What Half Man Wrought

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket.

And with me, as always, is the star of the podcast, The Hollywood Handbook, Judge John Hodgman.

You should, I won't say anything, go check it out.

I appeared on Hollywood Handbook, and it was quite an emotional journey.

Wonderful podcast.

Sean and Hayes, shout out to Sean and Hayes.

But, Jesse, hello.

Hello, John.

Spring sprang in Brooklyn.

Woke up this morning with the window open a little bit.

Chilly, but nice.

Sound of a morning dove yelling outside my window.

I've never heard a louder.

You know, a morning dove is a pretty low-key dove.

You know, I mean, it's a pretty low-key member.

A lot of pigeons will go,

but a morning dove kind of goes, oh, oh.

Yeah, it's not to be confused with that all-night dove.

Right.

That thing's wiling.

Yeah, maybe this one had been up all night.

Maybe this one had gotten into a supply of

my son's energy drinks or something left out

in the yard.

But it sounded like this.

I'm like, what is that sound?

My family tells me it's a morning dove.

But it woke me up out of a big dream.

I used to have the most boring dream.

This is Dream Journal time, Jesse.

This is everyone's favorite part of every podcast.

It's the segment that comes right before podcasters discuss Los Angeles outdoor shopping mall, The Grove.

Itself a dream.

A dream of return to a time that was somewhat normal.

Pretend streetcar carries you 800 feet.

I'm ready for it.

I'm ready for that.

That's a dream.

I, you know, normally my dreams are I was walking down the street and then I was trying to make

a reservation for a rental car and I couldn't get it to take my date of birth.

And then I wake up screaming.

It's the worst dream I have, not being able to fill out forms properly.

But my dreams have gotten a little bit more intense.

You have any intense dreams lately?

What did you dream last night, Jesse Thorne?

Yeah, I have had some intense dreams.

The most recent really intense dream was I was thinking about changing the furniture in my house to be more traditional.

So my wife and I went to an antiques auction.

Sure.

And to get to the antiques auction, we had to take, do you know those kind of like bus trains that you have to take at the airport sometimes

to get you from

street cars that take me 800 feet?

So no.

It's sort of like that, but like 50% more Tron.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

So we had to take one of those bus shuttles like at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C.

And it took us to the auction and we sat down and it was in kind of an amphitheater.

Yeah.

And sitting next to me was Holly Hunter.

And I was so happy to see Holly Hunter.

I'm the biggest Holly Hunter fan.

Well, you interviewed her on Bullseye, did you not?

And she was such a joy, such a delight.

A dream.

So appropriate in contrast to dream Holly Hunter, who in front of my wife was hitting on me relentlessly.

Just would not take no for an answer.

Holly Hunter.

Look,

who among us?

Who among us would not consider ourselves lucky to be hit on by Holly Hunter, but I'm a happily married man.

I was there with my wife.

Right, awkwardly.

And I was like, simmer down, Holly Hunter.

And it got so bad that I missed bidding on this armoire that I wanted to buy.

This truly sounds

such a Jesse Thorne dream mirror, dream nightmare.

I know.

But you were dreaming about something that you aren't able to do yet.

We hope we are moving forward back into those times when we can gather together and bid on armoires.

My dream was about a big dinner at a restaurant, unmasked.

And it was in this dream, it was a big publishing dinner party

that had been, you know, had been canceled last year, and we were all back after the pandemic, and it was after some kind of publishing awards ceremony.

I don't know.

It was a fake event, but I just remembered in the dream, oh, I did this two years ago, and it was great.

But now I'm here at this big, long, long, long table in a restaurant.

And I'm at one end of the table, and I'm all by myself.

It's like a banquet and chairs, and it's unbalanced.

So

I'm at the odd end of the chairs because there's no one in front of me.

I'm by myself.

And down at the other end of the table, they're getting all of the food and all of the drink and I'm getting nothing.

But also at the other end of the table are all the people that I don't want to talk to or get trapped into a conversation with, especially in a banquet situation where there's no escape.

So I'm at my end of the table.

with no food, but people that I like.

But then the people that I like leave.

They got to go run an errand.

And I'm sitting there all by myself, feeling completely abandoned, thinking there's no way to go back

to normal, to my old life, of publishing industry dinners where I didn't have to pay.

I'm just abandoned by the past.

And then you know what happens in my dream is a group of really nice young guys, kind of in their 20s, and they're this college team of like rugby players or something.

And they may even have been like Scottish or Irish.

They were just really adorable.

And they all sat down in the banquet in front of me because there was nowhere else to sit in this restaurant.

They didn't realize that this was a private party.

And they all sat in front of me.

And you know what I said to these guys, Jesse?

What's that, John?

Get out of there.

Get out.

This isn't your

table.

That is Susan Orleans' seat.

She might come back to talk to me.

I said the friends who abandoned me might come back.

And the nice guys are like, oh, okay, sorry.

I'm like, go to a different restaurant.

There are no seats here for you.

Do you see the placard there that says Mary Roach?

Totally.

And then my friends, it wasn't Susan Orlene or Mary Roach.

They would never do that to me.

I know which friends left.

They know which friends left and didn't come back.

And then finally, I'm back.

You're one of those lever friends and you're listening right now.

You know who you are.

Yeah, right.

Finally, at the end of the dream, one person, an acquaintance from the far end of the table, comes down to check up on me and he just leans over and he says this really funny thing.

He said, my book sold more copies than Vacation Lane and Medallion Status Combined.

That's pretty standard publishing dinner banter in the real world.

That's how we talk.

But I woke up screaming like a morning dove.

You know what I mean?

Okay.

Let's get into the docket.

Here's something from Jeff.

My wife and I enjoy watching Jeopardy.

Of course, when when we know the response, we both enjoy saying it out loud, as if we were playing the game too.

I want to be a contestant on this show one day, so I insist on waiting until the host has finished reading the clue before responding and responding in the form of a question.

However, my wife will usually say the correct response as soon as she knows it.

Worse, she doesn't put it in the form of a question.

For instance, if the clue was, this radio personality is the co-host and bailiff of the Judge John Hodgman podcast, my wife would say, Jesse Thorne, instead of the correctly phrased, who is Jesse Thorne?

You don't have to work hard to find somebody to say, who is Jesse Thorne?

I'll tell you that much right now.

Please order my wife to wait until the host has finished reading the clue and then answer in the form of a question.

Thank you very much.

Oh, wow.

This is

a tough one.

Jesse,

I'd like to use my phono friend.

Okay.

My phone a friend option.

Okay.

Sure.

Well, if we're playing by Jeopardy rules, absolutely.

Right?

It's part of the game.

Everyone knows.

Let's just see here.

Elliot Kalen.

Our friend Elliot Kalen from the Flophouse and I Potius was, you know, he was on Jeopardy.

So I'd like to get his take on this.

Let's see if I can get him.

Let's see if we can get him on the phone.

Come on, Elliot.

Well, at least he hasn't declined me yet.

How are you, Richelle?

Kalen, I'm not here at the moment, or my phone is turned off, so please leave a message and I'll get right back to you.

Thank you.

Bye.

At the tone, please record your message.

I know what to do.

I've been alive for 50 years.

Yeah, I know.

I know how.

Elliot, it's John Hodgman from the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm here with Bailiff Jesse Thorne and producer Jennifer Marmor.

Look, we've got a question about Jeopardy.

I don't know the answer.

I don't know the answer.

I guess you're busy right now, but if you can call back,

I'd really need your help on this one.

Thanks very much, Elliot.

You're my friend, and I've phoned you.

Bye.

Oh, man.

John, does this make me Regis Philbin?

Of course it does.

Of course it does.

You've always been Regis Philbin.

Yes, that's why I'm wearing this silver necktie with this silver shirt.

That's right.

The silver necktie and a silver shirt in a 1928 photo from New Year's Eve at the Overlook Hotel.

You've always been Regis Philbin.

Of course you have.

Yes.

All right,

we'll see if Elliot calls back.

We'll hold this one to see if Elliot calls back and we can get his insight on this.

But meanwhile, do we have another case we can hear while we're waiting for Elliot?

Yeah, here's a case from Kurt.

I would like you to issue a judgment against my wife for regularly criticizing one of my recurring comedic shticks.

Oh, no.

Rarely does it go off the rails in the first sentence.

An homage to the 1983 comedy Trading Places.

Which film is, we will admit, somewhat, this is an editorial introjection.

Right.

A great but problematic film.

If you would like to problematize it,

send your least favorite scenes to Hodgman at Maximum World.

Whoa, thanks very much.

I guess I deserve it for hearing this case.

In this role reversal themed film, after Dan Aykroyd's character sees Eddie Murphy's character being driven in his Mercedes wearing his Harvard tie, Aykroyd's character says, he was wearing my Harvard tie.

Can you believe it?

My Harvard tie.

Like, oh, sure, he went to Harvard.

That was my famous Dan Aykroyd impression.

Incredible.

38 years later, whenever I see someone wearing clothing advertising a college or university, I say in a spot-on Lewis Winthorpe voice, like, oh, sure, he went to Mississippi State.

Or, well, I should do the voice.

Oh, sure, he went to Mississippi State.

Or, oh, sure, she went to Simmons.

Classic Dan Aykroyd voice, whatever the case may be.

Upon hearing this, my wife rolls her eyes and groans.

Your honor, she thinks my shtick is derivative and tiresome.

I say it's an original twist on a classic line that's funny because it's so oft repeated.

Please order my wife to cease rolling her eyes.

Yeah, I got this one and I chose to to only remember Trading Places rather than re-watch it.

Yeah.

I have memory enough to know that it is

complicated and problematic for all sorts of reasons that were very common in 1983 that are receiving due interrogation now in the present.

Fair enough.

But I got to say, it is the first movie where I heard the term pork bellies.

I got to give it that.

Yeah.

Yeah, one of the, I mean,

almost certainly the top comedy commodity.

That's right, right.

I mean, it's, it's not as, I mean, there's no way frozen concentrated orange juice features.

Well, I don't know, which is funnier.

I think maybe they made the right call,

Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod in that writing, because pork belly sounds funnier.

But the fact that this movie hinges,

the climax of the movie hinges on a rousing

short squeeze scene involving Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy shorting or doing some stock manipulation around the futures of frozen concentrated orange juice.

I think that's a little funnier.

Frozen concentrated orange juice is very, very specific and funny.

All right, I'll buy that.

And I would say that there's a lot

in this movie that probably holds up comedically.

Looking good, Lewis, feeling good, whatever, you know, that is comedically sound.

Yeah, I think the last time I saw it was probably five years ago, and I was impressed at how much of it held together comedically.

The comedies of that era are not known for

their consistency as films.

Yeah, and I mean, it is itself an interrogation of class and race

in a range.

A row-handed one, a pork-bellied one.

Yeah, but

its intentions are clear.

Obviously, you know, Jamie Lee Curtis, who is someone I love as a performer,

Her career, she admits, was completely changed by this movie.

It got her out of horror movies and into Fish Called Wanda and onto an incredible career in different ways.

It's supposedly, but you know, without Trading Places, we only would have had Dr.

Detroit.

Dan Aykroyd's movie career would not have taken off and we never would have gotten Nothing But Trouble, which is a movie I find to be a lot more problematic and comedically unsound.

So don't watch that one either.

It's a real comedic Titanic.

But I would say that, so comedically, though, at least what I recall from it, including this joke

holds up.

Would you say that this joke in the context of trading places holds up?

The Dan Aykroyd going

to Harvard.

Yeah, it's a satire of Dan Aykroyd's character's perspective.

Yeah, he's an insufferable snob

who makes presumptions about people based on what they look like and where they come from.

What we call a Harvard man.

I went to a different college.

So what's happening, though, Jesse?

So did I.

Jesse, can we do a remake of Trading Places where we're the Mortimer Brothers?

Yes, please.

Okay.

You know, there was a guy at my college who always wore a Harvard sweatshirt?

The same one over and over again, or he had a variety of them.

I think he just had the one, and he would wear it.

He would wear it.

You'd say, dude, this is UC Santa Cruz.

Right.

What is this?

What is the symbolism of this sweatshirt?

Right.

Does your older brother go there?

Right.

Like, what does this mean?

What does it mean?

What is the, and this, I think, it speaks exactly to the question here.

Like, when you, when someone wears a Harvard sweatshirt or a Harvard sweater at UC Santa Cruz, it's saying something, but you don't know what it's saying, right?

Yeah, I talked to him about it.

It says that he loved social dancing, something called social dancing.

wearing a raccoon coat and a boater hat as well?

Is social dancing some kind of 1920s?

I think about it.

When I talked to him, he was sitting on a flagpole.

Exactly.

Got a bowl of goldfish under his arm.

You know, he fell out of a telephone booth and mentioned to me.

Well, you know, Jesse, I enjoy social dancing.

It's my famous Thurston Owl III invitation.

But I'm on, like, my instinct was

when I heard this bit about Kurt Kurt Schtick, like, I get it.

That's a funny riff on a classic joke.

I could see how that could be funny.

I could see that that would be funny.

But then I kind of dug into it a little bit more deeply, and I'm like, well,

what is this joke doing?

We know what the Dan Aykroyd joke is doing.

It is presenting the point of view of an insufferable snob.

But Jesse, you're a student of comedy and a practitioner.

You're a practitioner student.

Yeah, I'm a student and practitioner of comedy and a student and practitioner of American Studies at UC Santa Cruz.

There you go.

So if you were to unpack Kurt's inversion or version of this joke, what is it doing from your point of view?

Bothering his wife.

You're saying that intrinsically it has no comedic value whatsoever.

The premise of this joke is that he is upsetting the person he loves most in the world.

Well, if you're talking about me, John Hodgman, you're right.

I'm a little upset by this joke in a way I didn't expect to be at first.

Because at first I was like, okay, I get the, you take pleasure out of it because you're repeating a bad joke in front of your wife.

And it's that kind of anti-humor of constant repetition of the dumbest thing.

But intrinsically, I was kind of like, it was kind of funny to go like, oh, sure, he went to blah, blah, blah, like whatever it was, you know, like.

And if it's a random sample of college regalia that will trigger Kurt's joke,

I'm going to tell you, Jesse, I'm into it.

I think that's kind of

stupid and annoying, but kind of funny.

If every, whatever the college or university is that they see, if it's a random application of

quote-unquote snobbery or performative snobbery, that's funny.

But I'm curious about the examples that Kurt gave.

Mississippi State

and Simmons College, now Simmons University in Massachusetts.

I'm not sure whether he's making fun of snobs or being one.

Is he trying to suggest, is he inversion of the joke that it would be stupid to be snobby about going to Mississippi State, which I don't know anything about that institution, but I'm sure it has its pros and its cons, and the people who go there go there in good faith trying to get an education education and better themselves.

Like, why would we make fun of that particular institution?

You know, I hope you're not out there, Kurt, making fun of any of the incredible alums from Simmons College, like Gwen Eiffel of PBS NewsHour.

American journalistic hero, or Barbara Margolis, a prisoner's rights advocate who served as the official greeter of New York City.

I'm sure you're not making fun of Simmons College, which first admitted black students in 1914

and eschewed all racial and religious quotas and was one of the most accepting universities or colleges at this time.

Or that you're making, I'm sure you're not making fun of

women-focused undergraduate education in general.

I mean, I hope that you're not, Kurt, but only you know that.

So I would say this.

Just as it's important to analyze trading places,

and probably while we're at it, Jesse, we should probably reanalyze, analyze this, and analyze that.

Who knows?

Who knows what's going on?

I don't remember those movies.

I didn't see them.

But just as it's important to make sure that you're being careful with your comedy

and to analyze it, I encourage you, Kurt, before you make this joke again, to

look at what your premise is and make sure it's saying what you want it to say.

And I would say, until you do that, I I order a stay of making this joke for one calendar year.

You are prohibited from making this joke for one year.

Give your wife a well-deserved break while you explore your comedic premises.

And also, what else should I punish him with, Jesse?

One day a week, most likely Saturday if he's a church goer, Sunday if he isn't.

He has to wear a Harvard sweatshirt, a hoodie, you know, the burgundy kind.

Wow.

And then one evening a week, a Harvard tie?

I mean, surely that's got to be.

Well, yeah, he has to wear a Harvard tie to the club.

Producer Jennifer Marmor, has Elliot Kalen called back yet?

Not yet.

Okay, keep an eye out.

I really want to answer that question.

We're going to take a quick break to hear from this week's partners.

We'll be back with more cases to clear from the docket on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is brought to you every week by you, our members, of course.

Thank you so much for your support of this podcast and all of your favorite podcasts at maximumfund.org, and they are all your favorites.

If you want to join the many member supporters of this podcast and this network, boy, oh boy, that would be fantastic.

Just go to maximumfund.org/slash join.

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

Let me ask you a question.

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

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My new super soft hoodie from Quince that I got at the beginning of the summer is indeed super soft.

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welcome back to the judge john hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket and we have a case here from Laura.

Road trips.

Stop anytime for fun things and take your time or break land speed records with no breaks whatsoever.

Judge, please settle this dispute.

Thank you.

Whoa, Laura.

Swiftest question ever.

She did not stop at the road stop to pee on that one.

No, she made a land speed record with that question.

She always travels with a Gatorade bottle.

There was nary, I beseech thee, Judge John Hodgman, to be found.

You know, no $10 words, all good, solid $3 words.

Five buck words, I'll say.

And an interesting dispute.

Jesse, do you have an instinctive reaction to Laura's question?

I'm always torn on this issue.

I know, right?

That's why it's a good one.

For me, when it is me, I am glad to stop wherever.

Elliot Kalen's on.

Elliot Kalen's on.

Oh, well, Laura, you'll have to wait because my friend called back.

Elliot Kalen, it's John Hodgman.

Thank you for calling in.

As you know, I host the Judge John Hodgman podcast, and you and I are friends.

You're on the Flophouse podcast, also a member of Maximum Fun.

And we co-hosted the iPodius miniseries on Maximum Fun.

But one thing I know about you, aside from the things that I just said.

Thank you, John, for reminding Elliot that the two of you have met.

I just, I don't know.

I would hope that the listeners of this show have the context to understand who Elliot Kalen is in my life.

And I know one other fact about Elliot that I'd like to share.

You went on Jeopardy as a contestant with Ken Jennings as the host.

Yes.

A lifelong dream come true.

We were talking about our dream journals earlier.

Oh, that's very sweet.

Had you ever dreamed of being on, like literally had a dream of being on Jeopardy as you were going through the intense preparation to become a Jeopardy contestant?

I mean, by dream, do you mean like an actual sleeping dream or a fantasy?

Like a daydream?

A sleeping dream.

I did not, surprisingly, I did not have any

sleeping dreams.

I think all of my anxiety about appearing on Jeopardy was channeled through the anxiety dreams I already have, which are about I'm at the daily show offices and it's rehearsal time and I don't have a script ready and I'm like, I don't even work here anymore.

Why am I responsible for this script right now?

Why I just had more of those.

Classic.

My nightmare of going back to high school as an adult and not having prepared for the class has been replaced.

I'm now up to working at the literary agency and being like, why am I here again?

I'm in my late 40s.

What happened?

I've not gotten to the daily show yet.

Your dream life really lags behind your real life in a noticeable way.

Dramatically.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can't wait till I get that daily show dream.

Oh, that'll be so sweet.

I wonder if it's because your mind understands how fragile it is, and that if you were dreaming about what was actually going on in your life, you wouldn't know, as the great sage once said, whether you are dreaming or awake.

You know, whether you're right now, you don't know whether you are a man who used to be on the daily show dreaming you work at the literary agency or a man who works at literary agency dreaming that you used to work at the daily show.

Is this how you introduced yourself on Jeopardy?

It is.

They edited most of it out.

At the end of the show, they say portions not impacting the gameplay have been edited, and a lot of it was me trying to just meditate on life.

In the end, it just was you saying, yeah, I am a comedy writer.

Elliot, here's the dispute.

This dispute is brought to us by Jeff.

He and his wife enjoy watching Jeopardy.

Jeff would like to be on Jeopardy at some point in the future.

When they're watching the show, they, as many people do, play along.

And when they know the response, not the answer, of course, because the response is a question,

they will yell it out.

But Jeff's wife does not wait until the answer is finished.

Jeff's wife does not wait until the prompt is over, and Jeff's wife does not always

use the question form of an answer.

I was wondering if, when you said Jeopardy question, I was wondering if it was going to be about someone answering before the question is finished being read.

Right.

Like because

like you just tried to do.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, because I'm going to say I'm guilty of the same exact thing.

I'm a much faster reader than anyone else in my family, so I know that answer right away, and I want to shout it because I want to make sure that my family, who already knows that I'm smart, but I need to know emotionally that they know that I'm smart.

I need to know that I know that.

And I'm specifically smarter than them.

And smarter than them on that one particular thing.

And sometimes, I remember

10-year-old, for example.

One time we were watching Jeopardy, and it was a question about Larry Niven's Ring World, a book that I know nobody in my family has read or heard of except for me.

And I still yelled it out ahead of time as if I had to get there, just in case my seven-year-old had decided to dip into 70s science fiction lately.

Did you yell out Larry Niven's Ring World or did you yell out, what is Larry Niven's Ring World?

Well, I think Larry Niven was in the clue, so I just said, What is Ring World?

And I gave them a real look, like, mm-hmm.

And your son Sammy said, Well, I recently dipped into 70s science fiction.

And Ringworld is.

And he was like, well, Dad, tell me, who were the Ring World engineers?

Who built it?

And I was like, I haven't read that far in the series.

But

so I totally sympathize with that.

I would say that not answering in the form of a question, it feels like if you have agreed ahead of time as

a Jeopardy watching unit that that is okay, then I would say it's okay.

But obviously on the show, you would not get the points.

And as they tell you in round one, Single Jeopardy, they may nudge you.

They may prod you to say it in the form of a question, but in double Jeopardy round, they will not prod you.

The training wheels are off.

If you don't remember to say it as a question, you're just losing that money.

And then someone else is going to scoop up and take it by adding what is or who is to the front.

Because here's the secret: it doesn't matter if the question that you ask is grammatically correct.

You could say, when is Ben Franklin?

They got to take it because it's technically a question.

That's not.

You're trying to destroy the competition.

They tell you

that ahead of time.

You're mounting a return to the podia and you're just trying to psych people out, including Jeff.

Elliot, could you just answer, is Ben Franklin?

I don't think that is acceptable.

But they say they're like, it doesn't matter if it's the right question front.

It just has to be a question.

Because they know people get nervous.

I think it all depends on, in my opinion, on how you get the...

how you agree on the rules ahead of time.

But if it is really bothering the person you're playing with

that, you're not waiting until the clue is finished being read.

And again, this is something I've been guilty of many times, then it feels like you're kind of not playing fair with them.

You're taking unfair advantage of how fast your eyes work.

Could it hurt Jeff's training to be a Jeopardy contestant?

Like, for example, I refuse to play words with friends because I don't believe in words with friends.

I believe in Scrabble with enemies.

And I don't want the extra letters, the extra, the location and the number of double and triple word squares to mess up my knowledge and memory of the board and the probabilities.

So I don't want to pollute my mind.

Is Jeff's wife polluting his mind by not playing the game the way the game is played?

She certainly might be throwing off his internal timing.

of when he needs to be ready to answer the question, possibly.

Here's the thing.

This is what, one of the things that tripped me up on when I was on Jeopardy, but this and also the fact that one of the other contestants was just much better at it than me.

The other contestant was, I think, we were at about the same level.

Is that you have to get the timing of when you buzz in to answer, and it's very difficult to do.

In theory, you buzz in when the person, when the host is finished reading the question, but really, you kind of want to like jump it by a fraction of a second so that you can get in in between the time when the buzzers are opened up and before anybody else does.

And so I think think it's going to hurt his timing if she is answering the question super early because he's going to start thinking that he has to buzz in halfway through the clue being read when really you want to buzz in like as close to the to the end of it as humanly possible.

Are you suggesting this couple should get marital buzzers?

I mean, uh,

which now there's marital buzzers could be more than one item.

We're talking about

Jeopardy.

Jeopardy.

Oh,

Jeopardy ones.

I mean, Jeopardy does have a licensed line of marital buzzers.

Of marital help buzzers, yeah.

Now, in Jeopardy, they refer to them, I believe, as signaling devices.

So I think maybe they should get a marital set of signaling devices.

Two devices, and then maybe a third in case they want to expand the family at some point.

And

then they, yeah, and they should just play it that way.

If they did, that would actually be much better practice for Jeff.

I should have done that

when I was practicing and I found out that instead of dominating your children, you should have used a

or a family signal device.

Should have used a signaling device.

The guy who was the champion when I was on, he said at one point, he's like, oh, yeah, well, I found a used signaling device that was similar to the one used on Jeopardy, and I practiced on that, and I was like, well, he certainly wanted this more than I did because I did not go to that length.

I'll wrap a bunch of masking type around a pen, around a click pen to make it feel like a buzzer device, but I didn't go all the way to buying a used one.

So I think, yeah, and I think, you know what?

I think this could bring back a certain

enjoyable competitiveness to their relationship where neither has an edge.

It's a level playing thing.

I don't like the way you're wagging your eyebrows when you say enjoyable

competitiveness.

Because, no, the same way that Levin's.

Kaylin's getting saucy in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable.

No, no, just in the way where you see you see movies about like married thieves who are always trying to out married con men who are always trying to like outsmart each other.

And that's how they keep things, the spice alive.

Yeah.

As opposed to how you would keep the spice alive in the Dune universe, which is by by going to stop

can you mute him can you mute him jennifer mute him immediately we don't need this we don't need to go down this sandworm hole

elliot kalen what is the exact ruling that i was planning to give that's my answer and it's correct that one that you said

Thank you.

What is and then all the stuff I said.

Yeah.

And when is it?

Elliot, don't go away.

Real quick.

Here we go.

This is from Laura.

I want you to weigh in on this because we were just getting into this when you called.

Thank you for calling, by the way.

Oh, sure.

Oh, my pleasure.

And I apologize, I wasn't there

when you first called and left the message.

It was personal stuff.

You don't need to know about it.

Oh, right.

I'll tell you.

I was just reliving the questions I got wrong on Jeopardy and

kicking myself about not answering correctly.

Give me the answer that you, the response that you wish you had given when you're falling asleep and you think of this response that you should have given, and it wakes you up and you don't sleep for the rest of the night.

I mean, to be honest,

what really keeps me up is other episodes where there were questions, there were better Final Jeopardys that I would have gotten, and I'm like, why didn't I get that one?

But so the Final Jeopardy question, you were supposed to name the biggest and smallest countries that border the Mediterranean Sea.

And I did not have enough time to think through it, so I just started writing down the names of countries.

And I realized after the fact, I should have written a joke answer to save face in that moment.

And I should should have written what is a very big country in a very little country.

And I'm kicking myself that I didn't

do this dumb joke.

Let me tell you something.

That would have been a disaster.

That would have been, you would have been

so despised on the Jeopardy message boards.

Yeah, they don't like it when you don't take it seriously.

No.

There's only one great joke triumph in the history of Jeopardy, and it's the time that my friend Louis Vertel got a double Jeopardy right and did snaps.

I have heard this story so many times from Jesse.

I'm going to say,

I admire Louis Vertel, one of the funniest, brightest guys out there, and I admire that he got that double Jeopardy right and threw up some snaps.

There was a daily double that I wish I had gotten because that one of the other contestants got.

It was a question about Fiddler on the Roof, a musical that is a very important one to my family.

We watch it multiple times a year.

Sure.

And I was so mad that he didn't get to the side of the family.

We should mention that Elliott's family are fiddlers.

I should mention, yeah, it's because, well, we're ethnically fiddlers.

We're kind of like culturally fiddlers.

We don't practice.

I haven't touched your fiddle.

You're bad at it.

You're bad at playing the vibe.

You're bad at fiddling.

I mean, I practiced, I went to fiddle school from age 9 to 13, that

I had my Bow Mitzvah, and then after that, I just haven't touched the fiddle.

You're also pretty bad at being on the roof, because I can see right now on the Zoom, you're inside a house.

That's, again,

that's true.

Yeah, we're fiddlers under the roof now.

All right, fiddler on the roof.

So the answer was just, what is Fiddler on the Roof?

And if I had answered it, I think about this sometimes, I would have answered it like Tevya says Fiddler on the Roof

in the show.

And I would have said, what is Fiddler on the roof?

Because that's how he says it at

the beginning of the show.

And it would have gotten a big laugh.

My grandma would have enjoyed that.

I think that that is just corny enough to actually get a big laugh and buy in from the Jeopardy message boards.

But on the other one,

you dodged a bullet on the other one.

Don't feel bad about that.

Okay, that's fair.

What is Gibraltar and

Egypt?

How'd I do?

It's Monaco and Algeria.

Oh,

Algeria is the biggest country in Africa, which I knew, but I wouldn't put two and two together.

Right.

And Monaco is just a tiny little place that just exists for rich people to store their money.

You know.

But anyway, so what did Laura write in about?

Speaking of Monaco, Monaco is the home of the Grand Prix.

Race car race, where you are trying to break a land speed record.

But Laura asks, road trips.

Stop anytime for fun things and take your time, or break land speed records with no break whatsoever.

Please settle this dispute.

Jesse Thorne was just saying, when it's himself, he's happy to stop and explore whatever vicissitudes of landscape or his own mind come up.

Maybe stop at a little rest stop, right?

Or a tourist.

Yeah,

I like to stop at the thrift store.

If I see a town that seems big enough to have a thrift store, I'll stop at the thrift store.

I like to stop at a local attraction.

That seems fun to me.

And I will also drive out of my way to eat a tasty local food rather than a side-of-the-highway fast food.

Of course.

And the only one of those that I do when I have my children in the car is that last one.

I will try and plan some food that is

better than fast food.

Yeah, because that's something you have to stop for no matter what.

And even if your children are impatient and they want to get to where they're going.

I'm not sure if you've encountered this, Elliot, as a parent, that sometimes little kids are impatient in car trips, constantly asking, can we go to that thrift store?

Can we go to that thrift store?

My children are a little out of the ordinary in that they are incredibly lazy and just like sitting in a car.

Sometimes

when we're about to go on a six or seven hour drive to my in-laws, my son will get in the car very early and just be sitting there because he just can't wait to be in the car.

And I'm like, you know, we're not leaving for like 40 minutes, and then you're going to be in the car for six hours.

And he's like, I just like being here.

Well, yeah, right.

They've learned not to have, they've learned not to have any ambition or passion in their lives because their father will just beat them at jeopardy no matter how hard they try.

Exactly.

So

why not just go along for the ride, let dad drive the car?

But I was raised as a, as a stopping places and looking around.

My mother in particular, we would go on driving trips and she would do the research ahead of time where she'd be like, the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Museum's on the way.

Or like,

we're going to go to the caveest cave in the USA.

We're going to find out what makes it so cavey.

So, like, we used to do a lot of that stuff.

And I really miss it.

And I'm looking forward to doing that when my children are old enough that, like,

they, I think they're going to get something out of it other than just being bored and ruining my enjoyment of a room full of Hoover vacuum cleaners of all makes and models.

I mean, I think, yes.

First of all, those are incredible stops.

And I definitely,

you know, we did iPodius as a thank you podcast, a thank you second job to the listeners of Max Fun

during the Max Fun drive a couple of years ago.

And we hope to get together and do a podcast again soon.

And I think you and I on the road looking for the caveist cave, that's definitely a post-pandemic pod that I would like to do with you.

So let's put that

on the list.

Cave Boys.

I think the Caviest Cave is probably the best.

That was your line anyway.

Why are you trying to.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, no, no, there isn't.

No, there literally is a cave called the Cave that bills itself as the Caviest Cave in America.

And so.

All right.

This is definitely, I can't.

I'm so excited.

This is going to happen again.

But back to Laura's dispute.

I think that Jesse and Elliot are correct.

Like,

there are a couple of factors.

One, do you have buy-in from the rest of the people in the car?

Everyone, I like to stop.

I like to stop.

I'd like to explore.

But you need to get buy-in from the rest of the people in the car.

And also, it really depends on why you're traveling.

Laura asked about a road trip specifically.

And for me, road trip implies it's the journey, not the destination.

But if you were just trying to get to Altoona, Pennsylvania, for example, or Vacaville, California.

or Atlanta, Georgia.

I'm presuming I'm a mindhunter from the show Mindhunters.

Those are all the places they went.

went.

Do you like, by the way, how old are your kids, Elliot?

They're seven and two.

Do you watch Mindhunter with them yet?

Not yet.

Show about behavioral sciences and killing people.

I mean, the two-year-old might like it.

The seven-year-old gets a little squeamish around violence or peril, but the two-year-old is very into, as he calls it, spooky stuff.

Yeah,

my son is making us watch all of the Mindhunters.

And it was a great show.

I had only seen a couple of episodes.

I hadn't really processed that he had already watched both seasons completely

in two days earlier in the pandemic.

And he's like, this is a good episode.

Where do you see Manson?

Where do you see Manson?

Anyway,

road trip means you stop and you take a break.

You got to get buy-in from the people in the car.

But if you're on a destination trip, then

you want to keep it fast.

You want to keep it swift.

I will just give this one shout out, though, because Jesse, your impulse to, I think I've talked about this before, but I'll say it again because I'm not sure that Elliot knows.

Your impulse to go get good,

interesting, local food, even if it takes a little bit of time out of your day.

Like when we went to Traveler Food and Books on the way to Boston from New York,

it's a great, it's on the border of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and it's a restaurant that's also a crummy used bookstore, and you get a free book with every meal.

That's great.

But if you are driving from New York or really any point south of Massachusetts to Maine,

don't take the 295 cutoff shortcut that the map program will tell you to take to save you seven minutes.

Stay on 90, then go north, then right before you go north on 495, stop at the Wendy's in Southborough, Massachusetts.

Mark my words.

Hearken to me, listeners.

There is something about this Wendy's.

I stopped at this Wendy's.

It's just

a normal Wendy's next to a normal Cumberland Farms.

I got this drive-through burger.

And by the time I hit the New Hampshire border, I was crying.

This burger was so delicious.

And I've gone, made a point to go back many times.

And I've been to other Wendy's, and they're not good, but this one is on point every time.

So when you're road tripping, stop at the Wendy's in Southborough, Massachusetts.

Look it up.

You can find it.

Any other, besides the Caviest Cave, Jesse Thorne, any other road trip must-see destinations for when we're back on the road again?

I mean, the honest truth is, there aren't a lot of good destinations along the road from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which is the one that I most typically take.

But I will say that

it's worth heading over to Los Baños, not to see their famous baños,

but rather to just enjoy some decent food.

There's both a pretty good barbecue place and

a restaurant called the Wool Grower's Restaurant, which serves

Basque food.

Now, the Basque food of central and southern California has very little to do with the Basque region of Europe.

It is a very particular kind of family-style communal

restaurant that serves

a variety of interesting foods, among them lamb.

And it's very affordable and really tasty.

Wool Growers is a great name for a restaurant.

Yeah, it's a great restaurant.

My children hate it, by the way.

Could not hate it more.

Jennifer Marmer, you got any road trip recommendations?

Yeah.

Whoa.

Coming from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles, I would often check out in Castroville, the world's largest artichoke statue.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah.

So tired of two small artichoke statues.

Yeah.

And I would make a point to drive on the 101 instead of the five because it's prettier.

And

always stopped at Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo to use the bathroom at least.

Wonderful, wonderful hotel.

All of the rooms have different themes.

It's very floral, very pink.

I love it.

I love it so much.

Pretty extraordinary place.

Yeah.

All right.

I can't wait to go on a road trip with you guys for like a maybe a tour, like a Judge John Hodgman tour.

Oh, how novel.

Let's think about that.

Let's plan it and stop at all these places and then maybe not even do any shows.

How about that?

Yeah.

Sounds great.

I mean, well, Elliot Kalen, you are the co-host of The Flop House with Dan McCoy and Stuart Wellington here on the Maximum Fun Network with new episodes available every what day?

Every Saturday.

Every Saturday.

Every Saturday, you'll either get a full-length episode or a mini, which is when we let our hair down and waste everybody's time, even more so than usual.

Often the minis are longer than the full-lengths.

It's possible, yeah.

Elliot, when you say waste everybody's time, you mean in contrast to when you talk for 90 minutes about the movie Supergirl?

Yeah, exactly.

So this is, we would waste your time talking about,

well, famously, for me at least,

as mentioned earlier,

there's a book called Dune, and we had Tom Brokaw on to talk about Dune and the trailer for about 40 minutes.

All right.

You know what?

I'll back off for a second because your 40-minute Tom Brokaw impersonation, talking only about Dune, was one of the greatest things I've ever had in my ears.

Oh, thank you very much.

Rivaled only by the time we got to share together with you and my ears on the iPodius podcast.

Looking forward to co-hosting with you the new podcast, Caviest of Caves,

or whatever it may be.

Thank you very much, Elliot, for taking the time to share your opinions here on the Judge Chun Hodgman podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

Love the show.

Love to be on it.

It's great.

And next time you have a daily show dream, I'll be in it.

I'll see you in my dreams.

Yeah, bad news for you, Rob Briggle.

You're out and Hodrin's in.

Yeah, put me in the dream.

Put me in the dream.

I want to be, I want to move forward with my dream life from the literary, from the literary agency to the daily show.

And I need you to bring me along.

Elliot, can you do that?

I'll try my best.

Our thanks to Elliot Kalen.

Let's take a quick break when we come back.

Another new segment, Frankenstein or no.

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.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne with me, Judge John Hodgman, and here is a case from Rick.

My five-year-old daughter was talking me through the cast of the Netflix show, Super Monsters.

She said that Frankie was a zombie.

I corrected her and said he was a Frankenstein, but she insisted any reanimated corpse is a zombie.

I read one argument online that zombies are supernatural, while a Frankenstein is reanimated through science.

But really, aren't most zombies the result of viruses these days?

And viruses are science.

Also, does it really matter that a zombie is a single corpse while a Frankenstein is a collection of body parts?

For example, if I sew one zombie's head to another zombie's body, Is it now a Frankenstein?

I don't want my daughter to make an embarrassing mistake if she ever meets a Frankenstein, so would appreciate you clarifying the position.

In other news, your podcast through this pandemic has been a weekly source of comfort, company, and joy, and I cannot thank you, Jesse, and the rest of your team enough.

Thank you, Rick.

That's very kind of you.

Thank you, Rick.

That's you, Jennifer, the rest of your team.

Yeah, that's Jennifer Marmor.

The rest of our team.

Thank you, Rick.

But this is not the place for praise.

This is a place for judgment.

But if you, like Rick, do have have a story you'd like to share about Maximum Fun and what it means to you, particularly in advance of the Max Fun Drive that's coming up, please share it right to memberstories at maximumfund.org or call 323-601-8719

and maybe we will share your story on the air during our maximum fun drive.

If you're a Dracula, don't call.

You can send a voice memo directly to memberstories at maximumfund.org.

If that's easier, just record a voice memo on your phone and hit that share button.

Right, because remember when I left a voicemail earlier in this episode, it was very, it was, frankly, it got me very nervous.

I don't do it very often.

I got confused

because this is a podcast and

you were doing something from 1988.

Like, we might as well say, call that 323 number and you'll reach our answering service.

Exactly.

But whether you call 323-601-8719 or send a voice memo to memberstories at maximumfund.org, no Draculas, please.

We do not need maximum fun stories from Draculas, correct, Jesse?

I hate Draculas.

Right.

So

we are not talking about Draculas.

We are talking about Frankenstein's.

Anyone who writes me a letter about Frankenstein's monster, do not expect a response.

You know what we're doing.

Talking about Frankenstein's.

Now, Jesse, I found a photo of this character.

Frankie, from the show Super Monsters, and I've sent it to you.

In your opinion, this photo, which I got from the fandom.com page for Super Monsters, is Frankie a Frankenstein or no?

Frankie is a Frankenstein.

Frankie is a Frankenstein?

Why do you say that?

He's green.

He has stitches on his forehead.

He wears a signature striped shirt and shorts combo

that indicate the tattered clothing of a Frankenstein.

Top of the head kind of flat, right?

Top of the head is flat.

Now there are no bolts

on Frankie's head.

Right.

Bolts are an important part of the revivification.

Bolts are an important part of the revivification.

Bolts are an important part of the revivific

leave all this in.

Please leave this in.

Bolts are an important part of the

revivification process

for Frankenstein.

They're the lightning terminals.

Yes, that's where you put the lightning into the Frankenstein to make it come to life.

But I mean, I presume that Frankie, being a child, is probably just the natural-born child of two Frankensteins.

Well, that's the thing.

Here's what I got to tell you, Jesse.

Frankie is not a Frankenstein.

Sorry.

Based on the fandom.com page for supermonsters.

Do not, not for one moment, can you tell me that he is a Frankenstein's monster?

Nope, he's not.

Don't even think about it.

According, well, I think technically his last name is Stein, but according to the fandom.com page for Supermonsters, Frankie is, I quote, he is a half-human, half-Frankenstein hybrid.

That's a direct quote.

Wow, like a centaur.

Yes.

Exactly.

Like a centaur, Jesse.

I think humans should be allowed to marry Frankensteins.

Love is love is love is love.

I agree.

And the fandom.com page for Super Monsters does go to some length to explain Frankie's extended biological family and parentage, which it's odd to think about in Frankenstein lore.

I mean, Frankenstein's hugging and kissing to produce live offspring.

It's not part of the traditional lore, but I guess it's better than thinking that Frankie is made out of dead children.

Sorry, Rick's daughter.

Had to go there.

You know what I'm talking about.

Stitching.

Anyway, that's the ruling within the Super Monsters Cinematic Universe, aka Universal's light-dark universe.

I don't know.

But what about in general, Jesse?

What about these arguments?

Is a Frankenstein a zombie or no?

No, I don't think a Frankenstein is a zombie.

I don't think that viruses are science.

I think viruses are natural.

Right.

Okay.

I see your point.

This is a contagion.

We fight viruses with science, such as the vaccines that everyone is now starting to be able to get and I encourage everyone to get,

and the flu shots that everyone gets every

fall, I hope.

But no, I would argue that it's fair to say that Frankensteins are created by science and specifically animated by electricity.

You got it.

Because Frankenstein is the

original text in many ways of science fiction.

Like it is the

it is that idea of what half man wrought

half man or half man?

What half man wrought.

It's about a centaur who creates, who finds a bunch of corpses.

Makes it into Frankenstein's with his hooves.

I think that's as good an explanation as any.

Now, the the definition of a zombie is much looser.

Certainly it is rooted in

problematic colonialist ideas about Caribbean religions.

Right.

But since then, perhaps in part because of

those problematics,

the definition of what a zombie can be has

branched all over the place in various fiction writers' imaginations.

In contemporary worlds, it is more of a contagion situation.

Yeah.

And let's be honest, these things aren't real.

These are fictional.

Right.

They're not like, well, I don't want to say it.

Yeah, nothing.

I mean, these are stories.

These are just stories.

These are just stories.

They're not like a real problem.

Yeah.

Dracula.

Wow.

Think about it.

Sorry.

Yeah, I know.

Sorry.

You know, I don't think, look, this is my take home from this.

Yeah.

Super Monsters is hardly the worst show on television.

Super Monsters is a perfectly nice show.

I've seen Super Monsters.

I'm not familiar with it, but I take your word for it.

It looks very charming.

It's a perfectly it is a charming show.

Their fandom.com page is very nice.

It's no Spirit Halloween fandom page, but it's good.

Right.

Yeah.

I want to suggest a different children's television show that, in name at least, is just as my child, Frankie, I have a child named Frankie, would say, Pookie.

Frankie and Gabriel Elliott's Elliott's son share a love for the pookie.

And

there is a show on the streaming service Netflix

called City of Ghosts that my kids have been watching.

And it doesn't actually have anything spooky in it.

It is the ghosts are the voices of the people in various neighborhoods that the show investigates.

And it is as beautiful a children's television show as I have seen in quite some time.

It is an entirely unpatronizing investigation of urban neighborhoods and the people who live there

that

my children genuinely love.

From my four-year-old up to my nine-year-old, they all really like the show, which is very rare.

It's very beautiful.

One of the creators, I think, was a longtime

Adventure Time employee.

Oh, fantastic.

So it's no surprise, given the magic of that show.

But yeah, City of Ghosts on Netflix.

I worry that it is too artsy for

too many families and won't get many more episodes.

So I hope that it will, and I hope everyone will check it out because it's really gorgeous.

Created by Elizabeth Ito, it says here on the internet.

City of Ghosts.

Thank you, Elizabeth Ito, for making this beautiful show.

Adventure Time, also a great, great show, and one that I enjoyed very much with my kids and as well Steven Universe, obviously.

And now, my top recommendation for a kid's show is obviously obviously Mindhunter.

It's on Netflix.

It's about

an emotionally challenged

person who becomes obsessed with interviewing mass murderers in the 1970s.

Shall we dip into the mailbag?

Let's not dip in.

Let's dive in.

We have a letter.

And the letter, Jesse, is for you.

Oh, wow.

They sent it to me.

Because every week I repeat my email address, which is hodgman at maximumfund.org.

And every week you don't say your email address.

Nope.

Which is probably a good decision for you.

But that means people want to express themselves to you through me.

Jacob writes, I greatly enjoyed the most recent episode, 510, My Own Avocado Creation.

But I was especially pleased to hear Jesse reference the composer Steve Reisch's composition, Different Trains, when deliberating about the pronunciation of crayon.

Crayon.

I am a music teacher and a big fan of Steve Reich's music, especially different trains, music for 18 musicians, electric counterpoint, etc.

In the spirit of homage, I present to you my own minimalistic creation, different crayons, in the hopes that this fulfills Jesse's plea.

I'm a big fan of the show.

Thank you for doing all you do.

Jesse, you did make a plea after talking about different trains for someone to create a different trains.

Well, what was your plea again?

I think it was: I wanted someone to create a different trains-esque composition out of the musicality of the various pronunciations of the word crayon.

Crayon.

And here's what I have to say: I received more than one letter about people complimenting you on your reference to the composition Different Trains recorded.

I now see via Wikipedia in 1988 by the Kronos Quartet.

And everyone's like, oh, different trains.

And on the Reddit at

R slash Maximum Fun, everyone's talking about Jesse dropping this hot different trains ref.

And I'll tell you,

in that moment on the podcast record, Jesse, and until this very moment, that reference went straight over my head.

I would not have gotten a summary judgment in my favor.

I had no idea what you were talking about.

So for those who still don't know, can you explain a little bit about what Different Trains is and set us up to listen to Jacob's interpretation of it?

Yeah, sure.

I mean, Steve Reich is one of the most famous, if not the most famous, composers of new music in the United States or contemporary classical music or whatever you want to call it.

And one of the things he's best known for is experimenting with media or experimenting with instrumentation.

And Different Trains is one of his most famous pieces.

It is a piece composed in part for tape loops.

So essentially, the story of it is that Steve Reich, when he was a child, his parents were separated.

And he traveled during the 1940s coast to coast via train by himself to visit his parents and, you know, serially, you know, go from his mother's house to his father's house and vice versa.

And it occurred to him as an adult that during this same time that he was traveling back and forth across the United States between his parents' homes,

other Jewish children in Europe were traveling on what were called Holocaust trains.

He realized that he as a Jew in the United States was traveling between his parents' homes, and other children during this time were traveling, in some cases, to their death.

And so he interviewed a number of people about their experiences.

He interviewed

a Pullman porter who had worked on trains, including ones that he might have ridden on when he was a child in the United States.

And he interviewed a few Holocaust survivors who had been children, who had traveled on Holocaust trains in Europe.

And he composed a really beautiful piece that drew for its melodic inspiration on the melody in the voices in those recordings.

Cool.

So I think he originally did it on tape loops, and then

I think maybe it can also be performed on like a sampling keyboard.

But

it is a beautiful and haunting piece that is,

you know, when it comes to

when it comes to new music and Steve Reich particularly, weirdly one of his more humble tunes.

Both because the presence of language kind of stimulates the remembering part of your brain, but also because there is so much melody

in speech.

And so, yeah, I was reminded as we heard those little pieces of tape and they grew more and more abstract hearing people saying crayon over and over.

And I thought Jacob did a really nice job.

Jen, maybe you could play, before we hear Jacob's, maybe we could play just a little bit of the Kronos Quartet original recording of Steve Rice's different trends.

Just a few seconds.

And then Jacob sent us his version.

William, you need to go get your crowds.

William, you need to go get your crowds.

The docket is clear.

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

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

The rest of our team is Jennifer Marmer.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohodgman tweets, hashtag jjho.

And check us out on the maximum fun subreddit to chat about this week's episode.

That's maximumfun.reddit.com.

Submit your cases at maximumfun.org slash jjho or email hodgman at maximumfun.org.

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

Hey, you know what?

I'm going to Ferris Builder.

You still here?

What are you doing here?

You think there's going to be a post-credits sequence every week?

I can't do that.

Not every week.

Go home.

You got enough content this week.

Be glad you got that cool song.

Thanks, Jacob.

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