out 25 June 2026 and the next Answer Us Back will land on on 11 June. Become a patron at patreon.com/answermethis to get an ad-free version of each episode 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

After Kylie on Netflix, when is it's Sonia's turn? Hasamidivis, Can you return a rover to the rover's return? As to be this, heaven and lonely, answer me this. In Answer Me This 417, we had our correspondent wondering what the hell to do with 52 photos of her baby. Yes, the first year of her baby's life photographed with an orange dinosaur toy week by week. Yeah. Many people suggested the following, but the first was Swapner. Swapner says, the very first idea I had was to get a custom printed deck of cards.

There are 52 cards in a deck so you can use each of the pictures and it is a fun, useful item. It is ingenious. I can't believe the number 52 didn't jump out at us for this. No. And also, I love novelty cards. My dad had some erotic ones, which I enjoyed very much as a breteen. Do you know what? So did my granddad. We only found them after he died, though.

I guess it was an acceptable way to get porn in like the 1960s, I don't know. 52 pawns, not including jokers. I wish I'd kept some of my grandma's playing cards. When she died, I inherited her runner-up trophy from Linford Bridge Club and her sparkly bridge pens. And even a cushion that says, I only play bridge on days ending in Y. And I thought at first, I can't stand that up. I'm not going to... That cushion doesn't represent me.

kept it because it represented her. But I decided not to keep her cards. Eva also comments, I've been to quite a few one-year-old's birthday parties where the parents will make a garland out of the weekly or monthly photos and use it for decoration for the party. Yeah, that is a lovely idea for that one party, but then you just have someone writing into answer me this saying,

what do I do with the garland of 52 baby photos I put together for my one-year-old's birthday party? So I'm not sure it helps in the long run. You add a photo every week to the garland until the garland is a mile long, and then the child has reached adulthood. And then it's ready for the King's Golden Jubilee. Anyway, there is plenty more feedback on AMT-417,

including some of your responses to booze-free alcohol and shotgun weddings in the most recent episode of Answer Us Back, which is now in your feeds. But in the last episode of Answer Us Back, we talked about how your friend Ben didn't listen to Answer Us Back until his car forced him to. That's right. And then he was like, oh, this was good, actually. And we thought, who else is...

have fallen prone to this folly. I'm telling you now. Listen to answer us back. It's a sweet time. Agree. It's very laid back. It's a good hang, as is petty problems. Our live streaming series, we've got another one of those coming up as well. Sunday, June 28th, mark your calendars. Oh, I will. I very much enjoy those.

To join in for that or to watch back the old ones, patreon.com slash answer me this. Shall we take a voice question now from Lewis and Joanna in Swansea? I don't see why we wouldn't, Ollie. Hi, Helen. Helen on Ollie. and Martin the sound man. We have a bit of a dilemma. We have this neighbour who has just built a makeshift driving range.

In their backyard, which is adjacent to our living room window and is rather loud when he hits the golf balls into the net. And it's quite annoying. But I suppose he's well within his right to do it, but it's just annoying, isn't it? Yeah, it's just very annoying. It's just every so often we just get a loud, like, thud noise. In fact, he's doing it now and you may hear it in the background. He sort of does it sporadically throughout the day at any time, really.

But he's a working gentleman, I suppose he has the right to do that. Well, he could be retired. No, he's not retired, I see his work on. But basically, we just want him to stop. We want some peace and quiet. But in front of him and chatting to him isn't an option because we don't want to do that. There he goes. I understand not wanting to talk because I obviously do things myself,

being the golf perpetrator in this scenario rather than the person who's annoyed, there are things that I frequently do in spite of me kind of knowing that my neighbours won't enjoy it because I don't want them to say no, I don't ask them. So, for example, my hot tub, which is, I've talked about many times, is an inflatable one. It hasn't gone up yet for this summer, those of you that are interested in this granular detail of my life. When's it going up? what's the date?

So I do typically put it up in May 1 half term so actually at the very day this episode goes out might be around the weekend that I begin to put it out. But at the time of recording... The big inflatening. Yeah, exactly. The inflating has not yet happened. But I never asked them,

can I put a hot tub next to my side of the fence? Because I know it's a bit noisy and if I ask them, they might say no, but it is on my side of the fence. Equally, their barbecue is right next to the fence, next to my hot tub. So they have to listen to this out of my hot tub. I have to smell their burning sausages.

Oh, yum. We've never discussed this. I love the smell of other people's barbecues. The worst thing that I did was, and I didn't choose this, we got Sky to come around to install our satellite dish, and I wasn't attending to what they were doing. And only afterwards, when I looked at what they'd done, did I realize that they'd managed to position the satellite dish,

essentially poking over our fence and pointing directly into their garden, like a monitoring device. Did you put big googly eyes in the middle of it? I did feel bad. I was like, they didn't sign up for that. Like, we've moved in after them, and then we've put up a satellite dish pointing into their garden. But we've never mentioned it, and everything's fine.

So I do think sometimes it's best just to adjust, because you're going to bank this, you know, this annoys you. You'll probably do something that annoys him. But I would say, as always really, of course, practically, if you actually want to resolve this, you will have to mention it and your window for doing so is now. Like he's done this as I say knowing you may object. And so your window to object is now.

You can't object in six months time because I'll be like, I've been doing this for months. You could just add another source of noise to dilate this, by which I mean hang up some wind chimes. And then everybody has noise all the time, including you. But it would drown out the golf balls. Well, the reason that some lunatics like wind chimes is because they find that noise. pleasurable on some level. Yeah, it's all right. I do think psychologically you can play a trick on yourself.

I'm not saying this is like a great long-term solution, but if you really don't want to speak to him, train yourself to think of the sound of him hitting the golf ball as something that you enjoy. The pitter-patter of raindrops on the window. Exactly. I compare this to when I used to sleep in a bed with my dad if we were on holiday or something,

and his snoring was appalling. It really did sound like a tiger was. dying next to you. And what I used to do was tell myself, well, this is a sign that he is blissfully and vibrantly alive. And how lucky I am to be on holiday with my father, this noise, it asserts the fact that he has life. Now, obviously, that only goes so far when it's four in the morning and you want to kill

him and die yourself. But it did help me a little bit through that scenario. So I do think you can, you know, adjust. Yes, that certainly sounds like an adjustment that you made. and definitely not an adjustment to becoming a murderer. Exactly, yeah. How do you think this conversation should be handled if they do summon up the will to have it?

Oh, you've got to turn up at his house wearing full Bill Murray clashing colours to play a round of golf and have the conversation that way. I assume since you're doing it in my garden, effectively, that you wanted me to join in. Here I am. Who's rounds first? If either of you were musical, you could treat this as percussion

and then be out in your garden playing like a, I don't know, a hurdy-gurdy along with it. That's a very offbeat, though, isn't it? Instrument of your choice. I don't think the golf playing is going to be very rhythmic. I think it would be an avant-garde rhythm, but I was taking inspiration from you, Martin, when we had the noisy sex neighbours,

which vintage listeners have answered me this will remember, whenever you heard them firing up the barbecue of last, you started playing the final countdown by Europe. Yeah, that was more to send a message to them than to participate musically. You didn't play along with their rhythms. No, no. I was just trying to subtly be like,

we can hear you climaxing, but in a way that wasn't me putting a note through the door. Did they ejaculate after exactly three minutes and 35 seconds? Here's a question from Chris in County Durham, who says Helen answered me this. What is the origin of bumper? In phrases like a bumper edition. It seems to indicate something unusually large,

but where does the phrase come from? Well, bump had that sense of things that are large in a few hundred years ago, like it does with a bump on the head, like something that grows is what that meant. And so bumper probably came from that. In the 1670s, bumper appeared to mean a glass filled to the brim,

like a beer or something. So from there, it took a while, but it then came to mean anything that's unusually large, like crops, I think it was originally. And then there's lots of, other words that sort of meant the same, like swapper and thumper, thwacker, spanker, whacker, whacker, whaler, and Yanker, although I think Yanker was specifically a big lie.

I had a look on Waterstones.com shortly before we started recording to see if you can still buy bumper books. And there is a bumper book of cryptic crosswords. There is a bumper book as in Charles Schultz, not the snack. But also, like, popular are kids' characters' bumper book, so there's like a bluey bumper book and a Pepper Pigs Super Bumper Coloring Book and I think it wouldn't be called Pepper Pigs Yanker, would it? Spanker.

Spanker. Pepper Pigs, Wacker. I think the Times Spanker cryptic crossword book would sell. On cars, it makes sense, bumper, doesn't it? And I wonder if the two things are fed into each other because it's still in common currency for that, as in a bumper absorbs the shock of bumping into things. So it's still in, you know, use as a word,

whereas spanker and Yanker not so much. The spanker of a car has been phased out with electric vehicles. This is from Nigel in Austin, Texas, who says, Helen answered me this, what were Hitler mustaches known as before Hitler came along? Were they ever considered attractive? There's a, you know, a kink for everything. And has anyone ever ever?

looked good with one. Maybe Charlie Chaplin was his even real? Actually, I know about Charlie Chaplin, yeah, it wasn't real, was it? I didn't know and I feel so naive not to have known. But I mean, what a good idea to create a famous character and then all you need to do is take off your hat and your fake moustache and you can go around incognito.

Yeah, fascinating. We did a today in history about him and the moment when he first put the costume on for the tramp because it was all secondhand stuff that he got in a Hollywood basement basically. And the idea of the moustache was to age him. It works. And that was because he was only 25 years old

and he was playing, it was called the tram because he was literally a drunken vagrant like it used to be marketed then as Chaplin the inebriate that was the character. So it was just to look old.

And also that particular moustache style was so that you could still see his facial expression. But there's this video of him in his studio in 1917 like showing off to some visitors of him gluing on the moustache and then taking it off. And although it goes on like in one, just one gesture,

taking it off is just him pulling off lots of little bits. It's really disgusting. But he does look a lot younger and a lot hotter. Oh my God. Sorry, I've just seen that photo Charlie Chaplin without the moustache. He looks like Rudolf Nurev. Fucking hell. Yeah, right.

One extra fun fact about Chaplin, actually, before we get back to Hitler. The Tramp Moustache was banned for British troops serving in the trenches. You couldn't have one. Well, was that because of the rumours why Hitler first got it, which I don't think a true, which is that, like, you need. needed to trim your moustache, otherwise your gas mask wouldn't make a tight seal over hair. Oh, I love that. No, I hadn't heard that. I think it was because he was the world's most famous person and the British Army didn't want to be ridiculed, basically. The British Army

didn't want their soldiers to be replicating a clown. The name of this moustache before Hitler had is toothbrush moustache, sometimes also the one-third moustache. And it's all became popular amongst Americans first in the late 19th century. I mean, I say first when it was a big moustache trend, presumably at some point before that, someone had had the thought to give it a go. No, but it's worth paying respect to moustache trends in terms of impact back in the day. Like, I feel like since then, there's not been a moustache trend that's really been a trend because it only, by definition, affects people who have moustaches, which is like nobody. But then everyone did, right? So big deal.

Yeah, so in the 19th century, a lot of the prevalent moustache styles, or late 19th century, were like quite big, quite flamboyant. And so this one taking off in the late 19th century was like, look how, easy to maintain this is in comparison. You don't want to be a flamboyant man. Do you want to be tidy and hygienic? And from the States, it became a trend in Germany around the turn of the 20th century,

but then very controversial because they were like newfangled American thing. And there's lots of articles from the time of people complaining about it because there, the Kaiser Bart or the Kaiser's moustache was the popular star, which is one of those like big sort of sweeping ones that curves up a bit. Waris-a-Mistaches. Yeah, I mean, slightly less hefty than the walrus,

but yeah, very much in the same school. And that is what Hitler had before the toothbrush. I cannot imagine Hitler with a walrus mustache. Can you do those speeches and everything? That's such a weird thought. No need to imagine it. Oli, there are pictures. Then there are these unsupported claims

about why he switched to the toothbrush, the World War I gas mask seal thing. According to his secretary, he thought it made his nose look smaller. But it also might have just been he was following trends. And he wanted to be this like younger, exciting new politician rather than one with this 19th century

Kaiser-style mustache. Yeah, but you don't want to be influenced by America if you're Adolf Hitler. Oh, I think you do. I think you absolutely do. Do you? Why? I mean, Nazism got a lot from American white supremacism, I think.

He was quite a big fan of America. Henry Ford circulating anti-Semitic propaganda, all that stuff. Yeah, but it's all about building a proud German nation. Do you want people looking at you thinking he looks like a yank? When he got that moustache, it was a at least a decade after people had been complaining about the trend in Germany. He got it probably in the mid to late 19 teens.

And so he wasn't the Adolf Hitler yet, but the trend had also probably detached a bit from its American origins. But then when Nigel asked, has anyone ever looked good in one? I think in a post-Hitler world, it is really hard to assess it without the association. and Richard Herring, old podcast associate rival, he did a show years ago called Hitler Moustache where he grew a Hitler moustache and had to wear it for a year the time that he was touring the show and people treated him really differently.

Yes. You just have to see it through the prism of Hitler, don't you? Did one male from Sparks have a Hitler mustache for a while? In 1974, Sparks did play a gig in West Germany and he was wearing a Hitler moustache in that, so interesting choice. Martin, when you shave in the mirror, Have you ever?

Done a hit a moustache. Just for yourself, just for your own entertainment. You know when you're sort of modelling different ideas? No. I guess I must have done in a transitional stage. I've experimented with a lot of very ugly facial hair combinations. Like just a full moustache and nothing else. I've done like the abe, you know, where you've got a beard but no moustache.

I've done every combination. Yeah, yeah. But have you done the hila? Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yeah, I have. I wanted to see what I look like with a hila mustache. and now I know, and even if it was acceptable to go to a barber and say, I'd like Adolf, I wouldn't choose that style for myself. Last time I was shaving and I was in front of the mirror, I took off the sides first.

And then before I took off the mustache, I had the Craig David goatee. Nice. And I couldn't bring myself to actually wear that as a style. Oh, come on. Why should Craig David have all the fun? But I was looking at myself thinking, this actually suits me. This is actually quite good, but I just can't leave the bathroom with this. I can't be a 45-year-old with a goatee.

It's such a 90s look, isn't it? It just fell so hard out of fashion. I learnt in the course of researching this that by the time of his death, most of Hitler's teeth were gold. Oh. I don't know why that stuck in my mind. I've got some gold teeth. Do you?

Yeah, and the dentist said to me, I don't know why he said this. Like, I'll be dead. But he basically said, just remember, you've got those in there. I mean, they're actually worth a lot more that we wouldn't fit those now. Because you've got about £500 worth of tooth in there. I was like, I'm not going to... What do you want me to do about that information?

Just hoik them out your mouth and sell them. Probably more because gold prices have been going up. Yeah, apparently gold caps in the 90s was like a standard thing to do and now isn't and mine have... They still exist in my mouth. Do they look cool? No, they look like teeth. You need a mirror to see the gold bit in my teeth, but apparently I have them.

God, what a waste! They're just on the caps. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. What a waste of a gold tooth. I've got a question. Email your question. Answer me this podcast at Google Mail.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. right 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, like, 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 tote bag for just £12. That's right. Subscribe now at LRB.combe. That's LRB.m.m. answer. Here's a question from Brent and Vari in Ithaca, New York, by way of New Zealand, that's Brent, Scotland, Vari, and Canada, both.

Okay, so put that on your big map, Ollie. Good to know. Put some pins in all those places. Well, I assume Brent is the narrator of this because the email opens. Vari and I have been listening to your show forever, or at least a very long time, and have been meaning to ask you this for almost that whole time. Wow. Olly, answer me this.

This is the question that has been burning through them for however long. What's with decanters? They are an absolute staple of 1960s and 70s office decor on British telly, but show up even in shows set more recently. Maybe it's a sign of our classlessness, or absence from the halls of government, or maybe just because our bosses do so little day drinking in the office. We've seen decanters for sale in both thrift stores and department stores,

but we don't think we've ever encountered them in use in the wild. I don't think I've been offered a drink from a decanter actually come to think of it apart from it like a black tie dinner. My dad was very big into decanters, so I have been decanted. But then he was a man who, like the 70s were really when he got a lot of his ideas. As far as we can tell, say Brendan Vary, decanters seem to usually be about the same size as a bottle of whiskey or brandy. So why bother pouring it into another vessel?

Is it to disguise the shit quality of the whiskey or brandy in there? or is there another reason? Should we have a liquor decanter in our home, our offices? What are we missing out on? Right. Okay, well, I think you should have one if you have a home bar. Like if you have all the equipment, it's nice to have a decanter because it looks good. Because it looks cool.

Which is the only point, really, in having a home bar, because you can just make a drink by pouring stuff from a bottle into a glass without one. But it looks cool. I mean, to have a bar cart, that looks awesome. I don't even drink. Yeah. But I envy that. We had a decanter from the charity shop that I kept Martin's bubble bath in.

That's brilliant. Yeah, decanters aren't expensive because people chuck them out, they go to charity shops, and they are beautiful. And, you know, there's no reason not to have one aesthetically. However, the question is, you know, what's the point of it? So that depends on which fluid we're discussing. There is a point to having a decanter for wine. Right, to oxygenate it, right? And let the sediment...

No, sediment. So, yeah, well, both things, but the, the aerating is controversial, the sediment isn't. Oh. But if you know how to decant the wine properly, which, you know, it can be like a three-day process to do it properly. Whoa, geez. I know, it's just a drink. In the 70s, they didn't have internet, so to make your own fun. But if you know how to put it into the glass properly, then that can remove the sediment, and that is a real thing with wine.

Then there's the erration thing, which is, as I say, more controversial. Because most serious wine writers say there is no science behind that. There's no reason why exposing it to the air does anything. And anyway, wines a really broad category. It depends on the grape and it depends where it's from. And it depends how you aerated. And it gets aerated anyway when you pour it into a glass. But at the same time, you then read a load of wine critics who say,

yeah, well, I understand that the science says there's nothing behind it. But I know that this wine tasted better on day two than it did on day one. So I think there is something to it. So it's a bit more divisive. but the data isn't there to say, yes, you should aerate your, you can just pour wine into a glass without the decanter. But yeah, some people do swear by the erration. Also, some people decant champagne to reduce bubbles to prevent whizpopping. Reduce bubbles?

I know. Bummer. What's wrong with them? Maybe they're like, I prefer flat lemonade, so why not the champers? Exactly. But then we come to the whiskey. And indeed, any spirit, then it is purely aesthetic. because spirits do not react in the same way to oxygen as wine.

So as much as there's anything to do with airation with wine, there is nothing with spirits. There is no different. I suppose you could also maybe disguise how much you were drinking by just topping up the decanter. Yes, it's a bit like the hip flask in that sense, isn't it? Yeah. If you buy the cheapest shit and you put it in a decanter,

then psychologically people will be more well disposed to it, I think. Yes. And actually, you know, obviously in researching this, I ended up on the pages of a lot of different whiskey brands. and they've got blogs in which they, surprisingly to me, expound the virtues of the aesthetic of the decanter and say, I'm beautiful, and I was thinking, why are you doing this?

Are they selling decanters? No, I thought surely you want your bottle of whiskey on someone's shelf, but then I realise it's because you don't mix brands, do you? So if you're going to have a Jameson whiskey and your decanter, you're going to top it out with more Jameson, aren't you? I think it's that. Okay. Which is ironic because it was the branding of whiskey,

mass branding that itself killed off decanters because people wanted to show off in the 80s their yuppie brand of whiskey. They wanted people to know, oh, I spent $50 on this bottle rather than 20. And that's why you had the label, like, because you can't see a label in a decanter. But a lot of decanters will come with like a little plaque that you can hang around its neck to show what booze lies within. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like a military tag. Like Josh Hartnett would wear in the 90s. I just wonder whether... The very presence of decanters in these sort of Hollywood movies and then in things like Man, men, that you're talking about, is what enshrine them as an aspirational object.

I wonder if, you know, the liquid is in that so that they don't have to make a fake booze brand. Yes, exactly. You know, is it just pop it and decanter them to Greek something? Yeah, quite likely. What I did learn through all of this, though, is if you are going to get a decanter to decant your whiskey for aesthetic purposes, don't use lead crystal as it can leak lead into your whiskey. Do they still sell lead crystal for that reason? I suppose like antiques, but nice. It's the thriftil thing, yeah.

You might get one thinking it looks nice, but all those people are dead. Okay, good tip. Hi, Helen and Ali. This is Dan from London, long-time listener, first-time caller, though not first-time emailer. I was in a pub at the weekend with my family out in the countryside, and there's a condom machine in the gents. And that got me thinking it's a long time since I saw a condom machine in a pub toilet. So Helen and Ali, answer me this. What happened to all the condom machines?

Now I will account for every single one. Well, I think a reason why a lot of these machines have disappeared is because they're run by third parties. All vending machines are usually run by a third party. And if they're not making enough money, those companies aren't going to keep them there because there's maintenance. They've got to go and refill them. I think a lot of them didn't convert to card payments, but loads of people don't carry cash anymore. I find this generally quite odd. I don't know why there aren't more vending machines that take contactless cards.

I know there are a few, but when you think how many used to be out there with cash, they haven't all been replaced by contactless cards, and I don't know why that is. Just a lot of hassle, I guess. I can only imagine that online ordering has just killed a lot of the market for the impulse buy at all. Maybe if people just aren't going out enough. But apparently it was also easier, I was reading an account by a guy that was called Mr. Condom or something. He was a rubber man, and his father was also a rubber man. and their business was condom machines

and he was saying it used to be loads easier to get independent businesses to agree to have one than it is big chain so he was working in the US and he was like, I used to able to get a mum and pup diner to take one but you can't do that with Denny's like you just can't make a deal with these massive businesses

and I was wondering if that's similar with pubs because a lot of them are owned now by a big parent company but it's also people are far less shamed about buying these things now so Well they're in supermarkets aren't they and there are self-checkouts so that helps Yeah. Whereas originally the condom machines, which I think the first one was in 1928, and it was installed by one Julius Fromm. He was a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Berlin.

And he had to work early because his parents died, I think, when he was 15 and he had six siblings. And their business was rolling cigarettes at the time. And then that got phased out because they had machines to do that. So he studied chemistry and he got really interested in rubber. And the condoms at the time were still either made of animal products like gut or they were effective. kind of like wrapping a tire around your penis and they had this big seam and he was like, that's not very good. So he invented this method of basically dipping a glass penile mould into liquefied rubber. And that is still the method they use. And his company was hugely successful. He sold three packs in a stripy box and each box contained a little piece of paper which said, please discreetly hand me a packet of three Fromm's Act, which was what they were called. And then you gave that to

the salesperson. Oh yeah, because you had to do everything behind the counter. God. No wonder the machines took off. Yeah. And at the time, Germany actually was quite a liberal sexual culture. But he still couldn't sell them as contraceptives. They could only be sold as preventing sexually transmitted infections because they didn't want the birth rate to be lowered. Which, you know, it's a confused outlook, I suppose, condom-wise.

But he had this hugely successful business. And he was making 24 million condoms a year. They were shipped worldwide. And then Nazis came to power and his business, he was basically forced to sell it for peanuts. It was worth like 30 million euros and he sold it for a pittance to Herman Guring's godmother. Wow. Who then traded a castle with Goring for the condom business and from fled to England and then four days after VE Day he died.

He was really upset to leave the business behind because he loved running the business and he was like, when the war's over, I can start up my condom business again and then he fucking died. So did the company survive and carry on benefiting the Gurring family? That feels like a confused picture, doesn't it? Stop STI's, but you'll never guess who the money's going to. I think it ended up in Soviet hands immediately after the war. And then it went through a bunch of owners, I think, and a bunch of name changes. And then Fromm's sons had to pay quite a lot of money to get the rights to their own name back.

So I think it is still trading in some form. It's kind of a sad story, but a really interesting one. But he invented the condom machine in 1928, kind of as much. marketing for the product. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The same guy who invented the condom, invented the condom machine. The seamless condom. Yeah. He invented the condom machine. That's rare. He invented the condoms in 1912, the machine in 1928, and he was like, this will make people more interested in the product. And he put them in public toilets, a little out of sight. And it was because condom ads were banned. And he also sold a couple of other

rubber products like sponges. And so people knew that if they saw an ad for from sponges in a shop, that is somewhere they could buy the condoms. But then the Nazis banned the condom machines from public spaces except for military buildings. It's a novelty purchase then as well as a sexual health purchase, isn't it? Obviously there's the market who want to need that product, but there's also just people who are like, I wonder what that's like. Yeah, posh wank.

Blowing up as a balloon, seeing what the wrappings like. I think in the 20s and 30s, the products were good in the condom machines, and then at some point in like 60s to 70s, they kind of got overtaken by ones that are not very good condoms. And to be fair, there were other ways to buy condoms at the time. And during the 70s, condom use was at a low. And it came back with AIDS crisis. But, yeah, I think condom machines got reputation for a condom that you could do stupid stuff with

rather than prevent disease transmission and pregnancy. Yeah, exactly. So as much as I've seen these condom machines really in the last like 15 years, they're in service stations still. And nowadays, the machine is like half other things like baldness pills and Viagra. of pills and stuff in the mens loo. Oh, right. I've heard cock rings as well in machines, which surprise me. Peripheries, let's say. But there's still, there are still condoms in there, but like from memory, the kind of condoms, it's never duress. It's either a novelty one,

like, you know, XXL condoms for men with massive cocks and then you give it to someone as a joke. Yeah, or something with a novelty flavor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, bubblegum flavor, yeah. Or just something that looks really old and shit and you think, hmm, is that still going to be functioning products. People can't really trust them as products. And so it's sort of self-perpetuating, isn't it, that the condom machines are not a good place to get condoms anymore? I presume, but I don't have sex at service stations. I mean, maybe after you've had a salad from Leon, it's exactly what you need is a bubblegum condom. Who knows? I might be missing out. Before Julius From had the machine, like you got your condoms, sort of like going to a department

store and saying, can I see the brooches and they give you a velvet tray with the brooches on. That's how they presented the condoms. So it was quite hard to buy them discreetly. I'm pleased that I'm of a generation that's never had to have a conversation with anyone about that at the point of purchase. I think, as we've discussed before, particularly men in their particularly 60s and above don't seem to give a shit about anything anymore.

I don't know what point everyone as they approach middle age gets to that kind of watershed. I feel like I'm nearly there. Yeah, same. But definitely in my 20s, I did do the thing of like, you know, I was just in a branch of boots and it was a normal thing for someone in their 20s to buy, I would make a point of only buying condoms

when I had other products to buy so that the basket had other things in it, which is inconvenient if you are doing a lot of fucking that day because you don't need the vitamins, but you've bought them because, you know, you don't want to have to present yourself as an audacious shagger. A sex-hover! Yeah, exactly.

But whereas now it wouldn't even occur to me that it was a thing. Like, if I needed condoms, I just go into boots and buy some condoms. I would genuinely wouldn't be embarrassed about that. Would you go to the human checkout and everything? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. I suppose where it might be embarrassing is if, like, there's some delay. You know, like sometimes someone's trying to scan their advantage card

and the manager has to get called over. If you're there holding clearly just a packet of rubber johnnies, I'd be aware then that I'm essentially holding a comedy prop in a comedy sketch set up. But it's that awareness that would worry me more than actually being embarrassed. My uncle built my website He did his best It's pixily and spammy and nobody's impressed To be fair he died 12 years ago

He can't update it whilst he's at rest Not that he would of anyway Well with Squarespace there is nothing to upgrade ever Their sites update themselves Isn't that clever I wish my uncle could see it But now he's gone forever A man he loved websites

We would have died twice. Thank you very much, Squarespace, for sponsoring Answering This. Here's a thing I love about Squarespace, number 250 million. When you upload a file, like if you're illustrating a blog post with a photograph, for example. Yes, familiar with that process. It gets saved in your asset library, so you can use it again multiple times across your site without having to re-upload every time you want it. that simple as it sounds is the kind of thing that other websites don't do and it just saves you you know minutes every time you're writing

yes i i do personally find that very useful ollie every time i make an illusionist because the cover art you know reach for the cover up yes that's right yeah there it is asset library thank you square space because a lot of people listening who don't run the own websites yet might be thinking oh what's the big deal you you haven't dipped your toe into the murky af waters that can be presented but you know with square You don't have to go near those waters at all. No. You can keep your feet dry, murk-free.

That's right. Go and play around with the two-week free trial at Squarespace.com slash answer. And then when you're ready to launch, you can get a 10% discount off your first purchase of a website or domain using our code. Answer. Hi, Helen and Ollie. Lee from Buckinghamshire.

Answer me this. How do non-smoking actors act like their seasoned smokers so convincingly? And what do they use in cigarettes? I assume they're not real ones. At plays at my school, people did smoke real cigarettes, and they thought that was very cool. I had one of those talcum powder joke shop cigarettes when I was in a smoking play,

and that doesn't look like a real cigarette at all because it's puffing out talcum powder, which you can smell, and also it's doing that at the wrong time. Was it supposed to be a sexy cigarette? What character were you playing? Ollie, I just turned 46. I'm finally the same age as a character I've played in a play. I've never played a character younger than 45.

Sure. And usually I was playing like old, old characters. So you're playing the granny. Not that old people can't be sexy. Exactly, yeah, you can have a sexy granny. But I was never cast as sexy granny. I'm trying to picture that, because the way that smoking works is you draw smoke into your lungs and then breathe it out. Yes.

So did you have to like take a lot of talcampereen to your mouth and then spit it out afterwards? No, the cigarette is just puffing out the smoke in an unrealistic way. But the screen cigarettes that people use are usually herbal. The point is that they don't contain nicotine so that they're non-addictive because the actors have to smoke so many of them because of all the takes. So sometimes they have to smoke 15 or 20 and you only see one. Now, what I was surprised by was that these are still really bad for you. They still contain tar and they're still carcinogenic.

But they do contain herbs, like a proprietary mixture according to honeyrose herbal smokes, which one of the leaders of the prop cigarette, of marshmallow plant, red clover plant flowers, and rogobes. petals with the addition of fruit juices and honey. See, if anything was going to get me into smoking, it would be a marshmallow cigarette. Just a smore, a little tubular smore. You could probably get marshmallow vapes, don't you?

Tubular smores was Mike Oldfield's fourth album. I don't know if you've heard it. John Hamm has talked about having to smoke loads of these on the set of Mad Men because his character was always smoking. He said it tasted like a mix of pot and soap. It's interesting as well the different legalities around smoking that there are in each country, because obviously as well, you know,

a lot of these movies that they're first, are actually filmed in the UK for the tax break. And I was interested to learn that in Britain, you are allowed to smoke a cigarette on set or on stage in a theatre, which is a place of work, even though you're not allowed to smoke in a place of work, if there is an artistic justification for it. You have to apply to the council.

You're not allowed to smoke it in the rehearsal, only during the performance. So on stage might be the first time the actor has ever lit a cigarette, but I presume not. and it must be extinguished immediately upon leaving the stage. Right. But if it is artistically necessary to the story, you can get permission to smoke a real cigarette in England.

In Northern Ireland, it's yes to the herbals, but no to the reels. Okay. And in Scotland, it's none at all. You can only vape, which is really weird if the play's set in 1850. Well, then you can have the talc compound of cigarettes and people can just suspend their bloody disbelief. That's how they rolled in Victorian times, just puffing out the talc. Also, there's the thing around children too

So this is why Fagan doesn't light up in Oliver Even though it would be relevant for the character And it would be legal in England There's children on stage So child performance licenses could be revoked If the performance is detrimental to their health It was also really interesting I thought that in the US in 1950s

They were smoking real ones Because a lot of the programmes were sponsored by those tobacco companies And also everyone was smoking real ones all the time everywhere, children, taxi drivers, animals probably. And then in the 60s when they finally acknowledged the link between smoking and cancer, that was when the sort of villains smoke cigarettes narratives crept in. And then I think in 1971 was it? There was a congressional ban on all tobacco ads, which I think included in the shows. But that was in the US because I remember tobacco ads in our childhoods in the UK.

You know, Hamlet's cigar ads and things. Hamlets were a classic, Marlborough, yeah. It's funny, isn't it? Like, I can name 20 brands of cigarette, even though I've never smoked, whereas my children literally have no idea. Even the really big ones, they've never heard of silk cut,

don't know what it is. I had the good fortune to be holding a microphone on an interview for William B. Davis, who played the cigarette smoking man in The X-Files, one of the sort of major characters. And he had quit smoking at the time they started shooting and he was only an incidental character so he was like well i'll go along and i'll smoke regular cigarettes and then after a few shoots he realized he was looking forward to the

filming because he meant he could smoke so at that point he was like okay look i better go over to herbal cigarettes and apparently the crew hated the days when he was on set because the smell that it was made by herbal cigarettes is it's much more unpleasant than regular cigarettes and of course he'd be just chain smoking these things on a big broad mainstream show like that now you wouldn't have a any characters smoke, would you? Well, I don't know I'm saying that. Stranger Things, would you because it's at it in the 80s? Maybe you would. Does like, what's he called? The Demigorgon Smoke or something.

He's got a big chimney mouth. Yeah. We have another question of screen magic. From Will from Cardiff, who says, I'm watching Jersey Shore for the first time. Wow. In 2026. Exciting.

And, as well as being an amazing snapshot of premium reality TV in 2010, I'm wondering, Olly, answer me this. How do they record? the cast speaking when they're in clubs. There appears to be generic, unlicensed music in the background, but realistically, they would be playing pop music in the club. Most voice audio is a bit unclear and needs subtitles, but doesn't seem to have any Nelly Fetado under it.

So, Olli answered me this. How do editors or sound technicians make that work? I've got news for you, Will. Everything about Jersey Shore didn't really happen, or it wouldn't happen like that if the cameras weren't there. These people don't actually live together, apart from the fact they're on an MTV reality show together. And so the whole thing's contrived when they go outside and chat on their rooftop deck.

That wasn't on top of their house either. It was on top of the T-shirt shop next door. And so it is the case that in fact, yes, they did film in nightclubs with no music playing at all. Oh, wow. That's how you record audio. You know, in Hollywood movies where you're in a nightclub, which is often why if you watch for particularly children's films, I've had to sit through a lot of shit kids films where there's a nightclub scene.

Like in Scooby-Doo, there's one. And if you're looking for it, you can see it instantly. The extras aren't dancing to anything. They're dancing to nothing, which is why they look so shit at dancing. Because they need to record the audio from the actors. And then obviously they need to add the track afterwards so they can edit it properly. Yeah, and those earwig earpieces are expensive. So I'd imagine most of the extras are not going to get one to pipe some music in.

Well, in Hollywood films, the thing they can do is they sort of play a beat that matches what they know is going to be on the final track. Yeah, just get down to the metronome. Exactly. So if the beat is then picked up on the actor's mics, at least it matches, and at least they're going to be in time with the audio they're going to put on afterwards. So in reality TV, it's a bit different, obviously,

to a Hollywood film. But I think that beat soundtrack idea probably is something that they did on Jersey Shore. Because although they were in real nightclubs when they're being filmed, they were usually in, certainly in the later series when these people were basically celebrities and people wanted to go to the club

to be on TV themselves and or shag them. They had to film them to stop them being mobbed in like a separate VIP area as it is. So everyone who's there is effectively acting like the producers would scout for women that wanted to be in the scene with the guys flirting with them. And so, you know, the whole things can drive.

There's a massive crew there. You've got bright lights and boom mics everywhere, these pre-scouted extras. So it's not really a genuine nightclub. Is it like 11 in the morning as well? I think they would film in the east. evening, but it would be weeknights. And, you know, New Jersey doesn't have a lively nighttime scene on a Tuesday evening particularly. Hey, we don't know. So yeah, you take a club

that's basically empty. You fill it with family and friends of the crew. You play either a beat or nothing. And that's how you feel. But also like, they know the scene they want and the shots they want. And that might only take really 20 minutes out of the four hours they're there. So there's still plenty of time for them to drink and dance. And you can film that too. And you can film that too. And you can have music for that bit, just not the bit where you're going to use the sound. Right. So they would film like cutaways and establishing shots that are a bit more clubbing. Yeah, precisely. Also, it's interesting what you say about the unlicensed music. It's worth remembering Jersey Shore was, it wasn't just MTV's biggest hit in 2010.

It was the biggest hit on American television for that target demographic of whatever it was, 18 to 34s, I guess, on both broadcast and cable TV. It was bigger than American Idol for that demographic. So they didn't struggle to find songs. You know, record labels wanted their songs on Jersey Shore. They would have known in some of those scenes what song they were going to have soundtracking it because they were fighting over themselves to get the song on it. So that wasn't really the issue. It's just the technical thing of how do you record the dialogue. So, yes, I mean, a mix of different techniques, but none of it's really genuine filming in nightclubs with loud music blaring. Apart from, there were a series of Jersey Shore where they like

went to Italy and stuff like that, where they are in genuine nightclubs. They do genuinely have a night out. But you can sort of tell they're filmed differently, though, sequences. They don't get it from every angle. It is just two of the lads go out and, you know, vomit or get arrested. And you can sort of tell if you're looking carefully that the music isn't the music that would have been playing in the background at the time because they're in a real club and it's not one of the stage sequences.

You know, I kind of love wondering what people go through to film these things like a lot of the dating shows where they're paired off and then they get sent on a date to arrest that is otherwise totally empty because it's clearly first thing on a Monday morning when the restaurant is not open and you think how on earth, I mean, none of them seem to really hit it off outside of the studio anyway, but of course you can't. Like that is atmospherically unhelpful. I agree. Yeah. And I think also like it's perpetuating myths for the audience at home which you see in dramas as well. It used to really annoy me. I used to watch the OC when they'd have so many crucial scenes, you know, where a relationship was falling apart or getting together

they're all being discussed, which would take place at a gig. Yes. That was a big deal in the OEC, wasn't it? Yeah, I imagine again, it was the record labels trying to get on a popular show for young people, right?

So you'd have a popular band. The killers would be playing in the background or something. That conversation would not be possible whilst that music is happening. Why are you pretending that it is? The reality would be like, what?

Who are you talking? What? She said what? And they never did that. And not to show Oli Man would watch. Realistic nightclub conversations. I'm going to the toilet. You know what?

I'm never expecting you to watch Twin Peaks the Return, but that had a music scene at the end of every episode, and people did sit politely and watch the band. Well, that's as it should be. Quite. Maybe that's what we'll get you into the work of David Lynch on, long last. Hello, I'm Wilson, the ball from Castaway, and here is my song about my favourite balls.

Football, rugby ball, volleyball ball. Tennis ball, Zoe ball, basketball. Netball, handball, debutante ball. Bowling ball, baseball, big sweaty ball. Answer me this sports day. A marathon of fun and games. Out now at Answer Me Thispodcast.com slash albums. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement,

and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility and optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca.

Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. And we finish today's episode with This from Andrew in Melbourne, who says, A few years ago, I decided I should read all the books on my shelves before buying any new ones. Can I just say, I applaud that decision, Andrew. I made the same decision myself and couldn't fulfill it because I kept buying more books that I'm not going to read.

Well done. I'm about halfway through this now, he says. About 200 down, 200 to go. That's a lot of reading. I read three books a year, so you're winning. I've read all sorts of books with various levels of enthusiasm. enthusiasm and I've got something out of all of them. Oh, great.

But I have now reached one that I cannot bring myself to read. Atlas shrugged by Anne Ryan. I bought it when I was a student, he says, on the principle that I should read things I disagree with to understand different viewpoints and develop my own opinions. Oh, that's outmoded thinking, Andrew, but don't do that anymore. I feel like I'm exposed to people's shit opinions constantly and I don't need to go seeking them out. That's easy to say, he says, when you're an under-employed student.

but I'm now a time-poor, full-time worker, and the idea of wading through over 1,000 pages of amphetamine-fueled libertarian screed in my free time before bed is not particularly appealing. If it were shorter, he says, I'd read it. If it were less ideologically repugnant to me, I'd read it. But the combination of length and ideological repugnance is a deal-breaker. It's also badly written, I should add.

I already know, he says, the principles of RAND's philosophy, brackets, thank you B. A. On's majoring in politics and philosophy. So, Helen, answer me this. Should I stick to my resolution to read every book I own? Or follow Rand's principle that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness, and thus, for the sake of my happiness, not read her book. And if I don't read it, what should I do with it? If I'm not going to read it, it doesn't seem worth keeping it, but I'd feel bad bidding any book. And it seems unkind to leave this weighty tome in one of my local little libraries or secondhand bookshops waiting to fall on some unsuspecting innocent looking for a bit of light reading.

Oh, come on, that's their problem. Yeah, just dump it somewhere. You can always leave a note in it. It's not mine camph. I mean, there are people that would enjoy it. Someone who's going to pick that up in a bookshop knows what it is. I think it's fine. You can donate it. That's fine. Martin actually met someone who did enjoy it. We were in a local brunch spot and he was wearing his t-shirt that says never trust a man who reads Ayn Rand. Which is a good principle to go by. And the server was like, oh, why not? She said, why not?

And I said, because she's awful. And the server said, don't you think she's a brilliant satirist in the mould of Kurt Vonnegut? These are not conversations I have in the coffee shop. My conversation is like, Ollie with a why? Yeah, yeah, with a why. Not wanting to mansplain a book by a woman to a woman. I said, okay, I'd never looked at it that way. But she's not a satirist.

She just believes all this terrible stuff, and she's a poor writer and doesn't understand human beings or hate to write a character. But I just thought, if I said that, I'm going to see my total tit. So I sort of went, hmm, okay. I mean, I'm genuinely like, I'm glad she read that book and was like,

oh, this person must be a satirist because these views are so stupid and abhorrent. But, yeah, there's a lot of stuff that happens in Atlas Shroats. suggests that it is a parody, but it's not parody. You complained mightily whilst reading it. I mean, there'll be bits where this guy, someone stops a guy on his way out the car to interview him

or just get a sound bite, and he'll talk for like 15 pages about why money is good. It's just like, come on. I suppose the very simple answer to the question, though, is surely try the first chapter. Try the first chapter. No, I don't bother. It's a waste of time.

It's not a waste of time. It's never a waste of time to decide for yourself whether something is engaging and entertaining to you. It's boring. I just read the cliff notes. Like, she's so long-winded about it. Because of all my years as a book reviewer, I always found that if I wasn't enjoying a book within like 100 pages

or a third of the runtime, it never picked up. And so as a result, I'm an advocate of people just not reading books they don't particularly want to read because there's not enough time to read all the books you do want to read. So I think, free yourself, Andrew, by not opening this book at all, because I think that would then be changing the parameters that you've set yourself. I think if you get rid of the book before reading it, then it still kind of counts in your promise to yourself. But as soon as you start reading it, I think you are committed

because of the challenge that you've set. But if you get rid of it, then it's not on your bookshelf if you don't have to read it. Yeah, I think you can get rid of it prophylactically. I mean, the funny thing about Ayn Rand is that so many people take it seriously, so you're probably getting like some measure of like Randian exposure just by like listen to what Aylan Musk says, because there were all these like Silicon Valley, you know, amphetamine wonkers, are obsessed with her. So I think you've probably got a pretty good sense of a philosophy. You summed it up pretty well,

and you've also experienced it secondhand through the world that we live in. So I think it's absolutely fine not to expose yourself to that. Well, listeners, what would you do with a copy of Atlas Shrugged? Would you read it? If not, how would you dispose of it? You can let us know. And you can also send us questions for next episode of Answer Me This. You can send us your feedback to episodes old and new for answer us back.

feature and all of our contact details are on our website. Answer me, this podcast.com. And also do let us know if you've ever started something you thought you would enjoy, only to find you haven't. I always take on holiday with me because I don't read very much, and I make myself read on holiday, a book that I think will be a challenge and a book that I think will be easy. Yeah.

On my last holiday, for the challenge book, I brought something Victorian. I can't remember what it was now. It always remains unopened, the Victorian one. and then for the easy book I bought a collection of PG Woodhouse short stories because I thought well that'll go down well I couldn't bear the PG Woodhouse

I opened the PG Woodhouse I was like 50 pages in and I was like pretending I was enjoying it I was like this is just boring I've read PG Woodhouse before and enjoyed it and I know that lots of people that I like enjoy it and I know that it's distracting and fun for a lot of people but I'm finding it really tedious

and so light and about nothing but I'm not enjoying it had to be honest with myself You know, a lot of things that used to work for me don't anymore. We just got to find the new fun frivolities. Which is what for you, Helen? What's new? We have our petty problems video live stream.

There you are. That's a distraction, isn't it? Happening on June the 28th, 10pm UK time. And we'd love for you to join us because not only can you see all of us for once, having a jolly time. You can answer the questions also in the chat. That's right. Yes. It's a communal effort.

To join petty problems, live stream on June the 28th at 10pm UK time. You just need to sign up at patreon.com slash answer me this, where you can also listen to Answer Me This, like episodes like this, on an ad-free feed, either via the Patreon app or for a bit more money via Apple Podcasts or Pocketcasts or Overcast or other casts. All the casts.

Yeah, any cast. All the details are at patreon.com slash answer me this. And at any tier at patreon.com slash answer me this, You get a chat room with other Ansmey This fans, you get bonus bits every month, and you get that opportunity to join or watch back our Petty Problems live stream series. And most importantly, you support us. So thank you. But also, we have other podcasts and we would love for you to listen to them in the excruciating gaps between Answer Me This episodes.

Ollie, what have you got cooking? Extraordinarily, Helen, it has now been to the month five years since we decided to stop making Answer Me This season one. Shitting hell. Once I realized that that decision was incoming. I thought, shit, but I still want to make a silly show full of trivia in which I can learn a little bit about lots of stuff. So in that gap, I created a show with my friend Matt

called Today in History with the Retrospectors, and that show is now five years old. Wow. There are over a thousand episodes now for you to sample. Fuck me. So yeah, each day we talk about a curious moment from that day in history. Coming up in June, how they filmed Ghostbusters in New York City, a deep dive on Crazy Frog

and the man who invented the donut. Today in history with the retrospectors, wherever you get your podcast. Helen. Well, Ollie, speaking of books that we didn't want to read, I have a mini-series at the moment on The Illusionist about

not only Bram Stoker's Dracula, but also the Icelandic adaptation of that book and also the Swedish adaptation of that book that the Icelandic one turned out to be based on but it took people more than 100 years to realise that. and those are very different books.

Okay. These Scandinavian ones are a lot sexier than the original. The Icelandic one is a third the length, but the Swedish one is twice as long as the original Dracula, and it is all about a eugenicist conspiracy that Dracula is at the heart of to get the elites on top again. At the end of last summer, I read in a row, Dracula, Icelandic Dracula and Swedish Dracula.

Let me tell you, when you've just read two Dracula, the last thing you want to do is crack open another Dracula that is 300,000 words long. And yet I did. But all to the benefit of it, of your listeners, obviously, at the Illusionist.org. Absolutely. Yeah.

So come and check out the Draculae mini series at thealusonist.org and in the pod places, of course. Martin, what's happening with you, eh? I did do some production on a series for Drilled, which is about corn ethanol in Brazil. It's more fun and interesting than that sounds. It is more fun and interesting than that sounds. It's all about the environment and sustainable biofuels and some of the little loopholes and things that go on to around that. Some incredible bullshit

around that. Yeah, so if you're interested in politics and the environment, that's a good one to check out. Go to drill.media and you'll see the new series there. And we'll be back in your pod feed mid-June with a new episode of Answer Us Back and then on the 25th of June with Answer Me This 419.

Bye!