The Right to a Speedy Denial

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
This week, The Right to a Speedy Denial.

Liz brings the case against her husband, Aram. Aram enlisted a friend to help him hide a speeding ticket from Liz.

He since confessed to receiving the ticket, but he refuses to tell Liz which of the couple's friends aided and abetted. Liz says it's cruel to keep this information hidden.
hidden.

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.
Oh, this thing is running great.

It's just running great. It's so smooth into the curves.
What did you do, Claudio? I adjust the caster and camber and correct the tire pressure. Oh,

what a difference. Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear them in.
Liz and Aram, 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. Yes, I do.
I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that we've been friends for 20 years and have never told the other one about anything in that entire time? Yes, I do. Yes.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed. We keep our secrets, but today

I reveal them because we're recording. It's a rare Friday afternoon recording.
We don't do this normally. Normally we record on a Monday, but here we are at the end of the week.

Spring has sprung to the point of summer here in Brooklyn.

It's a Friday evening where I am, evening of a long weekend.

And I'm going to tell you right now, I'm wearing shorts under my robe

and I am not wearing shoes or socks. Wow.
And if you want to go see my feet over on the YouTube, here they come. Feet on Maine.

Wow.

Incredible. And my incredible calves.
You get to see too. Judge Hodgman, ordinarily when we're recording, I'm not afraid to say it out loud.

I only wear the top half of my uniform, but today our litigants are in our studio here in Los Angeles. For that reason, our new shots here in the studio capture me head to toe.
That's right.

I'm wearing my bailiff pants and my bailiff shoes. I know, and it's going to get hot.
I usually wear pants. I'm just not the

not just boxers. Yeah, no, I don't just wear boxers.
I would say it would be inappropriate, hostile workplace environment.

Yes, we're very, very excited to have these litigants here in the studio or over there in the studio with you at Maximum Fund headquarters in Los Angeles.

Liz and Arm, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment. And one of your favors, can either of you name the piece of culture that I referenced as I entered the courtroom?

Let's start with you, Liz.

Talladega Nights. Talladega Nights.
Nights.

That's about fast cars, right?

Fast cars. It's a good guess.
That's a really good guess. I'm even going to write it down.
Talladega Nights. And I'm really writing it down.
You can check it on the YouTube. It's written down.

Yeah, he wrote it down, folks.

Arim. Too Fast, Too Furious.

That's also about fast cars. Why was I having?

And

I could have sung Tracy Chapman's Fast Car. Yep.
I'm going to go ahead, Arim, and put you down for all of the Fast, Furious movies. Even Tokyo Drift? Even Tokyo Drift.

And Liz, your guess is superlative.

But I'm also going to put down Fast Car by Tracy Chapman.

All the things that I could have done,

but all of them, these guesses are wrong.

I had a real hard time for some reason. Because this is about a speeding ticket.

So I initially thought, well, we got to do that same scene from Fargo with Steve Bussemi at the traffic stop when he says, why don't we take care of it right here in Brainerd?

He tries to bribe the traffic cop, which was our very first obscure cultural reference, but I couldn't do that when I've already done it too many times.

So then I then I freaked out and I couldn't think of anything.

And then I thought of a song.

I thought of a song and I'm like, I don't want to quote this song because it's too easy, certainly for someone my age.

So I watched the video of the song. What I performed for you, impeccably, I may add, was the dialogue between the musical artist whose song this is

and his personal mechanic, Claudio Zampoli,

that is recorded as this musical artist drives into the scene in his classic 1984 Ferrari 512 BB

and compliments Claudio for adjusting the tire pressure. And then he starts singing the song.
And the song, if you haven't guessed, is I Can't Drive 55 by Sammy Hagar.

And his personal mechanic, Claudio Zampoli, passed away just a few years ago in 2021 at the age of 82 or 83.

And Claudio Zampoli

was not only Sammy Hagar's personal mechanic in the video, this was his real-life personal mechanic.

And in fact, I later learned through reading this obituary, Claudio Zampoli is the guy who gave Eddie Van Halen Sammy Hagar's telephone number. and got him into Van Halen.

Learned that from vanhaleninthenews.com or something. Anyway, RIP, Claudio Zempol, you really adjusted that tire pressure.

I hope that your wheels are really taking those curves in the afterlife or whatever. But in the meantime, we're right here settling justice on earth.
Who brings this case before me seeking justice?

Liz or Aram?

I do. Liz,

what is the nature of the justice you seek? What's the problem? What is Aram doing wrong?

I'm just a very curious person, and I just don't know if I can live with this curiosity of not knowing who helped with this scheme. Let's take a step back in time to this scheme.

Arim, tell me about your speeding ticket. I got a speeding ticket in December, and Liz is...

She sees all of the... Okay, I'm skipping some steps.
I didn't want Liz to know about it

for a few reasons. So

I had a friend pay because she would see the, you know, credit card charge. I had had him pay and then paid him

via Venmo.

And the idea was just to, you know, I thought that would kind of be the end of it. But then I wanted to do traffic school to, you know, not get the point.

And so it became a bigger scheme than I intended it to be.

You had to tell her that you were doing it for the comedy.

Yeah, so

I didn't want to try to sneak around and do traffic school behind her back. That seemed like too much.

That seems like a bad comedy movie, I think. Secret traffic school.

So that's when I decided to

tell her about it. So let me just understand here.
Can you drive 55 or can you not drive 55? Actually, the ticket was for driving 55. So I guess I can drive 55.

You definitely can in a what mile per hour zone? In a 45. Yeah.
Okay. 10 miles over the limit.
Yeah. Where were you driving? I was driving on Wentworth in Sunland.
What is that?

Is that a neighborhood of Los Angeles, Jesse? What is Sunland? That's a northeastern suburb of Los Angeles. Okay.

It is a weird town that is not very far from Los Angeles, but where you can have like a farm. Yeah.

Where you're like like in Los Angeles, it's like a 15-minute drive to Burbank or whatever. And then also you could have, as my friend Julia did when she lived in Sunland,

she had multiple miniature horses.

How many miniature horses do you have, Liz and Arm? One. Do you really? We have a greyhound.

That does count as a miniature horse, you're right. Yes, it does.
For betting purposes. We always call her a horse.

All right. So you're going 55 in a 45 mile per hour zone.
Jesse, you

recited the old adage: nine, you're fine, ten, you're mine. Meaning, the rule of thumb is: if you're under 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, you're probably not going to get in drubs.

Yeah, that's that's from my days in the California Highway Patrol with Eric Estrada.

I would just say that the Judge John Hodgman podcast endorses driving safely at all times without any impairments, obviously, without any

devices in your hand, at the speed limit, or following traffic so that you're not impeding traffic by going too slow,

but not going over 10 miles over the speed limit. But you did it.
You did it, Arm, and you paid the price, but you didn't pay the price.

Your friend paid the price because you wanted to keep it a secret. From your wife, right? You're married.
Is that right? Married, married? Yes. Legally married in the state of California.

Right. Yes.
The last person in the world you're supposed to lie to. You lied to her through omission.
Why? Oh, good question, Jesse. Why?

Well,

your silence is now lying to me through omission.

I just thought

that I would save her the stress. I didn't think there was any need for her to know about it.
You know, we worry about money sometimes. And, you know, I got the ticket.

There was nothing we could do about it i just thought i'll save her the heartache what was the fine what was the penalty if i'm asked the financial fine um i think including traffic school it was like

twenty five thousand dollars

it was like three hundred twenty oh that's a bite or so yeah that's pretty solid that's a bad bite that explains why you have packing tape on your finger where there should be a band-aid

wait a minute ahm you got a 300 plus dollar speeding ticket for doing 10 over in a 45 mile an hour zone. Okay, so I didn't want to interrupt you earlier, but

it was actually 60.

Okay.

But when the cop gave me the ticket, he said, I'm going to write you a ticket for going 55. And when I looked at the ticket, I saw both numbers.
I saw a 55 somewhere and a 60 somewhere.

So I don't know if if the amount I paid was for going 55 or 60 or if those are the same. So, yeah.
But I was driving. You were going too fast.
That's too fast, even for Sunland.

That's too fast for Sunland.

Even up there in miniature horse and warehouse country. Yeah.
Even though there aren't a lot of people around there,

there are definitely a lot of miniature horses around. How would you have felt if you had taken that corner fast and hit a miniature horse? I would have felt really bad.
Was it a speed trap situation?

Yeah. Yeah.

Were you polite?

I was very polite, yeah. He was letting you off easy with 55 when you were doing 60 and a 45.
300, okay, that's a bite: 320, 340 bucks.

Judge Hashman, you got to lay down a speed trap there in Sunland. People are racing to the Hughes Estate sales warehouse,

Sunland, California. Liz, Arim said that he didn't want to, quote, stress you out, unquote.

If he had come home and said, I got a speeding ticket and it costs, it's going to cost us 340 bucks or whatever.

How would you describe your feelings about that? Stressed out or other?

Probably a little stressed out. A little stressed out because of the money.
Yeah.

I definitely would have given him a hard time about it, too. That's probably part of the avoidance too.

But

yeah, a little bit because we're trying to save up for a house. So it's

every penny counts right now. Yeah, it's an unnecessary expense.
Yeah. RM, your theory was: well, if I pay this ticket, I'm going to have to come clean that I got the speeding ticket for $340.

So instead, I'll get a friend to pay it, and then I'll Venmo that friend because a mysterious Venmo to a friend for $340 is going to be less stressful. Well, she wouldn't know about the Venmo at all.

Yeah, that was the goal. What a villain you are, sir.

This guy has a Venmo account just for sneaky stuff. You got a sneaky Venmo?

I do. Yeah.
How does it make you feel, Liz, to know that Arm's got a sneaky Venmo?

I feel like to a degree,

I'm okay with him having some

privacy with his finances, you know? Okay. Like, I'm the primary finance manager for us.
So

almost all of our money, I see where it goes, and I do the budgeting. So.
Yeah, that's why he wanted to hide it from you. It's kind of his last holdout for privacy.
How do you fund your sneaky Venmo?

How does that money get in there?

I do like small side gig work, and sometimes I'm paid via Venmo. Liz, what do you do all day? I'm an RD scientist, do research.
And development? And development, yes. In what areas of science?

Human behavior focused on travel and how people move around. How would you describe Aram's human behavior with with regard to travel?

Typical, except for the secrets.

Well, I should hope so. First of all, does he routinely speed in Sunland? Yeah, I would say.
I mean, kind of everyone does, though. That's why it's not that abnormal to go 10, 15 over in that area.

Sunland is the kind of sort of ex-urban place where

it would be easy to go too fast on a street because you feel like you are on a freeway. Sure.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I understand.

No, I've looked. Do you want to know anything else about Sunland?

Sure. That's all I got, really.
I did Hughes Estate Sales Warehouse. I did.
That's all I got on Sunland.

Do I remember correctly that it's a neighborhood within the Crescenta Valley and the Verdugo Mountains? Yes.

It's not within, but it's right next door.

Lies between the Verdugo Mountains and the San Gabriel Mountains, would you say?

Is it contiguous on the east with La Cresenta Montrose? Yes. Got you right.
And it says here that by 1927, half the streets had been paved and a state highway ran through town.

People have been driving fast in Sunland for a long time. Yeah.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast, always brought to you by you, the members of maximumfun.org.

Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org slash join. And you can join them by going to maximumfun.org slash join.

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Would you say that the lying took you by surprise, Liz?

Yeah, yeah,

I would say so. How did you find out about this speeding ticket? He came into

my

little office space one day and was like, I have a confession to make.

Okay. Go on.
Keep saying, how did you wait? How did you feel when you heard that first?

I was not even that nervous. It seemed like it was not going to be a big deal.
When your husband comes in and says, I have a confession to make,

I'm already terrified and I know what it is. I don't know.
I guess like maybe it it was his tone or something, but it just didn't seem like it was going to be something really serious.

I think what I said was, I need to tell you something. Yeah, I can't keep it from you.
From you and Aram. Oh, just get it over with.
Just tell me.

You're leaving me, right? You're leaving the podcast. Go on, get out of here.
We don't need you. Listen, Jesse and I will get along fine.

For people who are listening at home and not watching the YouTube, an important piece of context here is that Aram's beard and eyes lend any sentence he utters just an extraordinary portent.

Just at any moment,

like he could come in and say, happy birthday to you. And it would sound like, I fear this, this storm may destroy the village.

Yeah.

I had to enlarge the screen to get a really good look at

Aram here. And he's got

guy's got some rasputin look to him. He's got the, got a little bit of a rasputin beard.
Hey, take a look at those sparkling peepers, too. I know.
Yeah. Glittering eyes, I dare say.

Liz, you look great too. Thank you.
So how long was it before you finally confessed to Liz?

It was the day before I had to do traffic school. So about three, three weeks ago? Yeah, but so you got the speeding ticket.
In December. In December.
And so you kept this secret for months.

Five months, yeah. Is what you're saying.
And so let's take me back to the night of the speeding. You got the ticket.
You make a decision.

You got to get a friend of yours to pay the ticket so that Liz doesn't see it. Who do you call? A friend.
Right. What's the name of the guy? I can't say.
That's why we're here.

Jesse Thorne, let the record show I tried to trick him. Yeah.
I tried to trick him.

I feel like maybe I almost got. I don't think I got very close, though.
Arm keeps his own counsel. No, there was a moment where he looked around like

this storm may be unpredictable.

this friend did they agree immediately yes this friend

was immediately like oh yeah no i'll pay that ticket you just venmo me back out of your secret venmo

liz do you have any idea who this friend might be i have theories how many candidates do you have in mind i've narrowed it down to like two or three people two or three potentials yeah yeah

and why is it important to to you for you to know the name of this friend?

I feel, as his wife, that I come first over the privacy of a friend, especially because I'm a cool person and I don't think it's going to affect my view of said friend.

Let the record show that Liz is claimed to be a cool person and the court agrees. I'm just going to enter that into the record now.
Liz is cool.

Bang a gavel on that. Arm, you're pretty cool too.
Well, I don't know. Secrets aren't cool.
So the gavel remains suspended above the clapper.

Maybe for the rest of this recording, I have to put it down. But when I put this down, I'm not gaveling on your coolness, Aram.
Okay, it's still tentative. That wasn't a gavel.

That was just me putting the thing down. Aram, why won't you reveal? Has the person asked you not to reveal their name to Liz?

No, but I feel if I were that person,

I wouldn't want my name revealed. Why?

Because I took part in this, you know, secret and lie. Right, but you're coming clean.
Yeah. Yes.
Overall.

Yeah,

as you would put it, there shall be a cleanse.

I mean,

it seems to me that if I were in your shoes, and I had lied to my wife through omission

and I had engaged a friend in this scheme. And the friend is a good enough friend to say, Yeah, sure, I'll pay that ticket.
Just pay me back.

It would seem that I could go to that friend and go, Hey, you know what? I felt bad about this, and I finally told Liz about it, and she wants to know who paid it. Do you mind if I give her your name?

Have you discussed it with the friend? No, I haven't. Okay.

And I wouldn't have a problem having that discussion and then telling her, potentially.

I mean, if I had my way entirely, that wouldn't even happen.

Because I just don't want this to

get between

them.

Do you think that

Liz's opinion of this friend would change if Liz learned the identity of the friend?

I think it wouldn't in any meaningful or important ways, but I think it would be impossible for it to not in in some way.

What are you concerned is going to happen? I'm not really that concerned about anything happening specifically. Then just give me the name.

You're obviously concerned that something is going to happen. What? Until I ask them, I don't think it's fair to them.
I think I've already done enough damage.

I don't see why I need to add to it and also,

you know, break their trust. I mean, John, imagine this.
Imagine a situation where I'm robbing a bank. All right.

I'm thinking, I'm planning. I'm thinking.
Hang on, hang on. I'm imagining it.
First, I have to imagine your outfit. Okay.

Oh, man. I'd have a great outfit.
I know. I have just a turtleneck.

I know. I was thinking the same thing.
I was thinking the same thing. I'm planning on robbing a bank, but as part of my scheme, I need a little bit of help from a celebrity brand spokesperson.

So I ask you for help. Okay.

You say, I don't know, Jesse, but I'll do it. We're friends.
Do I have to like go to the bank robbery? And I say, no, no, no.

I just need you to do a little spokespersoning on the side, and then I'll take care of the rest. And then I go and I rob that bank successfully.
Good job.

Everything is great. Our friendship is reinforced.
I got to rob that small-town bank I wanted to rob. You're a charming bank robber like George Clooney and and out of sight.
Exactly.

Just charm it out of him. I got to get in that trunk with J-Lo.
Yeah.

The whole nine yards.

And

then I have a crisis of conscience. Yeah.
I think, oh, gosh, I feel terrible for that small-town banker I robbed. He's going to have to pay back the FDIC out of his own pocket, I think to myself.

Yeah, it turns out there's no such thing as a gentleman bandit. That's just a bad person.
Yep.

So I say,

I'm going to go cop to it. I'm going to turn myself into the cops.
And they say,

oh,

thank you. But you probably needed a celebrity spokesperson to pull off a heist like this.
And I say, yeah, it was John Hodgman. It was my friend John.

How would you feel then?

Yeah, well, I mean, I would feel

a little frustrated because you had implicated me as an accomplice in an actual crime. Yeah.
There might be severe penalties visited upon me as a result. But this is not that situation.

Aram did not rob a bank. He quietly embezzled money from his marriage

and laundered it through a friend to pay to the state, but money that might have otherwise gone to a shared purchase or into the house savings to pay for something that he felt, I'm presuming, he felt ashamed of, although it's hard for me to to understand because Arim isn't very forthcoming with his feelings about this.

Did you feel ashamed? Is that why you wanted to hide this from Liz?

Yeah, a little bit. She does give me a very hard time about the way I drive.
And I felt, you know, this was more fuel for her.

So that was definitely part of it. Do you give him a hard time? I thought you were cool, Liz, by the way.

But you're not cool with the way Arim drives all the time. Is that right? I would say that's correct.
I don't even want to know the details, but you feel that Arm drives a little too fast?

Yeah, sometimes.

Who drives when the two of you are in the car? He does.

Is it his car? It's our shared car.

What is the car? It's a Honda Fit.

You're telling me that a Honda Fit can go 60?

Arm drives a little too fast,

a little not to your liking, right, Liz?

Yes. What other mistakes does he make when he's driving? What else is wrong with his driving? Just sometimes a little, you know, aggressive.
He's an LA, LA boy, born and raised.

You know, he drives like an LA boy. So let's go back to that day in December where you got that ticket.
You got the ticket. When did you decide to call or contact your friend?

Yeah, I got the ticket and I

entirely forgot about it for a few months.

And then I think around in March. They took your car away.

That's when I had to pay.

So, yeah, a few months later is when I got my friend involved. And so

you saw that the due date was coming up and you called your friend.

Did you call or text?

I text. And what's their name?

What was the the name you texted? You said, hey, friend named. All right.
Well, I tried. And what happened after that? They immediately said yes.
Yep.

I sent them the link to the, you know, website where you pay.

They paid.

And I Venmoed them the same day. Now, by their paying, they did not implicate themselves.
It's not going to affect their insurance or anything. It's just money.

Just money changing hands.

Why do you think you forgot about the ticket after you received it? Why did you forget about it? That's just kind of normal for me.

I think

I set an alarm in my phone to remind me

a few days before it was due so that I could just forget about it. Was there anything else going on in your life in December that may have distracted you?

Yeah, I think it was a few days before our honeymoon

that I got got the ticket.

I was shocked when I looked back to see when I got the ticket because I do not remember having this on my mind at all during the honeymoon. I really did forget about it.

What

crimes do you think you might have committed and forgotten about?

Well, there's that string of missing horses, the miniature horses up there in the sunlight. No one knows what happened to them.
Do you think you maybe unconsciously filed it away? Yeah. Uh-huh.

Because you didn't want to talk about it on the honeymoon that you just got a $340 ticket. Yeah, I didn't want to think about it.
I knew I had a lot of time to deal with it.

I definitely didn't come up with this plan

as soon as I got the ticket. That came later.

No, you simply hid it from... I mean, where did you literally hide the ticket?

In a drawer. In a drawer.
Yeah. Telltale heart style.
Hidden in plain sight.

You got to check those drawers, Liz, from now on.

I mean, doesn't it feel that way, Liz? I mean, it's a betrayal of trust, isn't it?

Is Aram known for his lying to you by omission or otherwise? No, that yeah, it definitely surprised me. I haven't

I'm not aware of any lies or secrets besides this one. I think part of the suspicion is because I've seen all of his friends that would be, you know, potential candidates since this happened.
and

any discomfort that I might have sensed in that, you know?

You're watching them. You're talking to them.
You're watching their eyes. You're wondering, is this the one? Is this the one? And you're a professional behaviorist.
You know what to look for.

You took a class in that in college.

Have you ever confronted any of your suspects? No, no, no. Directly or indirectly? Well, I haven't seen any of them since learning about this.

But I saw them maybe a a few days before learning about it. And so then I'm thinking about that

day with a little bit of a different perspective.

I'd like to just add something.

I knew going into this whole thing that

if she ever did find out about this, that it wouldn't be a big deal.

I knew that she would find it funny. And, you know, I wouldn't hide something that I knew would actually be a big deal if she found out about it.
And yet here we are. She is taking you to fake court

about it. And I don't think, Liz, if I'm, I don't want to speak for you, but I'm guessing that it's not, as they say, it's not, it's not the crime.
It's the cover-up.

Yeah.

It's not merely that Arim

did it, you know, did a dumb thing, got a ticket. Unfortunate.
No one got hurt. Sucks to have to pay it.

But also that Arm enlisted someone to keep it from you and continues to refuse to tell you who that person was, right? That's the problem? Yes.

How does it make you feel that he won't reveal the name of the person? A little frustrated. It just makes me even more curious, too.
You had mentioned that you feel that you should come first. Yes.

Tell me what you mean. I guess this discomfort of my curiosity.

Since it's not a big deal, you know, I don't feel like I should have to tolerate this feeling for the rest of my life of never knowing who it was.

Like, I want to have the image in my mind of the, it feels like it would make it funnier too to imagine them scheming.

Does it surprise you that Aram doesn't want to tell you the name of the friend? Is he a protective person who has a code of honor that way? Or?

You know, yeah, I guess, I guess he does have a code of honor, so it's not that surprising when you put it that way. Arm, how did you decide which friend to ask?

Did you know right away which was your most readily deceitful friend? I'm a little worried if I answer that, that I might help narrow it down. I could help.
Which friend was it?

I think that this is the first time someone has actually pled the fifth in this court.

Yeah. You're going to incriminate a friend you don't want to.
Okay.

What are the name of the three people that you considered first?

I think you probably already know who the top three would be, so I guess I'm comfortable. Arm, I hate to interrupt you because I'm very excited that you're going to reveal these three names.

I really, I mean, let the record show. I've been trying to trick this guy into saying a name two times now.
Here it is: three times a charm, and it's three names.

We're not, but you're not revealing which one of these three people is

the culprit.

But before you say those names, Liz,

we are providing you now with a piece of of paper and a pen.

Would you please write down your three guesses? Newlywed style.

All right.

And I'll do some newlywed music while you're writing.

Do you need more time? No, I'm ready. Okay, cool.

All right, Arm. I hope you haven't had time to reconsider.

First names only, please.

Wait, wait, wait. Aram, I'm going to write down my guesses.

Great.

Okay, here we go. Okay, so who were the three people that you considered to engage in this deceit with you, Aram? In no particular order.

Josh.

Saraya. Oh, yeah.
And Cameron.

Okay, I didn't get any of those right. And Kat.

Well, that's four now. And Randy.

And Randy. Five.
Oh.

This is what happens when people crack under interrogation. All of a sudden, it all starts spilling out.
Yeah.

This stopped being out of sight and became Ocean's 11. I had guessed Dane the Hambone, Willie Steve, or Gwen Sweet.
And I knew it wasn't Gwen Sweet because that's my mother-in-law's maiden name. Yeah.

Okay. Aram, take us through those candidates.
What made each of them a possible choice?

I think the answer is the same for all of them.

I just think they would not really ask that many questions, be kind of pretty uninterested in the whole thing.

It's not that they love you or even that they're fundamentally deceitful. They're just incurious.
Yeah. An easy touch.

I think all five of those people would just say, you know, okay, sure.

Liz, you wrote down three names. I'm pretty happy with my overlap.
What were the three names that you wrote down? I wrote down Saraya, Josh, and Weeha.

Oh, that's one that he didn't name. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised.
Interesting. Do you think Weeha asks too many questions?

No, actually, I think Weehaw would be a great candidate.

Can we rule Weehaw out or are they all still candidates? Weehaw is not on the list. Not ruled out.
Not ruled out. Not ruled out.
No. And I'll remind you under fake oath,

there are now six names that have been mentioned.

Is one of these culprits?

Remember, they're Cameron, Saraya, Wu-Tang, Frailpot.

No, you're doing the Quincy Boys from Doughboys. Yeah, I'm just listing Mike Mitchell's friends from high school.

One of the people that I named is the person.

Is the culprit.

This is very exciting now. Liz, of all these, these now six names, is there one that seems most likely to you? Yes.
Okay. Yeah.

And let me ask you, Aram,

you mentioned that Liz has an opinion of you as a driver that you did not necessarily want to confirm by revealing that you had gotten a speeding ticket on the eve of your honeymoon.

That might maybe make your honeymoon not go so good, right?

If Liz finds out the name of this person, is this going to confirm some ideas that Liz has about this person?

No, I don't think so.

You feel like you want to protect their privacy, and yet you know Liz wants to know, and it hasn't occurred to you, or you haven't gotten around to asking the person if it was okay

to give their name to Liz, and yet you included their name in a list of six suspects here on a public podcast. Where is the consistency here? What is the welder's code?

Well, I don't think I've revealed who they are at all. In fact, you asked for three names and I watered it down with two more.

And you could start giving out even more names. I could.
Do you want to add Dane the Hambone? Sure. Sure.
You want to put Frailbot on there? Sure. Absolutely.

Liz, besides your curiosity, do you have any other reason for wanting the secret to be revealed? No.

No.

Liz, let me ask you this question. And this might make you uncomfortable.
Okay. Do you have any secrets? I don't think so.

Not on purpose. Do you have any secrets that you are keeping from Arim?

No. No.
Do you believe that it is okay for a spouse to keep a secret? Depends on the secret. Yeah.
Depends on the secret.

Got me again, Liz.

Too cool.

Of course it depends on the secret. Why didn't I see that coming?

Is it hard for you to keep secrets? Yes. It is.

I really wish I wasn't in this situation.

Well, that's a good point. What have you learned?

Before I pass judgment, you've already gone through a journey where you realized that you had to confess to a crime and you did it.

What would you do differently next time? I would tell her about the ticket right away. And not involve

one of these friends.

Which friend was it? Yeah, which friend in particular was it?

How did you decide which of that list of friends was the one you were going to call? Or

is there a group chat that's all those friends but not Liz?

There's no secret group chat.

I think I just

kind of randomly picked one.

Yeah, I think they're all good candidates. Arm, if I rule in Liz's favor,

you're going to have to reveal the name of the person.

What are you worried about happening once Liz finds out? At this point, my biggest concern is just her winning. I'm not really that worried about the repercussions.
Aside from the

very minor, just like

this being a thing. And this person

knowing. that she knows.

Let me make sure that I understand.

If, for example, I were to to order you to gain the consent of your friend to reveal their identity to Liz and you were to follow that order, you would still be unhappy, even if they happily gave consent and said, of course,

because it would be a thing.

What is a thing? I mean, what do you mean by that? How is the other thing? A thing is where you walk into the room and you see that person and you go, oh, hey, that's the guy who did that thing.

Even though I'm not mad, I don't hate them, you know, but that's the guy. In Aram's community, the most important thing,

in Ahm's community, really, ultimately, the most important thing is to not really care about anything. That way, anyone can ask anyone to do anything as long as they Venmo afterwards.
Right.

It's no thing. Yeah.

Liz, is there a name on your list that you've written down

where if you find out that it was them, it will change your opinion of them, or will it confirm your opinion of them? It wouldn't change my opinion of them.

I guess I'm asking: the next time you see this person in a room, if you knew that it was them, is it going to be a thing?

No, no,

no. Do you believe her, Arm?

No, I think it's inevitable. It's it's um a thing is inevitable, yes, yeah.

Well, uh, you had said earlier, Arm, that you're you're most concerned about Liz winning. Yes.

Not about the truth coming out, but Liz winning.

And I'm going to give you a little spoiler. She's going to win.

But that doesn't mean that I know what my sentence is going to be. So I have to go into my chambers now and consider it.
I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom. Liz, this must give you some confidence about how you're going to come out in this case.
Yes. I'm feeling pretty confident.

How are you feeling, Aura? I knew coming in that my chances were very low. So I'm all right.
Yeah, I mean,

you don't seem too bent out of shape about anything that's happening here.

Well, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman decides when we come back in just a moment.

Hello. Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the Beef and Dairy Network podcast.
Oh, no, I'm sorry. No sales calls.
Goodbye.

It's a multi-award-winning podcast featuring guests such as Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Josie Long.

I don't know what a Josie Long is, and anyway, I'm about to take my mother into town to see Phantom of the Opera at last. You are wasting my time, and even worse, my mother's time.

She only has so much time left. She's 98 years old.
She's only expected to live for another 20 or 30 years. Mother, get your shoes on.
Yes, the orthopaedic ones.

I don't want to have to carry you home again, do I? Right, well, if you were looking for a podcast. Mother, you're not wearing that, are you? It's very revealing, Mother.

This is musical theater, not a Parisian bordello. Simply go to maximumfun.org.
I'm reaching for my Samsung Galaxy 4 as we speak. Mother! Mother, not that hat!

Judge Hajman, we're taking a quick break. What's going on with you? Well, Jesse Thorne, I finished Middle March.

I was reading it and also listening to Juliet Stevenson read it to me on the audiobook. And boy, I cannot recommend that novel enough.

I finished reading it in the park and I just had to stand there for a while and think about it.

Thanks again to Christopher Vizell and the book club for getting me through that.

I don't know what I'm going to read next. So if you've got suggestions for me,

why don't you bop on over to my Instagram account, which is JohnHodgman at JohnHodgman, and

give me your classic novel recommendations and your novel recommendations for novels of today, a new, maybe something that's been published within the past 18 months. I got to read books.

I loved Miranda July's new book, All Fours. Yeah, go over, hey, go over to my Instagram account at John Hodgman.
I'm going to post something right now and

you can leave the recommendation there, Jesse. Okay, try to help my algorithm here.
Okay, thanks. I understand.
I understand.

Can I recommend, speaking of recommending things, we have a new MaxFun podcast that I want to make mention of. I love it.
It's called Primer.

It's something that my colleagues, Kevin and Richard from Bullseye have been working on for actually like two years now. Yeah.

Along with one of my favorite Max Fund colleagues, Christian Duenas,

who is also serving as one of the hosts of the show. Primer is basically, the idea is each season of the show takes you on a tour of a musical genre you might not know about, and a musical genre where

the music is not in English.

And this first season of Primer that just got underway is about city pop, which is a Japanese music genre from, I guess, sort of the 70s into the 90s that is a kind of light jazz and RB inflected pop music.

Yeah.

That is very much having a moment.

And I don't know anything about it. I am really excited to be listening to Primer and learning about it.

They've also got a bunch of like really cool American musicians like Dame Funk and Devendra Banhart and stuff on the show to talk about CityPop. Wow.
But

it is a very special tour. It is of that genre.
And

yeah, a new kind of show for Max Fun, one of our first seasonal shows we've ever made, one of our first music shows we've ever made.

Christian produced one of my favorite MaxFun shows ever, Heat Rocks, which was a music show. But it's a really great show, whether you are a City Pop lover.

The people over in the City Pop subreddit really were into it, or you really know nothing about it. In fact, it's really designed for you if you know nothing about it.
So, yeah, check it out.

It's called Primer. It just launched.

You listening and recommending it to people and sharing it and reviewing it

in Apple Podcasts and all that kind of stuff really will make a big difference to the show. So

it's years of my colleagues' work and they're really, really proud of it. I'm very proud of them.
So go check out Primer. I'm going to go check it out right now.
Let's get back to the case.

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

So I'm sustaining my ruling that Liz is cool, and I'm giving a preliminary ruling with regard to Aram, which is that Aram is not cool.

Dude, is cold.

Ice cold. What's cooler than cool?

Look, I tried to bring the heat to this guy,

but he would not bend.

I mean,

I don't think I've ever encountered a more unflappable litigant in this courtroom. This guy won't flap, Jesse.
Nope. I'm about ready to confess to this crime.
That's how, that's how,

that's how he judoed it on me.

You're a cool guy, Arm, but you're cold. I love it.
But here's the thing: there's no such thing as a gentleman bandit. That's what I was saying, talking about Jesse with before.

And I can tell you how I know.

I was at a dinner, and

a new friend of ours, who we're getting to know, the parent of a friend of one of our kids, she told an incredible story that when she was in second grade, her second grade teacher got engaged to a young man in town, a real estate agent, I believe, in town.

And

as young teachers would sometimes do, she invited the whole class to the wedding. And our friend, she went to the wedding as a second grader and had a great time with all of her little friends.

And it was less than a year later

that

this new bride, the second grade teacher, discovered in the car of her new husband stacks of cash and multiple fake beards and mustaches,

which led to the new bride to wonder if perhaps the young, respectable real estate agent she married might not be

the person who had been robbing banks throughout the Southeast for the past year and a half, the person who had been dubbed by the newspapers, you guessed it, the gentleman bandit,

because he dressed up nicely and was always polite. Oh, and by the way, she was absolutely right.
She dropped a dime on the guy, and the police raided, stopped him.

in his car the next day, found a whole bunch of other stuff and found a storage, and he led them to a storage locker full of even more money and other kinds of mischief.

I mean, bank robber stuff, not anything beyond what you would use to rob a bank. A gun is what I'm talking about.
And he confessed everything. Not like live polar bandits or something.
Yeah.

And he confessed everything.

He confessed that he had gotten the idea to become a bank robber from a TV show and did it. And it made him feel good.

And he said, I am, I'm not, even he said, there's no such thing as a gentleman bandit. And indeed, there isn't, right?

Because,

for example, his method of robbing the bank would be to go to the bank manager's house the night before the bank opened and keep the bank manager and the bank manager's wife hostage overnight.

Didn't harm them, right?

Was polite, but he terrified them, terrorized them the whole night through so that he and the bank manager could go into the bank first thing in the morning and get all the money and go away.

That's not gentlemanly. Nor was it gentlemanly for him to

inform them that if they tried to do anything, if they tried to call the police or they got him out of the way, he had an accomplice outside who would finish the job.

And that person was dressed as a ninja. This guy was going through a lot, but he wasn't a gentleman.
Point is, it's not cool to rob banks. People get hurt.

It's not cool. to drive recklessly.
Miniature horses get hurt.

It's not cool

to steal someone's story. Like I just stole my new friend's story for entertainment purposes here.
I'm, that's not gentlemanly of me.

I just took that story and took it for my own to entertain you, but also to illustrate a point, which is it's not cool to lie.

And the thing is that if you had just, you know, if you had gotten this ticket, it was right before the honeymoon, you unconsciously put it out of your mind.

And then when it came time to pay, you did pay, but first you confessed that you had gotten this ticket. That would be cool.
That'd be fine. I get it.

But you compounded the issue by enlisting an accomplice to your crime, which was lying by omission. That, I think,

would be unsettling to any spouse and an erosion of trust that you are willing to protect that person's privacy over

the

bond of truth that you are supposed to be holding between each other in marriage. Like, that's

Liz is cool, right? Liz is like, yeah, I'm just curious. I just want to know who it is.

I was trying to get Liz to say, yeah, it feels a little weird that my, that my husband, the person that I love most in life, we've, we've pledged to trust each other till death do us part or whatever, is protecting this friend rather than just owning up to the whole thing.

But Liz, I mean, you should be, I mean, unless Liz is a liar too, just like you are.

She's like, no, I just, I just kind of want to know.

And I think that's fair. I think that if

you are confessing, which is the correct impulse,

and I think a noble one, because we all make mistakes,

we all make errors, and we all have a right to, and

should have an opportunity to make amends. You did the right thing.
You confessed that you withheld this information. And you went out of your way actively to conceal this expenditure, which is

concealing expenditures within a marriage is not a good look. You know, like it's not, no one is hiding money they're spending for good reasons.

You know, that's, and that's the sort of thing that can really erode the trust in a marriage. So you made the right call to appreciate that even if she were never going to find out, it was a bad,

it would be bad for you to compound the lie further by sneaking out to traffic school. It was time to come clean, but you didn't come clean all the way.

And I think you make a reasonable argument: like, I don't want to come clean because and violate the privacy of my accomplice. But that's what coming clean means.

You got to come clean all the way.

Now,

I don't have anything to come clean about in this regard. I don't want to out

your friend for helping you out.

And I don't think that I, I don't think that I have to,

in the sense that I don't think I can or should order you to say the name right here on the podcast.

But I do

think

that Liz should read the names on her card and observe your face as she's reading them.

And then

maybe

Liz will feel satisfied

or maybe not.

And Liz can define satisfaction in whatever way she wants. But I'm going to go ahead ahead and make my screen bigger.
This would be a good time to go to the YouTube, everybody,

to watch Aram's face

as Liz reads the names.

And Liz,

you know the names. You can memorize them, right? I want you to look into his eyes while you're saying the names.
Don't look at the cards. All right.

Whenever you're ready. Saraya.

Josh.

I don't know. I'm not getting much from this.
Oh, there's one more name.

No, because one of the names is crossed out on this card. Yeah, I crossed it out.
Oh, right. Yeah, because it wasn't on his original list.
Okay.

He's cold, right? We took the heat to him and he didn't bend. Yeah.
Yeah. It's tough.

What was the name? What was the name you were waiting to hear?

I was waiting to hear the three names on her card. Oh, okay.
Can't get them. Can't get this kid.
Can't get this kid, Jesse Thorne.

So do I take it that you are not satisfied, Liz?

I'm not satisfied. All right.
I demand satisfaction for Liz. Arm, you've got to go talk to that friend.
Tell them that you're going to tell Liz, and then you're going to tell Liz.

Okay. I'll do that.
And since it doesn't matter to us one way or the other, you both can keep that secret from this court for the rest of your lives.

Let me just say, Arm, that when you say to the person that you want to reveal their name to Liz,

I want you to carry this message to them as well. In my opinion, in the opinion of this court, there is no nobility

in helping a person keep a secret from their spouse or keeping their own name secret from that spouse in order to protect their own reputation.

If you are genuinely willing to come clean, they should support you in that and give their name.

Because I'm a little concerned, you're going to give them a wink

when you say it's really up to you. Wink.
You might even say wink.

I'm actually going to have them watch this episode before.

So

that sounds fair. They'll hear it straight from you.
Well, I'm satisfied.

But it's one thing to lie, it's another thing to engage an accomplice. If you want to come clear, you come clear all the way.
I am ruling once again: Liz is cool. Arm is cold and cool.

This is the sound of a gavel. Judge John Hodgman rules.
That is all. What does a yellow light mean?

Slow down. Okay.

Watch.

Yellow

light.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Liz, are you ready for satisfaction? I'm ready.

Which one do you think it is?

I think it's probably Josh. That's kind of where my mind goes first for the person he would reach out to.

But the first person that actually just popped into my mind was Saraya. I feel like it's a bit of a toss-up.
Arm, how are you feeling knowing that you're going to have to go through with this?

I'm okay with it. I'm fine with it.
It's nice to know that if they don't agree to it, then

I won't have to.

I think that's fair. So which of the following was it?

Angelica, Big Jim, Breslin, Brian Holt, Campanelli, Chankton, Dano, Frailbot, Glenn, Mike Green, Greg, Joeyo, Kifa, Lindork, Mikeus, Justin Kiley, Neil Kiley, Sarah Kiley, The Nader, Chuck, John, Ramondi, Scoop, aka Shawn Z, aka Arthur, that's Micus's brother, Spike, the Stern, Steve Ostocky, Sustin,

Joe Tormi, Anthony, Dan, Danba, Chris, Wham, or the Whammer, Kev, Todd, Ryan, Ed Wu, or Wu-Tang, aka Adam Wu.

I can't say.

What is that? The Doughboys Wikipedia page? Yeah, I went on the Doughboys wiki. The Doughboys have a wiki that lists all Mike Mitchell's friends from Quincy, Massachusetts.

Liz and Aram, thank you for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Thank you.
Thank you.

Another Judge John Hodgman case is in the books. In just a minute, we'll have swift justice.
First, our thanks to Redditor Rigd,

Rigiti, Rigd. for naming this week's episode the right to a speedy denial.
Join the conversation at the Maximum Fund subreddit. That's at maximumfun.reddit.com.

We'll be asking for title suggestions there too.

You can also check out other people's title suggestions. It's always a fun thread.
Evidence and photos from the show are posted on our Instagram account, instagram.com slash judgejohnhodgman.

You can still look, still send me, send me your favorite scruffy dogs on Instagram at Jesse Thorne, very famous.

Or just follow me on Instagram. Just follow them.
But you know what? Send me your favorite scruffy dogs. Remember, I want mutts and I don't want dogs where you're like, oh my God, he's so ugly.

He's cute. I want actual cute dogs.
They should look like Benji or something. We're also on TikTok and YouTube at judgejohnhodgman pod.
You can watch whole episodes of our program. on YouTube.

It is a ton of fun to watch there.

Make sure you smash the like and subscribe buttons there. You can also find special special exclusive video-only content on those platforms.
So go check those out as well.

And by the way, speaking of special exclusive content, we've been having a great time recording membo mailbag episodes. Once a month, we are making a special episode just for members of Maximum Fund.

So if you're a Max Fund member, get your bonus feed in order. If you're not, you can become a member at maximumfund.org slash join.

Thank you to JP Devine on Apple Podcast for our five-star rating. You want to read that, John?

Yeah, JP says, I don't know how they do it, but every episode, no matter how goofy the dispute, it's touching.

John, that's me, finds a ton of funny, but also a lot of warmth in the relationship between the Lydigans. And guess what? Thank you, JP, but guess what? So does Jesse Thorne.

Couldn't do it without you, Jesse. Oh, thank you, friend.
And of course, we couldn't do it without our wonderful listeners and listener members like you, JP Devine.

If you're listening to us on Apple Podcasts, why don't you please go over there and give us a rating and review? It really does help people discover the show, as does pressing that like button.

I don't want you to smash anything.

We're too tired to smash. But pressing those like buttons, the subscribe buttons, those notification buttons over on YouTube, sharing our social media stories,

saving them, commenting, all of that stuff really does help people discover the show. And we're really grateful to you for doing those things.

Judge John Hodgman was created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman. This episode recorded at MaxFun HQ by Jennifer Marmer.
KT Wegman was helping out a lot there too. Our thanks to her for her video help.

Our social media manager is Natty Lopez. Our podcast edited by A.J.
McKeon. Our video editor is Daniel Speer.
And of course, Jennifer is our ever-capable producer.

Now, Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with quick judgment. Here's something from Mayor Poopenmeier

on the Maximum Fun subreddit. There we go.
That's a good name. Mayor Poopenmeier.

What do they got to say? I request an injunction against the entire country of England insisting that I need to own an electric tea kettle. I already have an appliance that heats up everything.

Why do I need another one that just heats up a thing?

I'm not going to insist, Mayor Poopenmeier, that you get an electric tea kettle. But you need to know, I live in a place.
called New York City where my counter space is extremely minimal.

If I had extra real estate, if I had extra counters, would I have an electric tea kettle? Absolutely. They're incredible.
I'd be drinking a lot more tea to boot. I think they're wonderful.

And I think people who love tea and love pour over coffee or whatever,

they're terrific. They're terrific.
But if they're not for you, they're not for you. And guess what? I hate to break it to you, Mayor Puppenmeier.

I don't think the country of England cares what you buy. Go do your own thing.

Hey, we're now past Memorial Day. As noted, I am wearing my shorts under my robe.
It's getting warm. It's getting to be summertime.
It's getting to be a funner time.

And that means I want your summertime disputes. We're probably going to have Monte Belmonte coming through pretty soon.
We want to hear all your summertime fun time disputes.

Do you have a case about the beach? What's this year's song of the summer? Is it espresso by Sabrina Carpenter? I don't know what that is. Jennifer Marmor put that in there.
Is that a good song?

You tell me, good or bad. I don't know.
Pick a fight with Jennifer. Where's the best place to cool off? Go swimming at the beach.
Go swimming in a lake? Go to the mountains.

We all love summer camp disputes. Do you have a beef with someone

in the cabin across the camp that you want to finally air out? They don't have to be here to defend themselves. We'll settle your color wars.
That's right.

Give us all your summertime beefs, rivalries, disputes. fights, whatever they may be.
Send them to us at maximumfund.org slash JJ H O.

And of course, we want to hear all of your disputes, no matter what they're about.

Of course, we want to hear those summer disputes about melon ballers, but we also want to hear your miscellaneous disputes. Go to maximumfund.org slash JJHO.

And remember this: if you are a Max Fund member, let us know that you're a Max Fund member because we are currently running a promo, which is we will answer any Max Fund member submission on the Membo mailbag, except for weird or offensive stuff.

Literally, you can ask us: should we name our fish this or that? We'll decide it on the membo mailbag

because we appreciate your membership so much. Maximumfun.org/slash JJHO.
Here's my advice: get two fish, name one this, the other that. Oh, that's a good idea.

Or then three, the other one's called the other. We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.