Cease and Toxoplasmosist

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, Cease and Toxoplasmosist.

Becca brings the case against their girlfriend, Eli.

Becca and Eli just moved in together.

After the move, Becca discovered that Eli feeds feral cats in the yard.

The problem is that Eli also keeps bird feeders.

Becca says that Eli is luring cats to a fertile hunting ground, but Eli says she's actually saving the birds by keeping those cats fed.

Who's right, who's wrong?

Only one can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

When I tell you I wanted to live in a trash can when I was a kid, it's because of this cartoon.

TC made it look so cool.

I mean, look at him and his PJs going through his evening routine.

I always imagined what it looked like inside that trash can.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear the litigants in.

Becca and Eli, please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God or whatever.

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling despite the fact that he's locked in an eternal battle against Jonathan Franzen with John on Team Cat and Franzen on Team Bird?

I do.

I do.

Very well, Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

Yes, Jesse, you have precisely identified my one and only beef with Jonathan Franzen.

He gets mad at cats for eating birds, whereas I am teen cat.

Will it bias me in this case?

We'll find out.

Becca and Eli, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment in one of your favors.

Can either of you name the piece of obscure culture, I would say, obscure popular culture that I referenced as I entered this courtroom.

I'm going to guess something from a David Lynch film.

Okay, that's Becca.

Yes.

Jumping in and going first.

Something

from a David Lynch film.

Rest in peace, David Lynch.

Any particular David Lynch film?

The most obscure one.

The most obscure one.

What would that be?

Like, maybe wild at heart?

I think that that's the one that people don't talk about a lot.

Inland Empire is the weirdest, I guess.

Oh, I guess I'm going to have to say Inland Empire because I'm from there.

Oh, there you go.

Inland Empire by David Lynch.

All right.

And again, I will remind the listener and Eli now.

The quote is, when I tell you I wanted to live in a trash can when I was a kid, it was because of this cartoon.

Eli, have you a guess?

I was going to say maybe an interview,

a Jim Henson interview.

Jim Henson interview.

That's pretty good.

Can either of you, when I say this cartoon, can either of you guess the cartoon that I am referencing?

No.

would you know it if i sang the theme song probably no one should

the problem is we were both homeschooled in the sense of not getting exposure to popular culture so we might were you home on weekday afternoons uh in the 1980s and watching channel 56 with me uh probably not channel 56 we were only allowed to uh consume christian content so yeah oh if it's a christian cartoon is it veggie tales uh here's how it goes.

I will disguise the name of the character and the name of the show by singing Meow Meow instead of the words.

Perfect.

Meow Meow,

the most effectual Meow Meow,

whose intellectual close friends get to call him TC,

providing it's with dignity.

This is not as good a song as I remember it.

Meow Meow,

the indisputable leader of the gang.

He's the boss, he's the pip, he's the championship.

He's the most tip-top.

Meow Meow.

All right.

Can either of you say the words that Meow Meow is replacing there?

No.

Jesse, you can't, can you?

You're too young too.

Apparently not.

I was thinking of

meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.

Jennifer knows what I'm talking about.

Which one is that, Jennifer Marmor?

Meow Meow.

Yeah, meow meow.

Is that it's freaking Heathcliff, John.

Heathcliff?

Yeah, he lives lives in a garbage can.

He pulls the bones of a fish out of his mouth when he puts a whole fish into his mouth.

Heck, Eli, let me tell you something.

Long, long ago, I was interviewed

as a promotional opportunity for my first book, The Areas of My Expertise.

The interviewer on the other side of the phone line, a delightful and charmingly mellifless-voiced interviewer named Jesse Thorne.

My first audiophonic meeting with Jesse.

And one of the things I noticed in our conversation was, this guy knows all the TV shows I know.

He must be exactly the same age as me.

Wrong.

10 years younger, but an old soul.

This is maybe the first time I have made a cultural reference that Jesse didn't immediately recognize.

And also the first time Jesse has made a cultural reference that I refuse to recognize.

That is Heathcliff.

But I found that wonderful quote from a YouTuber who goes by the YouTube handle, Melman.

His full name is Melvin Ocheng Otieno.

He is a YouTuber from Nairobi and also a cartoonist and a writer whose graphic novel is called Little Fuji.

And I really enjoyed his video recounting why he loved Topcat so much.

He loved it even more than I did.

The most effectual Topcat.

And I'll tell you what, maybe the cartoon isn't the best, but that theme song will never leave your head once you listen to it.

So enjoy it for the rest of your life.

Becca and Eli, let's get down to it, though.

Who seeks justice in my courtroom?

I think technically I do.

Technically, Becca.

Yeah.

That's a pretty good handle for Reddit or something.

Becca,

let's not mess around here.

I mean, you think that your girlfriend Eli should stop feeding the feral cats in the home that you share,

but more important, you have two indoor cats of your own.

You must have sent in pictures, correct?

We did, and we have three.

Three indoor cats, excuse me.

Yes.

What are the names?

I'm looking at a picture of them now.

They are perched on a cat condo.

And this image, of course, is on all of our social media and our showpage at maximumfund.org.

Jesse, can you see these three cats?

Oh,

Niles, Frazier, and Fez.

You know, as we record this, Kelsey Grammer is coming into our office later this afternoon.

That's Frazier from the television show Frazier.

And he should know because he's Frazier.

That's a reference to a 30-rock joke.

And Fez, in this case, is named, the full name is Fezwick, right?

Not named after the sitcom character Fez, but

DeAndre the Giant Fezik.

Yes, from Princess Bride.

Yeah.

Anybody want a peanut?

Are Niles and Frasier the cats'

siblings?

Yeah, they're littermates.

Oh, and there they are in their cat condo, and they're all looking out the window.

And it feels like to me, they're preparing to make this noise.

Yeah, probably.

They're on our screened-in porch.

So it's kind kind of their catio, but it's also our screened-in porch.

But you know that noise that cats make when they're looking at birds sometimes?

Yeah.

Do they make that noise?

They do.

They do.

I'm going to do it again just for the YouTube channel so you can get a video of this.

You're locked in, but also dead eyes really so bad.

That's what cats look like when they make that noise.

And look, if you're already writing us letters, as I'm sure you are, about the ethics of feeding feral cats, Just pause for a moment and listen to the whole podcast.

Get it?

Pause.

That's exactly right.

In that pause, if you happen to know what the prevailing theory of why cats make that noise, I always thought it was that's their imitation of birds.

They're trying to attract birds.

Becca, Eli, do you have any thoughts on that?

I don't.

I always thought it was silly that they give away their position as they're hunting birds by making that noise.

So, no, I don't know.

I think that they're trying to talk to them, being like, I'm like you.

But, I mean, birds don't make that sound.

So who knows?

Maybe they're mesmerizing them.

Yeah.

Before you, before you finish your electronic mail

full of frustration and anger and hate, for me,

see if you also have some information that you can glean, that you can share with me about why cats make that noise.

Anything to do with the case here that I need to know by looking at these photos?

I mean, we'll talk about your cats more for sure.

Yeah.

No, I don't.

Well, the boys that are outside when they're all in the condo, they are watching birds.

So like, I guess that sort of relates to the case in that it's both cats and birds.

But otherwise, I think the two photos are just

character references.

I love it.

And, and, but they, these cats are not on trial.

They are not on trial.

Nor are the feral cats that you are feeding outside, Eli.

You are the one on trial.

Correct.

Who are the feral cats that you're feeding and what are their names?

So, right now we're down to just one feral cat that I call black cat.

Okay.

There had been orange cat,

but I think maybe family scooped him up eventually.

His owner passed away, and he had been an outside mostly cat.

And then she passed away, and it seems like the family forgot about orange cat for a while, but they've since, I think, scooped him up.

So Orange Cat was not a feral wild cat, a house cat that had, that had that was living a free life for the first time in its life.

Briefly.

But probably desired human companionship and we hope has it now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Even when she was alive, he was outside all the time.

But Black Cat, to the best of your knowledge, is genuinely feral, born in the wild, living in the wild, out there in the wild, wilding it up.

Yes, I believe so.

And

this is all going down in the state of Maryland, correct?

Where you two live together?

Yes.

Is that right?

Okay, so Becca,

you recently moved in with Eli into her home, correct?

In Maryland?

Correct.

And when did you realize that you were living in a feral cat paradise?

I think it was, I don't know, maybe a month in.

How did you discover Eli sneaking out food to the black?

I think I realized the frequency with which it was happening and also the location with which it was, in which it was happening, was very close.

to the bird feeders.

And the way I realized this is by going outside and seeing like the trays on the ground, empty trays that had once carried food that she brought out to leave for the cat.

The empty trays that had once carried food were now empty at the bottom of directly underneath the bird feeders.

That sounds insidious.

So there's like two bushes.

The bird feeders are in one bush.

There's a little gate.

And then the other bush is where I first found the dishes.

And I would say it's...

I don't know, like six feet away from the bird feeder bush.

The big thing that I,

that made me bring this up in conversation with Eli initially was that

they were very close to, there's like pans of water on the ground, like bird baths, but on the ground.

And that is, I believe Eli told me was so that the cats could also get water, but if the birds want that water, they can have that water.

And to me, I was like, oh, you're feeding them like six feet away from the watering hole and you're just like, luring bird cat encounters there.

The more I hear about this, the more it sounds like one of those Temple Grandin Grandin abattoir situations.

Put a weighted blanket on the birds and lead them into a funnel toward the rotating knives.

Eli, is it true that your water pans bring all the birds to the yard?

Yeah, they do.

And I do, I had a bird bath that was properly, you know, elevated, but it broke.

And so this is your primary problem here, Becca, right?

That, that at this point,

well, when you moved in,

was Eli feeding black Black Cat and Orange Cat or just Black Cat?

Black Cat and Orange Cat have been fed, I would say, for the duration of our relationship.

I knew about Black Cat because I had seen Black Cat when I was staying over at Eli's house and because Orange Cat would run up and greet me when I got out of my car.

Because Eli started keeping food in her car to give to Orange Cat when he would run up and greet her when she parked.

So he was like, oh, you guys are the

food people you keep in.

So you're also training the cats to approach moving cars?

Only orange cat.

Only orange cat gets the car food, right, Eli?

Because it's not just that you're trying to endanger all these creatures, but you're also playing mind games with them.

No, not intentionally.

He just lived by where I parked.

And so to make it easy, I just kept, yeah, some treats in the car.

Becca, your primary concern is that

basically Eli is luring birds to eat in the yard so that they can be eaten by the cats.

Eli has a very big heart and also animals love her.

They sort of flock to her in a weird way.

So she has all these bird feeders near the screened-in porch, which is where the cats have their little catio, our indoor cats, and they love to go out there and watch the birds.

So I don't even know how many bird feeders there are.

There's like four or five.

What kind of bird feeders are we talking about?

Like, what are the style?

So you've got a tray one hanging from a tree.

You've got the suet little cage.

You've got the one that the little like thistle seeds go in.

And then what I would call just a standard bird feeder.

That's one, two, three.

Did I count four or five different bird feeders there?

I think four.

And what do you see like a bird once a year, but most of the time it's squirrels and raccoons eating your food?

No,

it's mostly birds.

What kind of birds are we talking about?

Get the standard sparrows and cardinals, blue jays, crows, woodpeckers, nuthatches.

Nuthatches.

Tit mouses.

Tit mice?

Tit mice.

Yeah, so a range.

At one time, there was a hawk.

There was a hawk.

That time I did feel like I had set up a bird buffet because the hawk did catch a morning dove.

Yeah, I was going to say the hawk's not there for

some suet.

The hawk's there for some fresh meat.

I mean, it was a bird feeder for the hawk.

The hawk got the morning dove?

Yeah.

I can't wait to tell this story to my cat.

My cat,

little dum-dum cat, is completely uncurious about everything

curiosity shall not kill this cat because she doesn't care about anything

they're her primary hobby staring into the middle distance and then sitting up underneath the coffee table and bumping her head because she's dumb maybe she has a vibrant internal life john can i tell you can i tell you the truth no she doesn't

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So aside from this morning, doth though, Becca, have other birds perished due to the cats?

So Eli has rejected my proposal of a webcam that is trained on the bird feeding.

slash cat buffet area because I would love to get you know quantitative data rather than just that position lore and hearsay yeah i can't prove that the birds are being hunted by the cats but just sort of like a logic did dictate situation that by feeding the feral cats it's encouraging black cat to stay in the yard and hang out in the yard and then by feeding all the birds it's giving him a fun diversion and let me be very clear there's only really one feral cat now

There used to be brown cat, but we haven't seen the brown cat in several months.

Becca, do you want to say anything about the mysterious disappearance of brown cat?

Well, they come and they go.

And, you know, that's the nature of feral cats.

And it's sad and it's unfortunate.

But

I feel like maybe black cat has staked a claim to the yard.

And that's why other cats aren't coming.

So

you deny any role in the disappearance of brown cat.

I do deny any role.

And I also deny any role in Orange Cat's disappearance.

Eli, you said that Orange Cat was rescued by a family member,

a human family member.

That's your supposition in any case, right?

That was.

Now it's just the Becca space.

Is that just a story that

your parents told you when Orange Cat disappeared suddenly?

No, I know the

lady who passed away.

I know her family still kind of takes care of the house, like mow the lawn, check the mail every now and then.

So I just assumed at some point they captured Orange Cat.

Is she entombed in this house?

The old.

What's going on in this house?

Yeah.

I don't think so.

The neighbor that knows everybody's business told me that she went to hospice and passed away.

But I am curious as to, you seem to rely on a lot of assumptions and gossip from the neighbors.

Why reject

a camera to actually take footage of the bird activity in your backyard?

I don't actually remember talking about the camera.

I think what you said was you're already in debt.

You don't need to spend money on a wildlife monitoring camera.

That does sound like something.

And that is accurate.

You live together, you cohabitate, you are not married as far as I know, correct?

Correct.

You have separate finances?

Yes.

Becca, why don't you spring for the Trail Cam?

Well, it's her house.

And if she doesn't want

camera surveillance in the yard, I feel like I can't just overrule that.

And also, she is right that I am in debt and really shouldn't be spending money on.

You both don't have a little extra trail camp money lying around

not

not particularly okay because if it's a question of whose house you're going to put it in put it in the old lady's house she's dead in there she's not doing anything she's gone it's true nobody lives there yet only thing happening there is the lawns getting mowed i guess would it would you be averse to me living with you for three months and operating a drone i think our indoor cats would be averse to that they don't like new people come on niles frazier they freaking they freaking love drones

Well,

once again, my home invasion drone dreams are smashed.

So

let's go to first principles here.

We consulted,

everyone right now is listening is writing letters in their head, if not in their computers.

And we consulted with a veterinarian friend of the show.

And not just a veterinarian friend of the show, but a veterinarian friend of the show who works a lot with feral cats, right?

Yes.

And that is all of the identifying information that I'm allowed to give.

We'll call her Dr.

Vinny Boombats.

Dr.

Vinny Boombatz asked that their name not be mentioned.

You know, our veterinarian, Dr.

Vinny Boombats.

Yeah.

Because this is a very controversial thing and people do a lot of different things.

But this veterinarian friend of the show did point out that the American Veterinary Medicine Association has a position.

And that position is: don't feed feral cats unless they're part of a quote-unquote properly managed feral cat colony, which is to say a colony in which all the cats are spayed and neutered and vaccinated, and from which adoptable cats are removed.

And the theory is, and the feeling is among the AVMA,

is that the more you feed feral cats, the more feral cats there will be, statistically.

And the more feral cats there are, the increased risk to other wildlife, including boyds, birds, Jonathan Franzen's favorite things,

as well as increased vectors for zoonotic infectious diseases among cats and other species, and including toxoplasmosis, one of the favorite parasitic diseases of this very court, the Judge John Hodgman Court.

Eli, how do you respond to that?

So, a

couple of thoughts.

One is that I am on a waiting list to trap, neuter, release the cat.

I've reached out to the local people who do this.

So, I do

want to make sure, A, he's not microchipped.

He doesn't belong to anybody.

And then B,

get him neutered, get him vaccinated.

Yeah, so I don't want to have

100 cats in my yard, but if he's going to be there, I do want him to be neutered so that I don't end up with 17 kittens under the shed one day.

And I do think he came from a colony down the street that was not super well managed.

And that couple was a husband and wife.

They got divorced.

The wife is the one who cared about the cats.

She moved out and i guess the husband's kind of not staying on top of that so the cats have now scattered into everybody else's yard they've dispersed yes you're saying that the local neighborhood gossip told you about a another family down the road

a couple who are maintaining the wife in the in this case it sounds like was maintaining a feral cat colony by feeding them

and that they divorced and he's he is uh he's no longer tossing the kibble out the way that they're used to.

And so they've now dispersed into your yard, including Black Cat.

That's your theory.

That is the theory, yes.

A lot of gossip on this street.

We haven't even gotten to the chicken neighbor.

Go on.

Well, there was a chicken in the backyard one day, and

it was very exciting because chickens aren't allowed

in our neighborhood.

Here we go.

Like

zoning-wise.

So it's an illicit chicken.

It's like a city-town ordinance or a homeowners association rule it's like county level yeah no no backyard birds this is some county level stuff jesse here we go i'm into this so there was an illicit chicken in the yard and it it kept hanging out there probably because eli started feeding it um

and

at the same time still feeding black cat i might add but um what other animals are you stealing from your neighbor there was also a deer one time and he ate a bunch of stuff from eli's garden yeah i didn't hand feed the deer but i didn't scare it away either.

But I did find the owners of Daisy the chicken and they brought me food so that we could try to keep it in the yard long enough to catch her.

She was uncatchable, so she is free-ranging it up somewhere.

Yeah, in a coyote's stomach.

She was there for like a week and a half.

And then

the only thing that we found was just a...

a bunch of chicken feathers at the corner of the fence in a leaf pile.

So either she got out from that corner of the fence or something dastardly happened there.

Yeah, no, I think it's pretty probable that Daisy the chicken is now living with the orange cat in a beautiful mid-century modern home five miles out of town where they just sit together and watch the fire burn in the large, almost walk-in hearth that I imagine is my dream home.

But I think probably Daisy the chicken had bought the farm, as it were.

So you mentioned, Eli, that you're on the wait list to get into a trap neuter and release program.

Explain to the listener who might not know what that's all about.

Oh, so it's called TNR, and people do that to feral colonies.

So you put out this trap with food.

They go into it.

You then, once you've trap the cat, take it to a vet and they tend to do some vaccines.

They'll neuter the cat.

They tend to tip the ear, cut a little notch in the ear.

So you have a visible clue that this cat has already been taken care of.

And then if they hate humans, you typically just put them right back outside.

If they're friendly enough to be adopted or young enough to be adopted out,

yeah, they'll usually try to find a home.

So it sounds like you're making,

you're on your path to a more ethical feral cat management policy.

Becca, what do you want me to do?

I would like.

to ask Eli to say when she sent the email to get on the waiting list.

All right.

I will allow it.

Eli?

I sent the first email sometime last year.

I don't recall.

And then I followed up again last week.

And I admit that was in preparation for this conversation.

Oh, just so that you could say that you did it.

I pinged those people again to ask about

getting a trap out here.

Did they reply?

Are you sure that you're actually on the list?

Or are you just sending emails to info at cattrap.org?

I think she tied a little message to the foot of a tit mouse and released it to the wild.

Now that message is inside of Black Cat's stomach.

No, it's a real organization that I got Frasier and Niles from, so I know they're real.

What is the name of the org?

It's called A Cat's Life Rescue.

A Cat's Life Rescue in Maryland.

So if people want to adopt a cat or want to urge them to do their paperwork more hastily,

then contact them.

I'm sure they can find their way.

But you haven't answered my question, though, Becca.

So, all right, this has been going on for a while.

Eli

said that she contacted

a cat's life in order to become a TNR

trapper, neuterer, releaser.

But that obviously was just

performative in order to have something to say on a podcast so far.

What would you have me order, though?

I think she just has to choose, either feed the feral cats in the yard or feed the wild birds because I think it's unfair to the wild birds

to have a little food and water paradise for them that they don't know is also cat stalking, you know, yard.

And

I think she should stop feeding the cats because our indoor cats really like the birds.

They like to go out to the catio and watch the birds as and they don't like the feral cats.

So if I were to rule in your favor, Eli would stop feeding black cat i mean and black cat would starve to death and you would what order that its decaying corpse be kept on display as a warning to all ideally she would stop feeding the cats i i would like you keep saying the cats speca but there's only one cat right i mean this is kind of up until up until recently there were two that's why i keep how recently was orange cat disappeared he he I want to say a couple months I knew

I saw him when I moved in at the end of October And that was maybe the last time you saw him?

Yeah.

These cats keep disappearing, Eli.

It's very suspicious, don't you agree?

As soon as Becca moved in,

brown cat's gone, orange cat's gone,

Daisy the chicken's gone.

Who's next?

I think we know who's next.

Becca.

I would just like to state for the record: I'm a vegetarian.

No one's accusing you of eating the animals you murder.

No, I know, I know that you're not murdering animals,

but you are

new in this home.

This was Eli's home before you moved in.

Correct?

Yes.

Eli, what other ways is Becca telling you to live your life now that they have moved into your home?

Oh, I wish I would have thought to look at the list before we came here.

You should have thought to bring it in.

I hope it's a parchment.

No, it's a Google Doc.

No, it is not, is it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

What?

Where do you think they're going to make it in, John?

Word star?

It's 2025.

Oh, all right.

I'm, I'm ordering a brief recess so you can collect it.

Your list, your, your serious offenses list squeezed and pulled and hurt my neck.

Kim, what do you remember off the top of the list?

And why are you making a list?

Well, I have memory problems, so I do do better when things are written down for me.

So I'm not upset that there is a list.

And a fair number of them were things, you know, when you live in a house, house, you get used to like, well, this door just doesn't shut right.

And you kind of carry on.

And then someone else comes in and is like, what's happening in your home?

And then you suddenly are like, oh, yeah, this is a weird thing.

So some of it was just like fixing latches on doors or windows that didn't open right, things like that.

These are, this is a to-do list of

things to do around the house, little fixes.

It's a little fix-it list, not a list of things Becca thinks is wrong around the house that I am forced to change in my own home.

It's kind of bold.

We had to talk about it and we decided that the list was the best way to go about it so that I would stop just saying things randomly that you'd feel like randomly criticized about, you know?

What kind of things are on the list that you remember, Becca?

Some things that have already happened.

All right.

Big one for me was putting in a cat door.

in our front door so that our indoor cats can let themselves out to the catio screened in porch and let themselves back in because but they are still completely enclosed in this in the catio they're not they're not roaming the they can't get outside no um but i i work downstairs in the house and so um i just could not deal with being the on-call door opener

they all want to go out at different times they want to come in at different times so elay put in a cat door that was you know a lot of work that she had to do she had to research it and do that do that kind of thing my the windows in my bedroom didn't stay open so she fixed those um she She thought my TV was hung too high, so we had to rehang the TV, which required professionals.

And then they hung it at the wrong height again.

So then she made me have the professional move it again.

So now there's like seven extra holes in the wall.

You didn't fix the holes?

I have not yet fixed the holes.

We're debating just putting some big artwork up so that you don't see the holes anymore.

R slash TV too high.

it it would have been really highly rated on there i'm telling you it was very rather high

is that an actual subreddit r slash tv yeah it is i'm a member

the top of the tv matched the top of the door frame wow holy cow thank you that's like a sky tv well obviously your team becha on this one bailiff jesse but How do you feel about, how do you feel about sharing your home?

How do you think it's going?

I do think mostly it's going very well.

We have pretty good communication skills with each other.

Becca, when she does make suggestions, is really nice about being like, it's not that you did this wrong, but I would prefer X-way instead of this way.

And then we do also made sure tomorrow we have couples counseling scheduled in case this goes poorly today.

I mean, we have couples counseling anyway, but we thought it was funny that it was slated for the day after this podcast.

And we're like, that's good.

I'll work it out.

That's, it's, it's very thoughtful and considerate of each other that you both have, that you have regular couples counseling, and it's really smart.

And I'm glad it's tomorrow.

It's perfect because our plan is to sow dissent between you like Black Cat.

We're outside the window trying to start a fight between you.

Just remind me for a second, the three existing cats, indoor cats, Niles, Fez, and Frazier.

Are you their original human companion, Eli?

Yes.

Becca, you're bringing no pets to the table at this current time.

No, just my allergies.

Oh, dear.

That's enough.

She's made a lot of changes in the house for that, too.

I should get

to give her that credit.

That's very good.

I'm glad to hear that.

There used to be a lot of nut trees in there.

Just peanut butter smeared all over the canister.

Did I interpret this correctly when you mentioned, Becca,

that

an adjustment needed to be made to the window in your bedroom.

Is it the case that you are a romantic couple that has separate bedrooms?

Please say yes.

Please say yes.

Well, yes, partly because I'm very allergic to cats and her three cats like to sleep on her bed.

And that just wouldn't have been sort of torture for me, but also because

we've both never lived with a partner before and we both are well into our adulthood and like our own space.

Yeah, I really respect that, that you have that self-knowledge and that you are acting upon it.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is very pro, not couples not sleeping together, but normalizing couples not sleeping together if that's what they wish.

You can always choose to sleep together, but you don't have to do it every night, especially if not draped with cats all night.

Yeah, my room is the cat-free zone, so I have like an allergy haven in the house.

Also, if I've learned anything working on the Judge John Hodgman podcast these past 10 plus years, it's that people who don't live in Los Angeles or New York just have lots of rooms that they can't figure out what to do with.

Like, yeah, that's my cat grooming room.

No, no, no, you're in the darning room.

You want to be in the knitting room.

Yeah, this is where I have my normal train set, and this is where I have my specialties train set

that doesn't go in a circle.

It just goes in lines back and forth.

I was thinking, Jesse, when Becca was describing the backyard situation, they've got bird feeders in one bush and then bird feeders in another bush.

I'm like, two bushes must be nice.

Quite a spread out there in Maryland and quite a

semi-rural area.

I mean, you've got a lot of wildlife roaming around.

We do have a kind of a weird amount of wildlife, considering we're pretty close to a major city.

Like the deer that showed up was odd.

The hawk was weird.

The hawk literally killed a dove.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And how long do you two imagine that you'll stay in this particular property for the foreseeable future?

Or do you got plans to abandon this cat?

There is a small chance we move abroad in five years, ten years, something like that.

Oh, okay.

And by that point, Black Cat will probably be dead?

Or what will happen to Black Cat if you were to leave?

Well, so I inherited the birds and orange cat from the previous owner.

So perhaps I can just write him into the deed of the house.

Well, you were saying that the previous owner fed these birds, and so that's why the birds are so inclined to come visit.

Yeah, it feels rude to have them used to getting food in this spot and then be like, no, sorry.

And also, I like birds.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, of course, wherever you choose to live, I hope that you find a place that is peaceful and supports

your human rights and dignity.

Thank you.

Wherever that may be.

And

I hope that all the animals you want with you can be there with you, too.

Would you say that this dispute is the biggest dispute that you've had since Becca's moved in?

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's not super, super important.

We're not going to break up over the result of today or anything.

But yeah, it is one that we haven't been able to

reach our own solution.

Becca wants you to stop feeding the cat cold turkey.

I mean, literally nothing, but especially not cold turkey.

How do you feel about that solution?

And do you have an alternative solution?

I don't love, yeah, that.

I would feel very guilty, as Becca's pointed out.

I'm a big softy.

Really, really like the animals.

So I would feel, I would feel bad for a black cat.

He was used to a human taking care of him at least a little bit by feeding him, and then that stopped.

So divorce isn't his fault.

But anyway, so the yard is fairly big.

So I have listened to Becca a bit and taken his food, and now he's used to eating at the very back end of the yard.

Away from the bird feeders.

Yes, away from where the birds are, away from the bird bath.

Becca, it sounds as though Eli's trying to make some accommodations here.

John, you can lead a bird to water, but you can't make the cat eat it.

I mean, Jesse Thorne raises an important point here, Becca, which is that so far, to your knowledge, no birds have been consumed by Black Cat.

And if Black Cat were eating these birds, don't you think that Black Cat might be leaving them?

to you or Eli as a little tribute.

Well, that's a good point, but there is a ton of leaf coverage of the yard.

He could be caching bird bodies really anywhere.

He might be hiding them under the under the feathers of a dead chicken.

He might be hiding them in the bone shed.

That's where he lives now.

He does.

Excuse me, bone shed?

Yeah.

So

about.

So we live on the set of a saw movie.

And

the bone shed is actually an adaptation Eli made at my request because when I moved in, there's like a clothesline on our screen in patio.

And she said, don't look inside that bag.

And it was a bag hanging from the clothesline.

So I didn't look inside the bag and I just forgot about it.

And then eventually she confessed to me, I need to tell you what's inside the bag and what

was inside the bag.

This is too scary.

What was inside the bag was bones.

And I said, human bones.

She said, no.

And I was like, okay, well, that's, we could work with that.

And they are bones from her friend Christine's farm.

And she is saving them to clean them and display them because she's a bone queen, queen, a bone queen.

She's a gentle animal lover.

It makes perfect sense that she would have a bone bag

on the clothesline.

I said, can we not have the unbleached, unsanitized bones hanging next to our dried clothes, even though they are inside a plastic bag?

And she said, okay.

And she moved them to the shed, which is also where she put the cat bed that she made for Black Cat.

Can I just say that the beginning, the most incredible part of this entire story to me is the part where she said don't look in the bag on the clothesline and then you didn't look in the bag that's unbelievable it's her how many sessions with the couples counselor were just about the bag on the clothesline

You know, and I just kind of forgot about it.

I have ADHD.

And sometimes if I, if something is not registering as relevant to me, I just start, sort of stop seeing it.

So I had sort of forgotten about the bag by the time she confessed to me that it was bones.

You're a very trusting

partner, I must say.

Good for you.

And good for you for drawing your boundaries, which is I don't want a bag of bones on my clothesline.

John, it's like when I was staying with you at your house and you told me not to look in the lie pit in your basement.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

If you hear scratching, if you have scratching on the inside of this closet door, don't open it.

And what's your plans with the bones?

Rituals?

No Renaissance fair.

Go on.

Of course.

Then now it all makes sense.

It's not pure madness now that you've said Renaissance fair.

She's going to decorate her outfit for the next season.

I

love it.

What is your red and fair persona?

I don't really have a good term for it, but like natural colors and then bones.

So I made fish vertebrae.

I made fish vertebrae earrings.

And then, yeah,

when I find bones, I pick them up.

Yeah, just like in the Renaissance, John.

I think the bones might also decorate our house at some point because there are some bones already decorating the house.

Do you, let me ask this.

You didn't know.

that the love of your life was a bone queer until you moved in.

I knew that she was a, I knew that she had the bone earrings, but I didn't realize the extent of the bone collection and that her plans were to, you know, like do the solution that you're supposed to soak the bones in and scrub them.

Like that's an involved level of bone collecting.

And there's like a subset of the queer queer community that love to do that with bones.

You thought at most she was a cartilage queer.

Yeah.

And do you do you do this the bone scrubbing and other

sanitizing stuff that Becca's talking about, Eli?

So far I've researched it and I know what to buy, have not actually followed through to purchase the

so you should just have a bag of bones from your friend's farm that are decaying naturally in your bone shed.

Who hasn't given up on a craft project halfway through?

I'm not just, I'm just trying to establish what's going on.

There's no judgment here, even though I'm a judge.

I just want to know.

Yeah, they are hanging up in Black Cat's

pad.

Black Cat's shed.

In his shed.

Jesse, if you want to know

when you're visiting my Airbnb, the bone bag is in the black cat shed.

Okay, thank you.

Would you be averse if the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast bought you a trail cam?

No, so I would not be opposed to having a trail cam.

I do have some anecdotal evidence, though, about cats killing birds that I could come back to if we want to get back on track.

Let's definitely try to get back on track a little bit.

What is your anecdotal evidence?

Okay, so I've lived in the house for like six years.

I've been feeding the birds the whole time.

And before I started feeding any cats at all, every summer I would find the occasional dead bird in the yard.

Usually just like one or two a summer, but like they were there.

Since I've started feeding black cat and orange cat, I've not found any carcasses in the yard.

Well, my thinking is that by making sure this cat's not starving, he doesn't have to hunt.

I know cats will for fun, but he doesn't need to in order to survive.

And it seems to be working.

And the birds that you found,

did they display evidence of mauling?

Like, in other words, were they killed by a cat or maybe it was old age or ennui?

I guess

I'm not sure.

I'm not a veterinarian.

You said that the previous owners fed these birds and that you and then you felt the obligation to continue to feed them as a result?

Yes, I like them as well.

But yes, I do feel.

What, birds?

Birds.

Oh, Oh, you, Jonathan Franzen?

But it's not a situation where it's like you must feed the birds or else the curse will come.

Not that I know of.

Okay.

How do you think you would feel, Eli, if I were to order you to stop feeding Black Cat?

Thinking about it makes my chest hurt.

I'm getting very,

very tight in the chest.

I feel a little silly saying that, but I do like

it.

I appreciate your honesty.

Okay.

When Eli describes the physical sensation of distress,

when just contemplating you winning this case, Becca,

does that change how you feel?

Or is she just being manipulative?

Well, I think she should just stop feeding the birds then.

Just cats.

It's either cats or birds.

Cannot be both.

Yeah, I feel it's, you know, anecdotal evidence like of you used to find dead birds that weren't mauled and now you don't.

Like, it really can't prove that there's not predation opportunities happening.

And

I don't know.

I just think by feeding one feral cat, we're inviting the possibility to other feral cats that we might be recreating the feral cat colony in the neighborhood.

And I don't want that to be our house.

That too many feral cats in the yard would be very stressful.

Eli,

Becca suggested that you get rid of the birds if you want to keep the cat.

Does that make your chest hurt too?

Is there a difference in feeling there?

No, it also makes my heart hurt.

I think if I had to choose, which I hope I don't, but if I had to choose, I think I'd have to keep the bird feeders since it's, you know, 40 birds to one cat.

Do you think that black cat is potentially adoptable, Eli?

Right now, he's not super happy about, well, he's scared of humans.

So I don't know.

Sometimes cats surprise you and they come around.

Sometimes they don't.

And Becca, what do you think about the trap neuter release plan that Eli is pursuing?

Let's say, for the sake of argument, she's pursuing it ingenuously and not disingenuously in order to get podcast clout.

I think neutering him is...

our responsibility at this point because we fed him so much.

He basically lives in the bone shed now, which she made him a little heated cat bed.

So he's become accustomed to living in our yard.

We're providing his food and shelter.

We got to neuter him.

That's just the responsible thing to do.

Can Niles, Frasier, and Fez see the bone shed from their catio?

And if they can, do you say to them, be good or you're going out to the bone shed?

If I thought they'd understood me, I might.

I don't, they might be able to see part of the shed.

They can see it from the laundry room window, but they can't see it from the catio.

Okay.

They can hear the screams, though, right?

All right.

I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make a decision.

I'm going to go into my own personal bone shed.

I'll think it over.

I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Eli, how are you feeling about your chances right now?

I think I feel kind of okay.

In listening to the show, I've always been kind of touched by how no one's really the bad guy when they come in here.

And the judge does a good job being thoughtful

and

even bone collectors yeah even get a fair shake on our show even the bone queers should feel safe coming here

no I think my my intent to be kind to animals has come through Becca how are you feeling I think it's very possible I will lose and then I will have to accept the judgment but in that case I'm simply in the same situation I'm in now so I think Eli has more to lose technically in this.

And I don't want her heart to hurt.

I don't want to make her feel physical or emotional pain.

And one of the things I love about her is how much she cares about everyone and every creature.

It's her optimism is one of the things that drew me to her in the first place.

We kind of joked that she's like the sunshiny person and I'm like the goth clown of the relationship.

So I understand she's a lot more sympathetic in this case and that I might lose.

So tired of this couple's therapy language

it's a bunch of jargon

well we'll see what judge hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a moment

you know we've been doing my brother my brother me for 15 years and maybe

maybe you stopped listening for a while maybe you never listen and you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years i know where this has ended up but no no you would be wrong we're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show, Let's Learn Everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news, we still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper.

And on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Judge Hodgman, can I tell you about what's happening in our fundraiser for services for migrants through allotrolado.org?

Yes.

Okay.

So you know, I put up a $25,000 challenge.

My wife and I did.

I do know that.

Very generous of you.

You know that we blew past that $25,000 almost immediately.

It was astonishing.

You know that someone else put up a further, an anonymous donor, put up a further $25,000 bonus.

Some anonymous Nice out there, another $25K.

Blew past it.

Blew that too.

Blew past it.

Someone else put up a third one.

What?

Blew past it.

Another challenge met, another challenge blew past.

Okay, that's $75,000 in matches and over $75,000 in gifts.

Now, as we sit here, we're recording this immediately before we hit the road.

Yeah.

We are at $125,000.

Wow.

We are at 1,350 supporters.

As we sit here, and this is before we go on the road.

So $125 plus $75,000 in matching

we are up to two hundred thousand dollars for a lot of lotto now let me say this

yesterday john yeah what happened i don't

well for me it was a sunday i slipped in i got an email

from another person who's offering a twenty five thousand dollar match bingo bango bongo every gift during our tour up to twenty five thousand dollars will be matched.

That's amazing.

And Alotro Lato is doing some incredible stuff for migrants who are some of our most vulnerable neighbors at the moment, correct?

We're talking

the United States government has refugees in open-air detention right now,

literally in cyclone fences with

barbed wire on top out in the open in the desert in southern Texas and New Mexico.

We're separating families consistently, both entering the United States and leaving the United States.

And when that happens, they don't even tell you often where your family members are.

You just have to try and figure it out.

That's one of the things that Alo Trilado works on.

We're talking about just giving people help when they are deported to Tijuana through the southern border of the United States.

and just left in Tijuana, they might not even be, they're not only probably not from Tijuana, they might not even be Mexican.

This is the kind of stuff that our government is doing and the kind of direct help that Alotrolado is offering.

This is the last time we're going to ask on the show.

And

I am staring hungrily at a quarter million dollars.

I am thinking that between the tour and this last ask, we can make it to a quarter million dollars because we have a hundred thousand dollars in matching and we're almost up to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gifts.

We hit $150,000, that's a quarter million dollars.

So it's alotrolalo.org/slash let's do something.

And to those 1,350 people, like I absolutely, I'm just like gobsmacked.

I cannot believe it.

I am

so

grateful to you and so honored by your generosity.

John, you're one of those people.

Jordan is one of those people.

Jennifer is one of those people.

Stephen Ray Morris, the producer of Jordan Jesse Go, is one of those people.

I am so grateful to every single one of you.

Like, I have opened that webpage

and

started crying multiple times over the last six weeks.

So thank you so much to everybody.

And it's alotrolado.org slash let's do something.

And I will say this, John.

As this episode is released, it'll be right around the same time as our very last tour stop in Los Angeles.

I have contacted a print shop and I will be purchasing the largest novelty check available to present to Al Otrolado at our Los Angeles show.

This check is going to be so huge, John, you're not even going to believe how huge this check is.

It's going to be physically huge, but what we also want is that we want the amount to be huge.

Indeed.

And I think that's going to happen if you go to alotrolado.org slash let's do something.

And we'll put that link in the show description as well in your podcast app.

So you can just pull it up and tap that link right now.

And I mean, my gosh, thank you so much for this.

I'm so grateful to all of you.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and presents his verdict.

So I have a couple of first of alls.

First of all,

I've always said that

the pleasure of doing Judge John Hodgman for me is not telling people they're right or wrong.

That's a pleasure gravy for me.

The true pleasure, the main course pleasure is getting to meet people from all over the country and the world and from all different kinds of places and backgrounds and walks of life and so forth.

And this has just been a delight to talk to both of you, warmheart and goth clown,

and to discover things about other people and to have conversations that start with feeding feral cats and then go to, I have a bag of bones in a shed that I'm going to turn into a Renfair costume.

Now, I will say, I'm also, like Jesse, a little embarrassed that I didn't know

about the bone queer community, especially since I've been on probably 10 Jonathan Colton cruises.

You would think I would have learned about bone queerdom there.

Jesse, you're going on the cruise this year.

Maybe you can let me know what I missed and other subcultures I should know about.

In any case, my other first of all is, first of all, thank you for also

engaging in couples counseling

and particularly encourage you to continue to resolve your problems and disputes through couples counseling rather than trusting an unaccredited podcaster to help you.

This has been fun to talk to you, but I really do ask and encourage you to talk to your therapist or your counselor, whatever, tomorrow as you continue to process

not only this dispute or others and whatever ruling I make,

it comes second to your own good judgment and consultation with your therapist.

And that goes for everyone who's ever been on the Judge Sean Hodgeman podcast.

And my other first of all is this.

First of all, I love birds.

I know that Jesse Thorne tried to set up this dichotomy where I love cats and I hate birds.

I love birds.

Anyone who's listened to this podcast knows how excited I get when I'm pretending to podcast, but I'm actually just staring into the middle distance out the window in the style of my cat, and I spy the cardinal couple that come around.

I'm talking about birds, not

the guys from Conclave, like actual bird cardinal.

There's a couple that a paired bond that come around every spring, and I see them every year, and they're just adorable, and I love them so much.

I would hate to see them be eaten by a cat, even a cat that I love.

And indeed, I love all animals.

As I wrote in my very first book, The Areas of My Expertise: I'm a friend to all animals, except when I'm eating or wearing them.

I adore them all and I want them to thrive.

But we are dealing with hard questions of nature:

nature that we attempt to tame, and nature that we cannot tame.

Goth clown Becca has seen the harshness of the natural world when it comes to

animals passing away and even human companion animals, not just wild animals.

It's hard out there.

You live in a

human community, but even you notice that nature fights back.

Nature is sending deer and invasive species into your yards.

You are.

Becca says, I don't want to try to cultivate an ecological experiment.

What is an ecological experiment if not a garden?

This is the push-pull as we inhabit and exploit.

nature and as nature takes its revenge upon us.

It is harsh out there.

And I would say particularly harsh for feral cats.

There are a lot of them.

There is a reason that the AVMA has a stated policy, which is to reduce the number of feral cats,

primarily by trapping, neutering, and releasing.

Removing from the cats their procreative qualities and ultimately trying to keep those colonies

at a smaller size or potentially eliminating them because it's not good for those cats.

Those cats, they're not leading healthy or safe lives.

They have a right to live.

Obviously, that's why you trap, neuter, and then release.

But the idea of

mitigating the size of feral cat colonies is really important because they don't have a very high quality of life.

And indeed, my own daughter, who's a whole human being in her own right, had a, frankly, emotionally devastating and tragic interaction with an attempt to save a feral cat that did not go well.

And it is really, you really have to,

you really have to avail yourself of best emotional practices.

And ultimately, I do come down on the side of the AVMA here, which is that

unless you are actively and responsibly managing a feral cat colony according to best practices, you shouldn't just be willy-nilly feeding them.

And same goes for birds, too.

Like bird feeders are all over the place.

and yet they can be vectors for bird diseases if the bird feeders themselves are not clean and maintained properly.

Best practice

going back in time is probably to not

do what your divorced neighbors did, which was feed a bunch of feral cats for fun.

And that may be the reason that they're divorced now.

And I don't want you to be divorced figuratively or literally in the future.

So we have to find some common ground.

I think that you've already gone pretty far towards that.

And indeed, Eli, as you consider the changes to your

life

that may be asked of you in my verdict, Becca has come into your life with a cat allergy and has made real accommodations in order to share their life with you.

And it is reasonable

that

you make accommodations as well.

So again, I think that you have gone in the right direction.

Here's what I would say.

Black cat belongs in the moanshed.

I will accept the letters of those who disagree with me, but I think that you have, as Becca has pointed out, you've made a de facto commitment to the livelihood, that is to say, the life.

I don't know how this cat is making money, but

you are invested in Black Cat's life.

You have effectively created a symbiotic situation that you can't just

pull the food rug out from under Black Cat at this point.

But you're already halfway towards, I think, a good solution for this cat in particular, which is that the cat.

while still afraid of humans and maybe not ultimately adoptable,

it's still,

it can live in that shed.

It can live in that bone shed.

And you have already proven, Eli, that you know how to make a cat door.

And I would suggest in consultation with your therapist and

with the

animal rescue organization that you deal with, a cat's life,

that maybe you should install a cat door so that black cat can come in there and eat

and stay away from the birds and stay away from your other cats.

And

then what you need to do is you need to call a cat's life and say, look, I know that I only emailed you for internet clout, but I really mean it.

I want to trap this cat.

I've already got a bone shed.

How do I get started?

And I need you to trap and neuter

and then determine if black cat is adoptable or not.

And if black cat is not adoptable,

then the bone shed shall be black cat's domain away from your other cats, away from those birds, until such time black cat ends

its natural life without procreating.

That's, I think, the best, most responsible path that I can think of.

But I do think that you should, by doing this, you will also, I hope,

be isolating the situation to the bone shed so that you're not attracting other feral cats that might be living.

in the neighborhood.

Of course, the minute you build that cat door, that shed is going to be full of all kinds of critters, I realize now.

So maybe that's not the best idea.

But in any case, feed Black Cat of the bone shed, keep it separated, keep it isolated, get the training or the approval or whatever it is you need to really

from a cat's life to become a

trap neuter release expert and do it and continue to do it throughout the neighborhood.

And then you'll know you're...

actually and effectively helping those cats lives, which lives, by the way, may end tragically anyway.

You just never know when a hawk is going to come down and swoop on a dove or a cat or a coyote will come along.

That's the hard part about dealing with pets that are not actual true companion animals.

But

I think the proper thing to do is black cat gets food in the bone shed, thus no further.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Becca, how are you feeling right now?

You know, that's, I think it's a fair ruling.

I think it's fair to Black Cat, as fair as we can be, and I think it's as fair to Eli as we can be.

You got any stuff you want to put in the shed?

I was thinking about this shed just as a sequestration zone for all kinds of crap.

You know, maybe it can be turned into her bone cleaning shed, you know, just put a little counter and bins of solutions.

I just don't want them to be cleaned in the house, really.

Eli, how are you feeling?

I'm pretty happy.

Yeah.

I have two sheds, actually, one for other garden tools and one for miscellaneous.

So, yeah, I'm happy to devote one to the things that Becca does not enjoy.

Becca, Eli, thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

Another Judge John Hodgman case is in the books.

We'll have Swift Justice in just a second.

First, our thanks to Redditor underscore underscore magpie underscore underscore for naming this week's episode cease and toxoplasmosist join the conversation over at the maximum fun subreddit at reddit.com slash r slash maximum fun

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Blue Sky at Judge John Hodgman.

It seems like a nice, fun place for now.

We'll see.

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We We really appreciate it.

And I know that the only thing you don't like about our entire show is John calling his cat dumb.

So sorry there was 10 minutes of that on this episode.

Look,

you can't please them all, John.

You know what?

Maybe for Max Fun Drive, if we reach a certain threshold, I'll release a super cat of my cat staring into the middle distance, and you can decide.

You can decide.

Judge John Hodgman was created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman.

Our thanks to engineer Jordan Mercia at D28 Studio in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Man, you know, for a while, I lived right next to Silver Spring, Maryland.

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Rock on, Dan.

You may have misunderstood the tone of this program.

The podcast is edited by A.J.

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Now, Swift Justice, where we answer small disputes with quick judgment.

Golf is stupid on the maximum fund size.

I really support that.

Golf is the worst.

I mean, it's really great for people that love golf, and I wish you all the best, but it really is the worst.

Talk about an ecological disaster, Ariel.

Talk about just who are these people that are just like, I'll be back in five hours.

My friend thinks he met Willie Nelson, but this guy was clearly not Willie Nelson.

Is it okay that I will never, ever tell him the truth?

Man, one time I was in line at LAX, and guess who was in front of me in line at the security gate?

Willie Nelson?

Yeah.

Really?

He's very old and very small, and definitely Willie Nelson.

Definitely.

If you see

Willie Nelson, you're like, there's no other person that could possibly be.

Well, I mean,

people who have followed the podcast for a while, particularly people who were at our Atlanta show in 2023, know that Willie Nelson loves antique coffee tables and has a guy who travels the country looking for antique coffee tables to buy for Willie Nelson.

And Willie Nelson's coffee table guy looks a lot like Willie Nelson.

So it could be, Golf is stupid, that your friend met Willie Nelson's table guy.

That's a very deep cut for anyone who was in the audience that day for that joke that did not go very well.

I still love it to death.

In any case,

I think that it is not only okay that you never ever tell him the truth, it is essential.

It is a blessing to ever meet Willie Nelson or to stand behind him in line.

If you have that opportunity,

you have been touched by grace.

And

no friend of mine or

yours, golf is stupid, would feel happy to be told, no, you didn't experience what you experienced.

Let him live in ignorance in at least this one happy way.

All right.

We are always asking for you, the listeners and viewers out there on YouTube, to send your disputes to me.

Where?

MaximumFund.org slash JJHO.

Of course, we have found that many of you are a little worried that your disputes are too low stakes for the show, to which I say wrong go.

Correct, Jesse?

Wrongo?

Wrongo.

W-R-O-N-G-O, probably.

The best cases are often the silliest cases.

And so I'm asking you, let's lower the stakes.

There's nothing we need more in civilization at this moment than some good old-fashioned stakes lowering.

Let's take a breath, lower the stakes, and get silly.

What is your silliest dispute?

What's something you're disputing about that you know is completely trivial?

And are you and your friends still arguing about whether the dress is blue or black and white and gold or whatever it is?

Do you think your girlfriend writes the letter X the wrong way?

Do you know that Glinda was a witch, but your brother thinks she's a princess because she wore a crown and came down in a bubble?

Tell your brother to grow up and go see a movie.

But first, send your case to me and Jesse and the whole team here at Judge John Hodgman at maximumfun.org slash JJ H O.

Even if your case is small and silly and we don't end up hearing it, I'm the one who reads reads them all and I always enjoy hearing from you.

Maximumfund.org slash JJ H O.

Indeed, we will take cases high stakes, low stakes, medium stakes, ribeye stakes, rare stakes.

Yeah, whatever stakes you've got at maximumfun.org slash JJ H O.

And we will talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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