Extended Munching

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We are clearing the docket this week.

I'm joined by the leader of the J squad, Judge John Hodgman.

Look, we're all

co-leaders.

Oh,

I had no idea.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, we're all

John T.

Monty Belmonte, Gene, Jadaniel, Jadaniel Spear,

Jaddy Lopez, our social media manager.

JJ.

JJ, it seems like would be how it would go, right?

JJ McKeon, J.J.

Jakeen, and of course, me, John Hodgman, John.

That comes up right in our docket.

We got a lot of things in the docket.

Maybe we should go ahead and clear it.

Yeah, speaking of John's, we have a case from Karen in Levitt Town, Pennsylvania.

My husband, Julian, uses the word John, even though he is from Queens, New York.

We've both lived in the Philly suburbs for about 20 years, but have never lived in the city proper.

I believe that saying John when you're not from Philly is like using a fake Philly accent.

Please make him stop.

Leave it town, Pennsylvania, that famous little town full of all those little houses that

were designed to house people back when we wanted to house people in this country.

Little, modest little homes all in a row, but definitely not Philadelphia.

Jesse, have you ever said the word John in your life?

J-A-W-N?

No, many, many years ago,

my online life revolved around okayplayer.com, which is a message board created by Questlove of the Roots.

Oh, right.

The Roots are from Philadelphia, as well as

many of their sort of affiliated acts, Jill Scott and stuff.

Right.

And there were a lot of Philadelphians on the board and a lot of talk about Johns.

But that is now

20 years ago.

Yeah, folks, if you want to know what John means, Questlove is essentially the

explicator of John to the wider world these days.

It means a person-placer thing.

It stands in for any noun.

It's spelled, and I'm using quotation marks.

If you're watching on video,

I'm doing little bunny foo-fus on either hand to indicate quotation marks.

It's spelled J-A-W-N.

I put that quotation marks because it's a piece of verbal slang

that is presumably adaptation of the word joint,

as in this joint is jumping, thanks, Cab Calloway.

And now, meaning like the hand me that joint over there or this joint over here.

And you say it in Philadelphia, John.

I would go ahead and look at Questlove's explanation of it that he gives

in some promotional videos that he did for his movie, his great documentary, Summer of Soul.

Look at it up on YouTube.

He explains the whole thing.

John, John, kind of John, right?

A little bit of a a diphthong in John.

I don't know.

I never say it because I am not from Philadelphia.

Nothing like a Philly diphthong, John.

Nothing like a Philly.

They can diphthong anything.

Them and people in Baltimore.

You get a Philly diphthong with G's or without.

Yeah.

You want to add vowels to a vowel?

Those are the cities you want to go to in the end.

There you go.

Yeah.

Even though I'm not from Philly and I obviously can't do the accent, yeah.

My mother was and she had an accent, but it kind of went away over time.

My aunts have it, but none of them say John because,

as far as I can tell, this is primarily a piece of

black vernacular in Philadelphia.

And if I'm wrong on that, I bet I'll get letters.

I think that's true.

I think at the very least, you would describe it as urban vernacular.

Yeah, if you were going to be euphemistic about it, I'll tell you what, it's not Levittown vernacular.

I'm looking at a map right now.

Levitt Town, you're closer to Trenton than you are to Philadelphia, Levitt Town.

No offense.

You might as well be in Trenton.

You know what they have up there in Trenton there, Jesse?

What do they have?

Philadelphia, John Prentinton.

Got a big sign.

It says, it's the saddest sign I ever see.

It says, Trenton makes the world takes.

You ever see that sign?

I have seen it.

See it on the train as you're taking the Amtrak down there.

Down there to Philadelphia.

I can't do it.

Of course, I'm doing an imitation of John Worcester being Philly Boy Roy on the best show.

And what I'm doing is fairly offensive.

I can't imagine.

Not offensive so much as cringe.

And I don't know what would be more cringe

than a person from Queens and Levittown saying John all the time.

But then, on the other hand, a 53-year-old fake internet judge saying cringe is also pretty cringe.

What do you think about this one, Jesse?

Yeah, I'm there with you.

I would hesitate to characterize it as offensive.

I know there are defenders of the appropriation of African-American vernacular English and et cetera, et cetera.

I'm not inclined to go full offensive, but I am inclined to say a little embarrassing.

Also, because it's old stuff I didn't realize.

Like, you know, you, you saw it on this bulletin board 20 years ago because you're cool.

Me, I didn't even see Creed when it came out in 2015.

Creed was a very John-heavy film.

Yeah, I guess that, I mean, I didn't see that movie.

It's how out of it I am.

And I gather there's a whole scene in which the whole term is described.

So go see that.

But that was 2015 was nine years ago, almost 10 years ago.

So do I think it's totally chilled and

very demure to be using John in Levittown, Pennsylvania?

I would stay, me, I'd stay away from it.

Just say thing.

We have that word, thing.

Hey, do you want to know something?

You know who else is a native Philadelphian, a true native Philadelphian besides Amir Questlove Thompson?

Paul F.

Tompkins?

Paul F.

Tompkins.

Nailed it in one.

A lot of people are from Philadelphia.

I could have said Benjamin Franklin.

Could have said Benjamin Franklin.

Could have said the Phillies fanatic.

The Philly fanatic, yeah.

Don't want to get you in trouble.

I don't care.

I don't care anymore.

Throw your batteries, Philadelphia.

I'll take it all.

We had a great show in Philadelphia and it was fun.

We had some good cheesesteaks.

We talked about it already, but the point I'm trying to make is, I may be misremembering, but I think I'm not.

That Paul F.

Tompkins once revealed to me that he and Amir Questlove Thompson went to elementary school together.

Like maybe young, like maybe first or second grade.

Fantastic.

Together.

That is the Muppet Babies prequel that I need in my life.

My only disappointment here is that he didn't go to high school with the Roots, who also went to high school with Boys to Men.

Oh, Motel and philly's back again doing a little east coast swing indeed boys to men going off not too hard not too soft no just right and all the and all the philly steaks you can eat on south street anyway as far as uh we've had enough philly talk especially since we're really talking about levittown which might as well be trenton uh yeah karen i would say julian is a little a little cringe as a san franciscan i'd say it's hella cringe hella cringe it's not hyphy i'll tell you what would you say it's hyphy I wouldn't.

I wouldn't even say it's stupid, doo-doo-dumb.

How do you feel about me saying it's hyphy?

Well, I don't know.

I'd like to see you ghost ride the whip, John.

Oh,

we'd all like to see Judge John Hodgman ghost ride the whip.

That's as far as I'm willing to push my fraudulence.

I have no idea what I'm saying at this point.

So I think it would be safer if we just moved on.

Judge John Hodgman sideshow.

Let's go.

Okay, here's something from Gary in Buxton, Maine.

Buxton, Maine.

I seek an injunction against my wife, Kara.

Please make her stop scolding me whenever I try to do the right thing.

In the past.

Okay.

If we've learned anything from Spikely, it's always do the right thing.

Okay, in the past, I've been scolded for helping injured or stranded animals, removing tree branches, fallen street signs, and other hazards from the street.

Boo, boo.

How dare you?

Trying to break up a bar fight.

Oh, boo.

She says I should stay out of these situations and mind my own business.

I say, if not me, then who?

Okay, we got four, four bullet points to go over here.

Jesse, have you ever done the right thing only to have it go horribly wrong?

No, I would never do the right thing.

You would never do the right thing.

Let me go.

Hey, Jennifer Marmor, you're live down there in California as well, right?

Yeah.

You're broadcasting from home today.

I am, yes.

So we might hear a dog or we might hear a human.

A toddler, a garbage truck right now.

We got four bullet points on

trial.

Let me know, both of you, a quick quiz, just yes or no, briefly, if you've ever done any of these things.

Helped injured or stranded animal.

No.

I've followed a dog around.

I've followed a dog around.

I've never successfully caught one, but I spent like 90 minutes chasing around a stray dog once.

Did this say helping stranded animals or stalking stranded animals?

I was trying to help him find his way.

You were trying to help.

You were trying to help.

All right.

Remove tree branch, fallen street signs, other hazards from the road.

Have you ever removed a hazard from the road?

I've removed hazards from like the sidewalk where it's like blocking the path

for a stroller or a wheelchair or whatever.

Definitely removed tree branches or those

scooters that you rent from an app.

Oh, forget about it.

Oh,

when we're in Portland, Oregon

in early February in 2025, I know I'm going to be going to be clear in the pathway of so many abandoned scooters.

That place is just a scooter jungle gym now.

Last time I was going to climb over that.

All right.

I have a giant eucalyptus tree in front of my house

that is like 100 years old and drops terrifying branches like real as they say widow makers I saw it destroy a car once oh whoa whoa

and I will drag those branches out of the sidewalk again I don't really care about the street part but I will drag them out of the sidewalk because I live in a very old lady heavy neighborhood a lot of a lot of a lot of old ladies going for little walks with little visors on in my neighborhood yeah yeah yeah good you ever tried to break up a bar fight

Just imagine.

Just imagine me and Jennifer Marmor breaking up bar fights.

A friend of mine tried to break up a bar fight when I was with him, and I was like,

I tried to shrink into myself as much as possible because I did not know what to do.

It was terrifying.

Oh, yeah.

What did your friend, what was the technique your friend used?

He kind of just got in the middle, put both arms out, you know, between them, and it's just like, whoa, whoa, hey, you know, like kind of, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yeah, like, you guys, you don't need to to do this.

Everybody, chill out.

Everybody, be very demure here.

Mindful.

Be mindful.

I'll say this.

David Reese

intervened in what was a verbal altercation, a wildly escalating verbal altercation between

a mom and her

young teenage son.

And it was getting uncomfortable.

And David Reese just

popped in and said, excuse me, can you tell me what time it is?

And she's like, oh, yeah, excuse me, it's 5.35.

And then it stopped.

I was like, what was that?

He goes, you know, someone that he knows who is a social worker taught him that as a de-escalation technique, that it just sort of pops people back into a world where there are other people around.

And then they just auto-regulate, not all the time.

But it's a really, something I don't mind spreading, a de-escalation technique.

Ask people what time it is.

I love that.

That's like a, that seems like something that the Guardian Angels would have done on a bus when I was a kid.

Yeah, Curtis.

A lot of Guardian.

He was a New Yorker, but in San Francisco in the 80s, there were a lot of Guardian Angels in my neighborhood.

Yeah, for sure.

They were like weird superheroes.

It was really a trip with their berets on.

For those who don't know, the Guardian Angels were and maybe still are

a team of a team,

a group of volunteer safety patrol guys, typically.

Yeah, that's about right.

Or organized by a New York City oddball and now fairly right-wing figure and former talk show host, Curtis Sleewa.

But he became famous first for being a guardian angel.

He did run for mayor of New York City.

as a cat enthusiast Republican, I would say was his platform, right?

I don't know.

I find that to be a really interesting technique, and I haven't had a chance to put it into practice.

May I confess to you both, Jay Squad, one of my weirder fantasies?

Please.

I guess.

I was just going, ask Reddit after dark.

Here's my weird fantasy.

I wish,

you know,

if I were to choose a superpower, everyone knows I would choose invisibility over flight

because it's more practical.

But honestly, if I had a superpower, I wish I could win any fight.

It's so dumb.

But I just wish that I like had

kung fu programmed into my brain

and it was just known, it was just inevitable due to my own skills and weird, the weird hand of fate,

that if ever I were to be in a physical altercation, that I would win that fight.

And I'll tell you what, I would be breaking up bar fights all the time.

I would be using that great power for great responsibility.

You know where I'd be.

You know where I'd be.

I'd just be out there in my fortress of solitude.

Yeah,

in your meditative state, playing with your crystals.

Anyway, I don't know what trouble.

Kara is concerned or Cara is concerned that Gary is going to get into up there in Buxton, Maine by moving a branch off the road, but I will say this.

Speaking speaking of my own Maine experience: if it's a fallen power line, do not move it.

Stay away and call your local volunteer firefighter or the power company or something.

Trying to break up a bar fight.

Okay, here's where we get into some stuff here because it is really, especially these days,

it is really, really good to act upon and model neighborliness instead of the increasing trend, it seems to me, post-lockdown and other, let's say, political factors of selfish, I don't know how else to put it,

we should make sure that we are neighborly to each other and helping to de-escalate conflict is part of that, but you do not have an obligation to put yourself at physical risk.

And I think that, you know, I don't know what, I don't know whether Gary's got kung fu downloaded in his brain matrix style or whatever,

but I would try to develop some,

learn about some de-escalation techniques that are proven to work rather than just throw yourself in between elbows and fists.

Like

ask them what time it is or try to get someone else to help or whatever.

Also, if you see other conflict, especially

conflict between people who are more physically powerful

than others, like an adult or a child, or let's say a heterosexual couple where the guy is menacing the woman or whatever,

then it is good to step in

and just show the person who might be less, might be more intimidated or vulnerable in that moment that they're not alone.

But again, you're not obligated to put yourself at physical risk.

All right, let's take a quick break.

We'll be back in just a second on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

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The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Made In.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast, where we are clearing the docket and we have a case from Abraham in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

My best friend Thomas and I have had an ongoing dispute since childhood over the game The Legend of Zelda Four Swords.

Thomas will pick up my character and throw him into lava.

He does this to get the rupees that my character releases upon his death.

Wow.

This is a teamwork game.

Please ban Thomas from purposely working against the group in all future cooperative games.

All future cooperative games, even Save the Whales, the board game that I had as a child.

Yeah, when you're saving whales, the best way to do it is to destroy your co-player and get their rupees.

Each character was a different type of whale and had very, very nice, heavy metal whale pieces.

So you're not saving the whales.

You are the whale.

You are being, you are saving whales are saving themselves.

Yeah.

I'm trying to remember.

The memories are pretty mixed up with the legendary Canadian public television co-production, The Voyage of the Mimi, starring young Ben Afflank.

Well, I am not an expert on that game, nor am I an expert on this one because I have never once in my life played a Zelda.

Not a single Zelda have I played.

Have you ever played a Zelda?

I beat an entire Zelda.

But what's weird is that's the only Zelda I've played.

I've never played any of the NES Zeldas.

The only one I've played was

during the pandemic,

very early in the pandemic, my friend Jordan Morris from Jordan Jesse Go gave my family his Wii U, which is sort of marginal,

semi-unsuccessful Nintendo console.

It was a transitional console, let's say.

Exactly.

And it had the game Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild on it.

Yep.

Jordan had that game.

He gave us that.

Through 2020, I played and ultimately defeated that game.

I beat Gannon.

I'm not afraid to say it.

It's the only thing that my seven-year-old respects about me.

But that is not a cooperative game.

Only Legends of Zelda Four Swords is a cooperative game, I believe.

That sounds right to me.

I know

that Zelda is the boy, right?

Zelda is the boy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you, Ariel DeMas, for letting us know Zelda is the boy.

You know, you see his picture right on the box.

Yeah, it's right there.

The legend of Zelda.

It's a boy.

Elephant boy.

Yeah, Zelda.

Jennifer Marma, you ever play a game where somebody cheated or wasn't a good sport?

I mean, it probably doesn't count if we're talking about my five-year-old because he's still learning how to be a good sport.

Okay.

We don't know the ages of these people, by the way.

So it could be that Abraham's friend Thomas is five.

No, but I definitely have played like a board game with uh somebody who

as a grown-up was shockingly poor sport about it

just yeah i mean this isn't even cheating it's just kind of being crummy yeah you know yeah what thomas is doing

i once played uh

i was at an event once where uh where ken jennings

the host of Jeopardy,

was running a little, running a little Jeopardy-style trivia game on the side.

I'm not going to say that he was running a side hustle of Jeopardy.

I don't want to get Ken Jennings in trouble.

On the side, you sound like he was doing it in the back room of a pool hall.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was

high stakes.

It was down on the docks in a warehouse, and we were playing unlicensed Jeopardy.

There were millions of rupees at stake.

And then we got shut down by Batman at the last minute.

But before that happened,

I had gotten to the final round, and we had buzzers.

This is a Jeopardy-style game.

Okay.

Don't

get Ken Jennings in trouble.

We were just having some fun, trivia.

It was non-wagering.

It was just a little private enterprise.

But there was a buzzer mechanism.

And I was working hard to win this fair and square.

And guess what?

Hodgman did it.

What is Suriname?

That's the answer.

You guessed the question.

I'm not even playing.

It's not Jeopardy.

Point is, that was the,

I won.

And afterward, one of the two guys I was playing with, and they were both guys, he said, hey, that was really great that you won, especially since I was cheating the whole time.

Yeah.

He had figured out that if you just hold down the buzzer the whole time, you always buzz in first.

And I was like, why are you telling me this?

Excuse me?

Why?

Like, he thought he was being very clever about it.

But I thought it was like, you know, you just turn, you think you're,

he thought he was being very clever and he thought that we were all going to be like, hey, that's really fun.

But I was like, that's terrible.

That's a terrible thing to do.

And there is, and this is something that I've heard about through my wife, who's a whole human being in her own right, who's been a high school teacher for a long time.

There are two,

this comes, it's not a huge insight, but it's like, there are two kinds of students, those who will never cheat because it's obvious why they shouldn't.

That's not the point of what they're doing.

And those who will cheat because they believe cheating is part of the system.

And we live in a society now where it seems to be more and more acceptable that, yeah, cheating is part of the system.

Everyone does it.

So everyone should just cheat and be jerks to each other.

This is what I was talking about before.

You know what I'm talking about, everybody.

You know, you can get a lot, you can get away with a lot these days, but I have to have faith that eventually, if you get a reputation as a creepy crumb bum, it will catch up to you one way or the other.

I'll tell you, I don't know, I've never played a Zelda, but it is true that Legend of Zelda, Four Swords, it's my favorite Abraham Lincoln speech.

Okay, here's something from Kyle: When I go see a movie in theaters, I like to wait for the movie to start before eating my popcorn, then I eat it one kernel at a time.

My friend says this is distracting because my munching and bag sounds persist persist long after everyone else's have ceased.

She thinks that my extended munching violates an unspoken popcorn pact.

I consider myself a conscientious person, but it's my corn and I can eat it as I please.

Am I wrong?

First of all, I just want to

request an injunction against the phrase, it's my corn and I can eat it as I please.

So funny.

Absolutely granted.

Injunction granted as well.

It could be that Kyle's friend has a little mesophonia going on, or it could be that Kyle is just a very loud and disgusting eater that would repulse anybody, regardless of their level of mesophonia or their grossness tolerance factor.

But I don't know that Kyle could be making sounds that are more disgusting than simply the words, my munching and bag sounds.

That's bad enough.

All right, let's get into it.

First of all, popcorn.

Yes or no?

Jesse.

You mean in general?

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

We're going to ban popcorn.

Yeah, popcorn's very good.

Popcorn, yes.

Okay.

I know you're a whirly pop man.

Yeah, I do have a whirly pop at my house.

Same.

I use an America's test kitchen system

that involves putting three kernels into your fat

and then waiting for them all to pop.

Then you put the rest of your popcorn in and take it off the heat for 30 seconds.

Oh, yeah, this does sound like America's test kitchen already.

It's reading an encyclopedia article.

Then put it back on the heat and it works.

It's a miracle.

No problem.

30 seconds off the heat, then put it back on the heat.

So you have to wait until the pan and the oil are hot.

That's what those three kernels in the bottom are for.

The secret of the three kernels.

They can tell when it's ready.

Then you dump in the corn, take it off the heat for 30 seconds, put it back on the heat and wait until it pops and it's a total dream works perfectly what do you top it with what do you got going on i use something called butter

butter melted butter

melted butter the classic i have found that there is no better application for fancy butter than homemade popcorn.

I will go to a local warehouse store, best known for having a magazine that once featured Jesse Thorne in it.

And I will purchase a high-end Irish butter, cultured butter, and I will melt that and put it on the popcorn.

And it is the best.

You can talk about a brand.

It's Costco magazine featuring Coverboy Jesse Thorne.

Costco Connection.

Costco Connection magazine featuring Coverboy Jesse Thorne.

They sell butter and the butter you're talking about, I bet you is Kerry Gold.

Yeah, it's Kerry Gold.

Kerry Gold's having a moment for sure.

Somebody at the flea market market yesterday told me that they tore my article out of their Costco Connection magazine, but they also had not read it yet.

I just want to be clear.

There were two paragraphs about me in Costco Connection.

There was a picture of me,

two or three paragraphs.

That's it.

So look, if you're waiting on it, just go ahead and do it now.

You're going to enjoy those three graphs.

I'm definitely going to go search for the back issue of the big chicken barn when I'm in Maine over the holidays.

But in the meantime, Jennifer Marmor, popcorn?

Yes or no?

And how do you top your popcorn?

Or tell me, or tell me how you cook it.

How do you like your corn?

It's your corn.

You can eat it as you please.

We all know.

We use a whirly pop

also.

And when I say we, I really mean my husband Shane.

He's the one who does the popcorn.

Okay.

Yep.

And sometimes, I mean, I do enjoy butter on it, but sometimes I just don't.

Sometimes I say just plain.

Just plain salt is good for me.

Yeah.

Sometimes at the movie theater, here we go.

I like to add in a little M ⁇ Ms into the mix.

Whoa.

That's really cool and fun.

And that was something that I thought my friend Becca and I invented.

And then I found out that like everybody does it.

I've primarily heard milk duds.

People love to put milk duds.

I've never heard M ⁇ Ms.

Milk duds is tough because it would soften the duds, which I think is nice.

and then it gives you a sort of chocolatey caramel.

Remember our ghost guest, David Reese?

Who could forget?

Yeah,

he's got a popcorn recipe.

You ready for this?

Oh, I can't wait.

First of all, he uses an air popper, which is controversial.

What is he?

Wearing leg warmers, doing jazzer size,

and then he adds salt,

and then he adds pepper,

and then he adds canola oil.

Wait, he just pours canola oil on after air popping it.

I just said to him, What is your current popcorn topping subroutine?

I know it's a big part of your life.

I want to mention on Judge John Hodgman today.

If you can get back to me before 9:30 a.m.

your time.

And he did.

And this is what he wrote.

Air popper, canola oil, salt, pepper, nutritional yeast flakes.

Ooh, that's good.

Which is good.

That's, I think, a pretty, pretty prime add-on.

Very umami-ish.

Sometimes grated cheddar cheese.

Sometimes

peanuts.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm just reading a thing.

Write him letters.

Don't tell me.

I'm impressed that he get cheddar in there.

Sometimes grated cheddar cheese.

Sometimes peanuts.

Sometimes chili oil.

or other hot sauce.

But one word that is spelled with all capital letters after canola oil, salt, pepper, nutritional yeast flakes, all caps, no sometimes,

mayonnaise.

What?

Yes.

Did everyone drop their podcast players?

How do you even mix it in?

How does he eat it?

So messy.

He eats it with not literal, but still great relish.

I mean,

he might as well throw some relish on there as long as he's putting condiments on.

Yeah.

Just Just put some mustard in there.

Why not?

But definitely not ketchup.

That is not the Chicago style.

Yeah, it's your corn and you can eat it as you please, Kyle.

But here's the thing.

Jesse Thorne, we've talked about this before, right?

If you're at a ballpark and you're eating peanuts, what do you do with the shells?

Drop them on the ground.

You drop them on the ground.

If you're eating popcorn in the movie theater,

when do you eat it?

Well, this is a very

intense.

I'm aspiring actually this very evening to go to the movies with my wife, which we have not done together since before the pandemic.

Oh.

Oh.

So I'm really hoping that we can make that happen.

But other than that, the only person we did go see, the whole family went to see Super Mario Brothers too.

Okay.

But I haven't gone just with my wife since before the pandemic.

And

I'm really excited about it, not least because the usual person that I get to go to the movies with is my daughter Grace.

And Grace is absolutely fanatical about her popcorn.

She also will not eat one kernel until the movie starts because she needs the popcorn to last throughout the entire film.

So

it is, and I'm also thinking of

my daughter Scarlett, who has some very intense

auditory processing issues and needs.

And my youngest child, Frankie, who

among all of them is the most emphatically opposed to anything being added to the popcorn other than that butter that I mentioned.

They all are pretty on board for that.

And I think it's possible that Kyle

is an autistic child.

That's what I'm inferring from this.

Kyle and Kyle's friend, both.

And God bless them for it, is what I say.

Their needs are their needs.

They have needs.

You eat your corn the way you like it.

Listen, me personally, I never eat popcorn once the movie has started, but that is only because I eat it as fast as possible because I love it so much.

And I can never save it until the movie started.

But it's there for eating during the movie.

That's why they serve it at the movies.

And is it potentially loud and disruptive?

Yeah, because it's the movies.

This is why I brought up the thing about the peanut shells in the ballpark.

Years ago, someone said, I don't think you should throw your shells on the ground.

Be mindful of the work you leave for others.

And I was like, yes, you're absolutely right person.

And Jesse, you were as a, as a, as a baseball fan, you were like, wrong.

Throw the shells on the ground.

That's baked into the experience.

That's part of the ritual.

And I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

However.

We had a listener named Joanna who

had a case for us at Turner's Falls that we couldn't hear because we'd heard this very thing.

And I talked to her about it afterward.

Her husband wanted to throw peanut shells on the floor of the ballpark up there in Portland, Maine.

And I was like, yeah, that's great.

And then she's like, but the person next to us said,

excuse me, but my child is allergic to peanuts.

Would you mind not throwing the shells on the ground?

And I won't tell you what the husband did in this case,

but I will say you'd have to be a monster to say no at that point.

Because why not make this small accommodation that really costs you nothing in order to respond to a very specific request from a fellow human?

We're trying to be neighbors here in this place.

You know what I mean?

So while it is totally normal to eat popcorn during the movie and for that matter, other snacks, even if it's gross, and it's totally normal to throw peanut shells on the ground at a ballpark, even though it's, I guess, you know, kind of littering, I suppose, and someone has to sweep it up.

If the person next to you, whether it's your friend or simply your neighbor in your seat, says, I really wish you wouldn't do that, well, you have to then consider: here's the deal:

your friend, Kyle, has no standing to claim that it is a universal law

to not eat popcorn after the movie has started.

Everyone eats popcorn whenever they eat it during the movie.

That's just the way it is.

She can't sue you on behalf of the audience.

But if she says to you, I am personally distracted and grossed out by your munching and your bag noises, I think that out of friendship, you should attempt to accommodate her and maybe

eat a little less loudly or something.

Try to find a way to accommodate your friend.

There is no universal principle here, and it is disingenuous of her to suggest that there is.

But if the person next to you says, I just need a special, I just need

a little bit of consideration.

You should consider how much better you'll feel if you offer consideration than if you withhold it and have to sit next to that person for the rest of the ball game or whatever.

It's weird.

Otherwise, eat your corn as you please.

Let's take a quick break.

We'll be back with more of the Judge John Hodgman podcast in just a moment.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

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, 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 John Hodgman, we're taking a quick break from the show, and it is the holiday giving season.

Yeah, if you haven't checked out our new merch already, make sure to go to maxfundstore.com, check out our brand new weird mom shirts and stickers complementing our very famous weird dad hats and t-shirts.

We have also taken the Canadian House of Pizza and Garbage out of the vault for the holidays only.

Get your loved ones one of those Canadian House of Pizza and Garbage t-shirts or our brand new Canadian House of Pizza and Garbage beverage koozies in either a regular 12-ounce size or a slim 12-ounce can size.

Boy, oh boy, are we up on the trends?

Those slim cans, I see them all the time at the food train.

Now we've got koozies for them, Canadian House of Pizza and Garbage style.

Go and get them at maxfunstore.com.

And if you're giving away something this holiday, why not make it something special from the Put This On shop?

We not only have brought back our legendary dad caps, pre-order on right now,

also have our

New York and California caps.

They're very gorgeous.

And our classic Put This On ball cap, all of them available now at putthisonshop.com.

All of them handmade in the United States with beautiful wool flannel and leather bands and leather adjustable straps.

They're really gorgeous.

And I also just added to the Put This On Shop, John, a new line of scarves.

I found some beautiful vintage Japanese textiles.

And, you know, there are certain Japanese fabrics that are woven very narrow.

And so we are calling them our double selvage scarves because both selvages of the weaving are used in the scarf.

So it is essentially a length of the fabric with the ends finished by hand, hand-rolled.

the short ends, the long sides are selvages.

And there are a few different really gorgeous vintage Japanese textiles.

Somebody I know went to Japan, bought them at an antique store or something, brought them back to me.

Very limited, all there at putthisonshop.com.

And if you buy one of those things, you can use the code Justice and it'll ship to you for free in the old in the classic continental United States.

Jesse, when we're done recording today, remind me I have a question I have to ask you.

Where can I get a stunning antique rhino statue?

Oh, well, you're going to want to go to putthisonshop.com, but we can talk about it later.

Okay, that's great.

Hey, one more thing before we go.

Speaking of going into the holidays, if you're living on the West Coast or you know someone who does, who's a fan of the show, we've got tickets on sale for our shows in the West Coast in the new year.

Going to Vancouver,

Canada, British Columbia specifically, Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California for the just announced San Francisco sketch house appearance on Groundhog Day, February the 2nd.

Too bad, Los Angeles.

We are sold out for that special show with Jordan Jesse Go, but check the subreddit, Maximum Fund subreddit, because some people sometimes give away tickets there.

But the best way to make sure you get a ticket is to go ahead to maximumfund.org/slash events and buy one for yourself or for a loved one, or even just for a liked one.

Info and tickets for all of our shows are available, as I say, at maximumfund.org/slash events.

Let's get back to the docket.

Let's

welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We have a case here from Daniel in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Shout out to Brookline, Massachusetts.

What a nice time we had in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Just hanging out in the film library of the

Corner movie theater with our friend Josh Cantor.

Yep.

Josh Cantor, the Boston Red Sox.

Shout out to all of the folks, Coolidge, Ann, and Andy, and Mark, and all of the incredible people who, Lars

and Blair, all the people who worked there and helped us put on such a great show.

It was such a wonderful time to come home to see the theater where I worked so many times and to see it again for the first time because they just built this whole new

extra couple of theaters on top.

It's a beautiful extension, and it's, I'm just so glad that the movie theater is thriving.

And I'm so glad to have one more dispute from Brookline.

So, what does this person have to say?

Can I just say that my highlight of our entire

tour

was

our friend Josh Cantor can play any song.

And we started talking about baseball songs.

Baseball song.

One of the great baseball songs, a song called Van Linglemungo by Dave Frischberg, jazz pianist.

Right.

Van Linglemungle.

Van Linglemungo.

Van Linglemungo.

It's just a very beautiful song, but all of the lyrics are just the names of baseball players.

It's a truly perfect, it's the apotheosis of the phenomenon known on the internet as Remember Some Guys.

It's like that, sort of like that Kim Peele sketch.

It is, but with real names,

just as good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

it was a song that I had on a cassette tape as a child.

And I would listen to this.

It was like a baseball songs cassette tape.

And I would listen to this cassette tape a lot.

And

so Josh Cantor and I took turns during sound check singing

singing Bailing Galmungo by Dave Frischberg and just remembering all the names,

Big Johnny Mize and all that.

Oh, it was great.

It was a really great time.

Thanks, Josh.

I'd like to give a shout out to Michael's Deli for being open on Mondays for the first time in years so that I could

just not on purpose for me, it just so happens that I really wanted a pastrami egg and cheese sandwich and they made me one and it was delicious.

And then I also want to shout out not to a Brookline, they have a branch now in Brookline, which is a real delight, but

it's a Connecticut small chain of noodle shops called Mecha Noodle Bar, where they make really, really good different ramens and phoes and Pan-Asian cuisine of all kinds.

And not only does their stuff taste really good when you're eating it at their location right there across Harvard Street and Coolidge Corner, but it even tastes great after it's been heated up at 1 a.m.

in a microwave oven and you're eating it alone in a completely empty dark lobby of a courtyard by Marriott.

It's really good.

It's just a Brookline delight all around.

Okay, but we do have a dispute here from Daniel and Brookline.

What does Daniel have to say?

My wife fills the Brita pitcher with whatever temperature water the tap is set to.

This often leads to a pitcher full of hot water for drinking.

She says this is because I don't refill it.

That's not true.

I would like her to acknowledge that filling a Britta with hot water is unhinged behavior.

Whoa.

And that blaming it on me is unfair.

What do you, what's your hydration situation these days, you guys?

Fully hydrated.

Really?

100% moist.

How do you, when you're going for a drink of water, what's your go-to drink of water?

A tall glass of water, Jesse?

A tall glass of tap water.

You know, I grew up, my father was a recovering alcoholic.

Yeah.

And when he and I lived together in a little apartment in the mission in San Francisco before he married my stepmother,

there were usually two drinks in the fridge.

One was that's just science.

Body needs two drinks.

And the two drinks were:

number one,

a like liter bottle of generic club soda

just the absolute most classic recovering alcoholic beverage that there is right

and the other was

you know that kind of fancy ish apple juice that comes in a glass jug martinelli's

not not a martinelli's one not the glass jug that is like uh like an apple but like a knudsen or a knudsen that has a that comes in a glass jug and has a like a pebbly throat uh of the jug that you hold onto the jug.

That's my favorite baseball player, by the way.

Yeah, and he would uh

and he would keep that in the fridge with no lid on it because he lost the lid at some point,

and so that there was always cold water because he liked to drink it just cold tap water in that jug.

And that, frankly, is essentially my hydration habit to this day i i know i don't drink club soda which i i guess has a a little salt in it or something to just do that distinguishes it from seltzer uh i i'm glad to drink club soda if that's also fine with me but i have a i have a bubble water machine i drink ice cold bubble water or i drink cold water from the fridge poured over pebble ice from the pebble ice machine that was purchased for me by my good friend john hodgman oh i'm so glad that that thing hasn't broken.

Seems impossible that it hasn't broken by now.

I'm so glad that that's working for you, but no, no filtration, no, no Brita filter,

just straight from the tap.

Well, you know, speaking of Costco, I have a Kirkland brand.

Okay.

Filtering water pitcher.

Oh, okay.

So you do have a water pitcher.

All right.

Yeah.

But Jennifer Marmer, Jesse goes both ways, still and sparkling.

Are you a still baby or a sparkling baby?

I'm also both.

Right now I have sparkling in this glass

that we made, that I made from the bubble water machine.

Yeah, at home, if we go still, I'll do tap water, but I usually put ice in it because I just like iced water better.

Yeah, look, here in New York City, we have

pretty good tap water.

I don't ever have to, I don't ever have to filter it particularly.

It tastes great.

But, you know, in general, I'm a sparkling baby.

If I go to a restaurant and they're like, still sparkling or tap, everyone at the table is like, tap is fine.

I'm like, no, it is not.

It is not fine.

I know this is a ridiculous upsell, but I want a bottle of sparkling water.

And I will say that, you know, I've had a bubble machine in the past, but I don't, I, I really, there's a, I'm, I really love trying out different sparkles.

I'm really into this brand, uh, Lauricia.

Lauricia is from the Italian Alps and has got a haunted lighthouse keeper on the front of it

holding a lantern at the sea looking forlornly.

That's what I like to think about when I'm drinking my water.

I also like Mountain Valley is pretty good too, but I'll tell you what, I'm off of Gerolsteiner.

I don't like Gerolsteiner.

I like mineral content,

but and I like a little sodium in my

bubble water.

I'm sorry, Geroltsteiner.

When I finish drinking a big bottle of sparkling water, you know what I don't want to be thirsty.

That stuff just makes me more thirsty.

You know what I like is that

I think it's the same company that makes Jaritos, the Minaragua.

Yeah.

I think Jaritos Minaragua is pretty good.

How do you feel about Peña Fell?

I don't know about Peña Fel.

Is that a baseball player or a sparkling water?

Peña Fell is a Jarritos competitor.

Oh, okay.

Jarritos has gone pretty hard in the United States the last maybe 10 10 years.

They have English language marketing and stuff, which they didn't used to have.

Jarritos' main competitor, though, at least in the imported beverages from Mexico in the United States market was always Peña Fel, which is sort of more,

it is a soda line, but it is more focused on the idea of it being mineral water.

And they make, you know, they make Jarritos style fruity

sweetened sodas, but they also, their like main product is uh, uh, is a sparkling water.

And it is nice, but it comes in a plastic container.

Daniel Spear, our Mexican-American correspondent, checking in.

Yeah, the main uh difference with all these Mexican drinks is that instead of corn syrup, they use sugar because sugar is subsidized in Mexico.

They have sugar cane, and that's one of the biggest Mexican exports.

So pena fiel has a lot of appeal because it uses sugar and it gets you uh it's less

less fake, I guess, taste.

Much like, well, it's got

a different flavor profile.

Much like, you know, the

Coke that is exported, the Coca-Cola is exported from Mexico as cane sugar as opposed to corn syrup.

And, you know, you get it, you get it

at hipster restaurants and so forth.

Yeah, or if you're like my family, we would go to Mexico once a month and then just restock on junk food.

There we go.

How could you ever find Mexican junk food here in Southern California?

In the 90s, it was harder.

In the 90s, it was harder to come by.

And when I was a kid, we lived in San Diego.

So a border trip wasn't that big of a deal, you know?

I'll tell you this.

I think I've complained about this on Judge John Hodgman before, but in that time when I lived with my dad and just my dad, I mean, I split time between my parents' houses, but there was no one else at my dad's house.

When I would be waiting for the bus to take me to school, this would be when I was about seven or eight years old.

Once in a great while, he would say I could pick out a drink to bring me with me to school.

But the only store that was by the bus stop was a Mexican grocery store.

And in the Mexican grocery store, the only drink was Kern's nectar.

And I don't even know what that is.

I hated Kern's nectar.

Drink a bite of Kern's nectar.

I hated the stuff, but it was, I needed to choose something because otherwise I was getting to choose anything.

So I had to choose something.

Coming up to bat, famous Lefty Kern's nectar.

Here comes a bitch outside.

Strike one for Kern.

No, foul.

Well, anyway, Paul.

Jesse, you identified something that was very important to me, which is that

water that comes in plastic does not taste good to me.

And that includes Brita filters, everybody.

Don't care for them.

Now, look, I have a lot of fondness for the Brita filter.

I mean, talk about Brookline.

First time I ever saw a Brita filter was at Lisa Dierks' grown-up apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Boy, did Lisa Dierks tell us how to live?

Take your shoes off in the apartment, have a Brita filter, pay your rent on time.

She was a grown-up.

We weren't.

It was amazing.

And yet, I don't ever want to drink water from Brita filter because it tastes like plastic to me.

Is it placebo?

Perhaps, but it tastes like plastic.

That said, Daniel, do not describe your wife as unhinged

when what you really mean is lazy or impatient or resentful.

Because I have no doubt that she's correct.

You probably don't fill up that picture enough, but that is no reason why she should be filling it up with hot water, especially when

if you are not so lazy or impatient or resentful, you wouldn't be writing me.

You'd be checking the Brita website.

that says, quote, hot water shouldn't be used with the British standard filter.

She's doing it wrong, but you both are.

You both should stop calling each other unhinged and wrong, and instead just fill up the Brita pitcher with cold water.

Break the circle of revenge.

Fill the pitcher, Daniel.

But yeah, don't fill it up with hot water.

It's also really energy inefficient because you're using energy to heat up the water.

And then you're using energy to cool it back down with your refrigerator.

It's warming up your entire refrigerator.

What a mess.

I just hesitate to call unhinged what we can ascribe to simply like, we're just trying to get along here.

Just trying to fill up the picture.

But yeah, no, technically, you're correct, Daniel.

You got to fill that picture up with cold water.

That's what the website says.

Do it.

Here's something from Brian in Westfield, Massachusetts.

I have been the commissioner of a friends and family NFL pick'em pool for the last 25 years.

At the beginning of this season, I changed a pool setting in order to eliminate weekly ties and a split pot.

We play

for bananas.

All right.

I'm just going to stop you there.

Am I having a stroke?

Do these words mean something to you?

I feel like I'm just hearing Charlie Brown teacher talk here, but okay.

This is an

intra-family form of gambling in which you're basically just choosing who's going to win

in games

during that week's NFL football games.

Okay.

All right.

What's the dispute then?

And apparently they play for bananas.

Sure.

More than one pool member let me know that they don't like this new rule.

I emailed the group to open up the discussion.

I encouraged everyone to hit reply all to weigh in on the topic and vote yay or nay.

A few millennials in the group have harshly criticized me for showing a lack of internet courtesy.

Based on the responses the thread has received so far, I stand by my decision.

I think my critics are dunderheads.

They think I am an obtuse boomer.

Okay.

Okay, boomer, dunderhead, or whatever.

What are the top email sins that you've encountered, Jesse?

I'll get started.

You know what bothers me is long emails.

Oh, all those Judge John Otman fans have now just paused in the middle of their 10th paragraph of that email they're sending to me right now.

But it's true.

I've seen the email.

It's true.

It's true.

Look, I love it when you send me emails and I'm so glad that you listen.

But,

you know,

a paragraph is fine.

You don't have to send more than one.

I won't send out.

I send out a newsletter at hodgman.substack.com that comes in email form.

And while that will have multiple paragraphs, I would make sure that no paragraph is longer than three lines just because it's more readable to me.

You know, those big blocks of text, not for me.

And by now, I mean, you know, our attention spans are so challenged, not merely by our habit of looking at our phones all the time or whatever, but it's just like we have so much coming at us that you need to be clean and punchy and write in direct sentences.

Get in, get your message out there, get out.

That's my thing.

That's my advice for emails.

Do you have any emailing advice?

My mom sends emails that I don't understand what they mean.

Like, I really don't know what they mean.

My wife rarely knows what they mean.

She often has to come to me for explanation.

But then I often,

even after,

even with four decades of experience with my mom's writing, I still sometimes struggle to understand what they mean.

I do not know what my mom's neurodivergences are, but they are substantial and they directly affect her ability to write emails that I understand.

Clarity, clarity, again, is key when it comes to emails.

Yeah, but I think the obvious one is,

and in my email inbox, the probably the almost certainly the biggest problem is publicists.

Publicists who are sending me things that are irrelevant to my work because it is easier for them to just blast it to every email address they have

than to actually make pitches to people who might actually appreciate what they're pitching.

Got to cast that net wide now that it's so easy to reach people.

Why not bother everyone?

Exactly.

But I think that the question of

CCing without BCCing

and replying all is

ultimately the most central email send.

If you don't need to make everyone's email address public for a particular reason,

then you can BCC instead of CCing.

And

if you don't need to talk to everyone, you can reply instead of replying all.

Yeah,

I would agree.

Aside from protecting people's privacy

and, frankly, the dignity of their attention

and not looping them in on stuff that they don't necessarily need to know about, replying all is a really, really hard way.

to have a group conversation.

It's real like all of a sudden you've got a list of 30 or 40 emails.

And depending on how your email program formats it, that last email for some reason might just be a list, like a single column of one character.

Yeah.

It just gets, you know, it's like, it's so, it's so confusing and complicated.

And I think, Brian, that the biggest email sin of all,

and this is what your millennial family members are trying to teach you, is using email.

Like it's, it's a terrible, compared to a text thread, it's a terrible way to have a group conversation.

The formatting just becomes so ungainly and it is so complicated to follow the conversation.

And young people don't do it.

Young people don't really use email anymore.

Like if I email something to either of our adult children, I might as well be

putting it into a tin of caramel popcorn and throwing it into Lake Michigan.

Because that's how soon I'm going to get a response from that email.

It's just not part of it.

And frankly, using reply all to try to to have this conversation, I dare say it is dunderheaded.

You are the dunderhead, sir.

You have a head of dunder.

That's right.

I said it.

You are the dunderhead, sir.

You have a head of dunder.

This goes back to our dispute about how to punctuate text messages, in particular using periods at the end of sentences.

in text messages, or specifically the ends of messages.

And a young person in the office advised the older person in the office, like, don't use a period

at the end of the message because it sounds severe, it sounds harsh.

And the old person's like, you don't understand punctuation anymore.

Read strunk and white.

Meanwhile, that person is using toe the line incorrectly all the time and begs the question incorrectly all the time.

People think they're so smart about language, but they're dumb.

They're all dumb.

And the fact is, when someone who offers you advice on how to use language, particularly a younger person, is trying to teach you how to use language as it is used now.

That's a favor for you.

That's information for you to process and perhaps not incorporate into your life.

But better, take it in and decide.

Like now, I understand that putting a period at the end of a text message sounds like yelling, period, dead stop.

That's what it sounds like.

It's different than if you're writing a formal letter or an email or whatever.

And you need to be flexible.

Okay, Boomer, be flexible.

I don't know if Slack is the answer for you, but there's got to be a better way for you to communicate with everybody than these reply-alls and the emails.

It's terrible.

I read a newspaper article one time, you know, in 1874.

Yeah, that's right.

I remember.

And I was reading newspaper articles.

I read a newspaper article relatively recently about Gen Z business owners

not using email, which I understand.

I think there's a certain tragedy to people turning away from email because it's really one of the last parts of the internet that

isn't corrupted by corporate advertising algorithms

and attempts to build walled gardens.

It's an open platform that has existed for a really long time for a reason.

But leaving that aside.

And I will say offers a lot of features and convenience

when you are conveying information formally or trying to send attachments.

In terms of, you know, professional correspondence, email is the way to go.

Reply all sucks, but that's what I'm saying.

But go on, Jesse.

Unless you're the people that this trend article found who were people in their 20s, who were business owners, who communicated about their business exclusively through Instagram messages.

Whoa.

Which aren't at the time.

I think with the introduction of like AI features into Instagram, those messages are now searchable, maybe.

But I know that at the time, because I was selling things on Instagram at the put this on shop at put.this.on,

you couldn't search in Instagram messages for anything that was inside the messages.

So I can't imagine how you could possibly keep track of your correspondence without being able to sort it or search it.

I'm not going to say it's dunderheaded.

I mean, I do think you're losing something by not being able to search your messages or properly archive them or keep them should Instagram decide to shut down tomorrow or whatever, but it's your planet now.

I don't know why I would be yelling at a younger person when they're inheriting the planet as it is.

Like, I'm sorry.

All I should be doing is apologizing.

So, okay, Boomer, don't be a dunderhead.

The docket is now clear.

That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman.

Judge John Hodgman created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman, our video editor and Tijuana grocery correspondent is Daniel Speer.

The podcast edited by A.J.

McKeon.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Natty Lopez is our social media manager.

Photos from the show are posted on our Instagram account at judgejohnhodgman, instagram.com slash judgejohnhodgman.

Do you think we're going to probably, we'll probably end up with some pictures of

Guardian Angels there, don't you think?

I'd love to see your pictures of Guardian Angels.

I'd love to see your recommended Bubble Waters storage solutions.

I'd love to see

your popcorns.

Send me the corns the way you like it.

When David Letterman was on Bullseye with Jesse Thorne, the hit NPR program.

Yeah, yeah.

And by hit, I mean least successful.

Come on.

He was at his, he was in Montana.

He lives in Montana.

And

he was, it was like relatively early in the pandemic, so it was just like the people that were allowed in his house, it was just like his assistant or something, and they were trying to figure out how to set things up for him to record locally.

Uh, he had a microphone that I think we had sent to him, it was like a very everyone was like buzzing around, and Letterman and I were just sitting there on the webcam, just chatting and filling time.

And uh, probably the best thing that's ever happened to me in my life was uh, David Letterman said to me, Hey, uh, what kind of of water is that you're drinking?

Is that a good one?

That's a good one, Jesse.

That's a good one.

It was a good one.

It was a cherry waterloo, black cherry waterloo.

It's a nice one.

We're on TikTok and YouTube at Judge John Hodgman Pod, where there is lots of exclusive content in addition to the video of every single episode.

You know, I just read a study, John, from Edison Media Research.

YouTube now the number one podcast platform, the most used podcast platform.

Uh, so go ahead and send an email to a 20-something and tell them to watch it on YouTube.

Watch the podcast on YouTube, Judge John Hodgman pod.

You can let me know whether or not you think that replying all is a betting pool foul over there in the comments on YouTube or wherever you want to get to me.

But we also still need party fouls in general and all of your party disputes.

Uh, is some is someone making punch wrong at the party?

What about a potluck dispute?

I love a potluck dispute.

Maybe the luck is not so good.

Speaking of parties, you know where we always have a good party is over there in the members only mailbag.

If you're a member of Maximum Fund, you can send us a letter at maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho.

Doesn't have to be a dispute.

Doesn't have to be anything.

It just can be a request for comment of any kind.

And we'll read it over there in the members only feed, the members only mailbag.

This year, we're going to do our Judge John Hodgman office holiday party over there in the Boco feed, the members only feed.

Will we be able to top Kenny's five cup salad, also known as moon poop from last year?

I don't know, but if you or your family has a favorite old holiday food or drink recipe, particularly if it's weird or disgusting, we're talking about eggnog and fanta territory here.

Send it over there at maximumfund.org slash jjho.

If you're not already a member, do consider becoming one at maximumfund.org slash join so you can get in on that membos only

office party mailbag coming up soon.

You can always join the fund at maximumfund.org slash join at any time.

All members at the $5 a month level or higher get immediate access to the entire network's bonus feed, including our monthly membo mailbag.

It's a lot of fun.

And of course, we want to hear any dispute that you have.

You can send them to us at maximumfund.org slash jjho.

They are the gasoline that powers the motor vehicle that is the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

So go to maximumfund.org/slash JJ Hoe and submit your case right this very moment.

We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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