Forensic Mom and Unnamed Creepout Boy

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 a giant hole-digging machine that after it bores into the earth, then pulls the dirt out of its earth on its screw and then goes clank, clank, clank, clank to shake the dirt off of it.

Also, Judge John Hodgman.

Are you journeying to the center of the earth over there in Los Angeles, Jesse?

I'm pretty sure that the foundation of the two houses being built immediately across from my house are

journeying to the center of the earth.

Oh, this is a reference to sounds outside your home.

Yes, that will undoubtedly intrude on.

There she is, the sound.

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Yeah,

that's the one.

You're saying we traded Lowy the Leaf Blower for

the giant diamond tip journey to the center of the earth drill.

Yeah, it is really, it's a real monster, and it's been going for weeks now.

It's making me completely insane.

And now it's making you, the listener, completely insane.

Well, hopefully we're moving slowly.

We're no longer digging a hole, but moving slowly into a new and better normal.

It is Wednesday, as we are recording this January the 20th at 1.40 p.m.

Eastern Standard Time here in Maine, where I am joining you, Jesse and Jennifer Marmor in Los Angeles from Maine, the solar-powered studios of WERU 89.9 FM in Orland, Maine, and also WERU.org with our local Maine engineer, operations manager, Joel Mann, a.k.

Moleman.

Hello, Judge.

You've journeyed to the center of the earth a few times yourself, right, Moleman?

Yes, I have.

Absolutely.

And I only mentioned the date because I woke up this morning and I was feeling feeling guardedly optimistic about what was going to happen, but I was nervous.

I was nervous because you never know what's going to happen.

And I'm here to tell you, Jesse,

that as I drove here to WERU,

my fear that something bad was going to happen came true.

Because when I reached the shell station at the intersection of Routes 15 and 1, right before I get to WERU,

and I went in, to get a couple of chicken tenders, which has now become my routine on a Wednesday when I come here to

I went over to the chicken stand, and there were no chicken tenders.

And Jesse,

do you know what happened?

I don't know.

No, I wasn't there.

You were there.

I know.

I said, what happened to the chicken tenders?

She said, we don't have any.

But

there are some more coming out in one minute.

Jesse,

I got the freshest chicken tenders I've ever had in my life.

I waited.

Straight from the frying pan into your mouth.

Straight from the frying pan into the fire of my belly.

I was like, it happened.

The thing I've been waiting for so long,

the thing that I didn't imagine was possible, the thing that I didn't dare to dream was going to happen.

Because it just, after four years of disappointment, and frustration and sadness and trauma, not just for me, but on a national level,

I never thought that it would actually happen that I would get the freshest chicken tenders right out of the fry later

and eat them so joyously in the parking lot of WERU.

And also,

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were inaugurated.

Not sure if you knew that happened yet.

Maybe it hasn't come across the wire to you there.

No, I don't follow the news.

I don't know.

You know, normally we want these things to...

just be timeless and we don't mention the date or anything else.

But

I'm I'm just going to say, like, it just happened that they were sworn in as I was driving out here, even before the chicken tenders.

But it wasn't until I was eating those chicken tenders

in the parking lot.

And it wasn't until really, I didn't even believe that it had happened.

And it wasn't until really I heard on public radio, by the way, your friends, Jesse, your best friends in the world.

Public radio.

Everyone knows you love them.

All of my wedding party.

Robert Siegel was there.

Linda Holmes.

Linda Holmes was there.

The Car Talk guys were there.

The ghosts of Click and Clack?

One of them is still alive.

Oh, I'm sorry.

My hometown heroes.

Who else was there?

Linda Wertheimer?

She was there.

Bob Edwards.

It wasn't until I was eating those chicken tenders and listening to NPR, and what I heard were the sound of bells.

And I didn't know what they were until NPR told me, thanks, NPR.

And it was the bells at Howard University chiming 49 times

for the 49th Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris.

And

I lost it.

The combination of the chicken tenders and that, this historical.

Cow pow.

It was a one-two punch to my tear ducts.

Following the hook with the uppercut.

I know.

And look, nothing is fixed.

Everyone knows that nothing is fixed.

Two weeks ago, I was feeling pretty optimistic.

I drove out here to WERU.

Two weeks ago, this Wednesday today.

I was feeling cautiously optimistic and said so on the podcast because we were waiting for the results of the John Osoff race in Georgia and hoping that the Democrats are going to retake the Senate.

And I was feeling pretty good.

And then I walked outside and learned that the Capitol had been invaded.

So I don't know.

Anything could happen after this.

And in two hours, aliens could blow up the Grand Canyon.

I've learned.

Yeah.

I wish there were.

Where did you learn that from?

The movie Mars Attacks?

That.

I was going to see my lived life experience of seeing Mars attacks and also

experiencing things that I thought were completely implausible happening with swiftness in my life.

Well, John,

I'm I'm a journalist, so I don't express my private political convictions in public because I don't want anyone to think that it would prejudice my interview with Tina Fay.

But

I will say this.

I am proud

as a Californian and as a Bay Area in

that

our nation's first Asian American, first African African-American, and first woman vice president is from Oakland, the nickel dime.

And I'm proud that she is also another auspicious first, the first vice president that I, as a teenager, saw having lunch with Willie Brown in a fancy restaurant in downtown San Francisco when I was 16.

You saw history in the making.

And maybe you made it happen.

Right before she became district attorney of the great city of San Francisco.

I'm telling you.

So

nothing is fixed.

Things will go wrong.

But this is better than it was.

I'll say that much.

You can't unring a bell.

We worked too hard, all of us together, to get to this point.

And I thank you for doing the work that you did, for getting, talking to your friends and neighbors,

doing anything that you did to help get to this point, because this is better intrinsically,

in my opinion.

And I would dare say

the cost of losing this moment would be unbearable.

Well, John, I want to say you're welcome.

And I'm glad you enjoyed my interview with Tina Faye.

Yeah, of course.

Things will get bad.

Things will not be perfect.

Things will get worse.

Things will surprise you and hurt you.

But you can't unring those 49 bells.

And I just want to say that I know that there are members of the audience, longtime listeners who I've had emails, exchanges with over over the past few months

who aren't happy about this moment and feel differently about issues of the day.

And let me say, you know,

you are welcome here.

We have our differences and I won't compromise my values.

And if you want to talk about it, email me.

But you're welcome here and

you can take the measure of my character, my heart.

You can take the measure and listen to the people who are on this podcast as guests, friends of the court, litigants.

Take the measure.

And if you still disagree with them, so be it.

That's democracy.

This is a little thing I just made up.

Just made that up.

Not quoting anybody, Jesse.

Nope, just off the dome.

Anyway, the point is, Joel, that's it.

I'm not having any more chicken tenders.

What kind of sauce did you get?

No sauce.

I'm not, I have no time for sauce.

Wow.

Well, I'm in a car.

I'm parked, parked in a car.

But the point is, it's done.

No chicken tenders will ever be better.

And also, I can't go on eating all these chicken tenders.

It's got to stop, Joel.

So that's it for me and the shell station.

Hold me to it, okay?

Check out the mac and cheese.

No.

Here's something from Leslie.

She asks, does a straw have one or two holes?

My adult son, Skylar says one.

He's clearly wrong because it's a cylinder with two holes top and bottom.

There's much arguing about this on his Instagram.

The poll on Schuyler's Instagram has one hole in the lead for now because his friends are clearly ridiculous.

We need a resolution.

This is very serious.

If you dig a hole, it has only one opening.

Therefore, there must be two holes in a straw.

Also, please tell Jesse that I went to UC Santa Cruz and Schuyler is there now.

I want to say this, John.

Please.

I've been told this, but I am also telling Jennifer Marmor, a fellow banana slug.

Oh, yeah, Jennifer Marmor.

She just gave two thumbs up, and I won't ask her to comment on either holes or the meaning of today because she's chewing on some food.

Yeah, this is the kind of conversation that you would have at UC Santa Cruz,

particularly on April 20th or frankly any other day.

So Jesse, as a UC Santa Cruz banana slug who's obviously thought about this in a dorm room before, does a straw have one or two holes?

Gut reaction.

There's probably a mathematician's answer to this.

And

UC Santa Cruz, despite its well-earned reputation as the home of white people with dreadlocks,

has an excellent math department and one of the best physics departments in the country.

I'm sure

the physics majors at UC Santa Cruz would have strong physics-informed

answers to this topography question.

To me,

your head has

two holes.

I would say it has two holes, but I would also

not feel strongly enough about it to even enter into an Instagram debate about it.

Even in that most hallowed hall of our nation's discourse, an Instagram post.

I would not desecrate it with my own argument.

Here's what I say to you, Jesse.

Common sense answer, straw is two holes.

Common sense.

Is there a mathematical answer?

Of course there is.

Look, John, when I was growing up, the son of a union man in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The noalarkey answer is two holes.

The mathemalarchy answer, more complicated, but stand by.

First, I just want to apologize

for the sound I made

when you asked if there was a math answer, and I went,

I'm very sorry.

That was terrible.

I'm very trying to do better on my Reacts.

Yeah.

So, you know, nice try, Leslie, for trying to buzz market your son's Instagram.

It is Sky Learns, if you want to check it out, everybody, but it's private.

I couldn't even get into it.

I can't see where this argument is going down.

Sky Learns, S-K-Y-L-E-R-N-S.

But I don't need to see where this argument is going down because it went down a long time ago.

This is a reference to a widely discussed Reddit thread from three years ago

where people were fighting for a while about whether or not a straw had two holes.

It's done.

It's done so.

It's like the hot dog is a sandwich.

It's been covered.

It's not a sandwich.

Now, if you peruse that Reddit thread, which is now closed, you will see that there are basically two answers.

One, common sense, two holes.

It's a cylinder like a hot dog, but cut off each end and take out the meat.

Two holes.

Two, that it has one hole because it is a torus,

which is a Mathemalarchy shape.

Essentially, picture a donut.

Take that straw down and squash it on down

to a donut shape, and you would say, reasonably, that that donut shape has one hole in it.

That is to say, it is topographically or topologically akin to a donut.

And I'm using one of those words wrong.

Look forward to your letters.

Now, this may be true if you're making this argument that topologically or topographically it has one hole.

You may be absolutely right mathematici wise

but I don't like you because you're just stirring the pot.

A pot is itself a hole.

You're stirring the pot for no reason.

And if you've ever used a doughnut shaped straw,

you know that your nose is very wet right now.

Now, I'm not going to say that the sides of a straw have no mass, but if you were to mush it up into a donut

and you preserve that material,

then that flat straw would resemble more of a plane in the way a donut itself is more flat than it is tall, right?

It is planar.

And the hole would be in the middle of that plane, and therefore it would correspond to a dictionary definition of whole.

And obviously, dictionaries are not proofs.

But I haven't been getting feedback right now in real time from Emily Brewster and our friends at Merriam-Webster, who are, it so happens, coincidentally backing up my opinion, which is that a straw has no holes.

A straw has no holes.

It's a cylinder that is open-ended on each side.

But a hole, as defined by the dictionary,

is

something that is cut into something else, like the middle of a donut is cut out.

Like a hole in a piece of fabric, a plane, or a hollowed out area like a hole in the ground, such as a party hole.

Check out Going Deep with David Reese on the subject of how to dig a hole.

In this case, what you have on the end of either end of the straw is not a hole in something.

It's not a hole into the straw matter.

It is an absence of something that happens to be defined and circumscribed by the circumference of each end of the straw.

It's nothing.

It's It's not a hole, at least not defined by the dictionary

and me.

And I'm going to take my definition and call that law

because A, it's our podcast, Jesse.

B,

because now I'm going to make those Donald Ducks in Mathemalkeland even matter.

Because I out sophomoreically dorm room funk them.

No hole.

Yeah, think about that at 3 a.m.

when you're smoking a clove cigarette.

Wink, wink.

No holes,

topologically speaking.

It's just a cylinder that's open on both ends.

Nothing's been cut into it.

No holes.

I will read the full explanation from our lexicographer friends at Merriam-Webster, specifically their science editor,

next time.

That's a tease.

Not today, too long.

Next time.

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

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.

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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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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

Here's something from Ray.

After dating long distance for over two years, my partner and I have been living together happily for five months.

But there's one disagreement we need settled.

My partner's mother knits and gave her a handmade washcloth.

The washcloth has a unique coarse texture which I would value to better clean tough grease stains and other such messes in the kitchen.

My partner has a strong sentimental attachment to the cloth and she doesn't want it used in such a filthy way.

So we keep it hanging by the sink to dry hands after washing.

But we have plenty of viable hand-drying cloths

that could be used instead.

I would like the judge to order that this washcloth become a proper cleaning cloth rather than a simple hand-drying cloth.

So, of course, Ray sent photos of the cloth that his partner's mother had knitted for them.

And we'll post those pictures on the Judge John Hodgman Instagram and on the show page at maximumfund.org.

But Jesse, you have access to these pictures here.

How would you describe

the cloth that Ray would like to use to scrub pots and pans?

It was described as a washcloth.

It's certainly significantly larger than a washcloth made of toweling that you would use in the shower or to wash your face.

Yeah.

I would say it's about three or four of those in area.

It's a marled red and white pattern.

Marled.

And the red looks like maybe a kind of burgundy.

And it's not entirely clear from the pictures what type of of material it is.

One presumes that it's cotton.

And

it's got a loop on the corner for hanging.

It's a very sweet,

very clearly handmade but well-made item.

And it's a, you know, it's,

I would say it's red and white and knubbly and soft looking.

And in terms of its size, it's

based on this photograph and the spice rack next to where it's hanging, it's about,

it's longer than it is wide, but it's about the length of three and a half jars of powdered garlic.

And I think it's very handsome looking.

But let me ask you this, Jesse.

What do you use to scrub

like dirty dishes?

Like with tough grease stains and other such messes?

I use a brush with a long handle.

Long handle brush, right?

Would you use your mother-in-law's handmade washcloths?

I would not.

My mother-in-law has never made me a washcloth by hand, and I would be surprised were she to do so.

But if she did, I would not use it for that purpose, no.

Unless she had specifically told me it was a dish scrubbing washcloth, which is not a type of washcloth.

Yeah, I don't know why Ray would want to use this handmade washcloth to clean up tough grease stains aside from spite.

You can't clean up, this is not, unless this is secretly made from like steel wool.

It looks like it's soft and nubbly and would not do a great job of scrubbing up tough grease stains.

And why would you use something like this when there are so many

existing products that are better for scrubbing up grease stains?

One, because they are

more tougher and more abrasive, but without scratching.

Like my very favorite

cleaning sponge, the Doby.

You ever use Adobie, Jesse?

I haven't, but it sounds great.

Yeah.

We also just got

a special brush for cleaning cast iron pans.

I just bought it on a whim,

and I texted home to find out what the brand name of it is, but

no one is responding to me.

So that will remain a mystery.

But that's a good, good stiff brush.

It's great for cleaning out cast iron pans.

In no case would you be using a nubbly soft washcloth unless it had been hand-knit by your loved one's mother as a gift and you wanted to spite that person.

Maybe

what you really want to do is you want to rub that washcloth and that handmade gift right in your partner's mother's face.

I don't know why you would want to spite

the mother of the woman that you claim to love, Ray.

I don't get it.

Functionally, it makes no sense.

And, you know, your devaluing of your partner's affection for this gift as a sentimental attachment.

Do you think that was going to win me over?

I'm not a robot.

If you could have

shown me that her mom had knit adobe or steel wool washcloth, then I would say, yes, you can be practical and use that to clean up tough grease stains.

But

sentimental attachment is normal and human for gifts that are given by your mother.

I don't know what you're trying to prove here, Ray, but I think it's pretty clear that you're wrong.

Go get some disposable, tough, abrasive items to clean up that grease.

And instead, use that washcloth as a cold compress as you try to cool yourself down after the hot burn that I just put all over you.

I judge in Ray's partner's favor.

I have to say this, John.

I've recently had a real revelation in the area of kitchen cloths.

Tell me.

I'm the primary caretaker for the kitchen in my home.

Not the exclusive caretaker by any means, but the primary one.

And

for years, I used

kitchen towels that I had purchased from a friend who's a vintage textile dealer.

So I would see her at the flea market, and I would see that she had

a big pile of of cotton cloths with

little kitty cats wearing different outfits embroidered on them from the 50s or 60s and she'd say $3 a piece and I'd just buy as many as she had and use those for a while.

And that went well.

But not that long ago, this friend of mine named Ryan Cecil Smith, who's a wonderful animator and comics artist, introduced me to this store in Little Tokyo here in Los Angeles called The Good Liver.

And it's a store that is the store equivalent of that giant German catalog that I talked about once many years ago on the show, which is to say that

it is a store that sells

sort of

high-quality,

I guess you could say artisanal, but many of them are actually industrial, simple home goods.

Yeah.

ranging from, you know, a nice pair of organic cotton socks to a lodge cast iron pan.

And

they have a collection of kitchen cloths that

has given me so much pleasure and satisfaction in using.

They're very reasonably priced.

And they have different kitchen cloths for different purposes,

some for cleaning up messes, some for drying dishes.

The ones that I have enjoyed the best are on their website called Cleaning Cloth, the description of which is, this is a cotton cleaning cloth made in Sweden.

Yes.

That one has a very nubbly texture.

And then I am especially in love with Japanese kitchen towel,

which is a simple and very and very beautiful soft cloth that is made of a cotton rayon blend.

It is actually surprisingly absorbent, but very soft and very durable.

And they're both, you know,

they're not shop cloths.

They cost about 10 bucks a piece, but they're sizable and I've been using them for years with very little degradation in their quality.

So tell me the name of the company again.

The company is called The Good Liver.

Good-liver.com.

Love them.

Love them to death.

Beautiful store, beautiful website.

Nice people.

Also, if you go into the store, they'll wrap anything you buy up all Japanese style.

And you're like, oh my God,

I would have paid you $20 to do this.

And I'm just going to take it home and unwrap it.

Joel, you ever hear of the good liver?

Not mine.

Yeah, no, I'm not surprised.

These are beautiful towels.

They offer no partnership with this podcast.

We just align with them in beauty.

I'll check it out.

These look good.

Here's something from Jillian.

She says, My husband and I recently found out we're expecting our first child.

We're very excited.

Sports are important to both of us, but we come from different fandoms.

I'm a Philadelphia girl.

My husband grew up in New Jersey, but he's a Jets, Rangers, and Yankees fan.

He hates Philadelphia teams and fans and will openly root against my teams, even during the Eagles Super Bowl.

That's not its official name, by the way.

People of Philadelphia make this mistake all the time.

It's just called the Super Bowl.

It's never the Eagles Super Bowl.

The Eagles don't actually automatically win it.

There's no official...

But that speaks to Philadelphia fans.

Okay.

Go ahead, Jesse I apologize how do we raise this child I'm willing to separate the four professional teams two for me and two for him

and I'm willing to divide the child down the middle if that's what's necessary now she doesn't say that in the letter but she she implies that

I also find my husband's dislike of Philadelphia to be irrational.

Or should we just stuff our teams down our child's throat and hope they come to our side later in life?

I hashtag trust the process and think you can help us.

Of course, John, you wouldn't know this, but Philadelphia fans did not hashtag trust the process.

That was the whole problem.

I certainly did not know that.

But I hashtag trust what you told me.

I mean, I know a little bit about Philadelphia sports because my mom was from Philadelphia.

There was a lot of Flyers memorabilia in the basement of my Nanan and Popops house

up there in Mayfair, Philadelphia.

I I was recently talking with our friend Mark McConville on his new

podcast that's entirely about sports mascots called Mascots.

I was talking about

the Philly Fanatic, which was my first mascot because the Boston teams didn't really have mascots.

You should check out the mascots.

I saw you nodding there, Jesse, but listener, check out the mascots.

You know,

all the episodes are great.

If you want to listen to my episode,

stick around to the end to hear about a surprise mascot named Babadoom

that I did not know about.

Even with my love of extinct hockey,

I did not know about Babadoom.

Check it out.

But, Jesse, you grew up in the milieu of sports fandom.

What's your gut feeling about how to raise a child in fandom?

This is my worst nightmare.

I mean, this is truly my worst nightmare would be

if

my wife, Teresa, had I not met her before I moved to Los Angeles, had I met Teresa in Los Angeles, and rather than being a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, that she were a native of Los Angeles and for entirely justifiable reasons were a Dodgers fan,

a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I don't like, I see those couples at the ball game sometimes.

And, you know, they'll show them on the Jumbotron so everyone can can boo.

But

it's really, and I think it's amazing that they've managed that relationship.

But it is truly terrifying to me.

Like the one unreasonable

request I think that I've made of my children, you know, the one thing that I said, my child will never be a blah, blah, blah.

It's not that I don't want them to become lawyers or I don't want them to become artists.

It's,

you know,

It's not that I want them to fall in love with a certain kind of person.

It was just as long as they're not Dodgers fans.

As long as they're not Dodgers fans.

Is this because, I mean, there's a rivalry between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers?

Is that true?

That's absolutely true, yeah.

And is a rivalry just born out of sort of like

Northern California City versus Southern California City, the two big metropolises?

They're naturally going to mix it up a little bit.

Or is it because one of the teams is like the worst thing in the world, like the Yankees, the worst franchise in the history of baseball, just not in terms of success, but in terms of being terror, like awful people?

No,

in the specific case of the Giants and Dodgers, it's a rivalry that goes back about 125 years.

For many years,

up until 1958, when both teams moved from New York to the West Coast,

they were the two National League teams of New York City.

The Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.

You know, the Dodgers famously playing in Brooklyn at Ebbets Field and the Giants playing at the polo grounds in New York.

And

then that rivalry, I think, was heightened and sharpened by the rivalry between Northern and Southern California.

And I think you'll find that, you know, having a little bit of a little brother complex, San Francisco Giants fans hate the Dodgers more than the Dodgers fans hate the Giants,

simply because, you know, Los Angeles is a city, you know, five times as big as San Francisco.

But no, I don't think the Dodgers are a fundamentally evil team in the same way that the New York Yankees are.

It really is a matter of just

identity.

And I think that's also true of

these particular

New York teams.

You know,

nobody, the Yankees are evil, but I don't think many people would argue that the Rangers or the Knicks or, you know,

none of the Yankees are the evil New York team.

The Jets are

not even a New York team.

And so,

yeah, like

it's a mixed bag.

And I do think that there is something to be said for New York and Philadelphia sports fans.

I would say New York, Philadelphia, and Boston sports fans being different in the context of American sports.

Yeah, so thank you, Jesse.

But when I say that everyone involved with the Yankees is terrible, I don't mean that they're individually terrible people.

But Jesse, you're a baseballian.

The Yankees suck, right?

They're evil.

Yeah, they're evil.

I mean, like, obviously.

He's part of their brain.

No one is going to watch Pride of the Yankees and come away thinking that Lou Gehrig was a bad person.

No, no, no.

But he was fundamentally evil for playing for the New York Yankees, which are fundamentally evil.

Joel, Yankees, evil or no?

Definitely evil.

Right.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you want to root for a bunch of bullies, fine.

That's your team.

I get it.

But here is a fun.

This is the thing.

I don't know a lot about sports, but I do know the Yankees suck.

And I do know that the Philadelphia fans,

the Philadelphia fans and New York fans are diametric opposites.

I don't know how two of them could be married to each other.

Where was your wedding?

In a bar fight?

And

I understand, Jillian, why your husband has strong opinions about Philadelphia fans?

Because they throw batteries.

They're rough and tumble.

Because they boo their legendary, their own legendary players.

Yes.

Like, we can agree that the Yankees as a whole,

as a franchise, as a brand, is evil.

But when I say everyone involved with the Yankees, including their fans, are terrible people.

That's an exaggeration.

But when I say that

all of the Philadelphia fans are terrible people, of course they are.

They're doing it on purpose.

It's fun for them to be terrible.

That's their whole thing.

That's their whole thing.

And they're also, I would add, John, they're not evil.

So I would argue that the Yankees fans' hauteur and expectation that anything other than a championship is a failure on the part of their team

is

an expression of the team's general identity as evil.

I would say that the Philadelphia fans' tendency to throw batteries at Mike Schmidt or whatever

is

bad,

but I would not call it evil.

And I cannot exact, it is an ineffable difference.

Yeah.

But there is something oddly

honorable about the awfulness of Philadelphia sports fans.

It is honorable awfulness.

So obviously I am biased because this is my mother's hometown.

But I am not going to recuse myself, but I'm going to instead try to be objective.

Jesse,

what do you think the solution here is?

Now, I'll point out that this family lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in a town that is considered to be a suburb of Philadelphia.

That this town is all team Eagles, all team Phillies, all team Flyers, all team, what's the sport I'm missing?

76ers.

Oh, all-team Liberty.

I mean, Philadelphia Freedom.

That's the United States tennis team.

Did you know that Philadelphia Freedom, that's Billie Jean King's, started the United States

Tennis League?

Philadelphia Freedom is the team in Philadelphia.

She is an ownership stake in it, and she got her friend Elton John to write the theme song.

The song Philadelphia Freedom is about the professional tennis team.

It's all team Phillies.

Hooray for professional tennis.

Hooray for homosexuals in American culture.

It's all team Philly in this town, and it's definitely team waw, I also learned.

And definitely team except

being the 1970s, 1980s, I guess still operating today,

a very influential German heavy metal band that was co-founded by bassist Peter Baltis, the only, quote, notable person on this town's Wikipedia page, now living outside of Philadelphia.

So this is all Philadelphia town.

Jesse, what do you think about this idea in this context

of both the parents advocating for their own teams and letting the chips fall and the kids decide?

Yeah, I think ultimately, in this case,

it may be a situation where the children can decide when they come of age.

They can shed their milk name and

choose their own teams as long as it's not the Yankees.

Fair enough.

I will defer to my sporty friend.

I think, you know what,

dude, take your shot.

Try to convince these kids to like the Jets

in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

See what happens.

See what happens.

You're going to get pelted with batteries.

I hope they're nine-volt.

Try to convince your kid to like the Jets if you live at the Jets stadium.

Sorry, George R.R.

Martin, one of the biggest Jets fans.

Even he knows.

Good luck.

Good luck, New Jersey.

You live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania now.

Good luck.

But the kids can decide just as long as it's not the Yankees.

Okay, let's take a quick break.

When we come back, Creepy Children and a brand new old-timey ragtime tune.

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.

Nope, 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.

We're clearing the docket this week.

We have a dispute here from Milo, who wishes to bring his brother Zane to court.

Milo writes, I would like to order my brother Zane to try the video game Bioshock.

I myself have played it and have deemed it to be a top quality game.

Okay, Jesse, hang on.

Let me just jump in here and jump to the chase and say, yeah, Zane, play Bioshock Bioshock already.

It is, as Milo says, a top-quality game.

You ever play Bioshock, Joel?

Pong.

All right, check it out.

Bioshock, top-quality game.

But Zane, you agreed to give this game a try when you got to Diamond Level on Brawlhalla, and you got to diamond level, I happen to know.

So it's time to make good on your verbal contract and go below the sea to rapture.

the best virtual underwater game city based on the philosophy of capitalistic extreme self-interest called Objectivism, as invented by Ayn Rand.

Make sure when you're playing it, Zane, to check out the secret level where Paul Ryan and Stacey Abrams are playing doubles underwater tennis with Phil Donahue and Ayn Rand's ghost.

Very surprising secret level.

Sorry to cut this short, Jesse, but we are, we're at, we can't, we have to move on because of promises that I made to listeners.

A lot of these later segments, the past couple of weeks, that have been rollicking along here in Maine, have been devoted to listener interaction letters and quotes from children and other games that I've initiated.

And it's made a lot of homework for me as I've had to

judge dishwashers and gather letters together.

And, you know, look, I'm a little behind.

So let me just do a little housekeeping.

On the Star Blazers theme song Promise, it's still in effect.

We're just putting some things together to get it right.

On the dishwashers that I'll be judging, I will be doing it on Instagram coming up this week.

Just be patient.

I know last week we heard from Aiden, who runs the Harvester of Souls page on the Wikipedia Wikipedia about Spirit of Halloween.

I referenced his video.

I forgot to give you the bit.ly, the direct link to his video response to Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You can check it out by going to bit.ly slash soul harvester number one.

Soul Harvester number one.

And of course, we do have a few more quotes from creepy cool babies that I wanted to read to you.

So let's get these out of the way.

Jesse, these are the last creepy cool babies, okay?

John, before you start reading, I have a creepy cool baby.

What?

I'm trying to get through these things and you're adding to my homework pile.

Okay.

I can't wait to hear it.

John, yesterday I picked my child Frankie up from preschool.

Yeah.

And as I drove him home on the 110, the Arroyo Seco Freeway

from Pasadena to Los Angeles,

He looked at me in the rearview mirror and smiled his broadest, most beautiful smile.

And I have a very, not to brag, but I have a very beautiful child.

All your children are very, very beautiful.

Frankie smiled his broadest and most beautiful smile and he said daddy and I said yes Frankie

and he said

daddy when we get home I hope mommy didn't get runded over by a car accident

oh my god

I don't know why I'm laughing it's to it's to prevent myself from feeling the terror

that's the whole.

Just with the sweetest, kindest eyes, John, the broadest of smiles,

a loving lilt in his voice.

I hope mommy didn't get runned over in a car accident.

That is the, that is, for those of you who have just started listening to the podcast today,

that is the soul of this segment called Creepy Cool Babies.

It was Cool Babies.

Now it's Creepy Cool Babies.

It's parents or other guardians of human children writing in

where their kids say things to them that are strange, weird, unsettling, or creepy.

That is the soul of the segment.

Let's harvest that soul right now.

We heard from a listener named John.

This is also a smiling one.

Kids smiling is scary.

What are they smiling at?

John writes, several years ago,

When our now 10-year-old was a toddler, he wandered into my and my wife's bedroom early in the morning.

He walked over to my side of the bed and with a big smile said to me, Today is your last birthday.

John goes on to say, it wasn't even my birthday.

Creepy.

Yay.

This is another, this is another one, Jesse.

This one is also from the car.

I think creepy children have a lot of time to think in the car about creepy stuff.

And

it's meditative for them.

They're watching the world fly by them.

They know that they're in a moving container of death.

They're thinking about people getting run over.

They're thinking about death.

Stephen writes: One time when our child, Maeve, was a toddler, I was driving them in the car.

Maeve asked, Daddy, do you want to be buried or cremated?

To which I responded,

I guess I would like to be cremated.

And Maeve replied, How much does that cost?

And

I said, Maeve, I have no earthly idea.

After a brief pause, Maeve heaved a big sigh and said,

well,

I guess I'll find out soon enough anyway.

This is a really quick one from Sarah.

Sarah wanted their three-year-old to stop getting up at night.

Apparently, Sarah's three-year-old would get up in the middle of the night and, quote, smush his little mouth into the crack under the door and yell for us.

So we got the three-year-old a walkie-talkie, and now he likes to whisper creepy things into it.

A couple of weeks ago, he hailed us in the walkie-talkie and while talking to us suddenly said, who's that weird guy?

I jumped out of bed and ran into his room.

There was no weird guy there.

Unfortunately, I was wearing pajama shorts, and he was so freaked out by my bare legs, a rare and even weirder sight in Minnesota, that he never said another word about the weird guy.

You, Sarah, you freaked out the creeper with your bare legs.

Who creeps the creepers?

All right, this is the last, this is the last one, because this is a three-fer.

Amanda wrote in about her three-year-old who has creeped her out not once, but thrice.

And now she does not give a name for her three-year-old, which itself is pretty creepy.

Amanda, you should probably name your child.

It's weird.

It's creepy that you haven't.

Creep out number one.

We were returning from a doctor's appointment.

At a red light, my three-year-old said, It's burning.

Hurry this way.

He repeated it several times.

I realized we were stopped next to a hotel that had had a fire with fatalities in it in the 2000s.

Creepy.

Creep out number two.

I work in forensics.

We can just end it there.

Creepy.

Yeah, good.

I work in forensics and he tells me on a monthly basis to be careful upstairs because it is dark and there is a big monster.

Upstairs is where they deal with the forensic biology stuff, which are the more gruesome investigations.

How does he know?

Creepy.

Also, what's happening?

Do you guys live in a forensics lab?

I don't understand.

That's creepy too.

Finally, creep out number three.

My three-year-old woke up from a nap a few months ago and said, my sister isn't here yet.

He didn't know that I was pregnant at the time.

And we didn't even know we were expecting a girl yet.

I was sure we were going to have a boy.

Turns out my nameless child was correct, and we now have a daughter.

The gift of foresight, like Alicia Witten Dune.

My mother is, my brother is coming with many Fremen warriors.

Creepy.

So that's it, Jesse.

I want to say that we saw Amanda in Atlanta when we did our show there

now almost a year ago.

And we hope soon we can come back to Atlanta, which is a great town, and celebrate Georgia going blue and do a show for you there.

Maybe we'll see you there, Amanda.

Name your child before then because I'd like to meet him.

And also, Amanda, because I read your letters out loud, that's compensation.

So you can't sue me when I sell Netflix a show based on you and your creepy son called Forensic Mom, an Unnamed Creep Out Boy Who Live in a Lab, Solving Crimes and Slaying Monsters in the 404.

It's going to be a big show.

All right, Jeff.

That's a good title.

I think you can sell that to FX.

The long titles are really in, I think.

They're Google-able.

Okay, that's all the creepouts we have.

And everybody, I don't need any more creepouts.

I'm creeped out already.

I'm trying to reduce my homework load.

So don't write in with creepy stuff

unless it's really creepy.

Then you can send it in.

But don't worry.

I'm giving you, there'll be other chances to

engage.

And thank you for playing along and giving us so much fun stuff and violating your children's privacy with us.

Thank you.

All right, John.

Before we go, we have a letter from Jess.

I'm writing to you in regards to episode 447, specifically the tale of woe of Abigail's allium aversion.

In discussing the case, John says, fresh garlic on my flapstick is my favorite ragtime tune.

Well, when I heard that, I knew I had to write it.

I play the fiddle and was intending to work this up and record it with my string band, but then the pandemic happened and no one could gather together to play music.

In all honesty, though, rags are meant for piano, so I enlisted my incredibly talented ivory-tickling friend James Rohr to record it for me.

As an aside, James fronts my favorite local Boston band, the Blue Ribbons.

So, here.

A year after the inspiration, I'd love to share with you your favorite ragtime tune, Fresh Garlic on My Flapstick.

Jess.

P.S.

Jesse, I hope you doubly enjoy this as the only ragtime tune I know of which can repel Draculus.

Let's listen to a little of Fresh Garlic on my flapstake.

Oh, here it's very bouncy.

It's a bouncy, bouncy little tune.

Yeah.

Jesse, we use this as a bed.

You can take us out on the credits.

The docket is clear.

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

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Our engineer in Maine is Joel Mann, Program and Operations Manager at WERU Community Radio in Orland, Maine.

You can listen to WERU at weru.org and you can follow Joel on Instagram.

His handle is the main man.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohnhodgman tweets, hashtag jjho, and check out the maximum fund subreddit to discuss this episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org jjho or email hodgeman at maximumfun.org.

I want to mention we've had a lot of rollicking docket episodes lately.

Someone asked on Reddit why that was.

There's a couple of reasons.

One is that it's difficult for us to book litigants into studios these days.

In fact, impossible to do so safely.

And it adds a lot of complication to have people record from home.

We also have all had significant life complications due to the pandemic,

not least of which were those which befell Jen and myself as the parents of young children.

And so don't expect that this is a forever change to the show, but

do know that

this is what we're doing most of the time for a little bit, and I hope you enjoy it.

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

Surprise post-credit sequence.

Hey, it's me, John Hodgman.

I just wanted to say thank you, Jess,

for submitting that ragtime tune.

It was very rollicking.

It is the unofficial rollicking theme of the rollicking docket.

The sinking ship that we're all on board together.

The rollicking docket plowing the frothy Maine here in Maine.

Now, let me just add this, Jess.

One note.

I love this song.

It sounds like the music bed beneath an old silent comedy from that famous comedy duo, The Judge and Bailiff Jesse, which we should make a movie of, Jesse, at some point.

But all good theme songs need lyrics, and there are no lyrics to your ragtime song.

So, listeners, if you want to listen again to Jesse's song and write some lyrics, garlic on my flapstake,

send in the lyrics to me.

I thought I was making homework for you, but I'm making more homework for me.

Send in the lyrics to me.

I'll pick the best one.

You'll get a free t-shirt and I'll sing them on the air.

All right, that's it.

See you next time on the Judge Judge Sean Audrey podcast.

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