August 2021 marked the final episode of my favorite podcast, Answer Me This! Do yourself a favor and check it out.
What’s so good about it?
Two friends, Helen & Olly, having a conversation and answering listener questions. Sometimes mediated by a third (disembodied) voice, Martin the Sound Man.
They answered a lot of questions that were a Google-search away, but they also handled quite a few that were particularly curly, or covered social situations that were tricky to navigate. Not so easy to Google!
They have great chemistry and provide lots of laughs. They also sing their Squarespace ads and have interesting home-made jingles throughout the show in different musical genres - my favorite was the Björk-style jingle.
Staying faithful
I ventured into many and varied podcasts after finding AMT. I recall long relationships with This American Life, the Savage Lovecast, The Moth, and 99% Invisible.
I have long since moved away from them, but always kept AMT in my feed.
Retrospective
In recent years they moved to a monthly cadence. To fill out the feed, they started doing a ‘retrospective episode’ every other week, where they republished an old episode with an introduction at the top of the show taking a look back at their younger selves.
An interesting take on cancel culture and viewing things from a more mature perspective. I went through a similar process when I recently moved my blog from Wordpress to GitHub Pages. Looking back on posts from five years ago—do I still stand by what I said then?
Recommendation
I love this podcast. I’m sad it’s over but I’m happy for anyone just discovering it. You have many pleasurable hours of listening to look forward to.
