Mr. Clicky Keys

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

And with me, as always, is the once and future personal computer, Judge John Hodgman.

The truth can be told.

Yeah, it's true.

It's true.

I see you as the human personification of the IBM PC XT that I had at home.

I'll tell you something.

A long time ago, in a little town called Brookline, Massachusetts, a young John Kellogg Hodgman

in 1984

had a decision to make.

Literally, Mac or PC.

At that point, it was not Mac, right?

In early 1980, well, no, I guess it's probably 1983 because the decision was an Apple II

or an IBM.

And

I'm trying to remember.

John Lynn had an Apple II, but John Wolfe

had an IBM clone.

And it was very hard for me to decide because both had different games.

Apple II had

Track and Field, where to run, you had to hit the spacebar all the time.

I'm still really good at that.

And then John Wolf had a game.

It may have been Castle Wolfenstein, The Orig.

But in any case,

the reason that I was leaning towards an IBM PC at the time

was

the keys were clickier.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Those clicky keys that had the really good key action.

Click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

Bounce right back up.

Not to brag, but

you got clicky keys?

Yeah, I got clicky keys, homie.

You got a clicky key, a special clicky key keyboard?

Yeah, but don't email me clicky key enthusiasts because now it's like a thing where you build your own clicky keys and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'm not that deep.

I just found it at a thrift store.

Yeah, but do email him, clicky key mesophonia sufferers.

Anyway, I was about to press the clicky key on the side of IBM PC.

But then a young John Hodgman, then in 1984,

spending a weekend with my mom's old nursing school comrade, Eleanor Clifford, out there in Worcester, Massachusetts.

I'm watching television.

The sports game is on.

I don't care.

An ad comes on television directly by Ridley Scott.

The famous 1984 Apple computer ad introducing the Macintosh.

And I said, that's for me.

And so my fate was born.

I told my father, please get me a Macintosh computer.

And he said, of course, son, you are my master.

That's not exactly how it worked.

I had an Apple II, John.

I had an Apple II Plus.

Yeah, not to brag.

One step off.

When I asked for a computer, my mom had a computer nerd friend.

And they went to a computer show to buy it used because my mom couldn't afford to buy it new.

And this was a few years.

This was after the launch of the Macintosh that I had an Apple II.

But

that was the last Apple computer that I used regularly.

I later attended a middle school

where all the other kids had...

apples and it forever cemented in my head the unfair idea that Macs are for rich kids.

Sorry,

I'm like an android in Westworld.

What you just said means nothing to me.

I couldn't even, it was like garbled clicky keys or something.

I don't even, was that even language?

They're great computers.

Wonderful computers.

So for our non-middle-aged audience, Jesse was making reference to a series of ads that I was very lucky to be a part of for Apple Computer between 2006 and January 2010.

That was our last shooting day.

Ooh, I remember it.

In which I played the personification of the PC, Mr.

Clicky Keys, and Justin Long played the personification of the Mac computer.

And, you know, when they hired me for this ad, I'm like, I have to be the Mac.

I have this whole story about Clicky Keys and

seeing the ad.

They're like, no, we actually want a young, good-looking person to do it.

Like, oh, I guess that makes sense.

Time in my life, greatest job, one of the greatest jobs I ever had, aside from podcasting with you, Jesse Thorne, and all of you listeners.

And

I was just talking with Justin on his podcast, Life is Short.

We had a really lovely conversation talking about that time in our life.

And I kept saying to Justin kept making jokes.

And I'm like, I'm not going to make a joke about those ads because I want to do them again.

For a decade, I have been waiting every day for the call.

And then two Sundays ago, it happened.

They called me up.

They said, shave your fat face, John.

We need you.

You're going in.

So delightful and weird and surreal.

I mean, it's very, very, you know, I wish Justin had been there.

I wish Phil Morrison had been there, but they just needed a little PC cameo for their most recent Apple keynote.

And so

here I am now talking to you on Zoom with, I'm desperately trying to grow this beard back.

And desperately trying to dispense justice.

Oh!

All right.

Let's clicky key our way to a good segue.

Here's something from Sam.

He says, my wife and I were recently at home trying to figure out what to eat for lunch.

For dinner the previous night, I made Marcela Hazan's bolognese, which takes quite a bit of time, effort, and care.

I assumed we would have the leftovers for dinner and could just make eggs or something for lunch.

My wife thought we should have the bolognese and found my reluctance bewildering.

For me, lunch is a utilitarian meal, whereas dinner is to be savored and enjoyed.

To eat the bolognaise for lunch instead of dinner would have been basically wasting it.

My wife's argument was that we were hungry, there was good food in the house, and we should eat it no matter the meal.

Who's right?

I just, first of all, I have to comment on Sam's contempt for eggs.

Just have eggs or something for lunch.

I eat scrambled eggs anytime.

Jesse, it's coming up on lunchtime there in Los Angeles for you.

Do you have an idea of what you're going to have for lunch?

Yeah, I'm going to eat my leftovers from last night.

It's not an uncommon thing to do.

Last night I went to my favorite restaurant, La Abeja on Figaro Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.

Yeah.

Picked up my favorite meal from that restaurant, brought it home, ate half of it,

and saved the rest for lunch the next day.

I mean, to my mind, there are two ways of looking at this, right?

Like there is the question of

whether.

I understand the distinction that Sam is offering between dinner being,

it's typically a more social meal at least in the United States

it's typically a bigger production than lunch at least in the United States

but

I wonder if there can't be an argument made for leftovers being the easy lift

you know rather than being the special fans being the utility play as it were yeah yeah exactly yeah I mean I hear you Sam, that lunch is utilitarian, and there's a nobility in that.

I think that's true.

I mean, lunch

is not merely a caloric refuel in the middle of the day, but an emotional refuel, an emotionally stabilizing break between your morning work and your afternoon works.

And I would argue that you're right, Sam, that while dinner is enjoyed in the company of others, and you can get away with that at lunch too, like the best lunches I've ever had, I've been alone, staring into the middle distance, just vegging out.

Lonely sandwiches.

Lonely sandwiches.

The best.

But I will say, and I think you're right on this, Jesse, that the kind of lingering sort of late social dinner that you savor with a glass of wine, Italian style,

hospitaliano kind of thing, Sam?

When you're here, your family, that whole story.

That whole story.

Guess what, Sam?

You're wrong and the olive garden is wrong.

Because when you go to the olive garden, I know that that's not your idea, Sam, of a, of an Italian-style late-lingering dinner.

But if you were to go to Italy and have an Italian-style late-lingering dinner, pasta would be this tiny part of it.

It wouldn't just be a bunch of bolognese in a bowl.

It's named for the bowl.

Did you know that?

It's called bowl style.

It's Italian for bowl style.

In the style of the bowl.

No, you just have the antipasti and the contorno and the second.

Look, I don't know the Italian.

Just little plates of snacks and meat spread out over the night.

And one of them is pasta a little bit because if you're a grown-up like me, you can't shove that amount of pasta down your body anymore.

You know what's utilitarian, Jesse.

I'm waiting for you.

Thank you.

Pasta is utilitarian.

How hot is it?

Pasta is how hot it is.

Pasta is a workhorse, Sam.

Now, look, before I was the PC,

before my life was changed by Jon Stewart kidnapping me and putting me on television and then putting me in front of Apple computer and changing everything, I would write about

food and non-wine alcohol for Men's Journal magazine.

That's probably the nation's most prominent and prestigious magazine about men journaling.

Yeah, it's the basis of the film Ratatouille.

That's right.

Since I can't eat pasta, I get to read a lot about it today for you, Sam.

And here's what I confirmed in my own memory.

Pasta, it's paste.

It's literally, that's what it means, paste.

Paste of water and flour and egg.

And in the 17th century in Naples, when aristocrats were selling off wheat but hoarding meat, macaroni was not a fancy dinner.

Macaroni was a survival tool and commonly known as a beggar's food.

See the painting Macaroni Eaters by Domenica Gargiolo,

a 17th century native of Naples,

showing people literally eating pasta off the street.

Like picking it up off the floor.

What about the sauce?

Well, Bolognese sauce, of course, is not a sauce.

And it's not named for the bowl.

It's named for bologna.

It's a ragu, like the French ragu.

It's a stew, or more specifically a braise.

You look at the Marcela Hazan variation on the classic bolognese ragu from the New York Times cooking website, which I did, and you'll see what's happening here.

Simple ingredients.

Simple.

Sofrito of onion, celery, and carrot, and then meat, minced beef and pork, traditionally braised in milk, white wine, crushed tomatoes, and then simmered for hours.

As you point out, for hours, a lot of care and time.

But you're simmering it for hours not to be fancy, but because you are getting those flavors and texture to slowly meld and braise.

And then you serve it over pasta, specifically tagliatelle.

Now, Bologna is not Naples, right?

That's where the macaroni eaters live, Naples.

Bologna is about 298 miles north of Naples, as the crow flies.

Or

576 kilometers driving.

You do the math, because I guess Google Maps won't.

And Naples, of course, has its own ragu, the Neapolitan ragu,

which is no cream, red wine, ad basil, lots of tomato sauce.

That's like the classic tomato sauce, the ancestor of the Italian-American Sunday gravy, and meat, obviously, but not minced.

Big chunks of chuck roast and pork and other big chunks of thrifty meat cuts.

Because why do we braise?

We braise, we cook low and slow in liquid to break down collagen into gelatin.

That's braising.

So we take cheaper cuts of meat and we make them tender, right?

It's economical.

Or in the case of Bologna, where the meat is already minced,

I would imagine that it's just to make a little bit of comparatively expensive meat go much further to enhance that super cheap utilitarian paste called pasta.

This is what a braise is.

It's like chili.

It's like New England pot roast.

It is the ancient Italian way to stretch a lira.

Slow does not mean fancy Sam.

Ask anyone at a barbecue pit.

Bolognese is a humble utilitarian food mothered by necessity into something absolutely transcendent and amazing.

I agree with you.

And I think after all that work, there's an extra amount of pleasure in knowing that tomorrow, I don't have to do it again.

I can just get up, take the leftovers, heat it up in 10 minutes, and eat it.

Just incredibly debauched almost, and it's pleasure.

And it's going to taste better the next day because braises always do, just like burrito stumps, right, Jesse?

Yep.

Marinette stump.

Got a marriage stump.

So I think

last night's bolognese sauce is a perfect lunch for a cold afternoon, especially when your nerves are fried by global uncertainty and your waistline's already been blown by quarantine.

Go for it.

And then you're going to have those eggs for dinner because breakfast for dinner is the best dinner.

And that's the recipe for a perfect day.

But guess what, Jesse?

What?

Thank you.

How hot is it?

This is a hot.

This is going to be a hot take.

You ready for it?

How hot is it?

It's hot as three hours of simmered bolognese.

I'm finding it in Sam's favor.

Even though he's wrong

and his wife's idea is perfectly fine and reasonable,

the reason that I find in his favor is because, unless I'm misreading his letter, he is the one who made this thing.

I made Marcella Hassan's bolognese.

And just like the driver of the card gets to pick the music,

the person who makes the bolognaise doles it out.

If you want to save that thing for dinner, that's fair.

That's his labor in there.

But next time, Sam's wife, you want a quick bolognese for lunch the next day, you make it yourself.

It's fun.

It's good.

I'm going to make it this weekend.

Let's take a break.

More items on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast, always brought to you by you, the members of maximumfun.org.

Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org slash join.

And you can join them by going to maximumfun.org slash join.

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 John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

I've got something here from Kevin.

My wife and I welcomed our first child, Thomas, into the world in March, right at the start of the pandemic.

He is a bundle of joy.

When I'm holding Thomas and he drops his pacifier, I will often pick it up with my toes and put it back in his mouth.

My wife thinks this is gross.

I'm generally clean and hygienic, but understand where she's coming from.

I argue that because of the pandemic, Thomas is not getting a normal level of exposure to other children and their microbiomes, which would normally aid development of a healthy immune system.

Come on, dude.

He needs exposure to outside micro stuff where he can get it, even if it's my feet.

We would appreciate your medically unprofessional opinion on this matter.

All right.

We're recording this in November.

Time still has meaning, right?

So, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October.

No, this is an eight-month-old baby.

Yeah.

Got you.

Jesse, I have a question.

You have a bunch of children.

Yeah.

Were pacifiers part of their growing up?

A little bit, but not much.

No.

Not a huge amount.

Did they ever have different names for their pacifiers?

Like Passy or Yub Yub.

Or Yub Yub, the classic Ewok cry of victory over the Emperor.

Yub Yub.

Yub Yub.

Sorry, I started singing the night court theme.

You know what?

There's an overlap, and there's a mashup to be made.

There were actually, just as there are lyrics to the odd couple theme song,

there were lyrics to the night court theme song, and they were all in Ewok language.

Ewokies, sure.

There is a mashup to be made between the Night Court theme song and the original Ewok victory song before they changed the music for the re-release.

And any listener who wants to put that together and spend their time that way will be thanked by me, but not paid.

Yeah.

Our son called his pacifier a fafa because that was his word for flower and it looked like flour.

Cool.

Pretty adorable.

That's great.

I'm just making sure that if he is listening to this podcast, that he'll never listen again.

Can I say something cute that my kid did last night?

Yes.

Uh, my son, Frankie, who's three, yeah, finished a beverage

and asked for another one, but it was shortly before bed.

So, my wife, Teresa, didn't want to give him another drink

and you know, to keep his sheets clean and so forth.

And uh, so she said, Not right now, sweetie.

And he said, What

a body needs two dinks,

it's science,

It's science.

It's science.

It's science.

A body needs two dinks.

Do you know what, Jesse?

What?

I have two butts.

And I'll tell you about them in a second.

Okay.

But first to this case.

So first thing I wanted to ask, I'm neither a bacteriologist nor am I a pediatrician.

Obviously, I looked up the five-second rule, the rule about if something falls on the floor and it's less than five seconds, you can go ahead and eat it.

So safe to put in your mouth.

And it's a myth.

The five-second rule is a myth.

Bacteria can totally get onto that fafa within five seconds.

No question.

No question.

And

yes, according to Dr.

Aaron Carroll's 2016 piece in the New York Times, he's a bacteriologist.

It's actually also true that the kitchen floor is much cleaner, bacterial colony-wise, than many other places, including the kitchen counter, and especially the refrigerator handle.

Don't drop your fafa on the refrigerator handle.

That was a famous ragtime tune.

So, basically speaking,

I think Thomas the Baby will live by this practice.

But I have two butts.

Do you want to hear the first butt?

Let's talk about your big butt.

Let's talk about my two butts.

Thomas the Baby's too young to get this joke.

Thomas the Baby, when your father plays this for you when you're about five, hearing us talk about our two dinks and two butts, you're going to have a great time.

But butt number one is this.

My first but is that while Googling the five-second rule, I accidentally found out about a different five-second rule, which I had never heard of, Jesse Thorne.

Have you ever heard of this self-help book called the Five-Second Rule?

No.

Okay.

First of all, it's a cuckoo name

for a self-help book because it's obviously a reference to eating food off the floor.

So if you were,

if you were like, my self-help book is called the five-second rule, everyone would think, you mean I should only be eating food off the floor after five seconds?

No.

This is by Mel Robbins.

It's a real book.

And the five-second rule, this is a quote.

The five-second rule is simple.

If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within five seconds or your brain will kill it.

The moment you feel a desire to act on a goal or a commitment, use the rule, move within five seconds.

If you do not take action on your instinct to change, you will stay stagnant.

Now, listen, I know Thomas the Baby is listening.

I know there are some young people listening.

I'm sure my son has turned this off now because I embarrassed him about his fafa.

This is a family-friendly podcast, and I don't often swear on it.

But

for this guy, Mel Robbins, I have some choice words, which is this.

Fornicate you, dude.

Five seconds?

I gotta work on an impulse in in five seconds or i'm lost forever look around you buddy i know you probably didn't write this during a global pandemic but if there's one thing the global pandemic made us realize is whoa take it down a thousand well we can we can slow it down a bit

there's nothing good that's come out of this pandemic except for a moment that we've all had to reflect on our values and what we want the world to be in the new and better normal.

And one of the values that I really value is, yeah, you can take seven seconds to act on an idea physically.

You can even take eight seconds or in eight days.

I just saw Jennifer Marmer's dog in the background.

That was very cute.

Always nice to see George.

Yeah, George is definitely A, eating off the floor within five seconds, and B, acting on a five-second impulse for the most part, I would imagine.

But we don't have to be this way.

All right, now, butt number two.

My butt number two is that while it is probably safe

to suck on that floor fafa

that has been picked up by your dad's toes, Thomas the baby,

probably that's safe.

It's definitely gross.

Right, Jesse?

That's gross.

I love it.

You love him picking up the fafa with his toes?

Yeah, it makes me think of like my...

My weird hippie friends from college that had circus skills.

Well, that's what this is about, isn't it?

And lives in yurts.

It makes me think of not your weird hippie friends from college, but the weird hippie friends with the devil sticks in the middle of the quad in my college and the hacky sackers and the society for creative anachronismers

picking up with his toes.

That bummed me out.

Show-offs.

A bunch of show-offs.

That's what I called them.

Quietly to myself.

I guess because I can't do the devil sticks.

All right, I tried it once.

It wasn't.

It did not work.

And I cannot.

I am no good in

the hack, no good.

I guess what bothers, like the grossness of picking it up with his toes is less gross, is gross to me, but less gross than this spinning up this whole argument about Thomas the baby needs exposure to microbiomes.

Because that's absolutely true about children, that they need to eat some dirt, right, to develop their immune systems.

But I don't know at eight months if that's when they need to be doing it.

I'm not a pediatrician.

I could be wrong here.

I encourage you to write me a letter.

I will read the first 25 words of it.

But more to the point, that's just, you're just

rationalizing that after the fact because you want to show off your circus skills, Kevin.

Yeah, that's true.

This is obviously a post hoc rationalization,

not a carefully considered system.

He fell.

He didn't feel like taking a hand off the baby, and he knew that he had monkey feet.

So he went down there, picked it up, and then he came up with a scheme retroactively.

Yeah.

You know, and by the way, that's not helping his biome.

He's getting plenty of dead skin cells from you, Kevin.

Thomas, the baby is all up in your dead skin cells all the time.

Doesn't need your toe jam just to feel healthy.

You're right.

Absolutely, Jesse.

It's an ad hoc rationalization.

Parenting involves some seriously gross stuff.

And if your partner says that's gross to me, you don't need to add to the grossness.

There's going to be a lot of two dinks and two butt contacts for years in your house with this baby.

Just don't gross them out.

But, you know, look,

if a fawfall falls and no one's there to see it except for Thomas the baby and Kevin and it gets picked up by some toes,

who's to know?

None the wiser.

Just don't do stuff that grosses your partner out.

I've actually done a little research into

health with babies and children.

Yeah.

And I found that there's really only one immutable rule.

There's a lot of disagreement on a lot of different things.

The one immutable rule is that a body needs two dinks.

It's just science.

It's science.

Here's something from Lizzie.

My boyfriend Trev has five cast iron pans.

Five dinks.

We have only one kitchen cupboard and nowhere to put them.

Please order him to get rid of at least two of them.

Early next year, we'll be moving on to a sailboat, with even less kitchen space than we currently have in our studio cottage.

But even if that weren't the case, I would suggest that five cast irons is more than what we need.

We're making cookies tonight, so all the cast irons that usually live inside the oven are out on top of the stove.

The hot tray of fresh cookies is currently balanced on the left front burner in a fairly upsetting manner.

In the spirit of keeping this concise and specific, I won't get into all the other kitchen appliances we don't have space for.

So

I wanted these folks for a live case because I really, you know, I love cast iron pans, as do you, Jesse Thorne.

And I wanted to hear all of Trev's arguments for why each cast iron pan is essential, because I'm willing to hear them.

And I'd probably be inclined to believe those arguments.

But Trev

declined to participate.

Well, I'm still going to judge them.

And luckily, I got some more information out of Lizzie.

She sent me a photo.

Do you have this photo of the cast iron pans and the cookie sheet precariously balanced?

Yeah, I'm taking a look here.

Wait.

Okay, so.

I want to be clear.

When she said that he had five cast iron pans.

my immediate assumption was, like, for example, I have three cast iron pans

and a griddle.

So I have four in total.

Yeah.

I have, and that's not counting enameled cast iron because I have a Dutch oven.

Right.

But I have a big one,

a little one,

a grill pan.

Yeah.

you know, with raised ridges on it, and

a griddle.

Right.

Right.

I think that's pretty reasonable.

They put the griddle to make pancakes or whatever.

It fits very comfortably

in the cabinet because it's flat.

So immediately, when she said he has five cast iron pans, I said to myself, well, geez, I mean, maybe

he's got a giant one, a meaty one, and a little one, and then he's got a this and he's got a that, and he's got a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'm thinking of different cast iron pans he might have that have different uses.

He appears to have four of the same

plus a cookie sheet.

I think the cookie sheet is not in dispute here.

That's for cookie sheeting.

That's just a cookie sheet.

That's just an illustration.

Wait, five.

Yeah, one, two, three, four, five.

All five of these cast iron pans are identical.

Yeah.

By looks, it looks like one of them is...

So I see three that look like lodge cast iron pans

in the contemporary style, which has a little handle on the opposite side of the big handle for lifting if you're not strong enough to lift it just by the one handle conveniently.

And then there's two that maybe don't have that handle, so they might be a different brand or a different, you know,

slightly different style.

They all look like they're, if not exactly the same size, almost exactly the same size.

They are.

So what, in what situation is this man?

He's got a four-burner stove.

This is not a big, you know, Viking range like in a condo that just got built that's being sold to some, you know, yuppie that doesn't cook.

Yeah.

This is just a little apartment stove.

Honestly, we can see in this picture that the four identical 12-inch or whatever the standard size is pans

would not even fit on this four-burner stove simultaneously, even if you wanted them to.

No, and they live in the oven.

You know, that's because that's their storage solution.

And, you know, here's the thing.

You know, so I saw this photo, too, and I realized two things.

First of all, I understand why Trev did not want to defend himself live.

Because this is indefensible.

And two, I still needed more information because there's one lodge pan that's upside down on top of the other.

So I wrote to Lizzie, and this is breaking news, breaking chews, as they say on the Doughboys.

I wrote to Lizzie and I said, I need more information.

What are all the manufacturers of these pans?

Because I wanted to know if maybe he's a collector.

Does he have some vintage Griswolds or Wagner's that he's really into that are like old ones or whatever?

And what are their sizes?

Like, I just need to know what I'm seeing here.

And she explained, first of all, that the cast iron pan that's turned over on top of the other, that's actually a Dutch oven.

with a cast iron pan lid, which I've never seen in the history of Lodge cast iron.

In other words,

yeah, I mean, it's a cool idea, but the, but underneath that, there's an actual Dutch oven, it's not just a pan, it's a Dutch oven, it's a deep pan.

So, in other words, that item is all that he needs.

Basically, yeah.

And then the other thing she said, the other thing she said was they were all lodge, and Lodge is a wonderful historic cast iron pan manufacturer.

I've got two lodge pans myself.

I do not need any more.

You know, but there's not a collector's element to this at all.

She also said they're all 12 12 inches except for the one on the far side, which is a nine-inch one.

And

then she said something else.

I forgot we have a sixth,

which is a little tiny one for a single egg.

That actually, I like the sixth.

I like the sixth one.

I like the little tiny one for a single egg.

That makes me feel better about Trev's pan collection.

That one does seem more convenient to wield in an act of home defense.

Yeah, although sometimes you need to make a little single egg, especially if you're living on a sailboat, which you're moving on to.

Trev,

Jesse Thorne is correct.

Your Dutch oven,

this thing that you have, which is apparently a lodge Dutch oven that uses another inverted lodge cast iron pan as a lid, if this is an actual product, I think it's cool and you should keep it.

If this is just your life hack, because you noticed that the pan actually works as a lid on the Dutch oven, now you're thinking like a guy who's got to live on a sailboat where space is very limited.

And honestly, you should probably be trying to minimize the amount of heavy cast iron in your life as much as possible because you're on a boat.

Yeah, let's talk buoyancy here.

Yeah.

But if these are, if this is not a collection, but simply a horde of identical lodge cast iron pans, I'm saying you get rid of the nine inch, you get rid of those two 12 inches, you keep the cast iron Dutch oven, the 12-inch pan that goes on top of that one, and then keep that egg one just as a souvenir, as a tip of the hat for me,

from one cast iron person as another, and an apology for raking you across the coals here.

I mean, is this guy a line cook?

When are the times that he's cooking

more, like John?

Yeah.

You're a serious home cook, right?

You know, you're the cook of your family.

Right.

You know, you do a lot of cooking at home.

what is the most number of pans

you have going at the same time?

Two.

For me, yeah, two.

For me, it's two.

Like, I definitely am capable of having two things going at once.

I'll have, you know, the green beans cooking while I'm cooking a protein in a pan.

But that's certainly the limit.

There's no way that I've got three pans of food going at the same time.

Maybe I've got a soup on a back burner or something while I've got a protein and

green beans cooking in pan.

But that soup might be in your Dutch oven.

That's not going to be in a pan.

Exactly.

Exactly.

You're not making a pan soup.

Or in this stew pot that's also in the picture.

Right.

Yeah, I would say in a large kitchen, three cast iron pans would probably be ideal.

I do have a third.

It needs a refinishing.

And I wouldn't get rid of it because even though our kitchen is a little bit challenged for space, because there does come a time, specifically like around the holidays, where it's like, oh, I got to roast all these Brussels sprouts or whatever.

And cast iron pans are really good as roasting pans, as casserole pans, as chicken roasting pans.

They take up a lot of the work that a sheet pan, like a cookie sheet pan might do while also taking up three times the space.

But

I would say

if you have a kitchen that can support three cast iron pans, go for it.

This kitchen cannot.

and that sailboat cannot as well.

I also was curious as to whether all these pans were in use.

And I asked Lizzie to describe two things.

One,

how does Trev cook?

And what does he use the pans for?

And two,

when and why are they moving onto the sailboat?

And I asked her to explain these things to me in a couple of sentences.

And here's what she wrote.

This just came through the wire live while recording.

We use the two 12-inch pans for the majority of our everyday cooking.

Boom, right there.

There you go.

That's it.

Both stovetop in the oven.

Exactly.

Trev uses the Dutch oven and frequently to bake bread.

Once we fried chicken in the deep pan.

Yep, fair.

Trev also uses the 9-inch to cook things in his small pizza oven because the 12-inch won't fit in there.

Guess what?

You don't have a pizza oven on your sailboat.

Or you can choose.

You can choose to either have a sailboat with no pizza oven or a sailboat that's on fire.

You can pick.

We've never used the very tiny one.

We will be moving onto the boat permanently in May of 2021.

It's been the dream we've been working toward for the last five years to buy a boat, live on it, and sail it around the world while working remotely.

The plan is to head down the California coast next summer and into the Sea of Cortez next fall.

From there, we don't have a solid plan, but will most likely be heading west across the Pacific in some capacity.

We anticipate the trip will take about three years, but haven't put any hard time limit on it.

This is where my therapist retired.

To go on a sailboat?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm glad you've got your life priorities in order.

I'm not fixed yet.

Well,

I mean, it's not something you can do with children, and it's definitely something you can only do

with two cast iron bands.

You cannot, you got to be, you got to stick and move, as Paula Poundstone used to say.

You got to drive a light.

I want to mention that Lizzie was kind enough to send a picture of her looking super cool on the sailboat in sunglasses alongside a super cool dog who's also wearing sunglasses.

It's an incredible dog.

What a great dog.

I would like to mention that your plan to, you know, to go around the world on a sailboat is,

you know,

it's not in everybody's reach to do that, obviously.

But if you have a big, inspiring

get away from it all change of life that you're contemplating and you're young and you have few ties and you can try to do it, try to reach out and grab it.

I think that trip is a good thing.

Especially if your dog already has the sunglasses.

Exactly right.

I think that Lizzie's description of that trip sounds really amazing.

What it did not sound like was one or two sentences.

That was a lot of sentences, Lizzie.

Please, everybody, keep your emails short.

But bon voyage.

And

Trev, even though you wouldn't be on this podcast, I wish you the very...

Maybe it's a superstition to wish a sailor good luck.

Don't drop your pans in the ocean.

And John, if I learned anything from watching the public television show The Voyage of the Mimi,

if you get stranded

on a deserted island with the rest of the crew of your whale-watching ship,

you have to put a tarpaulin up on a stick and then collect the condensation that comes down the tarpaulin for fresh water.

If I learned anything from

season seven of Below Deck Mediterranean, is Captain Sandy really didn't give Chef Kiko a chance.

Yeah.

So let's take a break now that we've learned our lessons.

When we come back, we'll talk about anti-LGBTQ restaurant chains.

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 Lum.

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.

Here's a question about morality and Chick-fil-A from Ken.

For many years, I avoided even trying a certain southern fast food chain's legendary fried chicken sandwich because of that chain's anti-LGBTQ stance and politics.

Finally, I decided it was okay.

to try Chick-fil-A as long as I donate at least double the cost of the meal to the Trevor Project every time I eat said evil chicken.

And as predicted, I loved this evil chicken.

Is it okay to eat at Chick-fil-A provided that I donate to a worthy cause that seeks to undo their societal damage?

First of all, if you don't know, Chick-fil-A is a chain of fried chicken sandwich shops.

Their owners have a set of values that devalue human beings who are LGBTQ or otherwise.

They publicly came out against same-gender marriage, and they contributed a lot of money to a bunch of different questionable religious charities

that people in the LGBTQ community rightfully thought

to humanize them.

And so Chick-fil-A became kind of a cultural touchstone now almost a decade ago.

I didn't realize it was quite so long ago that this really flared up in the culture where there was a boycott of Chick-fil-A and then a counter-boycott, or I should say,

a defense of Chick-fil-A by Mike Huckabee, I think then the governor of Arkansas,

encouraging people to eat there to stand up for quote-unquote family values, whatever.

You mean legendary comedian, Mike Huckabee?

Legendary Twitter comedian Mike Huckabee.

So that's what's going on with Chick-fil-A if you didn't know it.

Now, Jesse, can you speak to the Trevor Project?

Yeah, the Trevor Project is one of the most notable LGBTQ

charities in the United States.

And my understanding is that one of its main emphases is to help prevent suicide among young LGBTQ people.

Yeah, that's correct.

So this is a very valuable thing, and I'm going to go ahead and make a donation to it today

because I had Chick-fil-A.

I've never had Chick-fil-A in my mouth, but I had its name in my mouth for a while, and I don't like the taste of it.

Have you ever had a Chick-fil-A thing?

I did.

I had it once before

this situation arose.

People love it.

Thought it was okay.

Yeah, I mean, I don't.

I don't get it.

I don't get it.

For me, I have to say that

I have no emotional or

no emotional attachment to and no cravings for any

fast food chain foods.

It just wasn't a big part of my childhood.

Right.

It's not a big part of my adult life.

Like, I like eating In-N-Out, but it's not like if In-N-Out disappeared off the face of the earth, it would really mess up my life.

It's something I eat every other month, maybe.

And basically everywhere else, I eat never.

So, yeah, it's just not a big thing for me to like long for a Chick-fil-A sandwich.

Like, I live in a a city where there are 42 better fried chicken sandwiches that I could get at any time.

Yeah.

I mean,

there's a lot of fried chicken sandwiches you can eat.

I'm going to go hit up the oinkster tonight.

There you go.

I mean, the thing with Ken, though, and this is kind of part of the mythology of Chick-fil-A, is that, you know, Ken had never had a Chick-fil-A before in their life.

And

then

Ken decided to try try it, sort of bought a carbon offset by donating to the Trevor Project and said it was incredible and is now thinking about having another one.

To me,

I don't get how it could be that good.

I've never had a Chick-fil-A.

I have, and it was fine.

I mean, like, it's better than most stuff that you would get at an airport.

Right.

Well, back in the, you know, back before I knew about this controversy, there mostly it wasn't available to me being a child of New England, a region in the northeast of the United States and the southeast of Canada.

But then, you know, once it was a controversy and I was traveling more through the south and I would stroll, I would never eat there.

I would stroll righteously right past the Chick-fil-A as I would then go to board an airplane and burn a lot of fossil fuels.

Like I get, it's pretty, it's hard to avoid moral implication when living in a capitalist society.

I still use Instagram, for example.

And Judge John Hodgman has a really fun, active, supportive Facebook group, even though Facebook and Facebook owned, you know, Instagram is owned by Facebook and that company has done a lot of things to kind of undermine civilization recently.

But, you know, it's hard to extricate yourself morally.

But I kind of feel like, in this case, it's pretty clear, Ken.

You know, first of all, donating to the Trevor Project is a good unto itself.

You can do that without eating a Chick-fil-A.

And frankly, I feel like, unlike

travel and social media and that sort of thing,

there's a difference between generally, a company generally being bad for humanity, kind of in the aggregate,

or where it's sort of a kind of evil trade-off, versus a company that holds beliefs that some people do not deserve full humanity in the first place.

So that's why I'm not going to go eat another Chick-fil-A.

I don't blame you, Ken, for trying this out and offsetting it with a donation to the Trevor Project.

You explored that taboo, and now you know what it is.

But But I do not think continuing to donate to the Trevor Project is ultimately going to offset the clear moral choice here, which is to just go find another chicken sandwich.

There are a lot of them.

That's it.

Dockets clear.

Our producer, Jennifer Marmer, you can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

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Make sure to hashtag your judgejohnhodgman tweets, hashtag jjho, and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit.

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