Limited Appeal

This show is an extended episode of Urban Legend: did you know that in the middle ages, it was fashionable to serve a gelatin dessert made from the party host's nail clippings, which would impart a flavour of the host to the guests? Well, it's apparently upsettingly true, even if the details of preparing this kind of specialty have been lost to time. We spend a lot of time considering how long a g...

We kick off the new year with an Urban Legend: did you know that before every game, famous Canadian basketballer Steve Nash watches the final game in the movie Teen Wolf for inspiration? He also has a fondness for fat basketball players (attribution: see the movie), and would like to change his team name. And he likes passing. Without much by way of transitional material, at some stage, Warren sug...

Merry Tedmas, everyone! After a long hiatus, in honour of the season we return to the Superhero's Phone Booth for a special festive Tedmas session. The superhero is� Candy Cane Boy! He runs around poking people with his magical candy cane, and anyone he pokes who has been naughty instantly disintegrates into a snowy white powder (not sugar, just burned human). Candy Cane Boy then snorts the disint...

This episode we finally take another nature walk! The topic this week: unicorns. OK, so maybe it's not as natural as usual, but there's a lot of undiscovered country concerning unicorns, so it's a rich vein to mine. Much of our discussion focuses on the proper dimensions of things: how many cubits per horn, how big a unicorn sleeping kennel should be, how long a wingspan you need to fly or glide o...

By the time you get through the intro, you'll be suspecting something awful is coming your way. Aaaaannndd, you're right. We start by talking about deep fried things, but then the discussion takes a sharp turn to the nasty. Sorry, but we need to get this out of our system (ahem) every once and a while. For those of you who don't like discussions of bodily functions, you're probably not a regular l...

As promised, and perhaps much sooner than expected (since we don't encourage expectations of any sort), we present for you, round 3 of What am I eating? We're increasing some constraints, and relaxing others: now one of us needs to eat a food and a drink, plus toast someone, but it no longer has to be something we would all eat. Are you satisfied, Josh? You shouldn't be, because this is just the b...

We start this week with the increasingly irregular mailsack segment, where loyal listener Josh sends in a complimentary email, but prods us to complete at long last our "What am I eating?" contest. The incredibly loyal and patient listeners among you will know that we began the contest with two editions quite some time ago, but never really got around to the requisite additional editions we need t...

This week Warren presents us with a real quandary in Foody Goody: what is the difference between soup and tea? If you think this is easy, hold on! It's a lot more complicated than you think, and most of the criteria we first propose are clearly violated by one or more exceptions that disprove the rule. Consider the following questions: "If you made a soup only out of leaves, would that be tea?"; "...

To begin, Warren asks us to name 5 pairs of words, that if they were anagrams, would work well in a dyslexia joke. Turns out this is a pretty tough assignment when one has limited inspiration. See if you can better our contributions (I'll bet you can), and email us with your suggestions: maskedman@limitedappeal.net. Then, in Polish the Bishop, Warren asks us to come up with a word for the near-uni...

We kick off a brand new season with a new edition from our "staggeringly popular" segment, "How about that?" Warren describes the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the trial of a 17th century "habitual troublemaker" (great job if you can get it) George Spencer, who was convicted of bestiality (sort of � listen for the details) on the basis of dubious testimony from a stillborn piglet and...

Warren starts by clicking on a testicular cancer mascot this week, and this makes us wonder whether Senhor Testiculo has a prominent mole, or whether it's just an ear, or his balls (do balls have balls?), or his arms. Or maybe just a gaping wound where he was severed from the rest of the body? As promised, here's a link so you can judge for yourself: http://www.limitedappeal.net/extras/photos.html...

Happy Tedmas everyone! It's that time of year when we try to include and alienate everyone in our special annual Tedmas show. Hard to believe it's Tedmas time already, but there it is. One minute you're soaking up the sun, the next you have to put up your shed. Unless you live in the southern hemisphere, in which case, you're possibly still in the sun, or unless you have no shed in your basement,...

WWHHHAAAAAANNNNNNNNNHHHHH! Yup, that's the sweet sound of Scotland. While the ringing in your ears dies down a bit, here's a twisty-twist on Urban Legend: Warren will present an urban legend, and then claim his own story is bullshit, and then we need somehow to contradict him: many years ago in Scotland, a common pub game involved grabbing or punching the stomach or genitals in an attempt to encou...

How much Limited Appeal is there, if you wanted a podcast marathon? We never actually tell you, but it's a lot. We're talking morning, noon, night, bullshit, bullshit bullshit, bullshit, bullshit bullshit bullshit. Somehow this prompts Warren to audibly crank up his podcast machine to check. On another topic entirely, have you been paintballing? If you've never heard of this, it's not nearly as de...

Did you know that you can't slip someone a valium? Well, you could, but it wouldn't be effective. This is important if you're trying to secretly get someone to relax. Note this is not exactly the placebo, because there's an element of subject awareness to the effectiveness, apparently. It's pretty fucking confusing, and perhaps (what do you know?) bullshit. How about that? Maybe part of the standa...

Hola! So Warren was watching the movie Surrogates, and while he only saw some of it, he figures the screenwriters missed out on some the obvious implications of having a robot version of yourself to run around in and live your life through. Sure, they figured out some stuff about violent crime and STDs, but what about the sweat pants, huh? And public toilets? And if you wanted your surrogate to de...

We start out the episode talking about popular expressions that are less than 20 years old. If you have any other ideas than what we came up with, send us a fax. If you don't have a fax machine yet, then send us an email (maskedman@limitedappeal.net). Later, we move into a brand new segment called "How about that?" Warren presents a rather scathing review of Huxley's Brave New World, and then asks...

Warren challenges team LA to answer this unresolved question: when does a scarf become a blanket? Does it have anything to do with wheels or posture? You'll have to listen to John stutter through a painful (although amusing) summary of the issues, but this precis quickly becomes inadequate, as we discover the nuances of this superficially simple, but actually intricate problem. In fact, although w...

Good morning! You too, Mr Deluise! Join us on a nature walk, when Warren asks why humans are the only animals that wipe their asses after pooping. First we deal with all of the obvious semantic issues (we know you've already made a list of these), before getting to some important instructions for several aspects of toilet performance. You might think you're already an expert, but allow us to enlig...

It's the first episode of season 8! It's great!! The start of this season is motivated by drunkards outside of Luc's house, who may have been singing the bagpipe song. Or maybe Amazing Grace. Anyway, on the topic of Scottish problems, Warren asks us to solve the problem of Scottish independence. We get a bit sidetracked by thinking about the nature of the question for the upcoming referendum, so w...

Luc makes a return visit to the Safari Park where he previously met a chimp with serious rectal problems (see Episode "The Assey Wonders of Wunderbar"). Understandably, this leads to speculation on the nature of the afterlife. What if you don't like sand? Or boobs? Or sandy boobs? Then what, huh? Also, we get repunched in the mail sack by Zeth, who generously responds to our rather ungenerous resp...

Get ready for yet another special (and extra long) holiday episode of Limited Appeal. This time, Warren has a new series of bird recordings for us to describe (just like previous episodes of Who's That Bird), but the extra twist is that each bird has some kind of Christmas significance, and Warren is awarding extra points if we can figure out how. Extra points = extra drama (or possibly just extra...

After starting out with some excellent intro music (Sparks is da man!), Warren introduces this week's Urban Legend. This is an update of an earlier episode (Linda's Favourite Hiding Spot), in which Warren had described the invention of the dildo. Turns out the true origin of the DILbertDOugh is in fact botanical, but this time it involves witchcraft and the, ahem, vaginal "administration" of "flyi...

This episode's mailsack contains a friendly invitation from The Four Listeners Podcast. We briefly consider the appropriate way to respond, but we're actually not very good at appropriate, so the segment ends up being unnecessarily (but perhaps predictably) hostile. Yeah. Soooo, sorry about that Zeth. To be fair (or at least somewhat less unfair), since the recording I have listened to a bit of Li...

Today we spend a predictably large fraction of time discussing farts and bees. How are they related? Well, they're mostly not, but they partly ARE (arguably). Exactly how? Well aren't you equipped with the questioning persistence of a three year old? Just listen to the podcast � it's full of health and safety information on important (arguably) gastrointestinal physiology. Guaranteed to have some...