Persona Non Grata Catch 'Em All

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, persona non grata catch emal.

Cameron brings the case against his friend Shuka.

When Cameron and Shuka were in college, Cameron was obsessed with Pokémon Go.

One day, Cameron was too distracted by Pokémon Go, so Shuka took his phone and deleted one of his favorite Pokémon.

Shuka says it's just a game.

Cameron wants justice.

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.

The machine in this room allows us to map the limits of your strength, endurance, and what we call clinical moxie.

Please approach the center of the room and stand in the yellow square.

The yellow square has a sign that says danger.

Yes, that's the one.

Please swear the litigants in.

Cameron and Shuka, please rise and raise your right hands.

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

So help you, God or whatever.

I absolutely do.

I do as well.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he does not have to catch them all?

Sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

I only catch the gout

for an immediate summary.

And you can't even, it's not even catching.

It's not even catching, but I got it.

Got in my big toe.

I choose you.

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

Can either of you name the piece of culture that I referenced as I entered this courtroom?

Let's see, it's someone's birthday today.

I just learned.

So,

Cameron, happy birthday.

But, Shuka, you go first.

Um,

I would say it's from the 1931 Dracula movie.

Wow.

Very specific.

I like that guess.

It's a strong guess.

I love a dated guess.

That's what I thought.

Let's put it in the guess book, 1931 Dracula.

The English language or the Spanish language edition?

Because they shot them both, you know?

Yeah, they shot them in the same location.

Yeah.

At day, they would shoot the English language, and at night, they shot the Spanish language.

And the Spanish one is better.

I would say the Spanish one.

Okay, let's put it the Spanish one.

1931's Dracula, Spanish.

All right, Cameron, what's your guess?

I would like to guess perhaps the novel 1984.

This machine in this room allows us to map the limits of your strength, endurance, and what we call clinical moxie.

That feels like a George Orwell sentence for sure.

1984.

I'll put the movie or the novel?

The novel.

The novel.

Yeah, that's a better guess.

All guesses are wrong.

The answer is that was a quote from a character named Dr.

Agent Hobbs, a member of the security elite force called Aegis

in a little TV show called The Tick, which was on Amazon for two seasons.

The character Hobbes, Dr.

Agent Hobbes, or it may have been Agent Dr.

Hobbes.

Sorry, Ben Edlund, who created the tick, was essayed by me, John Hodgman, who was instructed as I was about to

take the stage for my first day of shooting.

I don't want to give you any particular notes on how to play this, but are you familiar with the Muppets?

And I'm like, oh,

you want me to Buns and Honey do this, don't you?

He's like, yeah.

And I'm like, okay, I can do it.

In your acting resume under special skills, it says Buns and Honey doing it.

Yeah, I totally honey did it.

Horseback riding, fencing, Buns and Honey doing it.

You can see most of the time, in order to be Buns and Honey Do, I'm holding a clipboard and I only use one hand to gesture with in true Muppet style because the other hand is controlling my mouth.

But in any case,

why am I quoting from the tick one of that wonderful television show that I got to be a part of when I met my friend Griffin Newman, who's the co-star of that show with the great Peter Sarafinowitz?

Why am I quoting from that one?

Well, because that particular episode, Cameron and Shuka, was written by the writing team of Dan Hernandez and Benji Samet.

Do you know who they are, Cameron and Shuka?

Your Honor, I do not have the first idea.

You do not have the first idea?

Well, birthday boy, you of all people should know that Dan Hernandez and Benji Sammet are the co-writers of the motion picture Detective Pikachu,

who is one of the most famous Pokémons.

He is.

Perhaps the most famous of all.

Sorry, Snorlax.

my favorite of course being psy duck and should be yours too jesse because he constantly has a headache

but i will say they are not writers of anything right now because they are members of the writers guild of america and like me they are on strike and not writing anything for WGA contracted productions, including whatever they're working on right now.

They're picketing right now, and I will go pick it later on today.

And I hope you will all join me in supporting the WGA.

And you can always go to the link in my bio on Instagram to find out more about that.

In the meantime, we have this case to hear.

Luckily, Maximum Fun is a wonderful organization that respects its creatives, and here we are about to hear a case.

Who seeks justice in this fake internet court?

I seek justice, Your Honor, against my friend Shuka.

Well, happy birthday to you, Camp.

It is your birthday, so I do want to say sincerely happy birthday.

We just want to thank you very much.

And what is the justice that you seek?

So, I

had a good friend of mine, mine, you could say, murdered by a good friend of mine.

Um my tortera of Pokemon Go

was

taken from me in an untimely manner

when I was hanging out in the apartment of my friend Shuka during college.

And so Shuka on that fateful day, Shuka stole my phone and I chased Shuka around in a circle, in an in an actual circle.

And then Shuka, as I was chasing her around in that circle, deleted that Torterra, Ryan Gildemond.

And I would like

for Shuka to

basically be punished for her crimes.

Technically, Cameron, it's your own fault for putting on Yackety Sacks.

The Torterra is a pocket monster, a Pokemon, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

But did it have another name?

Rhine Gildemond, named after the lead singer of Mother Mother.

Sure.

I don't know a lot

about Pokemon.

Sure.

I'm sure that I'm going to learn.

But

when you got a Pikachu, you call it Pikachu.

You don't call it like Mark Mother's Baw or whatever.

Are you able to give given names to your various Pokemons?

Yes.

In fact, it's tradition.

I think you're allowed to not choose a name for your Pokemon, but I think that

with Pokemon Go, you just have to.

You just have to name your own Pokemon.

I would like to submit to the court for context that Shuka, I think, knows the least about Pokemon

in this room of people.

I think that's probably important context.

Shuka, when did this all go down?

It must have been 2018, I think.

At one point, everyone around me started playing Pokemon.

I don't know exactly when that was, but we were in college, so it must have been 2017 or 18.

Including all of my friends,

but Cameron, I think, especially,

liked to play Pokemon.

I never found the game interesting, so I never

downloaded the game or played or engaged with any other Pokemon content.

In fact, so far you have mentioned a few characters that I have no idea

who they are.

We'll all learn together.

I certainly don't know who the lead singer of Mother, Mother, or whatever it is.

We'll get to the bottom of all of this.

We're going to start here at the top to get down to the bottom of it.

You were in college together.

This is some years ago.

May I ask where you went to college?

George Washington University in

D.C.

Washington University in the District of Columbia.

Okay.

That's my mother's home of honor.

Oh.

Yeah.

She graduated on academic probation.

Congratulations.

I find in favor of Shuka.

I didn't, I sorry about that, Cameron.

You didn't know about legacy verdicts

on Judge John Hodgman.

Automatic.

I was going to say, if one of you had gone to Yale, automatic, automatic find in your favor, unfortunately.

And

Cameron, can you clarify for both me and clearly for Shuka and some of the other listeners?

Yes.

You weren't just playing Pokemon.

You were playing Pokemon Go, correct?

That's correct.

And what is that?

So in Pokemon Go, you can

basically walk down the street, you open up the app, and you see something that simulates basically what you'd see on Google Maps.

You see an overhead view of where you are.

You see streets and locations.

You see a map.

And on that map.

Just like you were using your GPS or whatever.

Yes, you're represented by, you know, your character in Pokemon Go and

where you are in real life,

they represent these little Pokemon, these little creatures on the map.

So you can go and you can walk towards one of these creatures.

If you get close to it on the map and in real life, then you can go ahead and you can catch that creature.

So basically,

it is a great motivator for people to walk around and go on little adventures and create a collection of these creatures so that you can,

you know, simultaneously do something cute and silly in a little game, but also you're kind of really interacting with the real world around you and you can make a project of it.

It's an augmented reality game such that when you look through the camera of your phone and you find one of these virtual Pokémons that the Nintendo Corporation has sprinkled all over the map virtually, imaginarily.

But if you hold the camera up, you will see it in the camera sitting there looking at you.

And then you capture it and add it to to your collection and that's the whole game right you capture them you get them you got to catch them all is the is the theme and you got a torterra did you get a torterra originally or did you get uh its earlier form i got its earlier form that's correct so uh that's a turtwig you get it as a turtwig right that's a cute little turtle with a leaf on its head Yeah, yeah, basically.

It's a little grass Pokemon.

It's a little creature that hangs out in the grass.

You go somewhere grass somewhere.

Was I selling Turtwig short there by saying it was a cute little turtle with the leaf on its head?

And you're like, well, basically.

I think that's about correct, Your Honor.

I think that's a very accurate description.

And I'm sorry for doubting you, Your Honor.

I didn't know whether there was more depth to Turtwig.

Well, it has large yellow eyes and its face is oddly shaped.

On the bottom of the face, there's a yellow mouth in an obtuse shape.

And also on its face, it has two tiny nostrils.

Are you reading from the Pokemon manual again?

I'm just reading straight from this Pokemon wiki.

What type of Pokemon is Turtwig?

So Turtwig is a grass Pokemon.

It means that, you know, in the original games, that just meant basically nothing.

It was an aesthetic feature.

In real life, in Pokemon Go, it should be.

In real life.

In real life.

In real life.

You go to somewhere grassy

and you catch the Pokemon.

In real life, of Pokemon Go, you would find a grass Pokemon in an actual grassy location.

Yes.

Okay, that's cool.

I like this.

I like this game.

Yeah.

And then did you

feed your turtwig to grow it into a torterra?

That's basically what it is, actually.

So

you grow it into a grotto first, feeding it Turtwig candy.

And then you feed the grottle more Turtwig candy that turns into a torterra.

I don't know anything about Pokemon.

I love talking about Pokemon.

Turtwig candy is a virtual candy.

Yes.

And how do you get that?

You buy it in an in-app purchase, I presume.

You catch other turt twigs and then you let them go.

So when you catch a turtwig, you always get turt twig candy, but you just set it free like you'd catch a fish and you'd let it go.

You set the turt twig free and you keep the candy.

But first, you extract its glands.

Maybe.

You know, they don't really explain how you get the candy.

It's an invasive procedure.

And then you get a tortera, and a tortera is like

a big turtle with a forest on its back.

Exactly.

Fair enough.

And you name this turtle, what did you call it again?

Ryan Gildemond.

Ryan Gildemond.

It has powerful resonances in the world of myth that this turtle has land on its back.

Yeah, that's right.

It's the world turtle, right?

Isn't that

a common mythological element, a giant tortoise upon which all of the universe rests?

Yeah, as detailed in Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, colon, gotta catch them all.

Gotta get all those faces.

Let's take a quick recess and hear about this week's Judge John Hodgman sponsor.

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

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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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Shuka, I saw you laughing uproariously during a lot of this conversation.

Is there anything you'd like to share at this point?

This is all

music to my ears if the the music was really bad.

Wow.

Judge Hodgman, yesterday I was talking to Oscar Thorne, a regular on this program, and I'm doing a dad joke, an exhausting dad joke.

Sure.

And

Oscar says, Dad, it's like,

I don't want you to be my dad anymore.

That's what Shuka just dropped.

Yeah.

That's, I don't want you to be my dad anymore, energy.

Amazing.

So, Shuka,

do you remember when your friend Cameron got this tortera or got the turtwig and turned it into a tortera by feeding it turtwig candy?

I have to say, because I found this game so boring, I never asked questions.

I was not particularly curious about it.

So my friend would play this game all around me, me, but I would never look at their phones to see what they were doing.

I just knew that they were playing Pokemon Go.

So I didn't know what Torterra was until Cameron decided to bring me to court.

So

when I did delete this Pokemon, I didn't know that it was Torterra.

It was just a pocket monster.

So Cameron is not the only offender in your friend group back at George Washington University.

There are a lot of kids playing this game.

That is right.

And how did that make you feel?

You know, it did make me feel a bit left out.

It was the cool thing that the cool kids played.

I don't know if that's true, but that's what it felt like.

No, no, I'm glad we can finally settle this.

No, it wasn't.

Okay, good to know.

But I was.

Your feelings are valid, but I need to tell you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's actually great to know.

In reality, actual reality, Cameron.

People had fun with it.

A lot of people had fun with it.

A lot of people had fun with it.

You were not one of them.

I was not one of them, but it was fine with me that people liked to play this game.

How did it affect your relationship with Cameron?

In a literal sense?

So Cameron is a great friend.

He especially is a very present friend.

He's someone that you can always trust to listen to you when you have something to say.

He's a great listener.

He's a great conversationalist.

And I think Pokemon, you know, Pokemon did not make Cameron a worse person, but I think it did make him a slightly worse friend.

Oh, yeah.

Did you cop to that, Cameron?

Were you a more negligent friend during your big Pokemon Go period?

I have no knowledge of this, but I

well, there's something about the specific events

that Shuka has told me about that I I cannot possibly deny.

So, um, the reason apparently why Shuka took my phone is because me and our friends Jackson and Justin, the three of us, we were on Pokemon Go in Shuka's apartment in front of Shuka.

So, that I definitely cannot deny that we probably were talking about Pokemon Go in front of Shuka.

I love it when a litigant tells them themselves.

Just honest, Your Honor.

And how conveniently have you forgotten this little detail about what happened that night?

I had no idea until you informed me about that, but

I doubt that otherwise I was talking about Pokemon Go all the time.

Maybe I was.

You don't have to be talking about it.

You're just going around.

You're trying to catch them all.

Yeah.

I mean, it's literally a game where you have to walk out of your house while your friend is trying to tell you something.

Like, oop, I got to go.

There might be a sand Pokemon nearby.

See you later.

I don't know if that was exact, but you are copying at least to the fact that one day it was in Shuka's apartment.

Yes, that's correct.

In the District of Columbia,

you, Cameron, Jackson, and Justin, the three Musketeers of Pokemon Go,

were all on your phones and just ignoring Shuka.

What were you trying to do?

Talk to them about their days or what?

Yeah, I was just trying to have a conversation with my friends who had come over to my place to play Pokemon Go, apparently.

I know that they weren't playing it constantly.

It was that they would take their phones out of their pockets every once in a while and start playing Pokemon.

And I believe there is a trade of sorts that you can do in Pokemon.

Yeah, because you weren't hunting for, were you hunting for Pokemon in Shuka's apartment?

Is that what was going on?

Or were you doing some other game activity?

Would you guess, Cameron?

I would guess that so you have your team, your collection of Pokemon.

Sometimes you might have some extra Pokemon that you, you know, catch.

You already have that Pokemon, but you'll take another just so that you can trade it with your friends to get a Pokemon that you don't have.

And that's probably what we were doing.

Some trash Pokemon.

Some shagweed Pokemon.

You've already extracted its glands.

It's dead to you.

It's gland candy.

It's just a husk.

Yeah.

So you were probably trading Pokemons with Jackson and Justin.

That's right.

And Shuga grabbed your phone out of your hand.

Is this what happened?

Tell me.

That's correct, yes.

Go deep into the narrative of your accusation.

Okay.

I don't know.

It was a cold winter day.

We were still in our coats, I think, in Shuka's lovely little apartment.

Lovely, but unheated.

Heated, but I think we like had just come in and we were like kind of probably finishing a little bit of a conversation about, oh, well, I have this Pokemon.

Oh, well,

let's see.

Let me look through my Pokemon.

Oh, look at my Torterra, though.

Look at my Torterra.

I named him Ryan Guildemon.

At that time, I had a system where actually the reason why I had named it Ryan Guildemon was not just because I really like the band that Ryan Guildemon is in.

It's because I had a system where I would name Pokemon after members of bands that I couldn't remember the names of so that I would always see the Pokemon and I would always see the names of the band members.

So if I couldn't remember, if for some reason I just kept on forgetting Tom York's name, whenever people talked about Radiohead, I could be in on the conversation and talk about the band that I really like.

Judge Hodgeman, this is all about the classic intersection between people who got to catch them all in Pokemon and people who got to catch them all at the used record store.

That's right.

You're saying that Shuka robbed you of a powerful mnemonic that you were using to remember Ryan Guildemond's name, lead singer of the band Mother Mother?

Cameron operates at the corner of Griffin McElroy and Tom Sharpling.

Okay, so you're there playing on a cold winter's day.

Does Shuka take your phone away or what?

She snatches the phone out of my hands.

It is completely sudden, and I can guarantee that I was not taking out my Torterre to trade.

Ryan Guildemond, I would not have traded, and I was, in fact, you know, devastated, shocked, terrified even when Shuka stole the phone out of my hands and started running away with it.

I did not think that Shuka would have deleted my Pokemon.

This is an extremely out-of-character move for Shuka.

And

so I had no idea that she was about to delete it.

So we were running around in circles.

She was laughing.

I was laughing in sort of that shocked, I can't believe it kind of way.

And then when I take my phone back, I see her, her thumb, as I'm wrestling it out of her hand, I see her thumb come down on the button to delete the Pokemon when it says, are you sure you want to delete the Pokemon?

And Shuka presses yes

with complete confidence.

I snatch it back and I go, how did you just do that?

And then Ryan Gildemon was

left us.

Yeah.

Ryan Guildemon was dead, Shuka.

I'm sorry for killing Ryan Guildemon.

It's a very intrusive thing to do to steal someone's phone and then delete something from their phone without their permission.

Don't you agree, Shuka?

I think you're right.

I agree that

I committed evil in that moment.

But I have to say that this was a situation that had built up to that moment.

It was like milk on stove.

It was still for a long time until it boiled and overflowed on that night.

Milk on stove, you're just dropping the hits.

It's incredible.

Yeah,

it was a slow boil and

it finally bubbled over.

Yes.

And boiling over milk is the worst thing that can happen.

Yes.

Milk is a pleasant substance until it boils over and it coats your cooktop and it's impossible to get off.

But now you acknowledge that

your friendship is coated with

crusty milk.

I suppose it is.

Cameron, have you ever had pets?

I have.

I had a golden retriever.

He passed away at the age of 13 while I was in senior year of high school, and his name was Fidelio.

He was named after the opera.

Oh.

And do you have a pet now?

I do not.

I have not had a pet since then.

Why not?

I have been...

I've been moving around too much.

My future has been changing a lot.

My plans have been changing a lot.

I haven't been able to get a pet.

I've wanted a pet desperately for a long time,

but it's never really been a realistic option.

Would you say that Cameron is a sentimentalist?

I do think so.

Yeah.

Would you say that you are a sentimentalist?

In some ways, and not in others.

In what ways are you not a sentimentalist?

I think I don't get attached to things very easily,

especially if those things are not living creatures

or, you know.

I also have a dog, so

I am very attached to my dog, for example.

What is your dog's name?

My dog's name is Plato.

Plato, like the philosopher,

not like the sculpting toy?

Exactly, like the philosopher, yes.

So I do definitely get attached to animals, but I wouldn't say that I get attached to animals that I don't know.

For example, if I see a bird on the street, I wouldn't say that I feel any particular way about it.

Well, you barely know that bird.

You haven't even spoken to it.

Not once in your life.

Yeah.

And you feel less inclined to feel attached to imaginary creatures?

I think so.

You send in some evidence, Cameron.

including a calendar from this year,

the year of our God or whatever, March 2023, with some dates marked off on it, X'd off on it.

And it says, Exhibit A, my New Year's resolution, ask me about this.

So I'm doing it.

All right.

Thank you, Your Honor, for asking me about this.

You're welcome.

So my New Year's resolution

was that I should get on the treadmill at least a minute a day, usually limited to a minute a day, but at least a minute a day most days out of the year, meaning more than half.

So I don't get out a lot.

I don't exercise a lot.

Ever since Pokemon Go, ever since I stopped using Pokemon Go because I was very sad that

my account got messed up and I didn't have any Pokemon left, my Pokemon all died.

Both,

you know, all of the Pokemon that were left, all of the ones that Shuka didn't murder, those Pokemon died.

And ever since that happened, I

have not been on Pokemon Co.

I haven't tried again.

I haven't been motivated to try again.

I haven't been motivated to get a new Ryan Guildemond or anybody else.

And

I haven't been getting out much.

I don't exercise and I tend to be like a little bit of a workaholic.

So I don't really leave the house too much.

So you're saying that what happened was Shuka killed Torterra.

Yes.

Consequently, all the other Pokemons died mysteriously.

Yes.

And you haven't left your home since that time.

And now you have to make a New Year's resolution to stand on a treadmill and trudge slowly through a non-magical world in your basement or whatever.

That's correct.

Simply to stave off physical infirmity because of this.

Yeah.

That's correct, Your Honor.

That's what you wanted me to.

That was the prompt from this photo of the calendar?

Yes.

Okay.

Correct.

Sounds like it worked.

I mean, Shuka, it sounds like it worked.

You stopped the Pokemon Go.

After you killed Torcari,

did that end Pokemon Go and your friend group?

I've never been so successful in anything else in life.

What do you do for a living, if I may ask?

I work for the government.

I work for the Federal Reserve.

I'm an analyst there.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's no room for sentiment at the Federal Reserve.

Yeah, if you're all cold-blooded.

So you shut down the Pokemon Go, and did that improve your friendships with Cameron and Justin and Jackson?

Yes or no?

I did not realize that what I did was

in any way a huge action that I'd taken in my fight against Pokemon, but apparently it was.

And I think after that,

Pokemon Go slowly died down.

I don't know if I should take credit for this happening, but I don't believe I know anyone today who plays Pokemon Go.

And I don't know if you do, but that is another thing that I think Cameron would, regardless of whether he had Torterra today, and regardless of whether his account still existed, whether he would be playing Pokemon Go still or not, because I don't know anyone else who plays Pokemon Go.

Jackson and Justin do not.

Cameron,

you wish to speak?

Yes.

So

my goal here today, Shuka has basically already apologized.

She's even apologized today.

My goal today, so Shuka, she's not personally responsible for the fact that Pokemon Go somehow deleted my account under mysterious circumstances.

Wait, there are two minutes.

Before you make your statement, please, because I think I see where you're going.

I just want to verify some facts.

Yes.

Because

there's a lot of elision over some of these mysteries.

Yes.

How did all your other Pokemon die?

So

I clicked on the Pokemon Go app one day.

My friend said, oh, we should meet up and trade Pokemon, Pokemon Go.

And I was so excited.

And I clicked on the Pokemon Go app.

It was someone I hadn't talked about.

How long was this after Torterra had been deleted?

Six months to a year.

Would you say that Torterra's deletion basically ended Pokemon Go in your life meaningfully?

for a while?

I was on it a lot less after that.

I wouldn't say that it was like an immediate stop but i think it was a part of of it slowing down would you say that something in you got deleted that day along with torterra

yes something in me got deleted along with my tortera and then six months later or so some other friends said let's get back together and try to get the magic back and you're like sure yeah and you open up the pokemon app pokemon go app and what happens and it tells me you are not logged into your account i tried to get information about how I could log back into my account.

It did not work.

This apparently has happened with a lot of people.

It's a glitch.

It's a glitch that happened in the Pokemon Go app.

And

you just start over.

I think that they basically fixed that glitch.

I think that's not happening anymore.

But

because all of my Pokemon are gone, they're dead.

My account was deleted.

I don't really have much of an interest anymore because of the fact that, you know,

the point of the game is the creatures.

And my creatures are gone.

I don't care about like I just want to point out that I just, I just do a little research.

I just searched Pokemon Go Glitch and I confirmed that this was a system-wide glitch that deleted lots of accounts.

And they say, according to this subreddit, it was due to a malicious code that they have only recently traced back to the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America.

Wow.

That's weird, right?

So you lost your account.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Yeah.

It was unfortunate at the time.

I was sad at the time, but

that was a couple of years ago now.

At this point, what I really want from Shuka, because Shuka has admitted that she has done evil.

And actually, I don't really have a lot of interest in making Shuka sad.

Let the record show that Shuka shrugged.

And you said that, Cameron.

Okay, continue, please.

You know,

Shuka,

aside from

being

cold-hearted, unsentimental,

she is

aside from that, Shuka is extremely sweet, and I do not want to cause her any suffering or pain.

And I don't care about making her apologize more or her, like, I don't want a deeper apology.

What I would like is very pragmatic.

I want Shuka to

get me a new Ryan Guildemon.

I think that I'm not going to do it.

Wow.

Okay.

I'm not going to do it.

I'm really sad.

And

I think that it is a completely suitable and appropriate responsibility for Shuka to take on.

I'm not asking her to recover or reproduce the Pokemon that were deleted by the Pokemon app.

I'm asking her to take responsibility just pragmatically.

I'm not asking her to like apologize.

I just want her to get

the Pokemon, get the Pokemon, bring me a Torterra named Ryan Guildemond.

It can be any gender.

It doesn't have to be a male Pokemon.

As long as it's a Torterra named Ryan Guildemond, it will fill the same space in my heart.

Let me make sure I'm clear on this, Cameron.

You want Shuka to download the Pokemon Go app, go out into the world.

She doesn't got to catch them all.

She's got to catch them one.

Exactly.

She's got to catch them one.

Well, she's got to catch three because she's got to

evolve her turtle gog into the dingle dong.

She has to get a number of turtwigs.

Yes.

One for saving.

Yes.

And the other's for getting that gland candy out of to feed the candy and become Torterra and then gift that Torterra to you on your Pokemon Go app.

That's correct.

And you created a tutorial for this on how to do it.

I did.

Which you shared with me and presumably would share with

Shuka as well.

Yes, that's correct.

Have you walked Shuka through this process before?

I have linked Shuka to this information.

But have you talked to her about it?

Have you talked her through it?

Shuka, did we talk through it?

I think we talked briefly about it.

Okay.

Well, let's pretend that you never did.

Okay.

All right.

So Cameron, describe to me and to Shuka what Shuka's got to do to got to catch him one.

Okay.

So

first of all, Chuka, do you have the presentation open on your device?

You can bring that up while I'm telling you how to catch him on.

Okay.

So first of all, you have to find the Pokemon.

You have to find the Turtwig.

You just open up the app.

After you made your account,

and you made your character, you see if there are any good Pokemon in your area.

If not,

you walk around in real life.

And then you see if there are any good Pokemon in your area.

And then you walk around in real life, etc.

So you're looking for the Tertwig.

You probably, it's best to go somewhere grassy.

Grassy, because it's a grass Pokemon.

Everyone knows this, Shuka.

Shuka.

And then

if we might all move to page two of the presentation.

Yes, don't worry.

I'm following right along.

Perfect.

So you go ahead, you click on that

turtwig.

That looks like a squirtle to me.

This creature is not...

Are we on the second page of the presentation?

Yes.

The only one I'm seeing...

I'm seeing a person here.

I'm seeing

a player, and there's a thing that looks like a turtle, but it does not look like a turtwig.

It looks like a squirtle.

That is a squirtle.

So on the second page, we have a different Pokemon, which is also not a Turtwig.

Okay.

This is a great presentation.

Incredible deck.

$1 billion in angel investing.

Absolutely.

You've got it.

Sold in the room.

Go on.

Okay, I see there's this.

Okay, right.

There's an animation on page two.

Got it.

So in the theater of our mind, this can become a turtwig.

In fact, it's a ziggagon.

that's a zigzagoon.

That's correct, Your Honor.

Oh, all right.

Zigzagoon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know my zigzagoons.

And so you, you, you take your Pokeball and you just, you throw it with your finger at the Pokemon, at your Turtwig.

Um, you want to make sure that you throw it on the moving green circle.

There's a moving green circle on the Pokemon, which works as a target.

You just throw it in the center.

You're going to try to aim it.

And hopefully you caught the Pokemon.

Okay.

Everything clear, Shuka?

Yes.

But if you notice later in on, I don't know which page it is, but you will see that I will need to get...

We'll get to that, Shuka.

All right.

It's all clear.

Yeah, no,

I understand.

We'll make the whole deck available, Cameron.

I think it's pretty well pretty.

Anyone who has passing understanding of Pokemon understands.

You throw your Pokeball at the Pokemon and it captures it in like a dimensional pocket or whatever.

Exactly.

And the Pokemon is imprisoned in that Pokeball

until you release it to fight against other Pokemons or feed it gland candy or whatever.

And to eventually,

over time, as you point out here, Shuka would need to obtain 125 Tertwig candy, catching 42 Tertwigs in all to get that candy, to feed it and make it into a Torterra.

Yeah, you need 125 Tertwig candy.

So

on the final page, I did do do the math.

Yes, that's correct.

It's 42 Turtwigs.

Cameron, could she just go to Target and buy one of those Robux gift cards?

That's what I usually do for my kids' friends' birthdays.

Just buy Robux.

Bailiff, I don't think so.

Okay.

You have to follow the deck precisely.

If I were to find in your favor, Cameron, she would follow your instructions precisely, correct?

Yes.

How long of a time do you think it would take to collect the 42 turtwigs to get the one Torterra?

Depends where you are.

Depends how determined you are whether you're going to do this in one go or not.

Which means years.

Definitely not years.

I'd say

maybe,

maybe a month.

Maybe a month of daily searching?

Maybe a month of,

Your Honor, that might be right.

I think maybe a month of daily searching.

If you take a few minutes every day,

just a couple minutes every day,

you could probably get 42 tertwigs.

So you can get tertwigs at a rate of one a minute?

Not exactly.

How long does it take to get one tertwig?

Hmm, I think it depends.

A little less than a day.

If you're saying it's a month of daily searching and you need 42 of them.

But in a few minutes a day, 10 minutes, maybe.

Within 10 minutes, you could catch a turtwig, I think.

So we're talking about a total of

what is that?

420 minutes.

420 minutes.

And that is 10 minutes after I'm on some sort of grass, not 10 minutes right outside my house.

Is that right?

It may register your house as grass.

I see.

So we're talking about like seven hours.

Seven hours.

If you were going to cram it.

Grass time.

Yeah.

You got grass around your Federal Reserve Bank wherever you live, Shuka?

There is some grass.

Low-quality grass, mostly, but there is some.

Come out to Cali.

You get the good stuff.

It's a work trip, then.

It's true.

Do you think your colleagues would feel differently about you if you were taking your lunch hour to go search the grass for turtwigs?

They would probably be very confused.

I don't know how many of them would know what Pokemon Go is.

Especially now.

Do people still play this game, Cameron?

It exists.

I mean, it's not, it's not.

That's an answer to a different question.

Yeah.

How many Judge Sean Hodgman listeners do you think would be willing to send a Turtwig to Shuka?

Oh, yeah.

Well, I mean, if we crowdsource the Turtwigs, she could be done in a day.

Turtwigsforshuka.org.

You better get that domain locked down right now, Valerie Moffat.

I'm already on it.

Oh, man.

We got to get Turtwigsforshuka.phishing.

But it's not a game.

It's not a game that is the moment has passed for Pokemon Go to some degree, it would seem to me.

It's not stylish anymore.

It's not trendy.

Right.

It's no longer for the cool kids.

You have no desire to get back into this game.

You just want to get a Torterra back to complete the cycle.

and to heal the wound.

I do want to get back into this game.

If I had the Torterra, then I could.

Currently, I actually genuinely, I'm not lying, I don't have any special particular interest in it.

I think genuinely, if I got this Turtwig, this Torterra from Shuka, I genuinely would get back into this game.

That's not a lie.

Shuka,

let's go back to the original moment.

You stole this phone and you deleted this thing

because Cameron wasn't being present in your friendship.

Why is that why is that important to you?

Well, Cameron is one of my best friends, and we have been very close ever since college.

And as I mentioned before, Cameron is probably one of the most present people that I know, because I'm sure you all have friends who are, whenever they're talking to you or whenever you're spending time together, they might have their phone out, they might be scrolling down Twitter every once in a while and nod at you and say, ah, yes, I'm listening, but maybe they're not entirely listening.

Cameron is not that kind of person.

I'm listening.

I'm what?

I'm sorry, what did you just say?

I was just looking up stats on the Zigzagoon.

Exactly.

Once you're in the Pokemon wiki, you can't get out.

No.

It's like a multi-level marketing scheme.

So you felt that Cameron abandoned you to a certain degree for Pokemon Go back a few years ago?

I believe so, yes.

And yet Cameron just said that if I order in his favor and you get this torterra for him, he might start playing again.

Why would you want that to happen?

Well, I I wouldn't want that to happen.

I.

Don't you think Cameron should have said, I just need to get this torterra so I can feel some sense of closure in my life, and then I'll just go ahead and be a very present friend to Shuka?

Well, listen, if Cameron wants to, if that is truly something Cameron wants to do, then I think if that brings him joy, if he wants to get back into Pokemon Go,

I think he should be able to do it.

I personally would probably prefer if Cameron Cameron did not get back into Pokemon Go.

And I'm still not entirely convinced that if that hadn't happened, Cameron would be playing Pokemon Go now, but I guess

we can't guess that.

That's an alternate universe.

It is an alternate universe.

So what I do want for Cameron is what he wants for himself, which is to get out of the house more.

If that is the purpose that Pokemon Go was serving in his life,

and not having Pokemon Go has led to him not leaving the house as much as he would like.

I would like Cameron to

do that.

And in fact,

if I win this case, I would ask Cameron to get out of the house more, maybe

a short amount of time every day, even if it's 15 minutes or 10 minutes,

the same amount of time it takes to get a tortwig.

You can, you know, go on grass, touch grass, as the kids say, and

and, you know, enjoy nature without without looking down on your phone.

Without the mediation of augmented reality.

Yes.

Just actual reality.

You two don't live in the same place anymore.

No.

So how does that present?

How do you manage to have a present relationship?

When you are not living in the same place?

Because, Cameron, you live in New York somewhere, right?

Yes, that's correct.

Right.

And

you live in a bank.

I do live in a bank.

Yeah, under all the money.

That's where I sleep.

That's right.

Fantastic.

Yeah, it must be hard to maintain a relationship.

Are you concerned that a resurgence of, I mean, how do you guys stay in touch currently?

We actually are very, like, actively best friends.

So

actually...

We don't always meet in person, but this is the third month in a row that we're hanging out.

Is that right?

Yeah, in person.

Yeah, I visited you in March in DC where I stayed there for like, what was it, a week?

Two weeks, two weeks, two weeks, that's right.

And then

we met another friend in North Carolina for a weekend, and now Shuka's visiting me for my birthday.

So

aside from that, though, you know, we hadn't seen each other for at least like a year, but we're very actively,

you know, we're very good friends.

We hang out a lot online, but we like, I'll just call Shuka in the middle of the day for no reason and sometimes Shuka says hi I'm at work.

Can we talk later?

I say okay and then Shuka calls me back a few, you know hours later and I say oh I got a

got a terrible stomachache today.

Let me tell you about it

and then

and we will just talk for hours.

I'll say oh I have to get to work in 15 minutes and Shuka will say okay and I work from home.

I'm I'm basically self-employed and and and

then we'll just talk for an hour when I I have to go work.

And

we watch TV shows together.

We're watching Twin Peaks.

We're very close.

Good.

And

so do you fear that if I were to rule in his favor, Shuka, that the Pokemon Go will cause a damage, will cause this relationship to become strained?

Frankly, no.

I don't think that will happen.

Both because

I think Cameron now knows how I feel about Pokemon, so I doubt, again, once again, Cameron is a great friend, so I think now that he knows this, he will not talk about Pokemon in my presence, probably.

And there's no difficulty remaining present when he, you know, you're visiting him now for his birthday.

It's not like he's on his phone the entire time.

He has not been on his phone.

Right.

And you're present there for him.

You're not just sitting over on your phone raising interest rates or whatever it is you do all day.

Well, no, I'm not.

All right.

So if you were to, if I were to, I know what Cameron wants, if I were to find in his favor.

If I were to find in your favor, you're asking that he be more active in the world, but not mediated through augmented reality of Pokemon Go?

Yes.

I want him to, without Pokemon Go, make an effort to spend some time outside, however much that he wants or he thinks would be good for him.

Let me ask you a different question, Shuka.

Is there any reason that I should find in your favor?

I'm not sure.

I like you both very much, and I understand where you're coming from.

But you did take his thing and delete his thing without his permission, and it was hurtful to him.

Well, I guess two things.

Firstly, the crime I committed was

out of passion, out of my passion for our friendship.

So I would first.

It was a crime of passion.

No, I like it.

I like it.

Keep going.

So firstly,

I would hope that first you would understand and you would feel the same if your friend was doing something like Cameron was doing.

Now, whether what I did was right or wrong, well, it was wrong, but I don't think I should be punished for it.

You know what?

That's a very honest defense.

I appreciate that.

Okay, I think I've heard everything I need to.

I'm going to go to my Pokemon training gym and consult with my Charmander, and I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Cameron, how are you feeling right now?

You know, I actually, I came into here thinking that I would win.

I do have my doubts.

I do understand how many

turtwegs 42 is, but I didn't exactly do the math on how long it would take to catch them.

That didn't exactly cross my mind.

But, you know, I do really want to.

You going to be able to re-evaluate your own choices.

I'm doubting how well

this is going to go.

But I will say, you know, I do feel like when your friend breaks something, usually the right thing to do is to pay them back.

And I feel like sometimes the way that you pay somebody back is through time and showing that you care and doing your best instead of just through money.

Shuka, how are you feeling?

Before coming here, I was certain that Cameron would win.

I'm now less certain, but I still think Cameron would win.

So I have to probably devise a plan to maybe guilt trip Cameron because it's summer and Cameron knows how much I hate the sun and being outside in the sun.

So maybe I can make him feel bad about me being out there in the sun on the grass, trying to find little

turtles.

I see.

Shuka, you said you would find that activity sopperific, I believe was your word.

Yes.

You know, you're an analyst at the Federal Reserve.

You know, you have a fair point.

We'll see what Judge Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a second.

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, 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 Long.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else, too.

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

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Judge Hodgman, we're taking a break from the case.

As we record this, the Writers Guild of America remains on strike.

Yes, I am prohibited from not only writing for struck studios and companies, but I'm also prohibited from promoting projects in association with struck companies.

So I will not say anything about the projects that you probably already know about.

But there's nothing that prohibits me from promoting this, the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

And here's a thing that we've said in the past, but haven't said recently, which is, hey, would you go leave a review of this show somewhere?

Would you go tell a friend about the show?

If you enjoy it, maybe this is the week when you might go to Apple

podcasts or wherever, get your podcasts, and

leave a review reflecting your enjoyment because it really does help people discover the show.

And it's something we're very proud of.

So why don't you go ahead and do that if you don't mind?

Write a social media post about why a particular episode was your favorite episode.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's all.

If you feel like doing that, that sounds great.

In the meantime, the writer's strike goes on.

And if you go to the link in my bio on Instagram, which is my best link of links, you can find out more details as why the writer's strike is happening and how to support it if you'd like.

In the meantime, Jesse Thorne, what do you have going on?

I've got the same usual things going on.

You know, I hope that people will check out Jordan Jesse Go and Bullseye, my other podcasts here at the Maximum Fund Network.

And I hope that people will join Maximum Fun, which I think are our transition to being an employee-owned co-op and i will be an employee owner is very very

imminent so we've all had all the agreements but i think the actual transition will happen within a couple weeks so uh go to maximumfund.org slash join and support us because uh it's a big undertaking maximumfund.org slash join and what about pullzyk anything coming up i had a great interview with stanley tucci recently i mentioned my wonderful interviews with Mary Steenbergen and Lonnie Listensmith.

Got our colleague from Fanta, Trayvelle Anderson, coming up.

Trayvell has a new book, and

they are one of the most brilliant and entertaining people that I have ever known.

So go listen to that.

Let's get back to the case.

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

Torterra's large and clean shell supports the lives of many small Pokémon,

which occasionally gather and build their nests upon the shell.

Some are born and spend their entire lives on Torterra's back.

Ancient people believed the ground contained a gigantic Torterra living underneath.

This is a deep Pokémon, and Shuka just deleted it,

Deleted a whole universe.

Not just a little virtual pet, a world that supported other animals on its back.

Deleted.

In a crime of passion.

I'll allow that, Shuka, because I understand

that you are tired of your friends looking at their phones and being distracted by a trend.

And indeed, this trend was fairly distracting.

There were, I remember there were a lot of news articles about, you know, people wandering into traffic while looking for these pocket monsters and getting dinged by cars.

People wandering into rail yards where they're not supposed to be, looking for valuable ding-dongs or whatever.

People who are wandering off from their friends, looking into their phones.

Never mind a lot of the weird ethical dilemmas regarding in-game advertising and surveillance that was prompted by this game.

What you did was wrong.

And obviously I'm going to find in Cameron's favor.

But I understand why you did what you did.

It was out of friendship.

But

let me just be clear to everyone who's listening.

No matter how annoying your friends are being, you can't grab their phones away, run around the apartment, and then delete their things.

It's not okay.

That's a violation.

It's a violation.

It needs to be punished.

And the question now is, the damages are substantial.

You're both young, a couple years out of college.

Your lives are not settled yet.

Cameron can't get a golden retriever.

The only kind of pet that he can have is a virtual one.

The emotional damage is clear.

He liked that guy.

He named him after the singer from Mother Mother.

He wants him back.

He wants his friend back.

He lost a friend that day thanks to your friendship, Shuka.

And that may be hard to accept, but it's true.

One thing I just want to say is that I really think that you are both terrific friends to each other.

I think that, you know, one of the hard things about post-college friendships is you move to other places and you drift apart.

You establish different lives.

You've really worked, I think, to not only just, you know, actually stay in touch with each other sort of logistically, but stay in touch with each other emotionally.

And I fully felt your apology when you offered it, Shuka.

What you did was cruel.

Now the question is,

what is the sentence?

What is the damage?

What's going to make it right?

Shuka, you would like for

Cameron to get out into the world.

Cameron, you want a Torterra.

Now look,

Shuka, I could order you to go find 42 Turtwigs.

That's no problem.

And with the help of our listeners, you'd get it done in a day.

Turtwigsforsuka.com.

Valerie Moffat was looking this up backstage.

We can get a year of that domain for $14.99, right, Valerie?

That's right.

It's on sale.

What about Turtwigsforshuka.fun?

Turtwigsforshuka.fun is available right now for $4.99.

Well, that's quite a bargain.

What about Turtwigsforshuka.luxury?

Turtwigsforshuka.luxury is available for $649.99.

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

We have any other offers?

Anything else we should consider?

If we're feeling really flush, Turtwigsforshuka.security is available for $2,499.99.

All right, I'll take 10 of them.

Got to catch them all.

Wow.

I think we should just grab Turtwigsforshuka.fun just to be safe, you know,

to make it a little bit easy, because I'm not going to order Shuka.

to go find these turtwigs on her own in the sun-parched grass around the Federal Reserve Bank because you're both going to do it together.

It's going to be a friendship quest.

Why are you sending your friend a deck of how to do something, Cameron, when you can just show Shuka in the real world

as you go from grassy patch to grassy patch together, finding turtwigs and siphoning off the ones that our listeners send you.

Get it done.

Big, bang, boom.

42 turtwigs.

I think you'd bang it out in an afternoon for sure.

I would wait for an overcast day so that Shuka doesn't have to be out in the sun.

Maybe go to a place with a nice breeze.

Maybe go to

the national mall or something.

I don't know if there are turtwigs around there.

Do something fun together outside.

With the aid of our listeners, you're going to get that tortera back very quickly.

You know, I appreciate that this is pain and suffering for you, Cameron.

But time has passed.

I feel like you're in a forgiving mood.

One or two afternoons of time with your friend out in the real world in the sunshine, collecting little turtwigs with the help of our listeners, you'll get it done.

You'll get your tortera back.

You put that in your pocket.

And I don't care whether you play Pokemon Go again or never again.

But when you and Shuka are hanging out together, phones down.

Hangout time is on, especially now that you don't live in the same place.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Gotta catch up.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Shuka, how do you feel?

I

feel good.

I think

this will

infinitely make this activity more fun if I'm doing it with Cameron.

So I accept this.

I accept this form of justice.

Will it be as fun as financial reserve analysis?

Oh, you have no idea how much fun that is.

What's the most fun aspect of analysis?

Oh, I love to troubleshoot code for hours and hours.

Cameron, how do you feel?

I am

very happy with this resolution.

I'm actually surprised and delighted that Shuka is happy with it too.

So that brings me joy because I never wanted Shuka to suffer either.

I just wanted, you know, to get my tortura back in in the way that felt the most appropriate.

So

I'm very happy with this, and I think that I'm going to be really comforted seeing that little creature in my, in my, uh, my phone screen now.

I think it's going to bring me a lot of comfort, and I'm going to be happy to see him.

Cameron Schuka, 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 second, we'll have Swift Justice.

Our thanks first to Reddit user Lex Fry for naming this week's episode Persona non grata catch-em-all.

Pretty solid.

Persona non grata, just a Latin phrase, nothing too legal.

Just a Latin phrase, nothing legal.

Yeah, but still, but still pretty good.

Had to do it.

Had to do it.

Join the conversation on the Maximum Fun subreddit.

That's maximumfund.reddit.com.

That's where we ask for title suggestions, so keep an eye out for those posts.

Evidence and photos from the show are on our Instagram account, instagram.com slash judgejohnhodgman.

Follow us there.

JudgeJohn Hodgman was created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman.

Our producer is Valerie Moffat.

Our litigants this week were recorded at Tiki Recording Studios in Glen Cove, New York by Fred Guarino.

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

Meredith writes, can we please assume that anyone with any sense has their phone in do not disturb mode while they're sleeping, or do we still need to be concerned about what time of day we send texts?

What do you think about this one, Jesse?

I don't really know how to turn do not disturb mode on and off.

I've never bothered to learn.

My big concern is that if I turn it on, I will forget to turn it off.

Yeah, that happens to me quite a fair amount.

My main problem is that I'm on do not disturb all the time, and then I discover that I should have been disturbed.

But it's also the case that you can set do not disturb, but certain contacts of yours automatically bypass do not disturb, like say your spouse or your child.

And I would say that I would prefer to maintain the sanctity of the email

as a non time-sensitive piece of communication, but the text as being, I need your attention right away.

I don't want to live in a world where people are sending me texts in the middle of the night, knowing that I'm going to get to it later.

It's too intimate.

It's too intimate.

It's like a call.

And I would say, if you're texting someone at 2 a.m., you better be seeing if they're up, if you know what I mean.

I don't think you should be sending texts in the middle of the night.

Sorry, Meredith.

When you say that, you mean that, like,

somebody's giving birth and they got to go to the hospital or whatever.

Right.

Or, yeah, like, yeah, exactly.

Or I think there might be a squirtle outside.

I need you to meet me right right away.

Hey, you know, we're all asking for cases.

And since we heard some Pokemon cases, how about some magically gathering cases?

That's another thing I don't know anything about.

I'd love to learn.

And I think I have a very good idea for an expert witness for that case.

So if you've got some magically gathering disputes, send them in or any kind of card game.

uh even regular old playing card game do you have do you have a bridge dispute pinuckle Can somebody sell you a bridge in Brooklyn?

Why don't you send in your cases to maximumfund.org slash JJHO?

And it's not just card game disputes, right, Jesse?

Any kind of dispute, maximumfund.org slash JJHO.

If you're not sure if it meets our standards, just send it in.

The stakes are low here, folks.

We look at all of them.

Maximumfund.org slash JJHO.

I love hearing from you, and I read them all.

I got to read them all.

I got to read them all.

I'll tell you the truth.

John can't reply to all of them.

It would be impossible.

But I think a lot of times John replies to somebody and they're like, thanks to whoever answered this.

That's not actually John Hodgman.

No, John really replies to as many as he can.

I got to read them all and I got to reply to them most.

Yeah.

So send them significantly.

Maximumfund.org/slash JJ Ho, send me your beefs.

And I got one more URL to tell people about, John.

Yeah, let's hear it.

It's a little URL I like to call turtwigsforshuka.fun.

Turtwigsforshuka.fun.

That's where you can go to find out information for how to send Shuka Turtwigs.

Honestly, if we just texted my bullseye colleague, Jesus Ambrosio, I bet he has 42 turtwigs right now.

Right now, I bet Jesus has 42 turtwigs.

If you got any extra turtwigs hanging around, you know where to go.

Turtwigsforshuka, S-H-O-O-K-A, dot fun.

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

MaximumFun.org.

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