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00:09 This podcast was recorded at State Library Victoria on Aboriginal land, the land of the Wurunjeri people of the Kulin Nations. We pay our respects to their elders past and present.

00:21 (Piano music)

00:30 PENNY: Welcome to In Those Days. I've got Christina Adams here with me. Hello Christina.
CHRISTINA: Hi Penny Tangey, how are you?
PENNY: I'm good. I'm always excited to be talking about Trove. Now one thing I wanted to talk to you about today is we mainly talk about the newspapers in Trove, the digitised newspapers. There's a whole lot of other stuff as well. But the exciting thing about the newspapers is. It's not static.
CHRISTINA: Right.
PENNY: Did you know that they're always adding, they're always digitising more publications?
CHRISTINA: I did not know that Penny.
PENNY: There's always new material in there. So if you don't find what you want one day, look again in 6 months, it might be there. And so for example, they put out a list in February of 20 new publications that have been digitised. And I'm quite excited about a couple of them. One of them is the Blackwood Magazine.
CHRISTINA: Right.
PENNY: Because Blackwood is the suburb where my husband Lincoln grew up. So I think there might be some interesting things in there. Blackwood South Australia. It's where the Hilltop Hoods are from.
CHRISTINA: Oh look, lots of trivia happening here.
PENNY: Cos he went to school with them and it's ah, yeah, it's a very kind of conservative suburb, nothing ever changes and they have a bakery there that's called the Conventional Bakery.
CHRISTINA: Good. Don't want to go crazy at the bakery.
PENNY: It's conventional.
CHRISTINA: I bet it's a good one though.
PENNY: It probably is. It's probably just got all your standards.
CHRISTINA: Great lamingtons and
PENNY: And a Boston bun.
CHRISTINA: Yep. Everyone loves a Boston bun.
PENNY: Cos it's conventional.
CHRISTINA: Yep.
PENNY: And there's also going to be, they've digitised the Colonial Times and Tasmanian Advertiser. And what's interesting about this is it goes back to 1825.
CHRISTINA: That's a long time ago.
PENNY: Digitisation, it's a lot of work, so Trove usually partners with other community organisations and things to get it all done. And I really appreciate them doing that.
CHRISTINA: I'm glad you do. I do as well.
PENNY: Thank you.
02:23 (Piano music)
PENNY: Our guest today is someone I met doing comedy probably 20 years ago. She is a TV writer, she's a funny lady, she's a very experienced podcaster herself, so I am a little bit nervous about having her here. It is Vaya Pashos.
VAYA: Oh, it's a thrill. You can use the parlance of this podcast and say I was a comedienne.
PENNY: She's listened!
CHRISTINA: Double 'n' 'e'.
VAYA: You just add a bit of flair to the end of the word.
PENNY: And so my first question is always, have you used Trove much Vaya?
VAYA: Oh, I love Trove. I love Trove. Not recently, but in one of my TV writing jobs, well it was not writing, it was coordinating. Script coordinating. It's my favourite job I've ever had, and probably will ever have. I got to be the script coordinator on the second season of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. The ABC period drama set in late 1920s Melbourne. In a lot of my tasks I had to just check the scripts and proof read them. One of the fun tasks I would get given is sometimes the script producer would tell me to fact check certain period details. And the fastest way to get a confirmation is just to find reference to something in a Trove article, in a newspaper article of the time. So I would often would just type in 'Did they have Aspirin?' and just type that in.
PENNY: And the 1920s is like peak, I reckon for Trove because a lot of things were still being published. There weren't many other ways of communicating. They didn't have television they didn't have, even radio not as much.
VAYA: And turns of phrase is a big one as well. So would this character say that expression and you'd just try and find examples. Because sometimes we use an expression every day and you look it up and you realise it's 1950s American slang.
PENNY: Things like okay, I think the word okay is actually relatively recently used and things like that.
VAYA: I think my dad will say that the ancient Greeks invented that, ola kala. All's well. Don't Trove that. So I often, and I would waste a lot of time and I would often offer new suggestions 'Oh what if she's cooking this recipe?' 'No, we don't need that right now.
CHRISTINA: Settle down. Settle down.
VAYA: Stay in your lane.
PENNY: I love it. And so now you work for quiz shows.
VAYA: Yeah it's this interesting niche that popped up. For awhile, I think the Australian TV landscape just hops on a bandwagon and for awhile it was cooking shows and then suddenly quiz shows exploded. I mean, they've always been around. You know, a new crop, cropped up and I had come out of working in radio and wanted to do some research, and get some work as a researcher in TV as a steppingstone into writing. I started as a verifier on 'The Chase'. Penny's familiar with that line of work as well.
PENNY: Yeah, Vaya actually was very nice, and she got me jobs in quiz shows.
CHRISTINA: And then you got me jobs in quiz shows. So. How quizzical.
VAYA: It's quite contagious.
PENNY: It's been a cascading
VAYA: It's wonderful for the industry. Dramas are thinning out so it's nice to at least have a bit of light entertainment out and about. I loved the idea of, well I've always been walking around, insight into my personality, even as a kid I would just walk around and just come up with quiz. Like, I'd learn a fact and I'd think 'That would make a nice answer to a question.'
CHRISTINA: Yeah nice.
VAYA: If I was on TV or, if I was
CHRISTINA: Are you an only child Vaya?
VAYA: Yeah, well, for about a decade.
CHRISTINA: Yeah. Solid decade of quiz making.
VAYA: You just go around, and you go 'Oh cantaloupe. That would be a good answer to a question.' Or, I loved the game Scattergories.
CHRISTINA: I love Scattergories.
VAYA: You could just play that by yourself anytime you want.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, I'm also an only child. I mean I know you're not now.
VAYA: It's only child energy.
CHRISTINA: You really have to work out ways of entertaining yourself.
VAYA: Fact checking on The Chase, you've just gotta verify that the question is true, which, on the surface seems straight forward but then you go down many rabbit warrens and find out there's many possible answers to a question.
PENNY: That's one of the biggest things, isn't it? Cos you've gotta check that there's not another answer that's also correct.
CHRISTINA: I used to just write the questions and submit them and move on. Glad I didn't have to check anything.
VAYA: It's a healthy way of going about it. So there's things like the word 'cement' is the answer but what if they say 'concrete' and so you've gotta rule out concrete. Or do you accept concrete? And you can go down quite a journey.
PENNY: Yeah, and I found when I was doing it that I was being, I often felt like I was being very pedantic, and a little bit mean sometimes to the writer. Particularly I would find myself if I ever started a sentence with 'Technically'. 'Technically'. And I just had this little voice in my head going 'Technically'. (mocking voice)
CHRISTINA: It sort of reminds me of high school debating when you come out with the Oxford Dictionary defines.
VAYA: Or the actually gold standard in fact-checking is 'Well if you look at the original source of this quotation’.
PENNY: And ever so often I'd be like, 'Turn the page of the book'.
VAYA: Or 'Read to the bottom of the article'.
PENNY: Exactly. It says the opposite.
VAYA: And so from there, you start getting really pedantic and you suggest alternatives in your little chat box, like when I was suggesting extra things for Phryne Fisher to do and say, I didn't stay in my lane. 'What if just wrote it this way?' And then I did that so often that they're like, 'Here, just write questions'.
CHRISTINA: Give her something to do.
VAYA: And just a hot tip if you are an up and comer in any sort of industry, they'll tell you not to do that. But you have to do that a little bit to show that you can do other things.
PENNY: Yeah, and then you worked for Hard Quiz as well, where they were very encouraging of people adding their extra take on things, I found, when I was there.
VAYA: Yeah. It reminded me of when I worked in commercial radio and they used, the bosses used to say, 'We'll take ideas from anywhere. If you're the receptionist and you've got a good idea for a promotion'. They said that but, they wouldn't.
CHRISTINA: No.
VAYA: They wouldn't take a receptionist's promotional campaign. Yeah, but at Hard Quiz they're happy to have people collaborate and express interest and I jumped in right from season 1, it was right at the end of season 1 and there was only one topic left for me to work on. I was filling in for someone who had moved on. And they handed me the, at Hard Quiz, you're given, the contestant submits an expert topic. And they answer questions about their own specialty topic and the topic I was given to write questions around was 'Galaxies'.
CHRISTINA: What a great, great topic.
VAYA: Just some scope there. And, but I had come from The Chase, and the format of The Chase is they ask about 200 questions an episode, because it's rapid fire. And Hard Quiz is much slower paced so you've just got time to research the ins and outs of all the galaxies and just took me down some places. I wouldn't have gone to Trove for that sort of research. It is very helpful for historical topics and to really pin things down. Also, it can be tricky because when you are going to something like a newspaper article from 1935 or something, you don't know that the contestant is familiar with that document, so you don't want to be tricking people by saying 'Ha ha! If you really looked deep down you'll this is incorrect'. So, you want to make sure, okay if you get to that point, that you're ruling out certain answers that you go, 'Well, maybe this is actually too hard'. That they won't know this, unless they've done dig deep.
PENNY: Judging the hardness of questions was like a big thing that we talked about a lot. Like is this a very hard question or just a hard question. It's really
VAYA: We still have, it's done 8 seasons now, and how hard a question is still argued about on the daily and there is a rating system. Like level 1 to level 5. Level 1 is meant to be your pub trivia.
CHRISTINA: Yep. And I'm not even that good at that.
VAYA: I don't like pub trivia. And Level 5, these experts are so expert at their field that there's no way to wipe out someone who's winning so well, that what can we do? We give them this rating 5 question. But that's, people aren't computers. And it's very nervous under stage lights and TV lights to
CHRISTINA: Yeah, to recall a really random fact.
PENNY: I think the show does want to highlight people's knowledge. If you're just asking them questions that they just don't know or. It's the best is, I reckon some of the best questions that I've seen are when the person kind of talks themselves into the answer. Like, they don't know first off and then they think about it, and they talk about it a little bit out loud.
CHRISTINA: Not like a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire talking it through though. 'No stop padding it's like literally B, get on with it.'
VAYA: 'Yeah no, I wanna pay for my kitchen renos.' So, we do, the show does like to celebrate the contestant's specialty area and also, early on, and typical quiz shows they target quiz enthusiasts, trivia enthusiasts. With Hard Quiz people just enjoy sharing their quirky interests and you're not going to get contestants who have been on TV before necessarily or have ever done a quiz, or sometimes their kids have nominated them because 'Oh my mum really loves this movie, she's got to talk about it'. And you want to celebrate those people who are just jumping in and having a go along with an astrophysicist who's putting in galaxies.
12:09 PENNY: So what I think we were going to do today in terms of Trove is I've actually looked up a historical quiz.
VAYA: Oh yes.
PENNY: So this is from 1943.
CHRISTINA: Yes.
PENNY: Now obviously a lot was happening in the world in 1943.
VAYA: People needed to decompress somehow.
PENNY: I don't want you to worry that because we are doing
CHRISTINA: Little bit concerned
PENNY: A Quiz for Ladies.
CHRISTINA: Gosh I'm glad it's not a gender whatever quiz, because honestly if it had man-questions we couldn't answer them.
PENNY: We wouldn't know.
CHRISTINA: We wouldn't know.
PENNY: These are questions we should know because we're still ladies and nothing has changed, obviously. Now this quiz was published actually in America in Liberty magazine. But it's in Trove because it was reproduced in the Gippsland Times.
CHRISTINA: Lots of cooking time questions, I think.
VAYA: Preserves.
PENNY: Yes. The quiz was written by a woman called Princess Alexandra Kropotkin.
CHRISTINA: Is that a self-title princess or?
PENNY: She was genuinely Russian royalty.
CHRISTINA: Or was she?
VAYA: Can I just?
PENNY: Not Anastasia.
VAYA: This has reminded me of my one, not my one, but this glaring factual error that I didn't pick up in Miss Fisher's. Is, there's an episode where Phryne just regales this time she was in St Petersburg and this antic she got up to. And it wasn't called St Petersburg when she would have been there. It would have been Leningrad.
PENNY: So did people, did you get some tweets, 'Technically'.
VAYA: I think we had a tweet. And it was one of those ones, it was a rewrite like the day before they shot it. But when you said Russian then I just got taken back to that place. I still think about it every day.
PENNY: Ah, so she was actually Russian royalty. Her father actually became an anarchist and so he dropped his title.
CHRISTINA: When do you know that you're an anarchist?
PENNY: When you reject hierarchy.
VAYA: Harry. When you, he's still got his title.
PENNY: He's not an anarchist.
CHRISTINA: Working towards anarchy and then have achieved anarchy.
PENNY: We are now anarchy. He went into exile and I think she was actually born overseas but she went back to Russia, she was there for the Revolution. She went to jail. She got out of jail. She comes back to America.
CHRISTINA: She met Rasputin. It was all happening.
PENNY: She probably did.
CHRISTINA: Who wouldn't have? He would have been everywhere.
PENNY: In America, then she started writing magazine columns and she translated 'War and Peace.'
CHRISTINA: That's a big undertaking.
VAYA: Wow.
PENNY: And she wrote a cookbook. A Russian cookbook.
VAYA: I love that she translated War and Peace and did other stuff.
CHRISTINA: And she bred guppies.
PENNY: So she kind of did it, did it all. So she's written this quiz. And is she a good quiz writer? We're going to go through these questions and if Vaya if you have any feedback on these, if you, have any thoughts. Or Christina as well.
VAYA: I mean I will.
CHRISTINA: You'll take ideas from anywhere.
PENNY: But also I want you to work as a team and we will be scoring you.
VAYA: Okay, good. So we answer as a team. Like modern children's board games where you work together against the common enemy.
PENNY: That's right. Love that. So, you don't have to like buzz in or anything.
CHRISTINA: Okay, good.
PENNY: There were actually 31 questions in the quiz. Too many.
VAYA: That's a lot.
PENNY: That's my feedback. Too many.
VAYA: That's like round 1 and round 3 of The Chase final chase and
PENNY: So we're going to do 10. Alright.
15:36 Number 1. "Does the average woman tend to be bowlegged or knock-kneed?"
VAYA: Okay, look, my first point of feedback here is that, it's a binary option for the answer.
PENNY: Yeah, it's like 50:50 but it should be a 33.333 recurring.
VAYA: It's just
CHRISTINA: There's a lot of concerns with that question. I feel
PENNY: It's the assumption that there's definitely something wrong with them.
CHRISTINA: Yeah.
VAYA: So they should be.
PENNY: "Does the average woman tend to be bowlegged or knock-kneed?"
Knock-kneed is when you put your knees together
VAYA: Knock 'em
PENNY: And your feet are out. And bow-legged is you put your feet together and your knees will be separated.
VAYA: It depends if they've done callisthenic training.
CHRISTINA: Or ballet.
PENNY: Would you like to just choose? I mean, I can put down
CHRISTINA: I feel knock-kneed possibly. Because I feel like bow-legged is a bit of a statement really.
VAYA: I feel bow has to be bred into you or taught.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, I feel like bow-legged suggests you're a bit loose. Or you just got off your horse.
VAYA: Well, we'll go knock, because maybe it's more naturally knocked and then they
CHRISTINA: And then it gets knocked out of them and they become bowed.
PENNY: And they de-knock. Okay alright.
VAYA: Do we get to know at the end? Is that what happens.
PENNY: I think we'll do it at the end.
CHRISTINA: Okay.
17:00 PENNY: Question number 2
"When should a personal letter be left unsealed?"
VAYA: Oh, well.
CHRISTINA: That's quite an open question.
VAYA: I mean if you're not putting it through the post and you're concerned about things falling out of it.
CHRISTINA: Maybe if it's being handed to the person in person.
VAYA: Yes, because then they don't have to fiddle around with it.
PENNY: I think. I'll give you a little clue. The word 'when' is deceptive. Cos that suggests some kind of temporal
CHRISTINA: It's not like, 'on the 19th of May'
PENNY: Really more of a category thing. So it's like a type of letter.
VAYA: Okay. Unsealed. I mean, we don't even do letters anymore.
CHRISTINA: No.
VAYA: I'm thinking like a thankyou note or a
CHRISTINA: yeah. Look, yeah a thankyou note. A thankyou note's great. I'll go with that.
17:52 PENNY: Questions number 3.
"What is the greatest monument ever erected by a husband in memory of his wife?"
VAYA: I thought you were going to say in memory of his wang.
CHRISTINA: Yep, there's a lot going on.
PENNY: In memory of his penis. It's the Washington Monument. Look, this question, I did find working on quiz shows that often one of the goals was to just subtly mention penises.
CHRISTINA: Yeah. You've gotta bring them up whenever you can.
VAYA: It's not so much a goal but it's an added bonus if you can get a bit of
PENNY: I felt like 'oh this'll impress the bosses'.
CHRISTINA: Yep. They'll love it.
VAYA: No, it's more that I just wanted to make the people at the table laugh. That's an easy way to do it if you.
PENNY: I just knew that they liked it.
VAYA: So I feel like this is one of those classic, like a Grecian mythological statue or
CHRISTINA: Or did he just put up a bench in the garden.
PENNY: Bench is, I'm gonna say think bench. It's a monument, it's a big.
VAYA: And we're not talking in Australia. So this is, I like to plant a clue in the question of where we are and when we are.
CHRISTINA: Yes, it's very broad.
VAYA: When was this quiz published.
PENNY: 1943.
VAYA: Okay. '43. At this point it's the largest
PENNY: Well, it's the greatest, so it's a very subjective. She thinks it's great. Do we think it's great?
CHRISTINA: Maybe it's a fountain. We just don't know.
VAYA: The other problem is. Answering quiz questions is not my forte because I tend to, the information flies out of my head once I've dealt with it and then I move on.
PENNY: I mean I just Google. I mean, people will be like 'You must be great at trivia nights' it's like 'No I'm great a Google'.
VAYA: What's that, is there one in New South Wales that's like so-and-so's chair? Mrs, Mrs, oh what's her name? Mrs MacArthur's chair or something like that?
CHRISTINA: That sort of sounds, I'm just gonna agree because if we were at a pub quiz, I would, I'd just be having a drink at this point.
PENNY: Write it down, write it down.
VAYA: Because it's blank. 'Quick put something there.'
CHRISTINA: I like to scribe in a team event so I don't feel under pressure to actually answer anything. Yeah, so I'm contributing, but not intellectually.
PENNY: Exactly. Question 4.
VAYA: Is that what we're putting down? No, we can't put that down.
CHRISTINA: Yeah we can.
20:07 PENNY: We've done it. Question 4.
VAYA: I didn't even have the right name of the monument.
CHRISTINA: It's in the ballpark.
VAYA: Okay.
PENNY: "How can you keep liquid cooking in a pot from boiling over?"
VAYA: Lid.
CHRISTINA: Lid. Turn it down.
VAYA: It's hard because you're picturing yourself in your modern kitchen. And they, and that's not
CHRISTINA: No, and they probably couldn't turn it down. It was hot, or not.
VAYA: Put a tea towel over it. No, no, no.
CHRISTINA: I think a lid's a solid idea.
VAYA: Go with the lid, even if it's makeshift.
CHRISTINA: Or you could add something cool.
VAYA: That's a different answer Christina.
CHRISTINA: I know.
VAYA: We'll go with gut.
20:47 PENNY: Lid. Okay, now I put this question in as a bit of a treat because it's a literary question.
CHRISTINA: Oh, good.
PENNY: I thought you'd like it. Genuinely, I think it's a good question. Okay, Question 5.
"Which of the following authors were women: George Elliot, George Moore, George du Maurier, George Sand?"
VAYA: Oh, it's Elliot.
CHRISTINA: I think it's Elliot.
VAYA: Unless it's an all of the above, which is tricksy-dicksy.
PENNY: Okay.
VAYA: But I feel like all of the above probably wasn't an on-trend answer option.
CHRISTINA: No, I don't think so.
VAYA: Back then
CHRISTINA: No, I'm happy with George Elliot.
21:18 PENNY: George Elliot. Excellent. Question 6.
"What did women of the 1870's mean by a Grecian bend?"
VAYA: Oh dear.
CHRISTINA: Is this another phallic question?
VAYA: Grecian bend.
PENNY: You've got Greek heritage Vaya.
CHRISTINA: Lot of pressure.
VAYA: I do bend. Flexible. Grecian bend. It's not the? No, that's the key. It's not the key pattern is it? That's not really so much a bend. It's quite angular.
CHRISTINA: A Grecian bend.
PENNY: I'd never heard of it.
VAYA: Is it to do with a hairstyle, or a
CHRISTINA: A neck.
PENNY: A neck.
VAYA: To bend under the olive trees maybe. A place to duck your head under.
CHRISTINA: Maybe it's something curvy on a building.
VAYA: Oooh. Yeah like an arch.
CHRISTINA: One of those columns that's a bit hourglass.
VAYA: But they'd make it, there'd be a nice architectural name for it.
CHRISTINA: It wouldn't be hourglass.
VAYA: So again, there's not enough hints in that question. Cos they haven't given us any kind of industry
CHRISTINA: Any context
PENNY: I mean I guess this would have been in the, so this is like 70 years so I guess it's like asking us about the '50s.
CHRISTINA: Yep. Not really my niche area.
PENNY: But if someone asked you, like about a term from the '50s we would have more chance of knowing than we got of knowing this cos it's, you know, no-one we know was alive then.
VAYA: Is it, is it art, is it
CHRISTINA: A skirt. Who knows.
PENNY: Well, you guys just decide. See, I feel like I'm being mean. In Wax Quizzical the, Kyran doesn't know the answer so it's not. Because I know the answer so I'm like, I feel like I'm being superior when I shouldn't be.
VAYA: And I'm starting to get angry at you, even though you haven't written these.
PENNY: No, I want to stress I did not write these.
VAYA: Christina, what's your
CHRISTINA: I feel it might be something architectural.
VAYA: Yeah.
PENNY: It's an architectural
VAYA: Bend in the arch. I mean, arches have bends.
23:19 PENNY: It's an arch. I'll just put arch. Okay. Seven.
"To use for sterilizing, water must be how hot?"
VAYA: Boiling point?
CHRISTINA: Yeah. Is that 100 degrees.
VAYA: Yeah.
PENNY: Yes. At standard
CHRISTINA: Look at my science degree serving me well.
VAYA: Cos now they go, you can put things, you can put like bottles in the microwave now with a little. At K-mart you can buy like a sterilizing contraption and off it goes. You don't need to think.
CHRISTINA: No, ou don't have to boil the water and check the temperature.
23:44 PENNY: No, well you're not using a thermometer. Okay, question 8.
"Why did a woman's petty cash come to be known as pin money?"
VAYA: Oh, I love this.
CHRISTINA: Is that because she pinned it in her petticoat.
VAYA: Oh, that's beautiful Christina. I just love both of those. I love petty cash and I love pin money. I love that she had it. I love that she had to put it somewhere. I love that she got given it.
CHRISTINA: How did she get it? We all want to know.
PENNY: And pin money is, means money that you know you can spend on non-essential items basically, that was the idea of it. Good. That, that question really sort of invites a story doesn't it? Is that, I mean sometimes that's okay on a quiz show, and sometimes it's not?
VAYA: Well for Hard Quiz we definitely want a story. To the point where you think. Well the reason you choose words, and names for answers because they're attached to a great story. And you would naturally expect the contestant to bring that story to us when they're getting to their answer but if they just don't know you're just like, 'Oh no, you're not telling the really fun bit that I've found.' So then you try and build some of that into the question so that it's not lost.
CHRISTINA: Eek it out.
VAYA: Some quiz shows it's just 'Give me the answer. Get out.'
PENNY: Yeah, they only really want one or 2 words for the answer.
VAYA: But in this case I love it because even if we're wrong, I like Christina's version. So even if
CHRISTINA: I like it to.
VAYA: So even if the real answer is not as good.
CHRISTINA: I'm gonna attach to my answer anyway.
PENNY: And just start telling it as a fact at dinner parties.
CHRISTINA: I will.
25:18 PENNY: Question 9. Sorry about this one.
"Upon whose skin do cosmetic manufacturers test their products first?"
VAYA: Rats, mice.
CHRISTINA: Rabbits.
PENNY: You're coming up with a lot of small furry animals.
CHRISTINA: A lot of rodents. Pigs.
VAYA: That's where the expression lipstick on a pig.
CHRISTINA: Orphans on the streets of St Petersburg.
VAYA: I think you'll find. Technically. Well, I think rats and mice is where we went first. But again, that's maybe cos that's where all the '80s and '90s marketing came in about not doing that.
PENNY: There is another animal. And you were close.
CHRISTINA: With rabbits?
VAYA: With pigs.
CHRISTINA: Pigs.
PENNY: With pigs.
VAYA: Guinea pigs?
CHRISTINA: Oh yes.
VAYA: We got help there. But sometimes the host, they can't help themselves.
PENNY: They lead.
CHRISTINA: They lead. They lead us to the correct
VAYA: They are very gentle and warm sometimes.
26:16 PENNY: Question 10.
"Nearly all babies are born with eyes of what color?"
CHRISTINA and VAYA: Blue (together)
VAYA: They don't have a Grecian bend in those eyes.
CHRISTINA: No. Same with kittens.
PENNY: So how do you think you went out of 10?
CHRISTINA: Maybe a 4.
VAYA: A fifth. A 5, year. 50, I was gonna go, percent.
PENNY: Well, we'll see. I've done a bit of light verification but not. But you, I'm not
CHRISTINA: Well don't do heavy verification in front of other people. Bit uncomfortable.
PENNY: That's how I got the sack.
CHRISTINA: Yeah.
26:53 PENNY: Question 1.
"Does the average woman tend to be bowlegged or knock-kneed?"
VAYA: A real tough way to start this one.
PENNY: It was knock-kneed, you are correct. Now in real life, I think that might not be true. And or maybe
CHRISTINA: I'd like to see the stats on that.
PENNY: And I think maybe nutrition and childhood diseases
CHRISTINA: They all had rickets.
PENNY: Can affect that sort of thing.
CHRISTINA: Scurvy.
PENNY: And toddlers are always generally bow-legged and then they go knock-kneed and then generally people's legs straighten out.
VAYA: I haven't seen, my toddler's legs are always in all sorts of positions that I can't keep up with.
CHRISTINA: Hard to tell.
27:29 PENNY: And look if you are worried about your child's legs you can go and see a doctor you can also reflect on how boring it would be if everyone was the same. But I did find an article that made me think that she, she was wrong in saying that it was knock-kneed. Because I found this article from The Sunday Mail from the 28th of July in 1935:
"'Sydney girls have such shapely legs.' This is the unreserved opinion of a Sydney visitor, Prince Karl Leopold von Schoenburg-Waldenburg."
CHRISTINA: What a dirty creep.
VAYA: Lot of prince and princess action. Everyone getting around.
PENNY: I don't know if she knew him personally. But he said:
"'Yes, and their figures are wonderful, too, and their ability to dress well is beyond reproach.' he said today over a glass of gin and bitters.
CHRISTINA: Oh I think he'd had a few.
PENNY: "It's nice not to see any bow-legged or knock-kneed girls here."
VAYA: Oh wait, so you're not meant to be either?
PENNY: No.
CHRISTINA: No. Not according to Prince Wankypants.
PENNY: So, I think her answer, you know if she was in Sydney.
VAYA: I also think the Melbourne/Sydney rivalry runs so deep that I'm just immediately bitter. I'm like 'What's wrong with my shapely Melbournian legs.'
28:51 PENNY: What's wrong with Melbourne legs? Yeah, look, maybe when he came here he was all about the arse. Okay: "When should a personal letter be left unsealed". And this is when it's a letter of introduction.
VAYA: Oh, so this is when you're meeting someone you hand them a piece of paper first.
CHRISTINA: It's like a reference check.
PENNY: I found another article about it, which is from the South Western Times, from the 9th of June 1939 and it says:
"Etiquette of Introduction
No one worries very much about formality and etiquette in these days, but when there is a right and wrong way of doing a thing it always gives more satisfaction to do the correct thing."
VAYA: This would actually be quite useful for a-holes that refuse to use people's correct pronouns. You could just go, 'Here you go, you say what's on the piece of paper. And we just do it.'
CHRISTINA: And we all move on.
PENNY: And it will give you more satisfaction.
"When an introduction is being effected by means of a letter to be personally delivered, the letter should be handed in an unsealed 'envelope to the person to be introduced"
VAYA: Because then that would add an unnecessary level of stress, of fumbling
PENNY: OR stress. Also you don't want to be carrying around a letter to give to people that says 'Penny Tangey's a low dog. Don't talk to her.' You know, like,
CHRISTINA: You want to know that what's on the piece of paper is good.
PENNY: Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of rude to give someone a sealed envelope that says, that's got, 'Oh I've written some things about you to give to other people'. So you've got the opportunity.
VAYA: Also you don't want to be walking around carrying a letter opener, which could cause injury.
PENNY: Exactly. Yeah but cos letters of introduction used to be just the standard way of doing things. We don't really do it anymore but
CHRISTINA: It's more like a referee for a job and I have to say a lot of people would benefit from having an open letter because as someone who interviews people a lot, there's a lot of people who have obviously agreed to give a positive reference and do not do that and bag out people. It's horrific.
PENNY: You should just say no, you should find someone else. I guess it's awkward sometimes.
VAYA: Oh that's mean.
PENNY: I think you can damn people with faint praise but you can't bag them out.
VAYA: Or look, if you don't want to say no, just be
CHRISTINA: Be general.
VAYA: Broad strokes, basic
CHRISTINA: I can read between the lines.
VAYA: This person came to work and did the job and then went home. That's what you need, isn't it? That's what you pay for.
PENNY: Yeah, I think that's right. Though sometimes people do still do it with email. Do you ever get that where someone will e-introduce you and they'll CC the other person.
CHRISTINA: Oh yes, that's awkward.
PENNY: I think that still happens. I guess it's a carry-over.
VAYA: I'm happy for that to happen I just want them to not say 'e-meet'. Just say, 'Hi Vaya, nice to meet you.'
CHRISTINA: And if you're e-meeting does it have a hyphen?
VAYA: They do put a hyphen.
CHRISTINA: Capital 'e' just little 'e'.
VAYA: Just takes me out of the moment for a second.
CHRISTINA: I don't want to e-meet anyone.
31:44 PENNY: Okay guys. Question 3:
"What is the greatest monument ever erected by a husband in memory of his wife?"
VAYA: Embarrassed.
CHRISTINA: So many wrong things.
VAYA: I'm embarrassed about this.
PENNY: It was the Taj Mahal.
VAYA: Of course it was.
CHRISTINA: Why did you say, when I said 'bench' you were like, 'yep'.
PENNY: Princess Diana sat on the bench out the front.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, tenuous.
VAYA: I couldn't stop thinking about.
PENNY: Sorry about that!
VAYA: We have a tradition in Hard Quiz, my friend Adam Richard and I, worked on the show the whole time and it's shit statues and there is a shit bronze, there's a bronze Fonz, which we love and there's a bronze Diana and Dodi Al Fayed in a shopping mall. It's like in Harods or something and I was just thinking of bronze, I just thought of terrible bronze things and I knew it would have been something old-fashioned and
CHRISTINA: Big.
VAYA: Statuesque. Stately.
PENNY: You don't think of buildings as being monuments.
VAYA: No you forget.
PENNY: But, the problem as verifier that I have with this question is 'the greatest'. Like it's a very subjective
CHRISTINA: Subjective.
VAYA: I mean it's great. No argument.
PENNY: It is great. Is it the greatest? And I did find another article from the Cootamundra Herald from the 4th of February 1938. And it says:
"Because his wife was, particularly fond of mushrooms, a resident of Jeroslaw, Poland, has had a monument shaped like a large mushroom erected over her grave."
VAYA: That is great.
CHRISTINA: Was it a shitake mushroom?
VAYA: Portobello, bit of shade.
CHRISTINA: When I worked in hospitality I did appreciate the large number of people who would order something with a shit take mushroom.
PENNY: Did they like?
CHRISTINA: With no sense of irony. Just a shit take.
PENNY: 'I just have to be mature about it, and just say it.'
CHRISTINA: I'd go, 'Yep I'll get that for you.'
PENNY: I know what you meant. 'Technically, it's shitake.'
CHRISTINA: Yas.
PENNY: "The husband has also arranged for mushrooms to be grown on the plot of land surrounding the grave."
VAYA: Yeah, so you need to specify are we talking largest, tallest,
CHRISTINA: Fungal.
VAYA: Most opulent.
CHRISTINA: Most colourful.
PENNY: Or, or, pin it down to a source 'According to the, you know, Guinness Book of World Records' or
VAYA: According to the person sitting on the bench.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, absolutely.
34:01 Question 4
"How can you keep liquid cooking in a pot from boiling over?"
VAYA: God we were confident.
CHRISTINA: So confident.
PENNY: No, you're right. I could not agree with your, but, although if you put the lid on it and it's boiling toO vigorously it will just, I don't know. Her answer is "By floating a small bit of butter on top of the cooking liquid."
VAYA: Oh yum! That's way more fun.
CHRISTINA: Extra butter.
PENNY: But you know, you can use a wider pot, you can turn the heat down, you can take it off the heat.
CHRISTINA: Lots of options really.
PENNY: You can put cold water in it.
VAYA: Lots of footnotes. If you were writing a cookbook you'd have
PENNY: And she did! She wrote a Russian cookbook.
VAYA: She's just decided on her method and that's quiz question standard.
PENNY: Exactly, she's just decided. And in some ways, philosophically speaking, when you ask someone a question, you're really asking them 'What do you think, I think the answer is?'
CHRISTINA: Gosh you're clever Penny.
VAYA: Well actually, on TV, yes. I'm often yelling at the contestant behind the scenes, championing them. Like I'm barracking for them to get it right, but going 'What do you think we would ask on TV?' Sometimes they volunteer something that you think, 'That's great that you know that, but that's not interesting to the person at home.'
CHRISTINA: No, that's not TV worthy.
35:21 PENNY: Absolutely. Question 5:
"Which of the following authors were women". You said, it was "George Elliot, George Moore, George du Maurier
VAYA: Oh no.
CHRISTINA: Du Maurier.
VAYA: There's a Daphne du Maurier.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, that's why I suddenly jumped out of my seat.
VAYA: Is she his daughter? But now I'm just panicking because the question didn't ask us, didn't specify if there would be more than one.
PENNY: Vaya, you're right!
VAYA: Oh no!
CHRISTINA: We were so cocky.
PENNY: Do you want to add another one?
VAYA: I don't think it's du Maurier. What were the other last names?
PENNY: Moore and Sand.
VAYA: George Sand sounds like, like a Hallmark.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, go with that.
PENNY: Yeah, it's right. She was French.
VAYA: Sand (to rhyme with 'pond').
CHRISTINA: Sand (to rhyme with 'hand')
PENNY: How embarrassing.
VAYA: George Sand.
PENNY: George Sand. Would be so. Oh Jesus Christ.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, nice.
PENNY: Oh well.
VAYA: But I put the fault in the question there. They should have, because it's asking for more than one answer. And that's not weighted accurately.
36:21 PENNY: It wasn't clear. What did women, Question 6: "What did women of the 1870's mean by a Grecian bend?"
VAYA: Go on, put me out of my misery.
PENNY: So it was, when they wore bustles at the back.
VAYA: Bustles!
PENNY: And then they would tip forward, and so they would be at an angle.
CHRISTINA: And then they got scoliosis. Bustle induced scoliosis.
PENNY: There was a lot of articles in Trove mocking this trend and I would actually say, what did women call it, it was more like 'what did men call it'. Like men were like 'fashionable women are standing funny'. Basically. There was a lot like, there were poems and songs mocking the Grecian bend. You can pretty much only find it as, you don't find anyone writing in an article going, 'The Grecian bend is back in fashion', it's always 'Oh these stupid women with their Grecian bends'.
VAYA: And what's Grecian about it? Is it cos that's what, how Goddesses looked in their
PENNY: And there was this comic, which I'll show you, which is the sort of thing.
CHRISTINA: Oh yes.
VAYA: Oh yeah. Right. Oh.
PENNY: It's a picture. It's kind of like the evolution of mans thing but it's a woman, with a bustle bending over and eventually becoming a camel.
CHRISTINA: Hence the term, camel toe.
VAYA: Camel toe of the rear.
CHRISTINA: Yes.
PENNY: Yes, so.
VAYA: Yeah, thanks a lot men. Like, who were they putting that on for. To turn around and then make camel jokes.
PENNY: I think, the thing about that is that would have been a hot meme at the time. Because this is like from the 1870s and so
VAYA: In fact, that's very good meme-worthy. It's very simple. Clear.
PENNY: And you know, Origin of the Species had only been out for 15 years, so.
VAYA: On trend.
CHRISTINA: Much more exciting than finches.
38:03 PENNY: So good on them. Question 7: "To use for sterilising, water must be how hot?"
And you guys said boiling. I agree with you, it depends. But she said.
VAYA: Very?
PENNY: 220 degrees Fahrenheit, which is over boiling point.
CHRISTINA: Just to be sure.
PENNY: And you can't really get, unless she's talking about it being in
CHRISTINA: Lava
PENNY: Under pressure under some kind of equipment, you're not going to be able to get it over 100 degrees in your own home. Bacteria dies at much lower temperature than that. I don't know, did you get that right?
CHRISTINA: Hard to tell. We'll say we did.
VAYA: Because
PENNY: I would put that question in the bin. If someone sent that to me, I would be just like 'I'm not verifying this.'
CHRISTINA: To boil or not to boil.
PENNY: Once it gets to, once it boils, it's not gonna get any hotter.
CHRISTINA: No.
PENNY: But you can raise the boiling point by making the pressure
VAYA: I'm happy to go wrong with the Princesses standard there. I'm fine. I'm happy. She's given me the butter tidbit and I'm happy to take that home.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, I'm workshopping that.
39:13 PENNY: Wrong by the standards of the Princess. Question 8: "Why did a woman's petty cash come to be known as pin money?"
CHRISTINA: We like this one.
PENNY: She said "Because in olden times pins were so expensive that women spent much of their small change for them."
VAYA: Hairpins? Or sewing pins.
PENNY: Sewing pins. I believe sewing pins.
VAYA: See, Christina's answers better.
CHRISTINA: And we'll stick with that and make it historically semi-accurate.
PENNY: Though I, I don't even know if that's true. And this is often the problem with a lot of these origin stories. Cos they can be myths or no-one's actually really sure. Because I found this other article from the 8th of October 1927 on the origin of pin money.
"The origin of the term "pin money" was explained recently by a lecturer at the Summer School of the Drapers'- Chamber of Trade"
VAYA: Good lecture.
PENNY: "At Caius College, Cambridge. Mr. A. H. Riddle, of Messrs. Byland and Sons, London, said pins were first used in 1672, when the pinners were incorprated into a city craft or guild."
CHRISTINA: Pinners.
VAYA: He's been on the pinners.
PENNY: "In the reign of James I. an Act was passed to protect the pinners"
CHRISTINA: Pin life.
PENNY: By forbidding the importation of pins. That Act was confirmed by Charles I,
CHRISTINA: Who was a pin-head.
PENNY: Well his head. Got chopped off.
CHRISTINA: Well, there you go.
PENNY: "Who received annually from the pin makers £500, which he handed over to his wife, Henrietta Maria for her private purse. So arose the term "pin money.""
CHRISTINA: And now we use a pin number.
VAYA: Oh my goodness.
CHRISTINA: We've come full circle. But pin number's not correct.
VAYA: Back then they used to say 'personal identification number money'.
CHRISTINA: That's right. Just to annoy everyone.
PENNY: "Sir Herbert Ormond, Chairman, of the Drapers' Chamber of Trade, remarking that fashions went in cycles, suggested that the days of long dresses might return. To this the young women attending"
We're on a completely different topic now by the way.
"To this the young women attending the school shouted, amid much laughter, "Never! Never!" ' -"Let us wait and see," retorted Sir Herbert."
That was another thing that I found from the, particularly in the 1920s there was, if you search for 'bow-legged' or 'knock-kneed' in Trove you get all these horrendous articles about people complaining about seeing women's legs and how most women's legs should be hidden cos they're just awful.
CHRISTINA: That's uplifting.
PENNY: Yeah.
VAYA: They didn't want it to be.
PENNY: One of the articles said, "most women's legs should be kept a close secret".
VAYA: I'm just. People had a lot of energy and time. And we these days there are people, there are windbags that have a lot of issues too and they're varied. And they're not as.
PENNY: Lot of opinions about, you know, whether pants are leggings.
VAYA: I think if you did a tweet search these days you would drill down on some other
CHRISTINA: Is it okay to wear leggings to work?
VAYA: Jeggings. Yes or no.
PENNY: It's going to be horrific, isn't it when people in the future are gonna be looking at
VAYA: Hashtags.
42:37 PENNY: Tweets and stuff and going. It'll be good for podcasting. Question 9: "Upon whose skin do cosmetic manufacturers test their products first?"
It is "The skin of a guinea pig's stomach.”
VAYA: Cos you can be a Guinea pig for something.
PENNY: "They shave it. It is two and a half times more sensitive than a lady's skin."
CHRISTINA: Oh that's horrible.
VAYA: Little baby no!
PENNY: It's not good. I found this obituary of Max Factor.
CHRISTINA: Not a guinea pig?
PENNY: No. From the 1st of October 1938
"Lovely Ladies And Guinea Pig's Tummy
THE man who prepared every famous film star of the day for the set, Hollywood's king of glamor, has died. Max Factor was sixty-one. He died after a long illness from kidney trouble. Thirty years ago Factor tramped into Hollywood with a bag full of cosmetics. He opened a saloon, then others"
CHRISTINA: A saloon or a salon?
PENNY: Well it said saloon.
VAYA: He wanted a drink, and he didn't think everyone in there was attractive enough.
CHRISTINA: Salon with swinging doors.
PENNY: And I even went back in and checked cos I thought it was an OCR thing but no it said saloon in the article.
"grew famous throughout U.S. He has visited England, and expressed the opinion that English women did not understand the art of cosmetics. Last year he told beauty specialists that Nature's nearest approach to the fine texture of a lovely woman's face was the pink tummy of a guinea pig."
CHRISTINA: I honestly didn't think Max Factor was a real name.
VAYA: Neither did I!
CHRISTINA: I thought it was something like SPF or something.
VAYA: I thought.
CHRISTINA: It was just a brand name.
VAYA: They're going to get the max factor of beauty. (American accent)
CHRISTINA: Look at them, they're max factoring all over the place. (American accent)
VAYA: I didn't know.
PENNY: He's best friends with Maybelline.
CHRISTINA: Yeah.
VAYA: Blown my mind.
PENNY: He's a real guy.
VAYA: And now I don't want to touch my face.
PENNY: Not a very nice one though apparently. Well I guess they all thought it was okay, I don't know.
VAYA: Oh yeah. I mean, probably, that's, the industry hasn't moved on from it completely.
CHRISTINA: Not really.
PENNY: Absolutely.
"And he worked on that theory, for he bought twelve guinea pigs on which to try out his newest lip sticks, rouges and creams."
VAYA: Sorry I just pictured them with little.
PENNY: But you can just do that with photoshop.
VAYA: Yep, you can.
PENNY: In fact, I had a housemate once who was studying graphic design and stuff and she had this picture on her wall, and this was a long time ago, it was like in the early noughties and so she had a picture on her wall of these guinea pigs wearing hats. And one day I said to her, 'Oh, how did you get the guinea pigs to sit still?'
VAYA: Oh you must have been living with Anne Geddes.
PENNY: She just looked at me like I was the stupidest person she'd ever seen. Anyway.
VAYA: That's how the Cottingley Fairies scandal went about. Because the two little English girls played around with cardboard cutouts, spoiler alert, of fairies.
CHRISTINA: That's right, yes.
VAYA: Pictures of fairies, and took photos of them. And everyone at the time, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle went, 'Well there's no photo trickery here. Because this is a photo. And that is a fairy.' And they thought the girls had seen fairies at the bottom of the garden.
PENNY: When did they admit to it?
VAYA: Well I don't think one them did. I think one of them may have done it on her deathbed, like. And the other one was just like, 'I don't want to talk about this anymore.'
CHRISTINA: Yeah, this is embarrassing.
VAYA: He was an adult man, he shouldn't have believed me.
PENNY: Okay.
"He studied the effect after 24 hours, and thus learned how to improve his products. Max was a firm believer in soap"
VAYA: Maximillian Factor, do you think?
PENNY: Yes I wonder.
"Max was a firm believer in soap and water as a basis of beauty."
Which is kind of weird cos then
CHRISTINA: But then add all this other stuff to it.
VAYA: It's like when you read about a model talking about her day in a magazine and saying 'Look, it's just really soap and water' and then 17 other things and chemical peel.
PENNY: Last sentence:
"He always hated extreme artificiality in make-up, and knife-edge eye brows made him angry."
CHRISTINA: Look, I get that. I get that.
PENNY: I really want my obituary just to end with my pettiest opinion. She hated puffer jackets.
CHRISTINA: And all they stand for.
VAYA: I want to know what he would think of the modern brow. I'm stressed with everybody's big pronounced brows.
CHRISTINA: Brows are a huge, huge thing.
VAYA: And I don't do anything to them. In fact, I have a trichotillomania, like a hair plucking compulsion, so I often have to draw them in. So I just get very stressed when people
CHRISTINA: You can laminate them. You can micro-blade them.
VAYA: Don't want that.
CHRISTINA: Look, there's heaps and heaps of shops near me that literally that is all people do.
VAYA: They just drilled down on the eyebrow.
CHRISTINA: Yep, yep. One of my friends works at such a set up and that is all they do. And they are making a fortune. I think the scariest look for me are laminated brows where they brush them right up, so they're standing really up, and then they just kind of contact them into place.
VAYA: April Rose Pengilly from Australian soap opera Neighbours, worked as model and she always flawlessly presented on Instagram and she got her brows laminated for awhile and she go so many hate comments. She had to like, stop cos it was.
CHRISTINA: But then you look at because Pamela Anderson's sort of resurfaced recently with her Netflix doco and you look at her eyebrows and they look really outdated.
VAYA: I'm happy with that. She's going the Max Factor
CHRISTINA: She's hanging onto the '90s.
VAYA: She's going for Max Factor brow.
CHRISTINA: Mini factor.
PENNY: I think it's just as well that he's not here.
VAYA: It really is.
48:34 PENNY: To see it all. Anyway. Question 10.
CHRISTINA: We actually got really passionate about our brows for a minute.
PENNY: I know, I was like, 'Isn't this petty and silly'. 'No!'
CHRISTINA: Come back to the brows.
PENNY: Question 10: "Nearly all babies are born with eyes of what color?"
And she says: "Except in extremely rare cases, all babies are born with blue eyes, which may then change to brown, grey, etc., during the first year."
I am gonna tell you, you got that right according to the Princess, however.
VAYA: But not really right.
PENNY: It's not true, it's a myth and she's thinking of white babies.
VAYA: Oh, of course she is!
CHRISTINA: And so did Vaya and I.
VAYA: Oh no.
PENNY: Well it is something that I've heard so many times oh all babies are born with. Actually, about 60% of babies overall are born with brown eyes.
VAYA: And where did she land on kittens.
CHRISTINA: That's probably more to the point.
PENNY: Do kittens all have blue eyes?
CHRISTINA: Yeah, they do.
PENNY: Okay that's what you got
CHRISTINA: That's what I was basing it on, not white babies.
PENNY: Not white babies.
CHRISTINA: Fluffy babies.
PENNY: So guys, you got 3 out of 10. According to the Princess.
CHRISTINA: It's not even a pass.
VAYA: No.
PENNY: Well, it depends, in Specialist Maths you don't get 50%.
CHRISTINA: And look, in VCE, it's not ungraded so we did pass.
VAYA: But, but, Penny you appreciated what we brought to the table. And on Hard Quiz we often, people will, if they leave not getting many answers right I'm like, 'Yeah but you said all the stories in an entertaining way and that's actually more important'.
PENNY: That's right. Absolutely. It's the personality. So I'm going to, I'll post a link to the questions so people can have a look at the full 31 question quiz.
VAYA: And you can test your family and friends.
PENNY: And see if they've
VAYA: Can you give us, Penny, can you give us just one more bonus. Just to,
CHRISTINA: Get us up to 4.
VAYA: Living with a toddler, you can have a bonus and you can have a bonus bonus. I won't ask for a bonus bonus, but just give me a bonus for a little treat. I'm actually sad that she doesn't at the end say how much of a Princess we are.
CHRISTINA: What level Princess are you?
PENNY: 1 to 10 you're. Maybe 1 to 5 you'd be like a
CHRISTINA: Scullery maid.
PENNY: Yeah, you're like an anarchist like my dad. Apparently she didn't actually, she only really used the princess title to get work, like she wasn't actually attached to it. Cos her dad dropped it, he became an anarchist, so obviously you can't go around calling yourself a prince if you're an anarchist.
And here is your bonus question. This is so stupid. Okay
VAYA: Good.
CHRISTINA: We like it.
PENNY: "What woman is supposed to have had the longest hair?"
VAYA: What woman?
CHRISTINA: Rapunzel?
VAYA: Aphrodite.
PENNY: Thank you Christina. You got the bonus.
CHRISTINA: Yay.
VAYA: That's so badly worded. What woman? She's not even real!
PENNY: She's not even real!
CHRISTINA: But she might have been. In Russia.
VAYA: In fictional, in common. I'm not even gonna justify it with a rewrite.
PENNY: I was working on The Chase and verifying and at the start of each thing that you wrote you had to write 'Okay' or 'Not okay'. And so, and you had to write it in capital letters, which always felt really mean
CHRISTINA: A bit aggressive.
PENNY: Like 'NOT OKAY'.
VAYA: And I don't write OK I write it 'o k a y'. So OK is very alarming.
PENNY: But then one time I was looking, I was looking up some old questions for some reason I had to look it up and then I found this old verifying note where someone had got a bit mad and they'd written in capital letters 'SO NOT OKAY'. I was like, look I understand the sentiment but can you not, you don't need to bring that.
VAYA: The style guide gave you two options.
PENNY: Exactly. I used to often like write a comment and then just read it back through for tone.
CHRISTINA: Yes.
PENNY: Try and, make it a bit nicer. Probably didn't always succeed. Vaya.
VAYA: Yes?
PENNY: Thank you so much for joining us on this lovely quiz.
VAYA: It was a pleasure.
PENNY: And where can people find you? If they wanna.
VAYA: Great question, I'm just trying to figure out where, what I'm doing with my life. But okay.
PENNY: Probably not your home address.
VAYA: I think Vays on Instagram. Neighbuzzpod is
PENNY: Is it coming back?
VAYA: Well it's technically not meant to have gone. So I have been hosting a podcast about Neighbours, the soap opera, for 8 years and then Neighbours got cancelled and really I just got burnt out dealing with the cancellation content. And so it was just a bit tricky to figure out what to do next and how to plan interviews cos we were all exhausted. But now it's coming back because of Jeff Besos money, so we getting, we'll get back on the mics. I just, the reason I'm hear today is because you organised it Penny, so as long as I can get someone to help me do that, then we will be right. But yeah, Neighbuzz, it's still on, look it up on your podcast app and.
PENNY: It's very very good.
VAYA: You won't learn as much as you learn on this one.
PENNY: Well, it's very calming and actually, you do bring a lens, like a social justice lens to the show, which I always found very interesting.
VAYA: Yeah, and one of my co-hosts Kate is a, studied cartography for a little while so often you get some geographical insights into Victoria.
PENNY: That's true.
CHRISTINA: Yeah, good.
PENNY: Particularly if someone's going off a cliff.
VAYA: Yeah, she'll tell you.
PENNY: Is that realistic?
VAYA: CJ's in marketing so she'll just put a great spin on anything else we say.
CHRISTINA: Fantastic.
PENNY: Yeah, thank you very much and we'll go and have lunch.
VAYA: Yes!! We'll go get a little pat of butter and boil it in some water.
CHRISTINA: Calm that water down.
54:09 (Piano music)
PENNY: Lincoln's like 'don't forget to actually hit the record button'. Thanks Lincoln.
CHRISTINA: Thanks Lincoln.
PENNY: I did nearly forget, to be fair.