Answer Me This! - Answer Us Back: Consider the Bidet

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Welcome to this month's Answer Us Back, packed full of your responses to previous episodes of Answer Me This - or as it will soon be rebranded, Could Be True/Might Be Interesting. Today's track listing:  In response to AMT420's question about illegal use of wet wipes, Eileen in Bridgewater, New Jersey sends an impassioned plea for us to consider the bidet! So, we did. We have previously considered the bidet, btw, in AMT361.  A Swedish Person successfully survived their trip to London for which they asked for advice in AMT415 - but it ended up raising more questions, about bus ads for fruit, and being constantly asked about allergies.  BJ, who in AMT414 asked about how to respond to people asking what BJ stands for, has feedback about going on vacations with your family, having listened to AMT420's contemplation of that topic WHILE ON VACATION WITH HER FAMILY. Therefore her suggestions of survival tactics are freshly tested.  Since we're discussing vacations, Sarah from Plumpton in East Sussex wants to know whether you can count yourself as having been to a country if you've just stopped off at the airport there. And the question to which we allude, about what constitutes sex, is in AMT267.  Rich in Oxford is an airline captain, so swoops in with The Actual Facts regarding AMT420's question about whether commercial planes have keys and would be easy to steal.  In AMT419, Dan in Pennsylvania asked about which British produce he could grow on his farm in Pennsylvania; this continued in the last edition of Answer Us Back; now, Alyssa in Indianapolis supplies a great suggestion, plus a recommendation for a recent episode of Gastropod about when blackcurrants were illegal in the USA.  And Margaret requests an update on the storied family houseplant which Olly mentioned all the way back in AMT258.  If AMTs 1-420 left you with lingering questions and opinions, share them with us for future episodes of Answer Us Back. And as always, send in your questions, in voicenote or written form, to [e-mail]. All new AMT421 will be in your podfeed on 27 August 2026.  Help keep AMT going by signing up at patreon.com/answermethis, where you can get an ad-free version of the show, monthly bonus bits, our video livestream Petty Problems, AND access to our ENTIRE back catalogue, including all our paywalled episodes, our special albums, and all the Retro AMT episodes.  Answer Me This is sponsored by:  • Cozy Earth, luxurious bedding, sleepwear, loungewear, and towels for bath and beach. Shop at cozyearth.com and get 30% off using our code ANSWER. Also, their Labor Day sale runs 25 August till September 8th! • Quooker, the the tap that does it all, from instant 100-degree boiling water to chilled, filtered, and sparkling water. Shop at quooker.co.uk and until the end of August, you can use our code ANSWER to get free installation and your free Quooker glassware set. • Taskrabbit, the online and mobile marketplace, available in the UK, that connects you with skilled, reliable local freelancers to help with everything from furniture assembly and home repairs to moving, gardening, and more. Get ahead of your to-do list with £10 off your first task at taskrabbit.co.uk or on the Taskrabbit app using our promo code ANSWER.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Answer Us Back, where we deal with your feedback and responses to answer me this episode's new and old. It's always surprising to discover what the topics are that will spur you on to write in with follow-ups, because it's not always the predictable things. You know, we can spend half an hour talking about our deep inner torment. And instead, you're like, you mentioned a drawing pin. We call it a thumbtack. People are moved by what they're moved by, Ollie. It's not our souls. Well, this is sort of about our souls. Clever stuff. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. It's from Eileen in Bridgewater, New Jersey, who says,

I can't believe that you could have an entire conversation in AMT 420 about wet wipes. And not one of you once mentioned that the answer is to get a B-Day toilet seat. No, we didn't because, A, that wasn't the question. B, if you're wiping down, say, a table or a seat on an aeroplane, you're just going to haul your B-D out and give it a good spray. Yeah. The question, to be fair, was, am I breaking the law for wiping my bum with where wipes designed for hand use. So I don't think the answer to that could have been B-Day unless we were playing a parlor game. But anyway, she wanted us to talk about B-Days.

She says, I even had to go back and listen again to make sure, because I was sure I had missed it. Are you okay, I mean? So certain we would be talking about B-Days. I had my head in the B-Day and my ears were full of spray. She's also added an emoji of a brain exploding. From too much pressure in the B-Day. She continues, whilst I prefer my warm water massaging seat. with blow-dry finish, there are cold water manual ones available for those who don't have electricity

near their toilet for $25 on Amazon. The cold water can be quite refreshing in the warmer months, winking emoji. Easy install, and once you live with a B-Day, you can't believe how disgusting it is to use wadded up paper or even a wet wipe. Get on the B-Day train, folks. Choo-choo, all aboard the B-Day train where the seats are wet. I mean, judging by the standard of the toilets on the Thameslink, I would not want to get on the B-Day train. That's all I'm saying. It's close to the ground.

Yeah, sometimes an involuntary B-day situation on a train in Britain, Eileen. Yeah. But Eileen, thank you for sharing this public service information because I have, I guess I did kind of distantly in the recesses of my brain know that you could get appendages to turn your toilet into a B-Day, but I've never looked at them. And I enjoyed that five minutes on Amazon looking at the reviews. the different versions. And I feel like some regret that I never reviewed one of these when I had a gadget column. It's kind of like a little wired karaoke microphone that you stick on the side of the rim.

And then you can kind of reach down, pick it up and stick it down there. So it's like a kind of hygiene karaoke. Exactly. But even though I like the gadget nest, I wasn't thinking even for $25 that I want one. And I think the reason for that is the same as why I don't have one installed in my house. I had an on-sweet bathroom designed in my house from scratch. It used to be the garage. Didn't even consider the B-Day.

Well, consider the B-Day, Olly. Consider the B-Day. Consider the B-Day. It's not just because I'm in the UK and it's not really a cultural thing here. It's because neither is having the weird showerhead we have with like six completely unnecessarily rainforest effects. And we went for that.

It was more just that it's the wet bumhole afterwards. I mean, there's no way of dressing it up. That's the thing I'd be worried about. I know you get that when you're in a shower anyway, but I'm not used to that on the toilet. I'm used to a dry bumhole after toilet. paper and I just can't make that leap. That's why you need one of those fancy Japanese toilets, Ollie, that both rinses and blow drys.

Yeah. That I did consider. I did consider a fancy Japanese toilet because, of course I did. But it was a little bit out of our price range. Here is some feedback from a Swedish person who says, first and foremost, thank you for your tips and advice in answering this episode 415 for our London trip. It was very useful. Good to be useful, like a B-Day.

During our trip, we noticed a couple of things. We found a bit strange. Why does everyone working in food service, breakfast at the hotel, any restaurant or pub serving foods, etc, ask about allergies when you order? We both agreed that as adults, it's our responsibility to ensure we don't eat anything we're allergic to and to ask if we're unsure. We were asked absolutely everywhere, including places we only ordered drinks at. And we both agreed that as adults, that was a bad idea because that's how you decide health policy, isn't it? Just two adults agree. and then you don't need to discuss it anymore.

You know, I think they probably ask you because a lot of people don't volunteer this information and if you have something like celiac, they want to know if they need to prepare your food in the celiac-friendly part of the restaurant kitchen, for instance, so they don't contaminate you with little granules of things that will fuck you up. Yes. I think it does have its roots this

in a couple of really tragic stories about children dying because they had not allergies that weren't declared in sandwich chains. Right, like peanut vapour or something. Yeah. Or even fish, like, fish for people like airborne fish cookery. But basically, it is, I think, still your responsibility to say. I think what this is ensuring is they're taking corporate responsibility as an organization that they're training their staff to know how dangerous it could be if they, for

example, serve nuts to someone who has a nut allergy and to just ensure that that question has been asked as a kind of, you know, responsible policy. But I do agree that if I had, if my child had a nut allergy, I would probably wear that on my t-shirt and I would certainly be saying it myself. So it really is belt and braces, isn't it, as if you've forgotten to mention it. I think also remember, London does get a lot of visitors, not all of whom might have the English right and ready for explaining what their allergies are. True, but also true that it does, I mean, what frustrates me as just a pedant is when I'm in a coffee shop and I've literally ordered a black coffee and then they say, do you have any allergies? And I'm like, I've asked for a one

ingredient thing. If I was allergic to coffee, I wouldn't have ordered the coffee. Like, what is the thing that you're worried about? I suppose it's, it's. that, you know, oh, this is an environment where we prepare other things that might include the thing that you're allergic to. Exactly. But they've even done it when they've passed me a bottle of iced coffee. And then it's just like, this is a pre-prepared package product. They don't ask me in Sainsbury's whether I'm allergic to it.

I mean, at some point, it does get a bit silly to be asked. But I suppose it's just better to ask than not ask and risk the attendant issues, isn't it? It's also just routine. Like, if you're in that kind of job, I don't think you're paid enough to do a bespoke approach to absolutely everyone. It is just easier to be like, okay, I hand them something. this is what I asked before I hand them. Yes, yeah, exactly.

That's a pattern. But although this may not have come to Sweden yet, a Swedish person, I can attest having recently returned from my holidays in Montana and Wyoming, that it has reached there. I don't think if you'd have stayed 10 years ago in some of the places that I've stayed on my holiday. I was staying in ranches with no restaurant for 100 miles and walls covered in taxidermy. There's a lot of taxidermy in those parts of the world.

You cannot escape taxidermy in Wyoming, seriously. If you are allergic to antlers, you are shit out of luck. It's like being haunted by the deaths of a million elk. But anyway, in those places, they were asking me, do I have allergies? So it's definitely becoming widespread across the Western world, and I would anticipate it would come to Sweden soon. Maybe people in Sweden don't have allergies. Maybe they give you that therapy through Abba.

That's probably it. That explains so much. A Swedish person also has another thing they found peculiar, worthy of comment. The same Swedish person. The same Swedish person. The person calling themselves a Swedish person. They are calling themselves a Swedish person and therefore I will too. A Swedish person's curiosity is peeped by this, Ollie.

The London buses were advertising fruit. They mean like not the buses were going around going fruit today, fruit today. London buses have posters on the sides. I saw both advertisements for Apple and banana many, many moons ago when I was living in the UK. I do remember that the buses advertised milk, which I as a Swede found very strange. But advertising fruit is certainly the next level in my opinion. So what's going on with that?

Well, I suppose those many, many moons ago when you were living in the UK must be more than 10 moons ago, because about a decade ago, Shikita bananas started doing this. It's not just an advert. It's not a poster. They've wrapped the whole bus to make it bright yellow in the colour of Shikita bananas. It's actually quite cool, yeah. The World Avocado Organisation then chipped in and said, we want that too, so they've done an avocado one, and now red pop apples as well.

So it's kind of like a meme that was started by Shikita of wrapping buses in fruit colours, and then other people copied it. Why are they doing that? Well, according to John Cockle, Shikita's head of Nordics, UK and Ireland, so this could be coming to you, a Swedish person. He says, in a press release from 2021, but I checked on LinkedIn.

He still has his gig. Quote, The double-decker buses are synonymous to being considered London's national symbol is a strategic avenue to bring local residents a dose of fun and excitement. You were demonstrating that,

Helen, weren't you? and I said they were bright yellow. You said, that's fun. You were mildly excited. Worked on me. Oh, my God. Advertising, I'm more vulnerable to it than I realized. In their everyday city lives.

Hey, we've got a banana bus. We've got a B-Day train. All aboard the banana bus. B-days are free. Our goal is to amplify the banana category positioning to support our growth in the UK. So there you are. The banana category has been amplified.

The thing is, though, when you're in the supermarket, buying bananas... Yeah, you just buy the bananas, don't you? Right. I might look at what kind of Apple, there's some kinds I like and some kinds I don't. Banana is it the amount of green plus days during which I need to wait for it.

I just would not be looking at the brand at all. So fuck you in your bus campaign. I mean, I agree with you when it comes to bananas. I read some research that said the bananas like the most popular product in the supermarket and the thing most people leave with is a banana or two if they go to the supermarket. It's always near the door, isn't it?

It's right by the door because it's the thing everyone just picks. Oh, yeah, bananas. And I don't look at the brand. But thinking about my grandma was always an absolute fervent evangelist for the Del Monte pineapple and once you told me that never buy anything else really they're sweeter and they're easier to peel

how many how many options do you have for the pineapple oh I think you're going to say how many pineapples do I buy a year because the answer to that is one right Del Monte haven't really benefited it's just when I feel like a pinocalada okay the Terry Memorial pineapple it's like pineapple yacht site

but still I'm amplifying the pineapple right here wait until the sponsorship money comes comes in, Ollie. We've also heard from BJ, who says, not long ago, you answered my question about what to do when people ask what my nickname stands for. Yes, she was reluctant to say, get into conversations about it. It was personal to her. Yes. I think that was answering this episode 414. Does that sound realistic? Sounds good for the archivists. And that's a growth industry these days being announced me this archivist. Yeah, yeah. BJ says, I've twice tried, as you suggested, saying Boris Johnson, for example,

and have gotten puzzled looks and further questions. I'm going to try again in the future, thank you for answering. It sounds like we failed you, BJ, sorry. And yet you're a satisfied customer, despite our deeply unsatisfactory advice. Some people are just here for amusement, aren't they? Good to hear. Well, BJ also is moved to respond to a more recent question, the one about going on holidays with your family.

BJ was listening to episode 420 while walking around the bus, boat. I'm currently on in Norway, and I was interested in the question about family holidays, because that's exactly what has brought me to Norway. My mother lives in the US, and my wife and our children and I live in the UK, and each year we meet up for a summer holiday together. We have discovered that it's challenging to spend time together in her city, where we get dragged around visiting lots of people we don't really know and don't have a great desire to hang out with, and equally challenging, but in a different way, having her over to visit us, where she nosily explores our house and needs constant entertaining.

So for the past few years, we've gone for neutral territory. I plan activities that are engaging and keep us all busy. My mother wouldn't have the confidence to travel on her own, so we support her. Meanwhile, she has much more money than we do, so she pays for much of the trip. Yes. I mentioned this, didn't I? My mum paid 50% of the Airbnb in Ibiza that me, her and my two children took three rooms out of. Great.

Win. Get it. Why not? She gives me the budget, tells me where she might like to go, and I organise it all. She delights in spending time with her grandchildren, and they get a chance to get to know her outside of their regular video calls. I insist on separate hotel rooms, and we also take time apart and make sure we do our own thing, because otherwise it gets way too claustrophobic and annoying. I mean, the thing about this is you can never truly know, even with your own family, what's going on inside their minds when they're frustrated with you as an individual. And I'm fascinated to know if there's like a flipside version of this email written by BJ's mom, where she'd be like,

my daughter is insisting on organizing events to quote-unquote entertain me while she foist her irritating grandchildren on me thinking that I'm delighting at meeting them and then insist that I pay for half of the holiday. You know, this is going well from your perspective, but who knows? Is your mum enjoying it? Well, BJ's mum, get in touch. We'll rash them on this shit. And stare it up.

BJ says, furthermore, I keep a journal so I can write down all the annoyances about my mother and our time together rather than exploding at her. What a pragmatic solution. I hope she never finds that journal. Yeah, that's great. Don't leave it lying around. No more free trips for you. And to bring it back to my name, BJ says,

my mother has been going around the cruise ship telling random people, that's my daughter, BJ, but her real name is X. So I haven't been able to deploy your tips on this holiday. Okay, but you probably don't want to go around a Norwegian cruise line pretending to be Boris Johnson because they will make you do a book reading. I don't know. Is he that big on the Norwegian cruise circuit?

He'd be a good guest on it. come on. Whatever you think of him politically where he was as a Prime Minister, he would be an entertaining book reading. I would not want to be trapped on a fucking boat with him. No matter how big. Sarah from Plumpton in East Sussex. Cessix. She lives in East Cessix.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She loves it there. Says, in our family, we love to travel and keep track of how many countries we've visited. Fun. However, we can't agree what actually counts as visited. What about flight layovers where you don't leave the airport

No, does not count. Wow, that's decisive. Yep, that's international territory. It's not real. Okay, but what about, as she says, when you transfer from the airport to the hotel and that crosses the border of another country? No.

Does it count if you stop the taxi and get out so that your feet have at least touched the ground, but that only takes two minutes? No, I think you have to engage with something in that locale, even if scantily. So I think about this one, when I'm like, how many American states have I been to? Because there's ones like Connecticut

that I've been through multiple times. Yes, same with Atlanta. I haven't been to Atlanta. I've just been to the airport. I've been through it by road and my feet have touched ground because I've been to gas stations and truck stops, but I don't count it because I've not seen anything of Connecticut. So I would say that too with countries. I think you need to eat a meal there or go to something. Even if you just like go to sleep and get up and leave again, I'm not sure that would count. I think you need to have some interaction with something. Yeah, it's like if you went on holiday to Australia and you had a stop off in Dubai and then someone, asked you three weeks later, where have you been on holiday?

You'd say Australia. You wouldn't say, well, we went to Dubai and Australia, because you didn't. Yeah. In fact, that very thing has happened to me. I did have to spend the night in an airport hotel in Dubai, but the airport hotel is technically outside of the airport. It's a very inconvenient bus ride around a building site. But I don't count myself as having been to Dubai. I've been to Dubai airport. It's like in 2002 I went to Australia and there was an overnight outside of a Japanese airport, even though I had a spectacular breakfast buffet there. I didn't count myself as having been to Japan. That meets your criteria of eating a meal there.

That was the first thing you said. In an airport hotel. Fine. Okay. Got to get out. I mean, it's true. I mean, airports are legally neutral territory, aren't they? But airport hotel, like you say, the definition's a bit vaguer.

It's not international territory. Like, if you do have to leave the airport on the little transfer bus to go to the hotel. It no longer technically counts international territory. But I feel like, emotionally it doesn't count as visiting the place. Yeah. I see that. But I also see that someone else might come to a different conclusion. if they had a landmark enjoyable experience in that hotel.

Oh, sure. If you have a landmark enjoyable experience at a truck stop in Connecticut, some of which are very comprehensively. You can get a haircut. You can buy an air fryer that plugs into the lighter in your car. You can buy some t-shirts with eagles and terrifying slogans on about gun ownership. But do I count it as Connecticut? Yeah.

Not really. Not sure. Sure, I get that. I mean, obviously, it's not at all actually important to keep a definitive list of the countries that you've visited within your family. have firm rules because society will not fall apart if you don't do so. But I can relate because I've just come back from my holidays as I mentioned and we had a bit of airport fuckery on the way back, which meant that instead of flying via Denver on the way home, we had to fly via Chicago last

minute. Right. It was annoying. Unexpectedly, instead of spending the last day of my holiday in a water park, I spent the last day of my holiday in Chicago airport, like in Home Alone. No. O'Hare is not a great airport compared to a water park. It really isn't. It's very busy. But I had to then decide, because I was in various souvenir shops in an airport, what else am I going to be thinking about once I've ordered my expensive lunch? I had to then decide, do I get a fridge magnet? So everywhere I go on holiday, everywhere I go for a day, every museum, every theme park, I get a fridge magnet. And this holiday, I'd already collected like 10, you know? I had them to the whole thing all the way through Yellowstone, all the different markers that we stopped off at,

I got a fridge magnet. Do you have one with the bison on it? Of course. Great, great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got one that looks like one of the National Park signs with little things dangling off it. Lovely. An erupting volcano.

I've got a kind of camp cowboy looking thing where he's got like a pink hat and stilettos on. It's fun. But then I got to Chicago and I was like, have I been to Chicago? I haven't left the airport, but I've been in Chicago Airport for six hours. Now, the ideal magnet in that situation would of course be

O'RD. That's what I should have got. I should have got a Chicago O'Hare magnet. That would be. legit. But I felt that I, nonetheless, with six hours to kill, could entertain the children by choosing a fridge magnet for Chicago. So did you? Well, the compromise was, Helen. I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that I did find a happy middle. I got a small fridge magnet. So whereas the places that I'd

be, as a distinction is only in my mind, obviously. The places that we went to on holiday, like for fun, all of those places I got the most outlandish, huge fridge magnet, like, you know, four inches thick. Someone's got a big fridge. Yeah. Chicago, we got very much the 299, you know, could almost be a sort of bag badge type size one. It's of the skyline as well, because I have previously been to Chicago and don't have a fridge magnet from that visit. Is it pre-fridge magnet collection era? Pre-fridge magnet collection, exactly, yeah. And Chicago has an incredible skyline, so it's worth commemorating. Yeah, and even the 299 fridge magnet had little snow falling on it, which was quite cute as well. I suppose you're not necessarily commemorating a place you went but an experience you had.

It's a bit like that question we had years ago where someone was like, I've done many kinds of sexual activity, but I have not done penis and vagina sex. Am I a virgin? Yes. And I think what we said was like it seems that you feel like you have not fully experienced sex yet, but that wouldn't be the case for everybody. Yeah, some people would definitely consider themselves not. And maybe it's like that for you with the magnets.

Yes. sure it's the comparison that readily springs to mind. Exactly. In answer me this 420, we addressed a question about whether aeroplanes have keys and I said that the big commercial planes don't have keys. You also speculated, Olli, that some of the buttons in the cockpit aren't really doing anything.

Oh, for show, yes. Yeah, I feel like you were being tongue-in-cheek and that was fairly ever. I can testify that I was being tug-in-cheek. It was an amusing idea that occurred to me that I decided to deliver in a way in that moment as if I genuinely had conviction that it was the case, but I was certainly open to being told that it wasn't. He's such a good actor. People don't know, because your acting career was like when you were younger. Sure.

But you still got the goods. Rich in Oxford has been in touch. Rich is an airline captain. No less than four airline captains got in touch with corrections on this. I do think we have someone of every kind of job in our audience. It's incredible. That's right. Well, Rich can confirm none of the buttons and switches on the flight deck are installed purely to confuse would-be hijackers.

They are all, in fact, very real. However, Rich says, a large number of them, particularly the ones on the overhead panel, are used infrequently. Yes, well, that's what I was getting at, really? You look up, you're like, well, what would happen if you got rid of that one, really? You change that, so just played a tune. Yeah, I suppose the once every three months you need it, you'd be like, shit, it's playing a tune now the plane's falling out the sky. Rich says these ones that are used infrequently tend to be for things like fuel pumps, hydraulics, electrics, etc, and are in general turned on at the beginning of a flight and off at the end.

Sometimes they are used during the very unlikely event of some kind of technical failure or in-flight emergency. Yeah, actually, that's interesting, isn't it? You'll remember that the context of us talking about this was answering numerous questions about planes. And I did that whole business about airline seatbelts. And I was like, do I know what I'm talking about? This is just internet research. No one's correct to me about that stuff. Maybe you're right.

Feeling quite smug about that. Yeah. Maybe you're right. That should be the new name for the show. Maybe we're right with Helen and Ollie. There's a lot of internet that is like that. Most of TikTok could be a fact. Repeat it enough times and it de facto becomes one.

Say it with public school conviction and you've got yourself a large language model. You also speculated, Olly, that the pilots for the commercial planes have to log on. Rich says there is no log on. The airplane doesn't know who's driving it. Now that I am surprised. genuinely I'm surprised by that. I would just think that was like the black box and all that stuff, scanning your pass, going through security.

You've seen them. You see the pilots go through security with all the plebs. I thought they'd just have to like scan a thing. So you know who's on the plane wheel. So that is interesting. Rich says, as Helen alluded to, we rely on the literal, quote, fuck tons of security to stop people from stealing the jets.

Also, they're quite difficult to start anyway. That said, modern PC flight sims could give a wrong and the right knowledge quite quickly. Yeah, I've been playing a little bit. bit with a flight sim on my VR headset. And the problem, if it is a problem, is that, of course, the most fun thing to do in a simulation is to repeatedly crash it rather than flight a problem. You might not even have, like, nefarious desires.

You might just inadvertently be training yourself to become a suicide pilot by doing that, because that's the fun bit. Cool. Maybe you shouldn't have that sim. Rick says, another kind of accidental security feature is that most airliners, at major airports at least, our part nose in to the terminal building. You need someone in a vehicle, a tug, to push the aircraft back onto the taxiway. Jet aircraft don't generally have the capability to reverse under their own steam. Reverse thrust is a thing, but it's more for slowing down

on the runway after landing than driving backwards. That's great. I didn't know that fact. Thank you. I've seen that, obviously. I've seen vehicles tow planes, but I thought that was some sort of weird insurance legal thing. I didn't realize the plane actually couldn't reverse out. Yeah, I thought maybe it was to like not have to ignite the engine yet or something. Yeah, I just thought maybe like the airport's responsible for the gate. And then once you're on the runway, the airline's responsible or something like that, you know. But actually, that's fascinating to know that you could hijack the plane and then it can't reverse. That's brilliant. What would you do in that scenario? Well, you have to hijack a tug and the plane.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a lot of business to attend to. Sure. Yeah. Rich says, love the podcast, been listening. since the very beginning and have recently got my teenage daughters into it. Lovely to hear. Thank you. Alyssa from Indianapolis says, you've already done and answer us back about your English vegetable suggestions for Dan from Pennsylvania to grow. But I'd like to throw in another fun fact that might be interesting. Cool.

That's all we can hope for, isn't it? Could be true, might be interesting. Right before hearing his question on your podcast, she says, I had listened to an episode of Gastropod where they discussed the, European tradition of using black current as the main purple flavor in things like Skittles and also in preserves rather than our American route of using grape. Yes. Yeah, that's true.

Purple sweets in America means grape. Purple sweets in England means blackcurrant. Never really thought it before, but it's true. I'd say generally outside of the US, grape is not a flavour that I've encountered very much and particularly not that very, very weird artificial grape flavour that is very common in the States. You're right. Before US sweets became widely available in Europe at marked up prices in places in places that are clearly fronts for drug dealing.

I used to fetishise that grape flavour as emblematic of American sweets because it was so unusual, like the Jolly Rancher grape. Yeah. When you have one, you'd be like, ooh, American sweets. Because we just don't have it, you're right, it's just not in our...

And smuckers jam, which actually is disgusting. Yeah, or that welch's grape jelly. Anyway, Alyssa continues. This is from what she heard in Gastropod. It turns out that black currents were banned from being grown in the US after they were shown to carry a disease that attacks the American white pine,

which was important to early settlers for use in furniture. I guess you can't sit on a black current for very long. But as I discovered, she says, during our travels in Europe this summer, black current is actually a much better flavour than grape. Well, I think it's a bit less mutated in the form you find it in European blackcurrant-flavored things. I personally still don't like it very much,

but maybe because it reminds me of cough lozenges. Yeah. And it is more, even in that artificial rendering, as you say, it's probably got more connection to real blackcurrant juice than grape flavor does to grape juice. I think so. Yeah. A little more tart. It is more tart.

That's it. That's it's slightly more sophisticated. It's not better. It's just more nuanced, isn't it? It's a bit more grown up. Maybe it lends itself more to reproduction than grape, because often grape, the flavour can get lost in the sheer sugar. Well, Alyssa says, apparently it's no longer banned from being grown in the US because the Canadian

took the time to develop a black current bush that doesn't carry the disease. Generous. So it's a niche form of produce that Dan from Pennsylvania could grow for Americans, not quickly, she says, because it's a bush. And he wouldn't have much competition from other farms. I guess not.

Why not? Yeah, introduce it. They love Huckleberry where I was. It's got Huckleberry everything. Oh, lovely. Huckleberry pancakes. Syrup. It's close to Black Currant, isn't it?

And it's their local one. And finally, here's a message from Margaret, who says during a night of mild insomnia, I was listening to answer me this, 258, which must mean from what, 2013? 2013, the prelapsarian times, yeah. During which Oli mentions a house plant given to one of his grandmothers

by his other grandmother decades ago. Yeah, the family tree. Is this plant still alive? And is it at Olly's house? The nation is crying out for an update on this, Margaret, so thank you for asking. Yeah. So just to recap, when I talked about

my family tree back in 2013. The literal tree. The literal aloe vera plant actually is what it is. But family aloeira, obviously, doesn't give you the pun. At that point, my maternal grandmother, Terry, Star of Answer Me This 200, was still with us. So she had the mother plant. She had the original plant that had been, just to recap the story, given to her by my paternal grandmother because she was a customer of her shop.

Right. So the cool story is, basically before my parents had even dated, before they were at all related to each other as in-laws, my maternal grandmother received a gift of this plant from my paternal grandmother. So the plant predates the union of Karen and Stanley. That's incredible. And also, they met at the butcher shop with my dad serving behind the counter and my mum flirting despite being married to someone else.

So that is a symbolic tree for my family. And my grandma always used to tell me that story. And I suppose in 2013, when I related it on the podcast, that's what I would have said. But since then, Grandma Terry has died. So what I'd had in the past were clippings of it that I always managed to kill. My grandmother kept it for 40 years without killing it. I managed nonetheless to like killed it on a radiator, killed it by underwatering it, killed it by overwatering it. Some plants just want to be fucking dead.

They just want to be dead. toddlers didn't like dogs didn't like underheated flooring didn't like undercounting lighting didn't like didn't like you didn't like me I shouldn't have this plot but then what happened actually is when my grandma died I was like right shit I'm never going to get an off cut from this anymore and I love this story even though my children are completely indifferent about it every time I tell them that this is like this tree you know this is a gift kids that your great grandma bought your other great grandma before they were even related it's older than me look at it isn't it cool and they just shrug at me I thought right I'm going to make sure I look after this main one.

So I gave it to my mother-in-law because she's very green-fingered. She's like got a greenhouse and everything. Nice. And she sort of brought it back to life because it was over-wintered when my grandma died because everyone who came to visit the house in that period where you're like clearing out stuff, watered it and then really killed it. So Anne, my mother-in-law, really brought it back to life, nursed it back to life. This is quite sentimental and beautiful.

Took cuttings from it and gave it to all of my wife's extended families. Like her two sisters now have the same plant. in their house. So it's not only now representative of my family, but also like the family that I've created. That's sweet. It is nice. So extended in-laws all have this cuttings, but nonetheless, the original plant. I do have the mother plant. I have Terry's plant, the plant that was given by my grandma, to my grandma, in 1977. I have it in my kitchen. A lot of responsibility, you know, keeping it alive. Yeah. I'm glad you're no longer the only person in charge of letting this thing live. Well, so yeah, exactly. When it looks like it needs to go back into a hospice,

it goes back to Anne for a bit and then it comes back having been rejuvenated. What a role in life, good for her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it's doing all right. Thank you for asking. That was a much more extraordinary answer than I anticipated to this question. Yeah, I mean, I suppose when someone asked, do you still have a plant? Yes or no.

You might not expect anything welcoming. Well, thank you very much for joining us for this collection of your feedback and do supply more. I'm always interested to see what thoughts our show provokes in your minds. Indeed. We have a new episode out next Thursday, if you're listing on the week of release. 27th of August, there we go.

Do listen to that and respond to anything we say for a future edition of answer us back, but also, as Helen's indicating there, do get in touch about the archive as well, because we love to revisit our past conversations without actually having to listen to them ourselves. Oh, gosh, yes. But you can listen to them and you can listen to them all ad free on patreon.com. I'll answer me this. Yes. Do support us. I was on holiday stumbling across and, an article in American magazine about the US's top 10 podcasters and what they earn. Oh, fuck me. And Jesus, I no longer feel bad about asking for money from our listeners. No.

And yet, you know, there's some of them, Will Arnett, who's still doing Reese's pieces ads. Right. Like, that guy's made like $100 million just from doing a podcast where he turns up not having done any work. Yeah, if you're funding any of America's top 10 podcasters, stop pledging to them and give it to us instead. Yeah, Joe Rogan's doing all right. He's fine. He's got money. Patreon.com slash Answer Me This.

And also contribute your questions for future episodes of Answer Me This. And our contact details are on our website, AnswerMe This Podcast.com. So, that's it. Don't look at me. You're right. You are correct. That is it. Yeah.

Let's power off the machine like a pilot doesn't. Bye. Bye. messy, chaotic, and here's something nobody really says out loud, but everyone knows. Sometimes other people are just a lot. The situation ship that's been situation shipping for six months with no resolution. The date, who was perfect on paper, but insufferable in person. The person who texts back eventually, having clearly not read what you actually said.

And at some point, you just decide not. tonight. Tonight, I am taking myself off the market entirely. Plans cancelled, door locked, phone face down. This evening is for me and nobody else is invited. This is actually a radical act of self-prioritisation, choosing your own good time over waiting for someone else to, maybe, possibly, if you're lucky, deliver one. Which is exactly what Love Honey is about. Your pleasure on your terms. No compromises, no mixed signals, no emotional admin. Just you, actually having a good time. Love honey, because you deserve a good time without the admin. Find them at lovehoney.com.com.com.