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And we're live on match day as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Beepsy too. What a finish There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi. Mornings have a rhythm You can hear it Feel it? And it quuaker, we fuel it with one hundred percent whole graines and a good source of fiber in every bowl, helping you turn that rhythm into your soundtrack for a great day Fuel to start whatever's next Quaker, official sponsor of VVA World Cup twenty six Hey,'s Ran Reynold here from MitMobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for fifteen dollars a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made fifteen dollars bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile dot com slash itch uppr payment forty five dollars for months, ninety dollars for months are one hundred eighty dollars for twel month plan reired fifteen dollars a month equalent taxes fees extra. initial plan term only great than fif gigytes slow netork busy see terms. Would you rather be Lord of the fllies or Lord of the Rings? Where on a buff below do they find the wings So Helen, you know how just a few episodes ago we were mourning the death of our phone line following the brutal death of Skype at the hands of Microsoft. Never forget Well U Adam, head of operations at socialcs. Uk has sent us the following email Hello, Helenollian Martin. I was listening to the podcast and heard about the number being discontinued, which is a real shame Thank you for your sympathy, Adam. Then, I realized I own a telecoms company. You hadn't realize that before? And could probably save the number for you. What? Not all heroes wear capes. I'd be happy to host it on my system for free and have any voicemail left forwarded onto your email if you like I suppose I like. We like We like Do we like the drunk calls with poor reception? I like the option to ignore them. So yes, I've been in touch with him and he's beavering away behind the scenes to make it happen. The way that you describe him beavering away behind the scenes to reanimate something for the deead does make me picture Kenneth Branner in Frankenstein Oh yeah, but Kenneth Branner at his hottest? Was it? Yeah Oh it was the only time he tried to make himself look for a film, wasn't it I haaven't seen his full filmography? No one's fantasy is it, Kennis Breno? And I don't mean that in any disrespect. I just he's not that kind of star is he's an actor actor Look, you're going to hear from all the Braniacs. I was wondering what the collective noun was. Braniacs? Sure It's sort of easiest to be the fittest thing in that film because you know the other two stars are made up to look like they're pieced together from old corpses Helena Bonham Carter is so fit in this film that Kenneth Branner blew up his marriage to Emma Thompson. There was something going on, wasn't there? The fact that he dressed her up in old meat. and then broke up his relationship for it He's like Emma will never wear the ham Anyway, you can once again Call this number Oh two o one two three five double seven I was good to hear that again actually Anyway, you don't need to call our phone number, of course, you can attach a voice note and send it to us via email, as these people have done. Helen and Ollie answer me this If the French eat snails, why do't we eat slugs? Thank you from Charlotte and Sophie R. It's not just the French. A lot of countries eat snils, especially in West Africa, Southeast Asia, around the med, But why not slugs? lotots of reasons. is one of those reasons rat lungworms Yeah, Bat long worm, brainworms. I just I got as far as Googling it and I was like, oh, that's why. L Not just any long wororm rat. It exactly That's in Wild sls, isn't it? Which is subingly also in Wild snails. Yeah, that's right. So eating snails tend to have been farmed for the purpose so that they're in control environments because A wild snail or slug can have consumed whatever and also absorbed a lot of pesticides But I don't know if they do as much slug farming. I can imagine if that was your job, I would do it I'm a slug farmer It would be easy to do J just put some muud down. I mean in a sense, we're all slug farmers. Just have a slightly dumamp British house with an air brick on the ground floor. The idea of eating them has never occurred to me. Well, you can. You do have to prepare them very carefully if you're going to eat them. Purge them first thoroughly for usually at least a week People will either keep them in confinement with no food or like just one ingredient. Oen they'll use flour. or herbs. Some people use carrot because when they start shitting pure orange, you know that they have perur. Oh right, yeah yeah, yeah. okay. good ide. And they shrink down when fried I did get far enough into a recipe again I saw the line rinse and boil again until they stopp producing slime. And I was like, No. Yeah, you'd have to do quite a lot of boiling to get rid of the slime. I've re vinegar helps. I think with slugs as well versus snas. slugs you need to remove the guts and sometimes they have an internal shell, whereas snails you can just eat the whole thing. Wait, slugs have an internal shell Some of them yeah What's the point of an internal shell? The point of the shell is to protect you from things. What's it protecting you from? Your own self? Well, that's what all these creatures with exoskeletons are saying to human beings. What's the point of having an internal skeleton protect you? Thats true. But that's why slugs are slimer because they don't have that external snail shell, right? That's the snail's protection. The slugs' protection is like slime, basically. So Yes. I think people prefer snails because they don't have all that slimey have to get rid of But they have some slime, but less slime. but I was reading about the annual slug festival that took place through the nineteen eighties in a town near Ruson River, California because they had a lot of banana slugs, which are the cool yellow ones. This event not only had a slug derby I E slug race and a sort of weigh in for the thickest slug, but it had a slug off cooking contest. Right? With dishes such as slugetti. Vodka martini with a twist of slug. Chicken fried slug. Okay. Strawberry almond slug shortcake Slug stuffed with sour cream. No Situan slug rolls. They won one year Slug Wellington, right And banana cream pie with a live banana slug on top And while I found quite a lot of newspaper reports with animal rights activists objecting to the slug festival as cruelty to slugs, I didn't see any about the judges dying from lunworm. I mean they would haveve covered up,ough wouldn't they? That be the end of the slug festival Big S slug covered it up Here's another question of food from Zoran from Washington State, who says, I'm an American and have lived here my whole life I have never been to a cheesecake factory. Inconceivable. I never have been to one either, but I haven't lived in America my whole life Zoran says, somethingomething I've always heard is that they have a huge menu. Olli anks me this. What is the least and most ordered thing on Cheesecake Factory's huge menu? Well least is all the stuff they get rid of. They get rid of items that don't sell well and they change the menu twice a year. They have done so for forty years But what is the most ordered item Ollie on the two hundred and fifty something item menu There are a lot of articles that are deep dives into cheesecake factory lore. So all the different articles list different dishes as being the most popular. The official data has not been released, but according to Vox Um two hundred thousand times per month peopleople order the fetuccini Alfredo Oh wow. How boring I didn't even know that people went to cheesecake factory treats or pasta and things like that. Yeah, everything, Martin, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Greek. It's all in one place with Egyptian columns and Californian palm trees They sell like thirty eight ish types of cheesecake So that's only like fifteen percent of their menu. Yeah, it did all start with cheesecakes though. The originator of the cheesecake factory, who is still their CEO, David Overton He's talked about having quote, the taste buds of the common man Boring. It's what they say about Benny Blanco, the music producer. If music passed the Benny test, then it is basic and mainstream enough to be a hit. He is the descendant of cheesecake entrepreneurs, proper, mum pop shop stuff. Cheesecake Nppo baby. They weren't in California originally. He moved to California did like a business degree, and then said to his mum and dad Come out to California, that's how to make the cheesecake business work And he totally like nailed it from like a cool joint in Beverly Hills they expanded and expanded. But everything about the way he put that business together is like the antithesis, as you're suggesting in your questions, uran. of what you would do really to create a business you could roll out. I've watched enough Ramsy' kitchen nightmares to know you wouldn't have in an ideal world, a twenty one page long menu with two hundred and fifty unique items on it, all freshly prepared in store. You would not do that if you wanted to be a successful franchise in the state, and yet by bucking the rules by doing his own thing. He seems to have managed it. They make more profit. per cheesecake factory store than almost any other rolled out American restaurant And they've survived some hard times as well. been rough times for the restaurant industry and cheesecake factory prevails I think it's partly because they started locating them in shopping malls And if you're in a shopping mall, then you need an all day menu because some people come in at three PM for coffee and cake Some people come in at ten PM for cocktails. Youve got lunch and dinner in between as well you just end up basically doing everything. I think that a twenty one page mu is able list against people with ADHD. A lot of people even without ADD will going to full decision paralysis when faced with what is essentially a novella of food items. I'm a bit like that. so okay. so I love the cheheesecake Fory. It is an absolute dead stop off on every trip I've ever done to the United States. It's the sort of US version of Pizza Express. Right It is as upscale a casual experience as you can get. it's good value, it's fun, it's predictable, it's tasty. But I do do that thing of like limiting myself. to choosing something from the first four entries on each page because otherwise indeed It's just you need a PhD to finish the menu Is that why Alfredo is the most ordered item because the men' arepha better sized? I wouldn't be surprised The long menu is part of their brand values for a couple of reasons. One is I think that actually you can't really patent cheesecakes, the actual recipe he was shilling was from the nineteen forties in the first place. There's only five ingredients in it. Cheese cake? What are the other three? Exactly. How do you make it your cheesecake And one of those things is just like putting ridiculous amounts of options onto it and that being the thing that you've done The other thing is that in the original branch of the cheheesecake factory apparently They had a bloat come aroundound selling menus with ads in So he was like, donon't pay for your menus to be printed anymore. I'll pay for your menus to be printed in return for you letting me sell advertising space in your menus and they took him up on it. And that became the kind of tradition of the cheesecake factory menu so that even now although they now obviously own and operate their own menus, they put ads in the menu for cheesecakes. So as you're flicking through the salads, you're getting an ad for the very veryerry cherry whatever. So it's not like ads for a local type. changing shop or something, It is ads for product. in which case it's not really ads, it's more like highlighting cheesecaes. Now, but originally it was indeed. Go and visit the guy down the road to fix your rubbers on your car. Yeah. It's like When you get an advert in an old novel like at the bat Whatever they paid for that, the fact that it's still there a hundred years in is a very good CPM. Cheesecake factactory makes such a big deal out of how everything is cooked there from scratch, which is incredibly unusual for such a huge menu. Yeah. And it is all freshly made, apart from ironically, the cheesecakes, which ironically, and they literally are made in a factory frozen and then thawed Really? I suppose the clues's in the name There's a place in Vancouver which is called cheheesecake, etcetera And it is one of the only places in Vancouver I have found that has the vibes of a pub in Britain You know, the gloom the dark wood tables, the dark paintwork on the walls, the late nightness, because cheesecake, etceter is only open In a city that goes to bed pretty early From seven PM to one AM every night. Oh right, okay. It's huge as well. It's kind of rambling And I thought, how on earth in this huge place that sells three kinds of cheesecake. exist in such an expensive City is Vancouver. And it was founded in nineteen seventy nine touring jazz musicians who were sick of performing in places where people were drunk and smoking. So they set up a sober jazz bar. that sells cheesecake. and tease. I mean, it's the only thing that makes jazz bearable for me is that I'm drinking it at the same time. The idea that someone would make me eat repeated amounts of cheesecake to sit there. To make it bearable would be hard. I don't even like cheesecake, but I like cheesecake, etcetera. I just go over there for the vibes A question of bouls now from Nilin from Cape Town, South Africa, who says, I recently found myself in a strange predicament In November last year, I bought my husband a set of boul as per his Christmas list. As expected, he hasn't taken them out of the bag yet What I did not expect was that the online retailer would accidentally send me three of the same set of bls. Oh, complete with their own bags. Oh you can play Mga Bl It's a bull fest. They cost a pretty penny each. It's not my place to judge hobbies, but the word daylight roobbery has come to mind I contacted the retailer in November when I got the extra sets and they asked me whether they should pick them up at the same address. But this was November and it was a crazy time in my life, and I never replied, Maya Culur. Mhm. I recently started organizing and throwing out stuff and realized I still have these two unused and unoped extra sets of boos, three if you count my husband's set From the moment I rediscovered them It's been like suddenly discovering a crack in the wall you can't ignore I mailed the retailer, but they haven't replied to repeated requests. Okay We've tried So Helen answers me this. What do I do with these two extra sets of boo I don't want to resell them because that feels unethical, and I don't want to use them or see them because they irritate the crap out of me. Don't chuck them out the window, that could really hurt someone. O. You could wrap them up and give them to your husband for his birthday on next Christmas And if he notices, yeah, absolutely. He might think it's the same bill sentence has been reacked. Yeah but that might give him an excuse to open up the old boulders to check at least he'll have touched them St Bs club. I was thinking host a Boulls tournament. Yeah and give the money to charity if you're worried about the unethical nature of monetizing your buoolls Yeah because I was just thinking take them to a thrift shop because if they're unopened and unused, that's great. Facebook markarketplace. Where we live, you could just put them out on the street with a sign saying free bull and they'd be gone by morning. If not, gag gift. Who else do you know who might find bul a funny gift and then it's their problem Or you could redecorate them in the style of ancient Boo. What's that? Well, it's a game that comes from ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome People who are into this sort of thing got a bit lost down a booble hole on the internet, do put like studded steel on them So they look almost like medieval weapons. That's a thing you can do if you want to. Balls were made of wood in the Roman Empire. You can't really play bull if they're covered in studs though they're not gonna to roll. That's true. It's more of a decorative item for the true Bll fanatic. It's actually a really beautiful amount of craftsmanship that goes into even a bog standard bull. Yeah. I presume that maybe the ones that you're buying on the internet in South Africa generica made in China, but if they are made in France in the artisan way You get a cylinder of steel You bash it into a disk then you bash the disk into a shell. Then you join it to another shell and solder them together It's all quite a process. That's why they're expensive. She's saying it's daylight robber It takes someone like an hour to make a c bable. and you've just stuck them in a cupboard and you't bear to look at them. How much is the annoyance the husband for not appreciating the gift of bull And how much is the annoyance at the company for mistakenly sending triple Bool? I think it's better that they haven't responded, and I think the people in the company think that too. Yeah, the postage on these is going to be more than the Bll are worth. Exactly It gets to the point where they've made the commercial decision to write it off and you chasing it is going to make you unsatisfied as they're like, oh, you can't be in on Tuesday. Well, it can only come on Tuesday. Do you I mean it gone forever They've decided to just let you keep them, I think, is probably the case. It is annoying when someone asks for a gift and then never uses it. I remember when it was my dad's sixtieth birthday and we got him a day of racing at Brand's Hatch and he sulked all through his birthday dinner going, I wanted a hammer drill So then my mum got him a haammad drill and he never used it. Did he go raising a brown hatch And he enjoyed it because he used to love driving fast I know that Neilin is currently irritated byy these Boul, But what if Neil Lin took up Bll and became a keen buouist? If Neilin's a woman, there are very few female bull players So actually you know you could be making your mark internationally very quickly. Well, that's exciting. I wonder if you could use the B to create your own garden game that isn't buool. You know, create a new game. Lawn snooker. Exactly. O giant pinball. There we go. G into a pinball. That sounds dangerous. That sounds very dangerous. I got a question Email your question to answer me this podcast at googlemail. com Answer me this podcast at googlemail. com Answer me this podcast at googlemail. com Answer me thisodcast at Googlemail. com So retrospectors, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday why Waltzing Matilda isn't the Australian National Anthem. On Tuesday, the true story behind the Magna Carta. On Wednesday, the only James Bond song to ever get to number one and you'll never guess which one it is O Thursday, the comic ineptitude of the Thieves who tried to steal Edvard Monks's the Scream And on Friday, we remember the days when Coca Cola had cocaine in it. That's today in history with the Retrospectors. ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts Here's a question from Erica who says, I'm so glad you guys are back. We're glad you wrote to us, Erica. Absolutely. It's mutual. I started listening when you started the show and I had just moved to England to do my master's degree Three career changes and two cross continent moves later, and I'm happy I can still Tune in. You're not that old and decrepid are you? I'm happy my fingers still work on my smartphone. I've popped out two kiddos of my own, now seven and nine years old. Congratulations and also welcome to the Less H bit. Dar era I'm finding it more fun than the under five bit, certainly. It's in between the high dependency and then the teens. It's between I need you and I fucking hate you. Erica says, My kids have their friends over to our house to play pretty often, and our home deccorps has started some conversations My partner and I have always liked weird stuff and have a lot of random art and found objects in Pide of place. Things like A but mannequin, we spray painted sparkly purple and use as a plant pot A set of candles, in the shape of naked ladies cooffee table erotica art books, swear word cross stitch, etceter. She's attached some photographs that is indeed a sprayed silver butt mannequin and some swear words spelt out in cross stitch. Yeah, an elaborate embroidery of the word fuck, veryery nice. Yes. Ollie, answer me this Am I supposed to put all this away before the undertens come round? pretty maximalist in our daycourts, so there's quite a bit And we've got a smallish house without many places to put it My general premise with my own kids is butots and swear words are funny funny They are funny. And I'd rather be open with them about questions than have things be secret and feel shameful. But I recognise I don't get to make those decisions for other people's kids. I've never had another parent say anything to me, but my kids's friends will point and laugh or whisper about stuff and I can hear them Do I just laugh and say ye, yeah, we think butts are funny too Or am I supposed to be a better grown up than this now that other people trust me to have their kids at my house Ollie, I think that you are very well placed to opine about this as someone who grew up around unusual decor and now has children Yes as a child as I mean, I didn't even realize how many claims we had in the house until you came round. and I was nineteen then. It was amazing you really hadn't seen that your house was Strewn with clowns. Infested. Yeah. No, I mean, I knew it, but until you pointed it out it was like, o you know that is that weird thing is clowns, but also that weird thing upstairs It's also clowns. cllowns clowns, clowns clowns, clowns. But even leaving aside the clowns, my parents had a wy sense of humour and an open sexuality. My mother had a selection of lubricants on display in the hallway when I was growing up. On display or just left there for convenience? Somewhere in between, I suspect. Cool I think It makes you a stronger character having to defend your parents' takeake or choices In general, I would say Don't cover up, don't put it away. It's your house, it's your taste There are limits I mean, it's interesting. I don't think your embroidery spelling out fuck is a problem. even with a nine year old Think if it was Kum I'd consider whether you should put that on your mantpiece, but I'd consider the reason is not because children will parrot it back and say, what's that But because so many people are offended by that word anyway. Yeah, especially in America. in North America, that's not It doesn't fly You probably wouldn't want to offend everyone who comes in your house to have a good chance of doing that anyway. It's just too much effort, really. Exactly. So I think within those usual constraints, equally it's interesting, isn't it? Like I think the butt mannequin is fine because it's both funny and potentially sexual. And it's facing the wall. So if it does have a graphic penis and balls, you can't see it. Again, I don't know why I'm drawing the line in this place But I think if it had a stiffyie, that would probably be inappropriate for children as well. Your mum made that coffee table, which was a sort of kneeling figure with a detachable stiffy and also their body sort of turned into a giant penis end That's right, yes. It also had a finger on its ar so it was being fingered by a partner. You could see the detached hand of a partner up its rectum. What did your friends make of things like that, or were they just so used to what was involved in coming to Ollie Man's house? So that particular effort was kept in a separate room that my friends didn't go into, although the mold that she'd sculpted it from was in the shed that I'd sometimes play in as a teenager. and obviously that was hilarious But I was fifteen by then, so that was okay But There was no sort of test case before all that explicitess, sculpture wise, whichich was, I don't know if you ever saw this But in my parents' living room until about I think nineteen ninety eight, but I imagine it was still around the house somewhere when you came round They had a coffee table, which was a sculpture of a naked man. Did you ever see that? Rember. So wasn't you use the word coffee table to describe what mum built? Well my mum but was more like a side table, an occasional table with the stiffy, right? Oh, sorry. But this was the actual coffee table in the middle of the sitting room. So it wasn't a sexy thing. The sculpture was called self portrait in Bath or something. And it was a bold, middle aged Thin, widely looking man who was the sculptor who had built the thing. Right. And so the water level was the sheet of glass that was the coffee table. And his knees were poking over the glass and his head was poking over the glass with his kind his mouth under where the glass was to where the water level would be. But obviously becausecause it was glass and it didn't have an edge around it, you could look down and see all these bits But it's like having a man in your living room. that you happen to put cups on. Yes, exactly. And I grew up with that as our coffee table. And when I was training for my perermitzfer, which involved weekly sessions with the rabbi coming aroundound My parents decided that the way to deal with the coffee table with this exposed, uncircumcised man in the middle of our sitting room. Scandalous was to take a cushion off the couch and cover his genitals Which was so much worse. Could you not have put a little pences on him It was exactly, that would have been better. Putting the cushion was just so obviously temporary and obviously done to spare imaginary blushes. that this supposedly conservative man would have at seeing the original offending object. And yet He knows what a penis is. They would be so much more straightforward to be like, o yeah that's a piece of art's a pce of art we know the sculpt than to be like, we've covered his genitals because the rabbi iss coming aroundound Anyway, I had to navigate that. And I'm fine. It doesn't sound like you're. You're fine. You're just scared of coffee tables now, but you're fine So yes, I would say just Leave everything out Like I say, I do think as well by the time nine year olds can spell fuck They can deal with it Like Harvey's watching Clarkson's farm at the moment and that's full of F words, but it's counterbalanced by the fact he learns a lot about farming these into it He knows not to say it himself, it's fine That's the thing. in Martin's and my current live illusionist show, there is quite a bit that includes the cunt word. It's all educational and historical and stuff and friends have brought their kids to it, like nine ten year olds And the kids are a bit like and it's not like they've never encountered the word before but they don't say it. So I think kids are quite good at self censoring. But I wonder what Erica has heard the friends kids say because I feel like a lot of kids would be kindind of Excited that someone has cool parents with interesting tastes And also that they do get to sniger at something butt shaped, but not in a negative way. they're not like, o go, I can't believe how disgusting this is. They're probably like, o how outrageous, I've not encountered this before. I think they probably just think it's f. I mean, even just from the photos you've sent us, you have a wide use of colour, as you say, maximalist style. I'm not even sure that they'd noticed the stuff that you think is particularly ue, per se It's nice that you're like Hizaba and bodies aren't a source of shame. they're just facts. We've all got a butt. but also little kids, like younger than The seven and nine year olds that Erica has are very anatomy curious. Yes So it's not a mystery At some point, your children are going to encounter this kind of thing if my children came home from someone's house and said My friends got a sculpture of a butt in their sitting room. I'd be like, that's a learning moment. Everyone has different tastes.'s, you know, they like that, it's funny, or they think it's, you know, artistically interesting. I think that's all right. Although that said, I was driving Toby the younger one, the five year old home the other day from Cubs with Harvey And Harvey is now nine said D dad At school today it's really bad, it's really bad. Someone call me the C word And I was like, o okay, yeah, that is really bad. Can we talk about it when Tobbey's out the car, please? because I don't want to talk about it if it's allright? And he goes, No, no, it's all right. I know what it is. I was like, yeah can you just save that conversation? Just wait ttill Toby goes to bed and then we'll discuss it. And then he couldn't wait to have this scandalous conversation with me. And then when Toby finally left the car And I was like, what happened? What happened at school to make someone say that to you? He said, Well, you know, Blake stole my toy and the teacher got involved. And you know, Bailey turned to me and he said You are And then he used the C word and And I was like, really What did he call you?cause you are a piece of crap? I laughed so hard. Yeah, that is the C word. Yeah, that's bad. Oh dear. well, he shouldn't have done that Intent is important because If he'd said, Harvey, you're serving Kunt, that would' have been complimentary. Yeah. m tired at thirty. I live on a beach. I'm a little bit bored, but passive incomes a peach. I keep my empire running. O whilse I get my asshole ple keepeping up with the Joneses. In the background squaare Sace keeps your business afloat, seirling products you made showcasing words that you wrote It does all the hard work while you drink pink fz on a b! My drink is as pink as my glistening balm Thank you very much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of Answer M me This. And for helping well me, helping me with support as I try and build up my Squarespace website. because you know, Helen, once you create your Squarespace website, it doesn't stop there. It can stop there if you want. If you want to be lazy. That's fine, Squarespace allows They don't stop there. They keep telling you with articles and support. how to get the best out of your site long after you've done the basics, with minimal effort, That's what I appreciate. Yes, it's low maintenance for you Exactly Squarespace are on the maining and growth all the time. For example, they'll send me an email being like, if you've got a business, we can calculate your VAT for you. You don't need to do that anymore. Just tick this box. There's loads of great features like that. W. W! W. Go to squarespace. com slash answer if you don't believe us, Have a play around during the two week free trial. and when you're ready to launch, you can get ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain using our code Aswer Here's a question from Katie, who is thirty eight years old and twenty nine weeks pregnant and from St. Ives, Cambridge here, not the other ones. She says Lots of towns and cities have large painted animals for people to see and find, such as giraffes, cows, hares, etca They're often decorated by local groups and then get auctioned off for charity Helen answered me this, What was the first one of these trails and where was it? It was Cows. It was Zurich. It was in nineteen ninety eight They sound like the lyrics to a Eurovision song. The cow sculptor is named Pascal Napp And his father was an art director called Baltternaap and this was his idea. Pascal Knaap says, My father called and asked me, can you make me a cow I said sure. So then he called a veterinarian and a taxidermist to help him make sure that he had properly depicted a cow, but also decided to sanitize Some parts of Ka anatomy For instance, these cows have extra wide tails, presumably to conceal They're A holes. I do do a lot of these trails with my children and cow A holes have not formed part of it. I'd never really thought about it before. I've seen others. I've seen others you can squeeze and get water from, but not a holes. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Walter had the idea because in nineteen eighty six Lions, which are a symbol of Zurich, were placed all around the city. I think they were decorated as well. And he was like, Why not cows? Switzerland loves cow And so they had eight hundred and twelve fiberglass life size cows decorated by different artists. boosted tourism by one point five million extra visitors that year. But just to stop you there, if there were lions the year before, why is the answer not lions? Like what was different about what he did that made his the first one They'd already put lions around everywhere. Yeah, great question. It was really hard to find pictures of those lions as well. I mean, to answer it myself, I imagine that the lions wasn't this kind of idea where different artists do different versions of the lions Yes. I mean, that's what I like about it for my children. And I think generally for the public at large is like it's for most people the only art they engage with. Public art is cool and often it is rare. Yeah. and this is also a way for not only the cow to be an object of art, but also local artists to get some exposure and then also there's money raised for charity because they auction off the cows What happened was that year of the original cows. Chicago businessman Peter Hannig happened to be in Zurich, was so inspired by the cows that he decided to call it cow parade and put it on in Chicago the following year. Oh homeome of the Balls. Oh to have a cow parade. So true, after which it exploded in popularity and appeared in many more cities, and different creatures ensued, but the credit was taken away from the Knaps as it has been taken away from the original Lions, because the Cowperade official site says Cow parade events have been staged in over one hundred cities worldwide since our inaugural event in nineteen ninety nine cow parade Chicago. Well they are they've on the website, haven't they?ure They do. Anyway, there's cow parade happening in Mexico City this year. Another creatures in the spinoffs have included elephants, bees, dolphins, teddy bears, the London twenty twelve Olympic mascots All those were weird. Oh yeah. W Lock and Manville They were odd. Not a fan. They were sort of phallic and yet not sexy, weren't they? likeike deeply unsexy and yet that shape Not every phallic shape is sexy oly. No, well that's what we learned. Get used to it. Some of us already knew that Stephven in Yorkshire here, Helena Nolly answers me this I've been using Spotify for quite a few years now as of we all And Increasingly, it seems evident that And I'm not going to get into the details of it, but the way that their functionality is set up and the lack of customizable settings, etceta. They seem to make life more difficult than it should be. to listen to albums. So they don't have album shuffle, for instance, or you have to go through like three processes to save albums and have them downloaded and have them in your liked songs. Whereas they make things very easy when it comes to playlists So answer me this, why Do they make life so difficult for albums and what is in it for Spotify to incentivize people to use playlists instead. Initification in a word? Yeah, you make it sound like it's intentional, Stephen, but often it's ' they don't give a shit about you. Sorry. They don't care. They don't care if it's a worse experience for you so long as you continue to subscribe and you carry on using it anyway. Yeah, as long as Daniel Lck has got all his money for spending on very bad things, then yeah, they don't care They want you to use playlists rather than they don't want you to look at albums. The reason they want you to use playlists is because they have data and they're a business. that says, evenven if you say you don't like it, you are more likely to continue streaming and listening when you're in a playlist than when you've listened to an album and then the album ends And also they have preferential deals with the record labels who want to promote certain artists through those playlists which they can't do in the middle of an album That's basically it. They don't care and it's slightly more profitable. G. Now I just want to lie down and stare at the wall. Well, whilst listening to any song ever released, I mean, I'm a fan of Spotify. I've been on it since twenty twelve, I think The ability to stream everything ever is extraordinary I am someone who used to like to discover albums, like we're all of that generation where we used to go to HMV or Virgin Megaza, or Rprze wherever it was spend what is now a month' subscription on Spotify on ACD. and listen to it for a month and I still in the early days of sport, if I was doing that, I would Be the person who go to the homepage, go to the album chart and then find something at thirty to fifty and try it And now you just can't, it's really he's right. It's really, really hard to do that. The thing that really annoys me is when you get into an artist You can't listen to an, even once you get to their album page, which is like six clicks away, you can't listen to the albums in chronological order, onlyn reverse chronological order. You have to listen to their most recent one first without making a playlist to do that Which is nuts, isn't it? I mean, that's such a basic if they've only got three albums out, you'd want to start the first one, wouldn't you if you like them Going back through the back catalogue. it's so weird you can't do that but you can't Well, you're not making me regret not using Spotify What do you use for your music discovery? Well, basically nothing. Since I stopped using Spotify a few years ago because Daniel Eck was spending a huge amount of money to ruin podcasting for anyone who wasn't Spotify And unfortunately It means I'm not using very much except for buying albums directly from the artist or Bangcamp. but then there's that's discovery. I did use to like the Discovery playlist and I found some good bands but no more because of Daniel Eck. I like it in a utilitarian way. I like that there is the thing of music whilst I'm working and music whilst I'm having a dinner party. but I also sometimes want music not to be a utilitarian moment. Right. I want one that another you has thought about. Yeah. Yeah. You know, maybe we're going to get back to listening to live music radioally, maybe That is the conclusion. Well, actually in all seriousness, so I like country, yeah. So I s's ridiculous to American listeners, you like countries is everywhere. It's not in the UK. it's growing, but still you have to seek it out I would rather listen to Bob Harris Country on BBC Sounds and listen to his radio two show with all the links and the stories and the curation Th listen to a country playlist that is actually authentically out of Nashville on Spotify becausecause it has that more human connection, I do that. I do a lot of listening back to radio shows. That's what Spotify has driven us to, back to the old ways. I can give you a hack though if you've got a mac If you can't be asked to go through the seven steps wow of trying to get an album, Stephen do AppleK when you're searching for something, then it gives you the results in the search bar So rather than then having to navigate a load of visual tiles If you're like me and you're not visual person It gives you a list and you can quickly it says album single playlist Quickly see what's the albums. It's a fewer clicks. Apple K. Okay. There you go Thank you for changing lives After my aute when I find the t send the question to the question line Inquiries or wanted as a part of the plan? Hlla Helen or Hlly or Martin Sown Mas . back time Kate from Rhode Island, USA says, Ollie, answer me this How does one become the owner off a cemetery Can one buy one outright, or is there professional licensure and permits required? Is their gravekeeper university In terms of official training It extends to basically asking authorities for advice and then checking you're within the law. but there are sort of unions. in Britain anyway, there's the Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities. There is the Institution of Cemetery and Crematorum Management They do do a course in how to become a sexton. It's only in one day. Explain to people what a sexton is. Person who digs Graves. Gravevedigger. Sexton but also like like maintains the cemetery. so it goes a bit beyond just the digging. You can't just get a laborer to be a digger, but a sexton is considered more of an art And there's also the National Association of Memorial Masons. I presume the invite to their AGM is just a big slab of courts So those are the three options for in this country, places you can reach out to to say, I want to like own a cemetery, can you help me? What do I do? What do I need to do to stay within the law? But in terms of like How do you just go about buying one? Can anyone do it Yes, if you've got the money, there are two ways of buying it just like any other property One is as land that you want to redevelop into something else, for which there are certain rules, of which more in a minute The other is as an ongoing business, and I found one for sale right now, the Garden of Rembrance in Spring Garden Road, Longton, Stoke on Trent can be yours right now for one point five million pounds. Okay, what's the area? how many Graves are we talk You get two point seven acres of established Garden of Rembrance slash cemetery slash burial ground. It points out on this commercial proroperty sales website you get regular income from the existing family clients, but also with the increasing preference for cremations, this dramatically increases the future revenue potential of the business Be you can cram in more of those cres, can't you? You don't need to just pile them all up in the ground in their full body state Annual turnover of circa three hundred thousand pounds, it says with ample room to improve prove More people are going to die. inevitably more people will die. Yeah. I guess a lot of cemeteries are run by the local authority So you know, whoever owns municipal land in Rhode Island or they are religious operations. So private cemetery is not Every cemetery is it? That's right. And the Church of England, again to return to this country are quite picky about who they allow to continue using their churches. And in fact, the United synagogue will not allow it, they say no. A place of burial is a consecrated holy site and always will be and it doesn't end Well this isn't what I was saying before There is the option to completely disregard the fact that it used to be bodies at all. You have to wait a minimum of seventy five years So seventy five years after someone's been in the ground before you can do anything to their body, and even then it has to be with the approval of the burial authorities and or the church. Bea I was thinking about how in London There are so many former cemeteries that now have other things on them. Like when we used to live in the flat in the church where Aw M this began? Of course, yes. The former cemetery behind it was a car park surrounded by houses. Yeah. And our neighbor attributed that to why the people that lived in those houses were often quite fighty I'm not sure I believe that, but I can believe, you know, there's a vibe Do you what me? I don't believe in paranormal stuff, but I do think if If for centuries it's been a graveyard and then you build something else completely on top of it, it might have a strange vibe. I can buy that There's some like bits of parks that you walk through. R remember one, particularly in Greenwich where they've propped the gravestones up at the sides and then just made. where the bodies are. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, well So those ones obviously are more than seventy five years old, right? So when you're looking through like medieval graves and stuff, yes Okay, fuckking U Exactly, but I find the seventy five year limit I'm sure there's a lot of paperwk to do it. I'm sure they normally say no, but even so, the fact that it's only seventy five years, that is in living memory, isn't it L my children went to my grandmother's funeral. In seventy five years time, they'll probably still be alive. Seems weird that someone could dig her up and put something else there Do what I mean? Theoretically? Sh should be one hundred and seventy five years. You know what I mean? seventy five doesn't seem very long. It's weird that it's shter than copyright. Yeah. Eactly. The person who did the stone has probably got more rights than the person in it Do you know about the Torjan people of Indonesia? Not off the top of my head. So apparently every year they dig up their bodies of their relatives and like dress them and give them cigarettes and things like that I think that's quite nice. I mean No it's not nice, it's rank. I mean, they'd be covered in flies and worms and stuff. It's alright on year one, yearar ten. I mean, come on year ten, they're probably justco give the person some dignity. I don't know. actuallyct, I've not like looked into the decay aspect, And that's quite a nice form of sort of honoring the dead I do feel like the corpse decay aspect is quite important though. I do. Well what I'm saying is like a few weeks is bad, right? But a year, maybe it's you know, it's not. I see. so maybe after a year it's basically just a skeleton anyway. It's quite shrivel. I think' still flesh, but it's like mummified, Maybe they bury them and prepare the bodies in such a way, knowing that they're going to dig them up again and adjust them nicely and stuff. Exactly, yes, yes, yes, that's probably a bit less scary. Yeah. I grew up next to a churchyard, so I always felt quite respectful of that space because that's how I was brought like I'd walk through the graveyard all the time to go to and from the bus stop or whatever And like from the youngest age was told, this is a graveyard, be respectful d of that For me, like it was such a horrifying concept that you could reuse Cemetery space when I was a kid. I wrote a novel when I was twelve.. I only got like p four chapters in. And more of a novella then. Yeah Well, it didn't the beginning middleight, it was just the beginning. But I'd been highly inspired by reading both Stephen King's fourour seeasons and Ben Elton's book Stark You'll see the influence of both when I tell you the plot And in my book An evil CEO came up with a horrifying concept to me of building apartment blocks on cemeteries. So innocent. What an evil thing a CEO could do. That felt to me like satire, like that you'd recycle dead people for commercial games Then I learned, oh, that is actually what happens. That's why the English teacher was unmoved when I gave him my horror novels I didn'tstand that it was so scarary. imagine a world in which the ruling classes do not care if you live or die and then despoil your corpsays If you want to buy a former graveyard and you're happy to abide by the laws that I was saying regarding, you know, you're not allowed to take anyone up seventy five years, then there are still covenants usually in the property purchase. One that I found for example was a Coxhall Baptist Church in Shropshire that was put up for auction a few years ago at a guide price of twenty five thousand pounds. which was a bargain for an old church. Yeahah It was small. It was one of those like one room village churches, but still less. Eocative structure. But that came with conditions, which would compel the owners to allow quote reasonable access to the cemetery and keep it in a good condition. So even though they werere intending to turn it into studio flats or whatever, they had to allow new graves to be opened up for the handful of people who hadd already booked a plot there and they had to allow existing graves to be reopened for family members of those buried there And you have to allow funeral services to take place at the time of burial, which could be, of course, basically any time, really. So it's a bit of an imposition on your garden party. You've got to basically treat the garden as an optional extra, haven't you? The garden is like an evocative timbert and style entrance way your house. But you don't own it. It's probably the best way to think about it. It's like having sitting tenants who are very good. Yes, ye. Well, that brings us to the death of this episode, Don't be sad. It had a good life. But for the next episode to live, we need your questions, which you can leave in the form of text or voice notote at the address listed on our website. Answer me this podcast dot com C Also on the website, of course, links to our Patreon. Now thank you everyone who joined us last week for Petty probleroblems, our Patreon exclusive live stream. If you're now like self flagellating because you missed it, I understand.t ht. Don't do that. There's no need. It's not too late. You can catch up with last week's live stream and you can watch the first one as well All you need to do is sign up and give us some money at patreon dot com slash answer me this. and then you can click collllections and then petty probleblems and they're both there as YouTube videos that you can stream whenever you want them Well, isn't that nice It's more than nice, isn't it? It's Nice plus. Yeah. And what is nice plus plus is you supporting the show financially so we can afford to exist. in the Stan. I very much appreciate that. Yes. Yeah, and you do. I' bought myself some butt shaped furniture in celebration Do doesn't come cheap, not available at IKEA That's right. What else s can people do? They can listen to our old stuff answthstore. com for that and they can find us on the internet. Helen, what can they find of yours in August? Well, you can find the illusionist at the illusionist. org. If you are an aficionado of four letter word decor, perhaps you would enjoy the illusionists four letter word season. aboutout the F word The C word, and then some words that are not rude. Martin was just in an episode in fact, debuting a new song about poisonous plants. Yeah. Also, I'm soon to appear on a stage in Vancouver at Nerd Night on the tenth of September, talking about Dracula, specifically big surprises in the Scandinavian translations thereof I've linked tickets at the illusionist to orgstash events What about you, Ollman? This may not be for everybody. Sometimes, in addition to my answer me this persona, I can be serious and talk about the news. If that appeals to you, then you should know that if you happen to be listening to this in the week it comes out, this weekend I'm going to be hosting driveime on Times radio. That's four to seven PM on Times radio this Saturday and Sunday and also in a similar vein I have a news podcast, The Week Unwrapped It is the official podcast of the Week magazine And every week it's me and the journalist from the week, Harriet Marsd and Jamie Timpson, and Felisty Capon unearthing three stories from the week's newews that you may have missed You can find the link to that and all of my shows at ollimman. com What' been up to? What have you been up to? Whatate have been up to? What have you been up to Mart ten? Wh have been up to I've been doing little Beatles videos. I've been making covers of beatles songs for my friend Jim because I don't text him often enough and I've been putting them on Instagram. What's been your favourititees so far? Oh, I mean I'm covering them in chronological order because there's so many beatles songs. Of course you are So you're still on the juvenilion? Well, please please me. The first record p please me. sllaps. It's really, really good. The song Please please me is great and there's a bunch of other great tracks. Their version of Taste of Honey is really great. Well, Beatles have got some good songs have they? No, I love Martins. if you know, Lennon McCartney are actually quite good songwriters. It's news to you, Martin. I know that you've resisted it for a long time. They like fucking twelve or something. They were good. Well they were. they were, weren't they? I think fourteen and seventeen When they started writ. Yeah, so that album was probably in the late teens. It's qu. actually I'm going read on holiday, John and Paul L love story. I've got one chapter. It's good. When I've read it, I'll say more things about that to you in real life. In Ollie Man's B club. Well, why listen to Beatles's original album, Please please me when you can go on my Instagram? A Martin H. And your friend Jim, while appreciative, I think still doesn't understand why any of this has happened And nor do I Oh, it's because middle aged white men would literally rather cover the whole of Fish Beatles album in order to communicate with their friend rather than go to therapy. Right, well that all sounds very wholesome. We'll be back on the last Thursday of September. That's the twenty fifth market in your diaries now and have a wonderful month B