Answer Us Back: Fridge Magnet Rotator

0:00Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Whether it's hot yoga over 100 degree weather or too much sun, Gatorlight with a specialized blend of five electrolytes was scientifically designed to help move fluids into the body faster for rapid rehydration. Shop now at Retailer's Nationwide. Gatorlight hydrates faster than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration, consult a healthcare professional and symptoms persist. Can we just kick off this edition of Answer Us Back by saying,

1:07RIP Tim Curry? Yes, we could do that every episode, but it would have been very, very inappropriate until episode 421, which we recorded the day before the death of Tim Curry. And therefore, we were maybe a bit critical of two of Tim Curry's most beloved films. Yes, we didn't know when we were slacking off both Rocky Horror Picture Show and Clue that he was going to pop his clogs on the day of release. We didn't say he was bad at them. We didn't, because he isn't. In the context that we were discussing, which is camp movies, let's acknowledge now that he is king of camp movies. And he elevates the material very often when he's in an absolute piece of shit. And if you've seen Christmas in Wunderland, it's literally unnotiable. But he elevates the material. It's probably the worst movie of all time. It's showing in the West Edmonton Mall. And it's as gripping as you might expect that to be. Edmonton in London or Edmonton in Canada. Edmonton Canada, yes, they put up the budget. They bought Patrick's Wazey and Tim Curry and Carmen Electra of Memory Serves. Gosh. And then ran out of money for the CGI.

2:09But... Who needs it when you have that three-pronged charisma going on? Exactly. Anyway, he's great in it. Always brought up performance. So no disrespect to Tim Curry, even if he was in some shit films. We're both fans of his attitude and his work. So anyway, thank you to everyone who got in touch saying, great timing, guys. Tim Curry. Yeah, I think people assume that a podcast is recorded seconds before they listen to it. But practically, that's simply impossible. Good thing we caught out that stuff calling Dolly Parton a cunt. No, we'd never. I met Dolly Parton. I mean, that's not true. That's not true. I shouldn't be on the public magazine. I met Dolly Parton, I didn't meet her. I was in a room that she put her head around and said, well, hi, all. Close enough, Ollie. Close enough, where? When? How? Very much in the kind of place you'd expect to meet Dolly Parton to be fair. It was in the green room at ITV's Lorraine. OK, yes. Yeah. Was she in full Dolly front of house regalia?

3:09She was. She was there to talk about the imagination library which she was launching in the UK. But she was dressed as if she was about to give a concert nonetheless. I'd flagged a ticket there and then from her PR to go to... I think it was the Savoy Ballroom where she launched it. Even though she was launching the imagination library, she had come on and mime to nine to five as well. So... What a way to make a living. There you are. I mean, you know, she's living and breathing it. She knows what the crowds want. And it isn't her talk about literacy. When are you going to write your memoir, Ollie, of all the times that you were technically in the same room as celebrities? Ah! It's the autobiography the world's waiting for, isn't it? I'm waiting for it. 50 feet from fame. The Oli Man story. Close enough for a book. Yeah. Come on, give us what we want. Anyway, Ollie, since episode 421, we have had some good news from Sally who says, Oli, you can cut the Samsung washing machine music short. We also have a Samsung washing machine and tumble dryer,

4:11so are all too familiar with the joyful inverted commas music at the end of the programme. What's the famous piece of classical music, as we said? It's just rendered in a terrible sort of eight-bit way. Sally says, if you open the machine door as soon as the door lock is released, then it stops playing the music and instead plays a very short sequence of notes and turns itself off. It's a blessed relief. Now, I did wonder if opening the door would solve it, but that relies on you scooting to the washing machine within 30 seconds and making you've got something else to do. We discussed that in the episode. And in fact, my concern is having to, like, drop everything to run across the house to get there in time. Is it self-stressable? Yes. If I start allowing myself to know that that's a possibility, I'll do my ankle in at some point. It's just not worth it. Not worth it, no. In any way, it's in my head. It's like, you know, when I golden brown for whatever reason, I fucking hate that song I'll always have. Just something about... The stranglers. Yeah. And I know people love it. I just find it really irritating. I find evening the opening bars of it really irritating, but because the opening bars are so iconic, immediately that harpsy called da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

5:13It doesn't matter. Even two seconds in, if I run over to the radio and turn it off, it's in my head. It won't go. You know, a problem I've had for the last few days since I went to a weird owl, Yankovic concert, is he did his song, which is based on blurred lines. Oh, yeah. But it's about grammar. And it just means I've had blurred lines on the brain for days and I do not want it there. Do not want. It was catchy at the time. I haven't sung blurred lines since then. Don't. Don't. There's some bad stuff in there, Holly. You know, Roy Chubby Brown is playing my local theatre in about six months' time. What year is it? How long have I been asleep? I noticed this today because I was booking tickets for the Pante and I was like, what else shall I chuck in that basket there? Which was a strategy that worked very well last year when I went to see both the Buddy Holly story and Stuart Lee on tour by that mechanism. You are the middle of that vendigram. Exactly. Anyway, I looked through it and I wasn't really interested in most of it, but I did think I'm sure that I wouldn't find any of his jokes funny.

6:15And yet, there's something in me that is curious to see how a comic has lasted that long. What, 60 years doing the same material? There's gotta be something in it. I wonder what a Roy Chubby Brown concert is like. You're right. Seeing someone who was doing comedy 60 years ago would be like going to a museum and the dinosaur skeletons come to life. But you wouldn't say that necessarily about someone who was more of a hero to us, right? I mean, you wouldn't have said that necessarily about Joan Rivers, but she'd been around just as long. Because Roy Chubby Brown had always set his humor against political correctness and because he'd been seen to be courting people, in fact, who, well, racist, I feel like, oh, well, that won't be for me. But that probably isn't his act anymore. He might be doing something interesting and I'd never know. He might be doing Stuart Lee's style comedy. Exactly. And it's not far. I could get to that particular theatre that he's playing in 10 minutes. How much though? Affordable, 19 pounds, maybe. Oh, OK. I mean, 19 pounds, if you're not enjoying it, you can walk out after 10 minutes and you can waste the rest. Yeah. But the thing is, you will be a person

7:16who's at a Roy Chubby Brown gig. I know. And do you want to be him? I don't. And also, just pushing that all-quiposition doesn't it? Because probably what he does now is he probably tells bad taste jokes, but kind of knowingly, knowing it all. We can't really save this anymore. And then what do you do if you find it funny and or what do you do if you don't find it funny and then just laugh, but then you don't feel good about yourself because the laugh is something that you're laughing at something you don't like. That's going to make me feel bad. Equally, if I don't laugh and everyone else in the room is laughing, I feel like a party pooper. Like, I bought the ticket, you know? Anyway, I am curious what a Roy Chubby Brown gig is like. I would watch a documentary about Roy Chubby Brown. Let's put it that way. From a distance, I'd like to know. Someone has probably written a substack from inside a Roy Chubby Brown gig that you could read. OK. More washing machine music news, Ali, from Helena in New Zealand, also Darren from New Zealand sent in the same information. But Helena did it first. Helena says, older, Fisher and Pakele washing machines

8:18have been programmed to play the national anthems of New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and USA. And apparently also the crazy frog song, but my one isn't a model that does this, so I couldn't check for you. They're not played at the end of the wash, but instead as the result of some specific button pushes so you can impress friends who don't know the secret and force them to listen to a very beeping version of God-de-Fen New Zealand. Although the company has phased this out in newer models for shame. I wonder what she means by the crazy frog song. Does she mean... D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding, the first one. But a bit of a ding ding ding ding ding, whatever it was. How many hits did the crazy frog have? Those two that I'm aware of. And as I say them out loud, I think it must be the Beverly Hills Cop 1, mustn't it, because that's the only one with the tune that a washing machine could render. Yeah, the other one just sounds like a washing machine coming to the end of a vigorous cycle. But they all play crazy frog in that sense.

9:18I don't think I'd want a nationalist-stick washing machine. I want it not to give a shit about borders. What it sounds like this is, though, is like an Easter egg, isn't it? This is an additionally pointless feature that you can opt into. That I'm kind of here for, because the memory chip has the space to program it to do all kinds of things. Why not something a bit weird? That's like the Tesla light show. I don't know if you've ever seen the Tesla do the light show. Again, you can park Elon Musk with Roy Chubby Brown, but I have to hand it to him for the Tesla light show, which is objectively hilarious. It's just his button you can press on the car and then it does a full-on, it's like, boom, dun, dun, dun, it's like, smoke's gonna come out of the boot, you know, stuff lifts and goes down again. It all gets very doctor-hoo. I'm not super impressed because in the late 90s, I had a stereo that had a button you could press and it would do a little light show. Right, I had a keyboard that had a secret version of, she'll be coming around the mountain when she comes on it. Oh. You had to know which keys to press to make it play it. Ah, Easter egg is.

10:19I've actually, in other laundry news, just bitten the bullet and spuffed 170 pounds on a plug-in era. Oh, what like the Lakeland ones that heat? It is, yes, it is the dry soon deluxe, three-tier heated clothes era from Lakeland, yes. People say their life-changing, but also cats like to roost on them in winter. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, I can test both those things very well in my house. The thing is, I know people listening overseas are like, why don't you just put it in the dryer and the answer is, because that's not our culture. Our culture is hang stuff on radiators. Yes. And then it makes the room kind of damp and the clothes kind of crispy. Yep. For three days, because it takes a long time to dry out between October and March in Britain. Yes, and the room temperature is too cold to dry things properly. Well, I'm very happy for you and I hope you'll be dry. Well, maybe this is how everyone feels when they buy a dry soon deluxe, three-tier heated clothes era. This better be life-changing. Maybe people want to believe it, you know, and that's why you've seen people say that it is. Oh, so it's the further that dries the clothes?

11:20Exactly. Yeah. Speaking of cleansing accessories, Molly in London, apropos, our last answer is back, has just bought herself a B-Day accessory. She says, I've just purchased a Rinsemate, AKA a bum gun that isn't plumbed in. Okay. I wish they'd actually called it bum gun. I once chose a Cessbit drainage company purely because they were called the Brown Wagon and I didn't regret it. She says, instead of it being plumbed in, you just refill it with water every so often. I am very excited for it to arrive. Okay, so it's basically like a squirt gun B-Day. Yes, exactly that. She says, I also have a dehumidifier. Uh-huh. With the drought this summer, I was thinking of how to reduce the impact of this purchase. Could I have the water collected by the dehumidifier and use that in the Rinsemate? I would not advise that because dehumidifier water has not been distilled or purified, but can contain molds and bacteria and other contaminants from within the dehumidifier itself

12:22as well like heavy metals come off the coils. If the dehumidifier water hits broken skin or your open A-hole, then that's risky. It can cause skin infections and respiratory trouble. And they're like, well, you know, if you clean your dehumidifier regularly, then maybe it'd be okay to wash with, but what they mean by regularly is you take the thing apart every fucking day. That's, I think, too much effort. I did stumble upon a forum where people were talking about washing their hair with dehumidifier water. Yeah. That's been such a game changer, but they were also rinsing it with kombucha. What? If you want to know what kind of forum this was. Ugh. Yeah. I know from many years of discussing sex toy recycling with Alex Fox on the modern man that you definitely want to avoid putting gray water on your sensitive bits in particular. As you say, like mold spores, bacteria. It would be bad washing your hair with it, I suspect, but it's probably not gonna give you a UTI because there's a different end of your body,

13:23but this does sound bad. That could go in your eyes. You use it for watering your plants or something that's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? Yeah, non-edible plants. You can also use it to fill your steam iron. And apparently it's very good for cleaning windows and cars if you want a streak-free finish, because it's mineral free. If George Hornby was alive now. It'd be very hard to scan dehumidifier. You could also put it into your toilet system. Yeah. If you can be bothered. I mean, the garden thing's interesting because it's still, like you say, non-edible, you've got to be careful with that. We've got one of those dryers back to dryers again, where instead of it being plumbed in, it's got like a shelf at the top that you detach and empty occasionally. Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar. And for a long time, because the dryer originally had been in our garage, sort of in the garden, I had to basically leave the house, go into the garden, walk into the garage to use the dryer. That's why Brits don't want to use dryers. It's a far far. Houses aren't big enough.

14:23I didn't have to, but the almost convenient thing to do with that water was just empty all over the garden. And I thought, well, that's doing my garden good. And then one day my wife was like, I'm growing vegetables there. So, and she's like, that's got detergent in it. But it's all the chemicals that have come off the clothes. You're then emptying onto the soil that I'm then growing the vegetables in that we eat. Dickhead. And I thought, I mean, both, she's got a point and she hasn't. I was like, the cat shits there. So, what's the difference there, really? Rew. Most of the detergent will have been rinsed out. Yeah, but it made me think, which is rare. But some people will plumb that to go straight into their toilet system, or same with the do-humidifier if they're somewhere very soggy. When I was in Japan, the little flatware I was staying had this toilet with a tap on top of the system. So, you'd wash your hands and your hand washing water then went into the system for the next flush. Lovely stuff. Well, we've had this question in from Annie. Hi, Helen and Ollie. We were just listening to answer us back. And Ollie was relaying his adventures in obtaining a magnet at a hair airport.

15:26But given the quantity of magnets you've collected over your years of travel, what I'm really curious about is what you do with them. I don't think they can possibly all fit on your fridge or do they. And then if they don't, do you have them in rotation? I'd love to know more about your magnet situation. So, I've just counted this afternoon just for you. Oh. And I have 116 fridge magnets. Well done. Now, those are just the ones that I would call location-based. So, they have the name of a place that I visited on them. If you include the other miscellaneous magnets on the fridge, not including the ones that are basically like thumbtacks, but the ones that are decorative. Yes. The number rises to 127. Gosh. So, is that all the magnets you've accrued or are those just the magnets you are willing to put on display? They are all the magnets that I've accrued. There are no magnets that I own that aren't there. Apart from some that I got in Camden Market, which I've got on my filing cabinet in my office. And that's because they're album covers

16:26and they just seem a bit mid. Fematically wrong, silly travel fridge. I just thought they were cool when I saw them. And then I got them home and I was like, it's a bit tourist-tap kind of stuff. I don't really want my fridge. Whereas on my filing cabinet in my office, cheers up and otherwise dull. I'm leaning back to see the brand. Bissly, of course, bissly. So anyway, on the fridge, yes, they are organized in a way that won't be obvious to visitors, but is to me. It's an American style fridge freezer. So you've got to imagine the opening is halfway down the middle. So you can open the doors, outwards on both sides, fridge and freezer. And does that mean also that it is large? Therefore you've got a lot of real estate for magnets. 127 magnets, Helen, of course, it's large. Because I live in North America, so I have a large North American fridge, although not one that opens like a double door, but it looks like it's made of metal, but you can't get a magnet on the front. Rice, wow. What a waste. What is the point of a fridge? You can't put a magnet on. I mean, it's more important than the food. Myself, everyday. In fact, I've thrown away all the food and the fridge is just full of magnets. LAUGHTER

17:28Well, the top half of the fridge bit is where I put the magnets that I want my visitors to see, because I've noticed that in general, people don't look at the bottom half. No, because their knees don't have eyes. Exactly. So the more exotic places go up top, places that make me seem like a more interesting person. Oh, I didn't even know. Those go on the top. The ones that are just a bit more like rides at Chessington, they go at the bottom. But then also there's some practical considerations as well, so the more breakable ones are away from the edges. Because when the doors are open, the edges are more vulnerable to being knocked off by the adjacent cupboard. Terrifying. Then there are also rules which I think I might have hinted at in the episode when I was discussing the Chicago fridge magnet situation, which is I have a rule that I don't like having a magnet for a place I haven't been. Yes, I think that's a good rule. It defeats the whole object, as I'm just saying. I'm disgusted when people bring me people... Oh, he likes fridge magnets. Will Brunkenma fridge man from where we've been on hold. They fuck off. No. I don't want that. I haven't been there. You've ruined my system. What do you do with those ones?

18:30Do you just throw them at them and they run off crying? I suppose if I got one now, it would go on the filing cabinet along with the Camden Town Alvin cover fridge magnets. I've permitted one from Peru because it's quite cool, but I still hate myself a bit for having it on the fridge because I haven't been. Well, you have to go to Peru just to cheer yourself up about that. Exactly. I even have a whole system for car stickers as well. I've been getting the vehicle stickers now, which show the different towns that you've driven the vehicle into. So I've got an SUV which has space on the back for... We went to a town in the door door, a town called Dom in France, very picturesque town. We went to St. Marlo, so we got one there. And then this summer when I was in Montana, they had a vehicle sticker for the Lewis and Clark caverns which we went to, which was cool, so I bought it. And then I've just even though I've been to that place, or something like this car, this car has not been to that place. I'm defiling St. Marlo and Dom by adding this. Well, you know what you can do is you can just affix that sticker

19:31to your filing cabinet using your Com Dom market magnets. Well, the good news, Helen, is I have a second car that run around the Seattle. Oh, okay, for all the incontroquential stickers. And it went on there. It's the obvious solution to this part. I'm not breaking a rule there because that car is for the places that I have been, but not in any car that I own, whereas the other car is for places I've been in that car. Like, say, none of this matters to anyone else in the world. It's a real insight. And are you allowed? Okay, so sometimes people come and stay with us in Vancouver, because it's quite a nice place for a holiday. And there are also holiday magnet people. And they are like, okay, I've bought what I thought would be the magnet. But now I've seen this other one with a bear on. Oh, man. Am I allowed to magnet? No, you're not. No, you're not. You are, I'll tell you what you're allowed. You're allowed one that says Vancouver, one that says British Columbia, and one that says Canada. They can all be from the same shop. That's fine. Lavish. Lavish amount of magnitude. You're not allowed three magnets that say Vancouver, no? So if I go back to the same place, I mean, this is so I've been to Dubai twice.

20:33The first time I got myself an Atlantis magnet for the Atlantis Hotel, which is that big sort of vacancy thing with the hole in the middle of it. But then the second time I went, I was like, oh, my God, they've got this blingy gold one that is like hilariously Dubai in every way. I want that. Thank God it says Dubai and not Atlantis. Imagine if it said Atlantis. I couldn't have two that said Atlantis. Well, can you just decide at home after which of the two magnets for the same place you're going to display? Yes, I suppose that is the reserve option. We wouldn't allow it because it would be really breaching the law. Well, again, I've been to South End multiple times because we have relatives in South End. I've got one that says South End. I've got one that says what's the she she plays that's next to South End called, I've got it in my head. Leon C? Thank you. I've got one that says Leon C. I've got one that says Essex, but I will not permit myself to have two from South End, which is good because the one I've got from South End is the magnet. It is shaped like a plate of fish and chips. Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

21:33Although not a patch on my pride and joy, which is the one from Marbella, which is a studdingly recreated scale model of a bubbling Paya la pan. Oh, wonderful. Yellow rice, gugliad shrimp. But what if you don't get a magnet from a place you have been to where you don't get a sticker that your car deserves? Yes. What happens to the system then? Will I permit someone to buy me one retrospectively or buy one online or something? Or just nothing. Is nothing acceptable? Oh, nothing, nothing's totally acceptable, yes. OK, just checking, just checking. But it does itch at me. So for example, when I first got a job at Radio 4 and I was proud to work in the building, I noticed that the BBC shop was selling BBC Radio 4 magnets. And there was a part of me that was like, I know those are for the tourists that are doing the tour, but they're never going to give me a Radio 4 magnet. I want a Radio 4 magnet. I'm just going to have to buy a Radio 4 magnet. And this is like that battle with yourself of like, I know I don't need it, but there's a part of me that wants it now,

22:35so I'm going to have to buy it. You're allowed to have things. Yeah. Answer me this is sponsored by Kozy Earth. Oli, my life has changed. Now that I own a Kozy Earth towel, it is a revelation to me. It's like hugging a beautiful cloud around myself that also drives my body. That's nice. Having the spa-like result, like quality of a fine towel at home. A thing about the Salzman's, or at least something that I inherited from my parents, is incredibly old towels. Yeah. I did inherit a towel from my great aunt in the early 90s that I kept growing for at least another 30 years, till bits were dropping off it. So I thought of my previous towel as like a new towel, and I actually got it 15 years ago. And so now I have a new new towel, I'm like, my God, I think this has changed me, or rather, I need to change to be good enough for this towel. Even my drier fluff feels more luxe. Oversized ultraplush and completely built for your best summer days. Head to kozyearth.com and use our code answer

23:37for an exclusive 20% off. That's code answer for an exclusive 20% off. And if you see a post-purchase survey, mention that you heard about kozyearth right here. Low energy, unfocused, foggy. You might be dehydrated. Gatorade zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body, with a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration, consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist. We talked in onc-minus episode 421 about conductor blints. Whether there is a guardrail to stop conductors toppling off and we have heard this. Hello, Helen and Ollie. It's Laura calling from Ottawa. I am a professional violinist

24:39and I played in orchestras for many years and I have not ever seen a conductor fall off the podium, although some have come close. But once when I was in youth orchestra, I went to Ann's Alberta for a big youth orchestra festival and the composer conducted us. He had very beautiful, longish, straight red hair that fell in front of his face and he would use his baton to move his hair out of his face and I was so nervous that he was going to stab himself in the eye with his baton. It was very distracting. Another time this was not an orchestra I was in but this is an orchestra in Ottawa. Many of the musicians in the orchestra sit on risers so not exactly as high as the podium but that's just to improve the sight lines in particular if they're in the back. So the back of the strings and the brass might be on risers. And in this particular case, the trombones were on a riser

25:40and one of the trombone players fell backwards. There was no guardrail. There was I think just like a little lip for the chair and he fell backwards and he was very seriously injured as a result of this fall and I believe some changes were made to the risers after that. So there are lots of perils with being a performer and being elevated. I never thought about a conductor maybe poking their eye out. No. That's conducting. Also, if you're a trombonist, people probably think you're a bit of a diva if you like belt yourself in. Do you want to mean like it's you're not the star usually and you're at the back. You know, making a big thing about, oh, I don't mind fall backwards, you're making sound pressures and yet very serious injury could happen. Well, more likely to result from your trombone particularly if you strap a knife to the slidey bit. Ian McKellen fell off stage last year, didn't he? Oh, gosh, Ouch, because a fall at his age can really do so much damage. Yeah. So apparently he, when he fell off stage,

26:40he doesn't remember saying this, but it was reported that when he fell off the stage, he shouted out to the audience, my neck is broken, I'm dying. Was that in character? Was that the next line in the play and he's such a professional? He just kept going. No, no, in fact, very amateurish to abandon the role at that point, Serian, disgusting. Oh, I expect the show must go on to be in your blood. You want your money back and you weren't even there. Prospero doesn't fall over at this point. Might have broken up my A level English if he had. You know, I might have enjoyed the film Tarmor if it'd been Kate Blanchett falling off Plint. No, no, that's interesting because we watched the first five minutes of that and my wife was like, yeah, not for me, can we watch something else? And I was like, really, you sure? It's supposed to be great. She was nominated for an Oscar. Yeah, I just don't like it. And I've never gone back myself to watch it. In my opinion, which I know many do not share, it was a not very good film, masquerading as a good film, like jupping people into thinking it was a good film. So I think you'll find not watching it.

27:41But also I think if she didn't enjoy the first five minutes, she probably won't start enjoying it at a later point. Whereas you might. Now, remember when I said I couldn't bear my father snoring? Yes, he was sharing a room somewhere on a trip. Yes, this is in a recent episode, but an anecdote from some time ago, yes. And I said that I sort of focused on the fact that the sound of his snoring made me realize that he was very much alive and in the room, and that somehow got me through it. That was very sweet, I thought. Well, Lola in Seattle says Oli's story about how he overcame his frustration with his father snoring was both touching and recognizable to me. Since childhood, I've sometimes felt a sudden and visceral feeling of rage when hearing the sound of someone eating. Yeah, that's misophonia. I have since early childhood often felt a deliciously tingly and pleasurable sleepiness when hearing certain soft sounds, especially the pop of consonants when hearing people speaking a language I can't hear well or don't understand, and other soft sounds like the scratch of a pencil on paper,

28:42or someone quietly telling the page of a book. This is ASMR stuff, isn't it? Yeah. Since then, she says that my negative reactions to eating sounds were a mild form of what people refer to as misophonia and my positive reactions to other sounds, constitute what is known as ASMR. The reason I mention all this is because, she says, I was able to overcome my mild misophonia using the very technique that Oli describes. Oh, cool. By focusing on feeling love for the person making the sounds, whether because they are a beloved friend or family member or simply because they are after all a human in a body, eating food, and that's a beautiful thing, really. Um, I mean, steady on. It's a thing. It's okay. It probably sounds polyanna-ish, but if I do that little mental exercise when I'm having a negative misophonic reaction, my sensation literally flips to a sense of pleasure. Why would it turn around? That never happened to me. I never had pleasure. Seriously, just endurance. It's as if I can magically change my misophonia into an ASMR response,

29:43just by thinking about it differently. That is fascinating. Helen, are you aware of other examples of people who can turn negative responses to positive ones and has this ever been used as a part of therapy for misophonia? Yes, because my friend Jane Gregory is a therapist and an expert on misophonia, which she has, and she's written a very useful book about it, called Sounds Like Misophonia, How to Stop Small Noises from Causing Extreme Reactions. I do recommend that book, if you have misophonia, but also if you live with someone or spend a lot of time with someone who has misophonia, so you understand they're not being punicoty at you for having eating sounds. It's kind of more than that. And I interviewed her about it for the illusionist a few years ago, and she did talk about how she would do this thing called opposite action, where you'd feel the reaction coming along like this outsized reaction to the noises. But if you know that is not what was required by the situation, you do the exact opposite. So she was like, I knew my husband wasn't making eating sounds deliberately to make me angry or upset,

30:43and I knew that he couldn't help it. So I would just gaze lovingly at him, and it didn't make me enjoy the sound, but I stopped acting like he was doing it deliberately to hurt me, because obviously he wasn't. And it was similar with her children as well. She was like, one of them kept eating with their mouth open, and I was like, oh, table manners means you shut your mouth, but really it was for me. And then they were like stressed by my reaction to their meeting. And they were like, I'm really sorry, but it's really uncomfortable for me to eat with my mouth closed. And she was like, that made me reframe my responses to their noises, because it's not, again, not their fault. Yeah, but to make yourself reprogrammed to the extent where you actually enjoy a thing that you actively hate is very difficult, isn't it? It's one thing to kind of minimize it, like I say, to endure it, but to actually completely change the way you perceive it, is your sort of playing a trick on yourself. That's very impressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe those parts of the brain, the mesophonia part and the ASMR part are very close, and you just like managed to form a different neural pathway.

31:45Well, I think what's fascinating about people generally being more open about their kind of mental quirks, I guess, in our lifetimes, is that, you know, makes you look back on your own behavior, doesn't it? And there were so many things that I did that I thought were unique to me in some way or rare, are just like commoners' mark. I had a lot of OCD tendencies as a child. I did do the thing and never spoke of it ever, of like, prophesizing doom if I didn't do a specific sequence of actions, you know, flicking the light off, that sort of thing. Yeah. Which again, like, very, very common amongst children. But at the time, I was like, I'm the only person who thinks this one. I'm the only person who thinks, unless I make this noise now, someone's gonna die. And then you were like, oh, that's the thing that loads of people's brains do. And it's amazing. Some people just completely grow out of it, and some people have to go through therapy to change the way they perceive the world. But it's innate in so many of us, you know. Yeah. Also, on snoring, I was speaking to a guy who's on Monjaro the other day, and he said that that has stopped him snoring according to his wife. Is that because his body has changed size

32:47or something else? It's something else that I found interesting. Like, if it was just that he'd lost weight, I was like, okay, well, we know that if you lose weight, you're less likely to snore. But apparently it happened instantly. Like, he'd take him a jar of once, and he'd stop snoring. And you know, he looked into it because like, that can't be, I haven't lost any weight. So why is it doing that? And it's, he presumes, but you know, other people have documented this that it's because it's anti-inflammatory and it kind of immediately goes to the tongue. And so your airway has changed before anything else, before you start losing weight. And like, immediately he stops snoring. Anyway, I deliberately didn't tell my wife because I don't want her to have another reason to start secretly injecting me with Muncharo, also sleep. Ha ha ha. Into the eye. Ha ha ha. Apparently also, meast phony is more likely to happen, depending on who's doing it. So like, if you hear the sound of someone eating in a way you find disgusting and you turn around, and it's not your partner, but it's your baby, you're like, oh, that's fine. I feel fine about it now. Or it's your dog or it's tortoise. So it's often like really attached to certain people. Yes, smells totally, I relate there.

33:48I know that smells a lot sounds, but again, when it's the dog, I'm like, oh, it's the dog. You walk in, you're like, oh, God, this room stinks. What the fuck's happened here? It's always you, fine, okay. No, well, that is. Thank you so much for your feedback on previous episodes, Advanced Me This. Yes, there will be another edition of Answer Us Back in a month's time. And we need to fill it with your feedback. And thank you, by the way, to Tom, who got in touch to say that if you just search for R-O-L on BBC Sounds, then you get back my podcast, Rollercoaster, Universal's Bedfordshire Journey. I was speculating last episode where you actually had to type in the whole of that composite title, but apparently not, R-O-L will do it. So thank you, Tom. You know, I've never tried typing AMT into a pod catcher where I wonder if it would return or show you as the top result. The acronym, yeah. I can do that right now if you want to do some live. Yeah, Gonzo Generalism, why not? Here it comes. It does, it does. It does. And the titles. Because it's in the show titles, isn't it? You're absolutely right. That's the reason, you're... Ah.

34:48There we go anyway. Important. Yes, supply us some questions for the next edition of Answer Me This as well. Otherwise, we'll just be in the sound of Helen and I googling ourselves as he wha- Oh my god. The next episode of Answer Me This with your new questions will be 24th September, 2026. So join us again for that. Bye. Have a lovely, answer me this. Have you heard that McDonald's spicy chicken with nuggets made with spicy tempura and a blend of aged cayenne are back. Remember to grab a few extra napkins. Bottom up, buh-buh-buh. For a limited time at participating McDonald's. Experience a membership that backs what year building with American Express Business Platinum. Get two times membership rewards points per dollar on eligible purchases and key business categories, as well as on each eligible purchase of $5,000 or more, on up to $2 million in eligible purchases per calendar year. American Express Business Platinum. There's nothing like it. Terms apply. Learn more at americanexpress.com slash business-platinum.