Grocery Store Quilts

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week to clear the docket.

With me, as always, is the man they call the scallop prince of Maine, Judge John Hodgman.

Oh, hello, welcome, everyone, to listening to this podcast.

It is I, John Hodgman, joining my friends Jennifer Marmor and Jesse Thorne in two distinct locations in Los Angeles.

I, of course, am in the solar-powered studios of WERU,

headquartered in Orland, Maine, broadcasting on 89.9 on the frequency modulation band out of Blue Hill, Maine.

It is, well,

the time doesn't matter to you.

You're going to start listening to this whenever.

But what you need to know is we started recording 10 minutes late.

For two reasons.

One, I needed to finish my chicken fingers that I was having for lunch in the parking lot of WERU, and that was delicious.

I was almost going to skip lunch, Jesse, but then I was like, I'm going by the gas station that has a good chicken.

I got to get some.

Yeah, nothing wrong with chicken fingers.

They're a classic for a reason.

Yeah, not after the record, before the record, so I'm all fueled up.

Probably the best of the finger foods.

That's right.

I would agree.

I would absolutely agree.

My apologies to lady fingers.

Oh, are those like the sponge cakes?

Yeah, it's like a soaked sponge cake, I think.

A soaked sponge cake?

What are they soaked in?

Rum?

Yeah, or maybe cappuccino.

I don't know.

Something like that.

You have your cappuccino lady fingers, you have your rum cappuccino lady fingers, and then you have your plain rum lady fingers.

In any case, we also had to pause to wait for Leafy to go away.

Leafy, the leaf blower, as you know, if you were listening last week, has been fired from the Judge John Hodgman family, no longer allowed to be on the podcast due to scaring Coco

last week.

And

Leafy was making a real racket outside your window there in Los Angeles, Jesse Thorne.

Yeah, Leafy's still here.

I mean, I can't promise that you won't hear Leafy, but Leafy was immediately outside my window for some time.

Yeah, like Leafy knew what Leafy did, and Leafy was coming back.

It was sort of like Leafy was throwing rocks at my window, you know, little pebbles.

Well, please let me back in.

Let me tell everyone in the listening audience, you will never hear from Leafy again.

We are restructuring our schedules to record on non-Leafy days.

So if you hear Leafy today, let your ears soak it in.

Leafy's vengeful buzzing.

Let your ears soak it in because it's the last time you're going to hear Leafy.

So mad at Leafy.

You know who I'm not mad at.

Not mad at my friends who are on the Zoom with me.

I can see you.

And I'm not mad at Engineer Joel Mann.

If I am the prince of scallops, Joel is the king of scallops.

How are you, Joel?

Good judge.

I have some good news for you.

What?

After last week's scallop talk,

I went to the supermarket on the way home.

Guess what?

You may not know this.

You don't have to buy a gallon of them.

What?

Yeah,

you can get just a few.

No.

You can order as many or as few scallops as you want.

Come on, stop it.

I got a dozen, and that was all I needed, thank heavens.

Wow.

And they were delicious.

They were great.

And they were right off the boat, too.

It said on a little card taped up,

fresh today.

And they were very good.

Awesome.

I don't know if they got them from your guy,

David Tarr.

Is that the name of your scallopman?

That's the guy.

He goes in the water.

He dives.

Yes.

Yes, he goes in the cold main waters.

All winter long.

All winter long and grabs them just to give you a gallon.

Just to hand off a gallon to you.

Yep.

You have to give me some of those scallop freezing tips that you promised me in case I get into too many scallops this winter.

All right, anyway, we got some justice to dispense.

It's not scallop talk.

It's a separate podcast.

Jesse Thorne, what's going on?

What's on the docket?

Hold on one second.

Was Leafy back?

Yeah, Leafy's back here,

right outside the old window.

You know what?

Just power through it.

Leafy's last hurrah.

Go ahead.

All right, I'll do it.

Here's something from JB.

She says, when When my partner makes the bed, he tucks in not only the top sheet, but also every blanket, quilt, and bedspread in use.

I believe this makes the bed both uncomfortable and aesthetically unpleasing.

It also puts stress on the fabric of our quilts and bedspreads.

What?

We've been married for 20 years, so I guess you could say I've made my bed and now I must lie in it.

But I'm hoping for a decision that bedspreads, quilts, and other covers aren't meant to be tucked in.

Whew.

Some fancy wordplay there from JB.

I appreciate that.

Jesse Thorne,

you have three small children.

That's true.

Is there making of beds in your house at all?

I will straighten out the bed when I get up out of it in the morning, but I don't even re-tuck sheets.

I just straighten them out and pull the duvet up.

Right.

And the main reason that I do that, frankly, is because I know that

otherwise my dogs will be getting into the sheets and trying to dig holes in the sheets.

And I would prefer that they try and dig holes in the duvet.

Yeah, they're hiding from Leafy, the malevolent leaf blower.

Sure.

Or looking for bed squirrels.

That's true.

That's always a possibility.

You got to flip the mattress twice a year to shake out those bed squirrels.

You know that, right?

Sure.

Right.

I'll tell you, listeners who are shopping the Hodgman Collection at Brooklyn, and hey, that's a plug.

They didn't even pay for it.

I'll tell you, shoppers who are shopping the Hodgman Collection at Brooklyn,

you all know the color of my sheets, slate gray.

And then I got

that stripe, that gray and white stripe duvet cover.

Do you know how I make my beds?

No, you'll never know.

You'll never know.

You'll never be able to replicate it perfectly.

I will keep some secrets.

Thank you very much.

But yeah, I mean, it's just.

In a normal situation,

but Jesse, in an ideal world, what would you consider to be a properly made bed?

What is tucked in?

What is not tucked in?

In the platonic world of Jesse Thorne's bedclothes head canon?

I think, well, first of all, I like to use a top sheet that will be tucked in.

And I think in a situation like a summary situation,

I don't think it's inappropriate to tuck in a light blanket.

I think that can make for a nice presentation.

Like if you're using like a quilted cotton blanket or something like that,

like a knit cotton blanket, maybe that kind of thing seems appropriate to tuck in.

Tucking in a feather duvet is a little goofy to me.

That seems a little too much.

And I'm not ready to dismiss JB's argument that tucking in the quilt puts stress on the fabric.

You notice that I highlighted that phrase for ridicule.

Yeah, I have some quilts that are family heirlooms

that I like to put out on my bed because they remind me of, you know, I have some that each of my,

one that my maternal grandmother made or was actually made from pieces that my maternal grandmother cut and sewed.

Yeah.

And

I have one that was made by my paternal grandmother and her mother for my birth.

And I like to have those out.

I also have a few like 19th century ones.

I know what you're thinking.

Who do I think I am?

Famous quilt collector Ken Burns?

I was thinking that.

I got confused.

I thought for a minute I was on the wrong podcast.

Google Ken Burns' quilts, by the way, because the man has some amazing quilts.

Right.

I'm not like you think I'm joking, but I am 100% on board with Ken Burns, famous documentarian and his collection of American quilt work.

Well, quilts are works of art.

But yeah, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to want to protect your quilt

and not to tuck it in tautly if it is an actual, you know, family piece, a handmade piece.

And it's just something, yeah, I mean, if it's just something that you, you know,

bought at the grocery store in 1997, I'm I'm not that worried about it getting tucked in.

Also, maybe time, you don't need those grocery store quilts anymore.

I think they've done their work.

If you've had them in 1999,

yeah, I mean, if anybody out there is a Zoomer, us millennials remember when they sold quilts at the grocery store.

You might be a millennial if.

I will say this.

All right, I'm glad that you stood up for JB

in her worry for her quilts.

And I would agree with you.

If they're an heirloom quilt, if they're something special to you,

you know, just even putting them on the bed.

constitutes potential damage.

Definitely you don't need to stretch those things out.

I would say a regular blanket or whatever.

I don't think that that's a real issue.

If it's a grocery store quilter blanket, I think you're gilding the lily, JB.

The fact is that what your partner is doing,

your spouse of 20 years or more, it's a very old-fashioned look and a very formal look to my mind.

And I would think that it would not suit a duvet cover, which itself suggests a kind of rumpled casualness.

But if you've got the bedclothes

to make that look good

and your spouse wants to make it look good, I say let them make it look good.

I appreciate that it's not aesthetically pleasing to you.

But on the other hand, you lied.

You said, I've made my bed and now must lie in it.

No, you have not made it.

Your spouse made it.

Your spouse made the bed.

Do you have any idea, JB, what kind of gift that is?

A spouse who makes the bed?

I know that one of the spouses in my spousal relationship does not appreciate what a gift it is.

Takes it for granted that one of us is going to go ahead and straighten that duvet cover every morning.

I want to get married to your spouse, JB.

It's just like picking songs on the radio when you're driving in the car.

The person who does the work gets to choose how to do it.

And I would just say, I'm sorry that it's not to your liking.

Before you go to bed, just go in there and pre-untuck.

Pre-untuck for a little while and let that drift into your eyes before you get into your bed.

Loosen up those sheets and blankets.

Here's something from Pierce.

He writes, several months ago, under duress, I had to describe what the non-ice cream parts of an ice cream sandwich are.

I said, ice cream sandwich bread.

My girlfriend, after laughing at me, said I was wrong.

She Googled and said they're called wafers or cookies.

Please order my girlfriend to recognize that ice cream sandwich bread, though not in wide usage, is the superior name.

I got to say I really love this first sentence.

Several months ago under duress,

I had to describe what the non-ice cream parts of an ice cream sandwich are.

Tell us what you call the non-ice cream parts of an ice cream sandwich.

Tell us.

That's an incredible.

There are a lot of different stories in that one sentence.

You know what it reminds me of?

One of the best first sentences in fiction?

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude.

X number of years later, I can't remember the number of years, but the rest of this is off the dome.

X number of years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia remembered the time his father took him to see ice.

Pretty good.

I haven't picked up that book in probably 25 years.

Remember that first line.

It's a a lot of stuff going on in that line.

I like the story behind this, Pierce.

You spin a good tale.

I don't know.

First of all, an ice cream sandwich is a sandwich.

It's meat between bread, obviously.

Would you call those brown, the tops and bottoms of an ice cream sandwich, a classic rectangular ice cream sandwich?

Would you call that a wafer or a cookie?

Well, first of all,

You know what kind of ice cream sandwich I'm eating, John.

I'm eating an It's It, the real San Francisco treat.

Yeah, that's right.

And they call it that because the ice cream is mixed with rice-aroni.

Yes,

exactly.

I only recently had rice-aroni for the first time because my wife accidentally bought it when trying to buy yellow or Spanish rice

in a box.

And she bought the rice-arone version.

I had no idea it was a mix of noodles and rice.

It's a pilaf.

What a weird product.

It's a rice pilaf.

That's all.

That's what makes it roni.

That's the roni and the rice.

Nothing reminds me of a cable car cresting a hill like a mix of rice and rice-shaped pasta.

Anyway.

Looking, Zoomers,

this is an Xer talking to you.

You have no idea what we're talking about.

You did not grow.

You are perhaps the first generation to grow up without any jingles worming their way into your head from television commercials that you were forced to watch during afternoon screenings of

what was my afternoon thing was Star Blazers channel 25.

It just sounds made up.

No, it's really real.

I'll tell you this.

This is the rice arony jingle.

Rice Aroni, the San Francisco treat, ding, ding.

Yeah, it's okay.

Maybe

later in the podcast, if we have time, I'll sing the Star Blazers theme as a treat.

You know what, Jen?

On our way out, play one of the bell ringers from the cable car bell-ringing competition that's an annual tradition in San Francisco.

And one of the best things about cable cars.

Yeah, let's do that too.

We got all kinds of teases.

People are going to listen to this whole episode.

I have a feeling, Jesse.

This is probably the first one people are going to go all the way through.

Anyway, you like an it's it.

Describe to the listener and, frankly, refresh my memory, what constitutes an it's it?

An it's it is a San Francisco-based, or I should say Bay Area-based, they're actually, I think, in Burlingame,

frozen confection with a kind of light ice cream in the middle, sort of an ice milk type situation,

two chewy oatmeal cookies on the outside, and the whole thing is dipped in chocolate.

It comes in a variety of flavors.

Right.

But I would argue the classic flavors are vanilla and mint.

It's kind of a chocolate-enrobed chip witch without chocolate chips.

Yeah, but the but the but

I mean, there is a chocolate-enrobed chip witch version of the It's It.

It's it makes a separate product

that is what you're describing.

What I am describing are chewy oatmeal cookies rather than chocolate chip cookies.

I understand.

Okay.

By the way, It's it.

Get on this program.

Get on the program of sponsoring this program.

Come on.

Look, okay, it's it has a cookie on top, cookie on the bottom.

I'm talking about

classic.

If you're asking me about the classic ice cream sandwich, like right now in my freezer,

I have a box of an ice cream sandwich called Fat Boy Jr.,

which are wonderful ice cream sandwiches.

I would call the outside cookies.

And I would be comfortable with wafers as well.

I don't know, Jesse Thorne, because I'm thinking of like school cafeteria.

School cafeteria.

Yeah.

I would call that tunkie or

I know exactly what you're talking about.

I think that's a great ice cream sandwich.

The worst version of that, we were just talking about this on Jordan SEGO the other day.

The worst version of an ice cream sandwich, like the equivalent of that gallon jug of red drink that costs 45 cents at the grocery store,

that version of an ice cream sandwich is still a great treat.

Oh, I do.

You know, I rarely go for sweets, but I do enjoy an ice cream sandwich.

And in some ways, I feel like

the sort of lower quality, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

Like true high school cafeteria.

Yeah, one that comes in a paper wrapper that just says I see sandwich on the outside in big block letters or whatever.

Exactly.

And when I think of that, because I think you guys are too fancy.

When I think of that,

I'm thinking of a very specific thin brown

thing that kind of mealy.

It has a mealy, a mealy text.

That's exactly right, Jesse, a mealy texture that is very specific to it and nothing else.

It's it in its own, it's it way.

And I don't consider it a wafer, which I consider to be crisp, or a cookie, which I consider to be more substantial.

I'm going to call it, I've never heard a better phrase for it, ice cream sandwich bread.

For that instance, I think that Pierce is correct.

Ice cream sandwich bread, it's great.

Let's take a quick break.

More items on the docket coming up in just a minute on the 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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It's true.

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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.

I'm in Los Angeles, Judge Hodgman in Orland, Maine, with the great Joel Mann.

Here's something from Ethan.

He writes: In May of 2019, I organized a betting pool for the final season of Game of Thrones.

One question was: who holds the Iron Throne at the end?

My friend Nick claims he is correct in arguing that no one claimed the throne because one, Drogon melted the literal Iron Throne, and two, the Iron Throne is symbolic of the seven kingdoms which were dissolved.

I argue that no one is an unacceptable answer because Bran became king of Westeros.

I ask that you order one party to concede defeat and award damages to the victorious party.

Presumably

in the form of what is called the Dork Throne.

The Dork Throne is at stake.

It's made of melted 20-sided dice, by the way.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Maybe people don't know what the Iron Throne is.

Joel, do you know what the Iron Throne is?

No.

Joel, here's the thing.

Egon the Conqueror, the first of the Targaryen kings, conquered the seven kingdoms of Westeros.

You remember him from Ghostbusters, right?

That's right.

And in the television show Game of Thrones and the George R.R.

Martin novels, A Song of Ice and Fire.

In the fantasy world in which it takes place, there's a place called Westeros.

There's seven kingdoms in it.

Egon

rode his dragon to King's Landing.

beat them all at war, took control of all of the seven independent kingdoms, kingdoms, except he didn't actually take control of all of them, Joel.

Dorn, the kingdom of Dorn, resisted his rule for centuries after, but still he claimed that he was the king of all seven kingdoms.

Technically later, those became eight and nine as there were some changes.

And then all of the swords that were surrendered to him by his opponents were melted down and forged into a throne of swords called the Iron Throne.

Got it now?

I always wondered why I didn't watch that.

Now I know.

It's a good show.

Yeah.

It's a good show.

Sounds like it.

Yeah, take a look.

It's good.

It's a great book.

Great series of books.

It occurred to me, Jesse, that George R.

R.

Martin is a fan of this show

and someone that I have had the pleasure of meeting from time to time.

Indeed, he sent me a text out of nowhere just to say, happy Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving.

It was very touching.

And I thought, well, I could ask George R.R.

Martin's opinion on this.

But then I remembered,

this not only deals with the television series, not the books, but also the final season of the television series.

And I don't think anyone has told George R.R.

Martin that that happened.

I think he's being

that the information that the television series had a final season and is now over is being hidden from him as he works on the final books.

So I'm forced to go with my own knowledge and expertise.

in the history and lore of West Rose.

And I'll say

that Nick is correct.

At the end of the TV series, that dragon, Drogon, melts that whole throne, so no one's sitting on that chair.

And at the end of the finale, I don't remember all of the seven kingdoms being disbanded, but

I know that the North seceded and became a kingdom unto itself, as it once was way back when.

Sansa Stark

demands that it become an independent kingdom.

And while she should be and is, as far as I'm concerned, the rightful queen in the north,

instead, her younger brother, Brandon Stark, Bran,

became named king in the north, rigged, rigged election, I say.

Not the way I would have done it.

But then again, it wasn't my job to finish that incredibly ambitious story.

I'm glad I don't have to.

I'm glad I'm not those guys who made that TV show.

I'm glad I'm not George R.R.

Martin for that reason.

It's a hard, hard landing to stick.

And both the show and the books have meant a lot to me.

And I will say that as someone who was pretty well steeped in the lore, I think Nick is correct.

And I think Nick also deserves this win of the dork throne for sheer boldness.

Dorkness favors the bold.

I mean, to go out there and say, no, no one.

That's such a

snarky answer to give.

Like, it's like, you know who I think is going to be the king at the end of the books?

No one.

I think they're going to form a constitutional republic or something.

Contrarian.

I like it, Nick.

In the game of dorks, either you win or you lose.

And Ethan, you lose.

Can I tell you something about that last episode of Game of Thrones and the conclusion of that grand tale?

Sure.

I loved the television program.

I haven't read the books yet.

Yeah.

Look forward to reading them at some point in the future, but I love the television program.

Watched every episode of it.

Was thrilled.

My favorite dramatic television program in many years.

And the other day, I was reading an article about media of some kind that mentioned the finale of Game of Thrones.

And I thought back and I realized that I could not remember who had won in the end.

Well, now I'm thinking, like, I just said that Sansa should have been the queen of Westeros, but she demanded independence for the region of Westeros known as the North.

Maybe she is queen in the North.

I'm not sure I know exactly how it ended.

I know Bran was named king.

I'll tell you what, listeners, please stop writing your emails right now.

I promise you, I will look it up on Wikipedia.

I promise you, I will do penance.

I will walk through the streets of Blue Hill, Maine, naked as the townspeople chant shame at me.

You can trust that this will happen.

Please don't correct me.

I got the basic contours correct.

And by the way, Nick is right and Ethan's wrong still.

It doesn't change anything.

I won't overturn the outcome because it

won't change the outcome.

Here's a dispute from Valerie.

She writes, like you, my husband is crab conscious because we keep kosher, but he is also now carb conscious.

Previously on a Sunday, Miles would have two everything bagels with cream cheese, but recently he decided he only wants one and a half everything bagels with cream cheese.

I took the extra half bagel and froze it to save it for next week, but he only wants fresh.

I then decided I knew how you would rule.

If I prepare his bagels, he must eat the remaining half the following week.

But if he prepares his own bagel and a half, he could throw the extra half away.

Although I am really bothered by the waste.

What say you, Judge Hodgman?

First of all, Joel, you may not know this, but crab conscious?

Yeah, what is that?

That's a reference to a running gag that we have going and some ad reads for another partner of Judge Judge John Hodgman, the great Sunbasket food delivery service and recipe delivery service.

How would you describe it, Jesse?

It's the only

food delivery service co-founded by my friend Tyler from college.

That's right.

And in any case,

I misread an ad read and thought that they were having special menus for crab-conscious eaters, when it's, of course, carb-conscious eaters.

Kind of a running gag.

In any case,

Valerie's husband, Miles, is carb conscious, so he is cutting down his two bagel

a Sunday routine to 1.5 bagels.

I mean, that's a 25% reduction.

It is a 25% reduction, except for when you remember that every bagel has about 1 million carbs in it.

As someone who has been genuinely carb conscious

right up until we went into the pandemic, right up until that moment, I had been carb conscious and basically carb free

for almost a decade.

I can tell you right now that there is a lot of carbs in a bagel.

Because when I eat a bagel, my head is spinning with sugar.

Woo!

So exciting.

I jump up in the air every time I eat a bagel and they're delicious.

Well, they are a pure carb bomb.

I mean, nice try, Miles.

But I'll tell you,

I don't think you're going to get what you're going for here.

Now, Valerie says that she

guessed what my judgment would be.

Let's set aside the nutritional aspect of this or the dieting aspect or whatever.

Just in terms of

Miles wants a fresh half a bagel and Valerie wants to freeze that extra half a bagel, she predicted that I would rule that if she, it's sort of like the

making the bed, if she does the work of preparing the bagels, she can freeze that half a bagel and serve it to Miles next week.

But if he does it, if he does the work of preparing the bagels, he can just throw it away.

Jesse, do you think that Valerie has predicted my judgment correctly or incorrectly?

Well, I think

everyone here has failed to consider what I see as the central issue, which is that bagels are inherently wasteful because someone has thrown away the center of the bagel.

How dare you?

How dare you?

Sorry.

You're still a millennial.

I mean, I know you're a dad.

I know you're entitled to make these jokes technically.

But you have no gray in your beard.

I can see it.

Your beard is luxuriously brown and healthy and youthful you've got a twinkle in your eye listeners will not be surprised to learn that you are wearing a jaunty kerchief neckerchief

yeah you're still a young man you don't have to do this jesse plus

bagels don't

when you

you can say that about a donut as a weird dad joke

but if you get a real bagel

Like from the bagel hole in Brooklyn, there's no hole there.

It all swells up.

You can't put a, you can't see through a bagel in any way, unless you've got some very specific weird superpower.

There is an issue though that

no one has contended with, which is A, Miles is absolutely correct.

A frozen bagel is fine, but it is nothing compared to a fresh bagel.

That is a very reasonable

distinction to make.

And in terms of like, if you're only going to put a certain amount of bagels into your hole a week, you deserve deserve to have the one that you want, or the one and a half that you want, or the two that you want.

Because here's the thing: Valerie is absolutely wrong about my judgment.

I would never make the judgment that

she who puts in the work gets to decide to freeze the half a bagel.

It's just

I get where you're coming from, Valerie, and I appreciate your listenership, but

that is a cumbersome judgment because I had to sit down like with some scratch paper to figure out, all right, I'm serving one and a half bagels and I'm freezing this half.

Then next week I just get one whole bagel and augment it with the frozen half.

Then the next week I got to go back to the two bagels and split.

It's too much work.

It's too much work, Valerie.

I'm sorry, especially when the solution is right there.

One bagel.

One bagel, Miles.

One.

That's all you need.

That's all you need of a Sunday.

Look, I was a young man.

Jesse, I was a young man.

There was a period of time when I was in my 20s, living on 104th Street.

All of my friends had

small studio apartments in the same building.

Jonathan, Christine, Catherine, we were all there.

Liz, we were all there.

We'd all get together on a Sunday and get bagels.

And sometimes I would eat two bagels with cream cheese.

Sometimes I would.

Everything bagels, of course, are the best.

That was in my 20s when my metabolism was probably at its highest.

And even then, I was like, like, this is too many bagels.

One bagel.

That's all you need.

Sorry, Miles.

Especially if you're trying to reduce carbs.

It's a really good way to reduce carbs is not eat bagels.

There are few food products that suffer more from staleness or freezing than a bagel.

I mean, a frozen bagel, a frozen and unfrozen bagel, you can toast it and then you get a passable toasted bagel.

Correct.

But if you have to toast a bagel, it's not a very good bagel.

That's right.

Jesse, you and I both know that the bagel hole in Park Slope does not offer toasting because their bagels are always warm when they come out.

They are the best bagels that I've ever had in my hands and in my mouth and in my stomach.

But I am saddened to inform you, Jesse,

that I personally can no longer go there because I made the mistake of reading the bagel hole's Twitter page.

So look,

people who love bagels,

go and eat whatever bagel you want.

The best bagels in the New York area, indeed, I would say the world are the bagel hole.

But do yourself a favor.

Don't ask too many questions.

Just get those good bagels and remember we're all neighbors.

I want to thank our producer, Jennifer Marmor, who reminded me that there's a pretty good bagel available near my house.

What is that?

Shout out to Bell's Bagels.

Bell's bagels.

Yeah.

Not the world's greatest bagel.

It's less good than the bagel hole.

Right.

But for Los Angeles, a city with surprisingly few good bagel options, it is a real solid bagel.

Here comes Coco getting on the lap.

Yeah.

I like it.

I like Coco to feel that this is a safe place to come now that Leafy has been banished.

Exactly.

That's right.

Welcome, Coco.

We'll give you,

you can feed half a bagel to Coco.

How about that?

She'd eat it.

I mean, honestly, she'd try and eat it if it was made out of wood.

Oh, there's no bagel for me to get here in Maine.

It's just not an option.

No, it's not worth it.

Not worth it.

Have some scallops.

Portland has a great bagel shop.

I can't remember the name, but they're really, really good.

Okay.

But you got to go to Portland.

Yeah, I don't mind going to Portland.

What do you put on it?

A little scallop spread?

Yeah.

A little smoked scallop?

Yep.

Good.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, questions from toddlers.

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.

This week, we're clearing the docket.

Last week, in the episode, A Gallon of Scallops,

which someone wrote me a letter saying, if you are pronouncing scallops in the New England style, scallops, why are you not saying a gallon of scallops?

Joel, would you say a gollon of scallops?

No.

No, gallon.

That's just the way it is.

In any case, we dealt with the important question last week, is but leg?

Question mark.

Is but leg?

Now, a grown-up asked this question, but you, Bailiff Jesse, suggested that it sounded like a question a toddler might ask, and I agreed with you.

So we asked listeners to send in some actual, real-life, deep questions posed by human children in their lives in a segment I am calling

cool babies.

You know why I call it cool babies?

Because that's a phrase that we definitely invented ourselves.

That's right that's my proprietary phrase

it's a reference it's a reference of course to our friends the mcelroy brothers and my brother my brother and me on the maximumfund.org slash network

in their introduction they make a reference to the fact that their show is not for children so uh babies who listen to it are cool

and it occurred to me They say it every week for years, a decade or more, right?

Always, it's always funny.

It's always funny.

What's up, cool babies?

What's up, you cool baby, I think is the actual phrase.

But then it occurred to me,

the brothers have a podcast.

Each individual brother has a separate podcast, often with their lovely spouses.

They've also got a podcast with their dad, and Sydney's got a podcast with her sisters.

It's a whole, it's a family affair.

But all those brothers have babies.

Where are the babies podcasts?

Why haven't they started the babies podcasts?

Why don't they just leave those children in a room with a microphone running and mint podcast money because they're recording it and call it cool babies?

It's on brand.

I've suggested this to them many times.

They've never taken me up on it, to my knowledge.

So

I'm taking the IP back.

Cool babies.

That's our thing now.

It's this segment.

Jesse Thorne, did anyone write in with profound questions from their cool babies?

Yes, John.

Many people wrote in with profound questions from their cool babies.

Marley wrote in to say that her four-year-old asked the question, do bees have hands?

This one actually got me to thinking.

I mean, bees don't have hands because they don't have arms.

They've got legs, right?

I don't know, spoken like somebody who's never seen the hit film B movie starring Jerry Seinfeld.

You're right.

You got me.

Starring and written by Jerry Seinfeld.

I think he also wrote it.

Well, it was his idea.

I don't know that he wrote the screenplay.

He just thought thought bees should have a movie.

They deserve it.

I don't think that I'm making this up because I think he said it in an interview, but it would be obvious to anyone who has observed the course of Jerry Seinfeld's long and storied career.

He was sitting around one day and goes,

you know, B movies are a thing.

Why don't they make a B movie about a B?

It's the best Seinfeld I could ever do.

A B movie.

A B movie is like a Schlock horror movie, a Roger Corman production.

Make it about a B.

It writes itself.

He didn't have to write it, Jesse, because it writes itself.

And he hired someone else to do the work for him.

Maybe he had a show business meeting that he thought was going to be what they call a general,

one where you go in and just meet somebody.

Right.

But it turned out to be a movie pitch meeting.

So he just pulled his notebook out of his pocket and flipped through it until he saw the word movie.

In any case, I did start to think, thanks to Marley's four-year-old, as to what bees have on the ends of their legs.

Do they have little hands?

That would be creepy.

No.

Their forelegs have antenna cleaners, and their hind legs have what are called pollen baskets for collecting pollen.

And the pollen basket is made up of three distinct structures, the press,

brush, and oracle.

A-U-R-I-C-L-E.

They don't have a fortune-telling

Grecian woman of ancient times attached to their back leg.

It's a A-U-R-C-L-E.

A-U-R-I-C-L-E.

Brush and Oracle.

Brush and Oracle is going to be the name of the new Subway Tile restaurant that I open, featuring New American cuisine as well.

Blake's four-year-old Lincoln has several questions, so this is going to be kind of a lightning round here.

Do bears eat wolves?

No, I don't think they do.

What do you think, Jesse?

I do not believe that they do, no.

Is a three-leaf clover bad luck?

Given how things have gone in the past couple of years and the prevalence of three-leaf clovers compared to four, I'm going to say yes.

Bad luck.

Do witches poop?

Great question, Lincoln.

Great question.

Witches poop.

They are human.

They're not immortal monsters like Draculas.

Jesse Thorne, do Draculas poop?

I don't see why they would.

Yeah, I say they seems like a waste of their time.

Yeah,

they could be spooking around.

That's right.

They don't poop.

Draculas don't poop because they're too busy sucking.

That's what I say.

Yeah.

They eat blood.

That's right.

They suck it.

Suck it, Draculas.

Do you know what I think a Dracula should suck?

No, what?

A lemon.

That's right.

That's right.

Go suck a lemon, Drac.

Speaking of poop, by the way, Ryan's two-year-old Ari asks, why do you poop so long?

This is not a profound question,

but it shows that Ari,

they're starting to notice a few things.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

They're starting to notice, like, dad poops, takes a long time to poop.

And I guess it's possible that Ryan has IBS.

But my guess would be that he takes his time in the bathroom for the same reason I used to, and arguably still did since I became a parent.

I deserve a private life.

I need some time with a closed door.

Yeah.

Ari, if you're listening, it's not that your dad doesn't love you, but he needs a break from you from time to time.

The sooner you understand that and respect those boundaries, the better it's going to be for you guys.

Here's something from Sarah.

She writes in to say,

Okay, I don't really have a toddler question,

but I do have a toddler fact.

This morning, Lucas, four years old, told me that, quote, armadillos are really hard to dream about.

Lucas, tell me about it.

This is a problem that

everyone goes through this period.

It's a normal part of human development where you have this realization and have to deal with it, work it through.

And if you don't have a priest to talk to about it, you know, or

you talk to a teacher, a parent, a police officer, a fireman.

If you don't have any of those things,

it's going to be tough for you.

I love the idea that Lucas is settling his head down into his pillow and thinking to himself, tonight I'm going to do it.

Tonight I'm going to dream about an armadillo.

Maybe he's a lucid dreamer and the only thing he can't picture is an armadillo, but otherwise he gets everything he asks for.

That would be better than seeing through a bagel.

That would be an incredible superpower.

If you could lucid dream every night and choose your dreams, choose any animal to see, but the one that you can't make is an armadillo.

I'd think that would be a good trade-off.

You're too young to know about trade-offs, but you'll learn someday.

Keep dreaming lucidly.

Finally, listener Jonathan writes: My four-year-old asks me if I know every character he sees on screen.

For example, Daddy, do you know Batman?

Daddy, do you know Obi-Wan Jinobi?

But in October, he asked, Daddy, do you know the Harvester of Souls?

Wow.

I didn't know what the Harvester of Souls was, aside from the Grim Reaper,

death, the fate that awaits us all eventually.

But Jonathan sent along a link, and apparently the Harvester of Souls

is a stand-up animatic Halloween decoration that is sold by Spirit Halloween, one of the big Halloween supply houses.

I will describe it to you.

Are you on this page there, Jesse?

I am stunned into silence, not just by looking at this picture of the Harvester of Souls, which is genuinely upsetting,

but even more upsetting and confusing than that picture of the Harvester of Souls is the existence of the Spirit Halloween Superstore wiki.

Yeah, I know.

Which has almost 1,400 pages.

This piece about the Harvester of Souls has 55 comments on it.

I had no idea that there was a Spirit Halloween Superstore fandom that would support a wiki.

Look, I'll give you the description and then we'll get into, you know, section two, trivia about

trivia about harvester of souls.

There's a picture here at the bottom, John, that's labeled Harvester of Souls Misplaced in Reaper's Island Village display.

Misplaced?

Can you imagine the embarrassment if you accidentally put a Harvester of Souls into a Reaper's Island Village display?

That's like one of the greatest Spirit Halloween superstore blunders you could make.

Okay, obviously the Harvester of Souls image will be shared on the Judge John Hodgman Instagram page at JudgeJohn Hodgman.

But since this is still an audio medium, I will simply say that it is an animatronic sold by Spirit Halloween for the 2020 Halloween season.

It resembles a tall, hooded, vampire-like creature.

I don't know what vampire is.

Vampire.

I don't know what that is.

Holding a...

It looks sort of like a zombie to me.

Yeah, maybe, or kind of a Frankenstein's thing.

Yeah, I don't know.

Sure.

Tall, hooded, spooky creature holding a young girl with black hair and a pink colored dress.

Upon activation, the creature lifts the girl upwards as the head of the girl rises and the phrase is spoken.

The phrase.

I don't even know what that is.

Fog then spews from the mouth of the girl and is inhaled by the vampire-like creature as green LED lights illuminate the fog, giving the effect of the girl's soul being inhaled.

Jonathan, why are you letting your child look at at the Spirit Halloween wiki?

This is terrifying.

Yeah, it's really upsetting looking.

Especially if you misplace it.

By the way, Jesse, do you know the code name for this animatronic is Strawberry?

It says that right here in the trivia section.

You know how you care for it?

Spot clean.

The arms with girls slip down after numerous activations.

This is caused by the belt stretching out over time.

Just so you know.

I wouldn't call that trivia, but I would call that

handy information to have if you're going to invest 300 clams

into this creature.

Jesse, would this count as a Dracula, would you say?

Yeah, I guess this is a type of Dracula.

Hate it.

Don't let your child look at this again, Jonathan.

But I think you've got a great Halloween costume planned for next year where you walk around as a hooded Dracula and your child wears a pink nightgown and you lift your child up every now and then and suck green fog from him or her or them.

All right, I'm calling it.

Doesn't get better than the Harvester of Souls.

That's our proprietary segment.

Cool babies.

That's our IP.

I mean, that's our IP, intellectual property, our IP to the Harvester of Souls.

Before we roll on credits, Jesse, I have one letter that I would like to read on a different subject.

Well, you know what, Jesse?

Read the credits.

Read the credits, and we'll drop that in as a surprise as a mid-credits sequence like this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe or something.

Ooh, I like this idea.

Should I also slip into the credits a half-joke?

Sure.

Go ahead.

The docket is clear.

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

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Our engineer here 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 Maine M-A-I-N-E Man, M-A-N-N.

Jesse, let me just jump in here with a surprise mib credit sequence.

Surprise.

Wow, didn't expect to see you, Nick Fury.

So I just want listeners to know that listener Sarah in Toronto, who had written me an email full of all kinds of interesting cat facts, she wrote in to correct me.

She is not a veterinarian.

I'm sorry.

She was a veterinarian assistant for eight years, and she would be happy to send you all the cool cat facts you want

if you just email her.

Her email is info at Cleopatra.ca.

That's dot CA for Canada.

You can figure out how Cleopatra is spelled.

That's her cat grooming company.

She also sent me pictures of Sophie, or one cat, and Captain Jack Sparrow Harkness, the other cat, together cuddling.

And Captain Jack Sparrow Harkness has one eye.

It's incredible.

We'll post that on the Judge Sean Hodgman Instagram.

Now, that's that.

Will there be a post-credit sequence?

You have to wait till the end to find out.

Resume credits.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJHO, and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit to discuss this episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash JJHO or email Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

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

Post-credit surprise sequence.

You knew this was coming.

I just wanted to thank listeners Jillian, Rebecca, Trish, John, Other John, Michael S., Matt J.

I don't normally read the last names, but this guy's name is Thaddeus Diamond, which is one of the greatest names I've ever heard.

Plus a bunch of others who came in as I was driving to the studio today to write in and confirm that they also, like I, had older relatives who ate Vicks Vapo Rub as a cold remedy.

You may remember from last time I was saying that my mom claimed that her mother fed her a spoonful of Vicks vapor rub when she had a cold.

And my mom has not been alive for some time, so I could never, it seems so impossible, especially since the jar says not for human consumption, that this could be real.

I thought it was a fake memory, but many people wrote in to say, nope, my mom or my uncle or my grandmom did, many of them in Pennsylvania like my mom, but others from Canada, parts of the Midwest.

It's not like it was regional.

It was really widespread.

It was the hydroxychloroquine of its day.

In fact, Alice wrote in to say that her great-grandmother, Jesse, ate a spoonful of Vick's vapor rub every day.

Not just for colds, every day as a supplement.

She lived to be 99 years old.

And she was actually named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's most mentholated woman.

Matthew T.

wrote a really disturbing letter

about a good friend from college, he says, used to eat Vicks Vaporub for fun when he was little.

Not just grandmas, kids.

Matthew's friend used to dip his fingers in and eat it right out of the jar.

And he claims that years ago, Matthew's friend showed Matthew an old picture of the friend sitting at a table during Thanksgiving dinner around 1970, age two, with an open jar of Vicks Vapor Rub next to his plate at the table.

Matthew's friend reported, quote, it felt like I was eating pure light, like it was making my mouth and throat glow.

Like the child whose soul is being harvested.

That's spooky.

Hey, children, don't, and parents, don't eat this stuff.

Wait, what's going on in this other photo?

There's another photo.

I don't have the photos.

I only have the descriptions.

Matthew, you should get your friend to send in these photos.

I really want this for the Instagram page.

Matthew says there's another photo that shows his friend's empty plate as well as the empty

empty jar of Vic's vapor rub that he had cleaned out with a dinner roll.

Quote, Matthew, he loved this stuff.

He did say, however, that it took him a very long time to learn how to ride a bike.

I'm not sure what the...

that may be correlation, not causation.

But yeah, don't eat Vicks Vaporub, anybody.

All right, that's it.

That's the end of the surprise post-credit sequence.

There's nothing left coming up.

I am definitely not going to sing the Star Blazers theme at any point.

This is the end of the podcast for real.

You can trust me.

You're going to sit there and try to listen and wait and wait and wait and wait, but it'll never come.

Jesse, it was great to see you.

You too, bad.

Jennifer Marmor, great to see you.

She's just nodding.

Joel Mann.

Are we done?

All right, that's it.

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