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Behold! Rob the Balloon Artiste, who featured in AMT405, has only gone and done a balloon portrait of us after Marc Chagall’s painting The Promenade! A very impressive technical and artistic feat, as well as a pretty accurate likeness (Martin the Sound Man appears in the form of headphones).

So that’s exciting. As are AMT407‘s topics of inquiry:

lobster mating rituals
the lies of Phoebe from Friends
cartoon anvils
suncream smell
malepolish
Judi Dench at Disney World
refusing to be recruited to your coworker’s MLM
the inverse relationship at coffee shops between nice coffee and comfortable seating
stock cube variety packs
and
the AMT cut of Friends.

Plus: Olly delivers expert voiceover tips; Helen delivers dating advice from Andrea Silenzi of Why Oh Why podcast; and Martin delivers a charming song about animals that mate for life. MICE?!

Got questions for us? Send them in writing or voice note to answermethispodcast@googlemail.com – remember to include the formula “Helen and/or Olly, answer me this”, and let us know a name (pseudonyms are fine) and pronouns to use for you. Next episode will land in your podfeed 31 July 2025.

Become a patron at patreon.com/answermethis to help with the continuing existence of AMT, and to get an ad-free version of the episode, plus bonus material culled from the show, and our live video question-answering session Petty Problems.

This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating and running your online empire. Go to squarespace.com/answer, have a play around during the two-week free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, get a 10% discount on your first purchase of a website or domain with the code ANSWER.

Check out our other work:

Olly is hosting a four-part BBC Sounds series about the building of a new Universal Studios theme park in Bedfordshire! Listen here. He also has his daily podcast Today in History with the Retrospectors, and a monthly magazine show The Modern Mann, both of which you can find along with his other work at OllyMann.com. 

Helen‘s entertainment podcast about language, The Allusionist, is BACK with a season about four-letter words; she and Martin are also doing a live show next week with Material Girls podcast (FKA Witch, Please) so get tickets at theallusionist.org/events. And their exquisite composition Souvenirs will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 4 at 16:00 on 22 July 2025, and be available online via the BBC thereafter.

Martin‘s other sounds include songs, available at PaleBirdMusic.com, his completed Tom Waits podcast Song By Song at SongBySongPodcast.com, and his experimental fiction podcast Neutrino Watch at neutrinowatch.org.

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