Die Flederhaus

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne, and with me is Judge John Hodgman from Brooklyn, New York City.

Yeah, that's where I am.

I am also, like you, Jesse Thorne, in the past, like all podcasts, we record these a little bit ahead of time.

And so we are recording this the week before Election Day.

We do not know the outcome of the election, certainly in the past, and maybe there in the future when you're listening to this, you still don't know.

I hope you do, though.

But since the future is uncertain,

we thought maybe this would be a good time to break the settled law, the nostalgia is a toxic impulse, and take comfortable refuge in the past with one of our most beloved episodes.

This is the one where when people ask me for an example of what Judge John Hodgman is, this story is the story I tell them.

It's the Bat brothers.

From 2012, eight years ago, eight years, these brothers have been pinging around inside my mind.

Yeah, Adam and Noah share a home that they bought together out of foreclosure.

And the problem is that it's invested with bats.

And Adam and Noah have very different ideas of how to deal with the bats.

I have to say, John, in retrospect,

the element of this amazing tale that sticks with me the most, the one that comes back to me more often than any other, has nothing to do with bats flying into bathrooms.

It's merely that as

a resident of a large coastal city where homes cost $1.5 million, I often think of the Bat brothers buying a giant house to save money.

That's right.

So enjoy this trip into the past.

This is going all the way back to 2012.

As Jennifer Marmor pointed out, pre-mustache logo, Judge John Hodgman, the old stuff.

A wonderful vintage episode of Judge John Hodgman that should, I hope, bring you pleasure no matter how you're feeling right now, you in the future.

So without further ado, let's get to the courtroom.

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week's case, Der Flieder Haus.

Noah and his brother Adam got a deal on a house in foreclosure, and now they live there together while they're slowly fixing it up.

The issue is that the house is infested with bats that slip through the cracks in the bathroom walls.

Noah is disturbed by the bats' presence, I can't imagine why, and prefers to avoid them at all costs by shutting them into the bathroom.

Adam thinks Noah is being a wimp and should confront the bats head-on.

How should they deal with their flying mammal problem?

Only one man can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom.

Justice!

Justice!

Bat justice!

Jesse, would you please just check and make sure the courtroom is free from bats and snakes?

snakes?

I'm not going to check.

Okay, swear them in, but I'm going to continue to wear my helmet.

What do you think I am, the bailiff?

Please stand and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God, or whatever?

Yes.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he himself has been known as a creature of the night?

Oh, even more so.

Sure.

Very well.

Judge Hodgman.

Okay, you are both brothers, Noah and Adam.

Noah is the plaintiff bringing the case.

Noah, are you the older or younger brother, please?

The older.

You are the older brother.

And you two live together in a house that was foreclosed, and there is a problem with bats.

Noah?

Yes.

Why don't you tell me more about the problem with bats?

Well, the fact that they're here is probably the biggest problem.

They shouldn't be in a house.

All right, let me look.

They should be in a cave.

Let me get a little bit more information of the house.

Is your house a house that is built upside down, hanging under the bridge in Austin, Texas, the largest urban bat colony in the world?

No, but I do know April 1st is going to be very interesting for them.

Why is that?

Because

they're known in some cultures and Native American cultures as a trickster god.

No, more about the Today in Ragnarok

entry where the bats are going to be screaming, nesting in visitors' hair, begging for asylum.

That part's a little worrisome.

You are making reference to my book, That Is All.

I have to.

Is this Noah speaking now?

Yes.

All right, I reject your pandering.

Mark him down.

Mark him down one on the justice scale.

That's down, minus one for you.

Pandering.

That's fine.

I'll accept it.

Is that an actual scale?

It is.

It's the scales of justice.

All right.

All right.

Take Take one off for the other brother, too, Noah.

No, for Adam.

Take one off for Adam.

One.

It's a scale of justice, and it's piled high with bats on both sides.

And as you offend me, I will take a bat away.

And the other party will be closer to justice.

This is how it was done in colonial times by witches in witch court.

Now listen to me.

Tell me more about the house.

It is is not on the underside of a bridge in Austin, Texas.

Where is it located?

In Paola, Kansas.

Okay, and it's a house that was foreclosed

several times as far as I understand.

Okay, and

describe the house to me?

A small two-story house with,

well, holes where there shouldn't be.

Mainly this.

bathroom area is an unfinished room where we have kind of insulation nailed up and things, but it's a lot of wind and things have access to that area.

And is it your belief that the bats are living inside the house or just coming inside the house?

I hear them in the walls, so I'm thinking that they are at least here most of the time.

And you two are brothers, is that correct?

Yes.

And are you ghost hunters?

No, we haven't had ghosts yet.

Okay, we're okay.

Describe to me the reality television show that you were shooting where the two brothers

buy up foreclosed bat-infested homes and live in there together.

What show is that?

Is that on HGTV?

Is that Bat Brothers?

Is that you?

Not yet, but it sounds like a good pitch.

Okay, why are you doing this to yourselves?

Why are you living together in a bat-infested home?

It was cheap.

Are you from Kansas originally?

Yes.

Yes.

I had been overseas for a bit, and

my brother and parents had bought this house, and when I came back, I've kind of moved in.

Although, I guess the bats were here first, so maybe I'm the problem.

And how much did this depressing haunted home with holes in the walls and bats all over the place cost you?

$27,000.

$27,000.

Well, it's not bad.

I don't know the Kansas haunted house real estate market particularly well, but that's a pretty good deal, huh?

Yeah.

Once you get rid of all the bats in this house and replace it with snakes, you're going to flip it.

And how much will you sell it for?

This is mostly just a living-in house.

We just took advantage of pre-flippers.

Okay.

If that's the term.

I got you.

Describe to me what it is like for you, Noah, when you are in the bathroom and a bat comes in.

If you've seen the evidence, the picture that I sent you, it's pretty much

fear-inducing and a lot of shrieking like a girl and running out of the room.

Well, you did send in evidence photographs of the bathroom.

I have a feeling that this is doctored evidence because there's a picture of, is that you?

Yes, I had one that was not doctored and one that was, just so you could compare.

First of all, it is never necessary for anyone to send me photographs of themselves sitting down in a bathroom.

Just put that down.

Take a bat off the scale for him.

Okay, second of all, you are staring at a doctored photograph of a gigantic bat with the head of the famous weekly World News bat boy on it.

That is not the problem, right?

And that is not real.

That is my emotional reaction to the situation.

Okay, take another bat off for doctoring photographs.

It's not looking good for you, Noah.

Oh, well.

Okay, so I do, but I mean, I do see these pictures of the bathroom, and they are terrifying, but not because of bats.

This is a grim scene.

What we have here is

it looks like a cabin made out of old boards with a

fiberglass insulation roof.

Some pieces pieces of drywall haphazardly stacked against one another to form a shower, a shower curtain, which, as far as I can tell, is

a navy blue towel clamped to something.

And then you have your.

And I don't think there's a single right angle in this photograph.

Everything, it's like a weird, gross lean-to that you're in.

It's a terror downer, is it not?

It was at one point.

It's slowly being resurrected.

Oh, so you are renovating it?

Yes, as money and things come in.

We're both students at the moment and not working, so it's kind of, that's why we haven't paid money to exercise the house of the bat problem.

What are you studying, Noah?

Instructional design and technology.

Okay, that's meaningless.

Adam, what are you studying?

Respiratory therapy.

Respiratory therapy?

Yeah.

Okay, so you're helping people in the world.

And you're the tough brother, obviously.

Noah, when you're in there sitting down in the bathroom, tell me about a bat coming in.

A real experience.

Yes, this was why I took it from that angle, just because that's what I was looking at.

Where the bat is at is approximately where it came out through the wall at the top there.

I have a picture here of the corner, the top corner above the shower.

where there is clearly a bat hole between the top of the wall and the piece of pink fiberglass that you are using as your roof right now.

Yes, that's where it had come out.

And I was

well occupied at the moment when it did.

And like I had mentioned the whole screaming and running part.

But, you know.

So tell me again, the bat starts coming out.

What color is the bat?

It was

at least a darkish brown to black.

I couldn't I would say a very dark brown probably.

So it was not a golden, a giant golden head fox bat?

With the weekly World News head?

No, that was just one that I'd found on a very quick Google image search.

And so when it crawled out, what did it do next?

It came straight from my face.

Did it look around and say, oh my god, it's gross in here?

Goodbye.

No, I think they were part of the renovation problem.

So, yeah,

I think they're used to it.

So it came straight at your face?

Really?

Well, that was kind of a if you see the picture, it was pretty much just a straight, that was just the first straight path for it to come at.

I don't want to talk about the picture anymore because we've established that the picture is phony.

Okay.

I mean, where I'm sitting.

You might as well have sent in a Thomas Nast engraving of a bat attacking a guy.

I don't care.

I want you to draw me a word picture that is accurate and not word photoshopped.

Do you understand?

Starting now.

Bat comes out.

Describe it to me narratively.

Okay, it was a smallish bat, probably about.

Start by saying it was a...

No, you don't know how.

I'm a professional writer.

Listen to me.

start by saying it was a dark and stormy night yes it was a dark and stormy night okay it wasn't actually but yes the bat crawled out it was probably it was after dusk probably when they were out feeding and moving around and i may have become lost trying to get out of the attic to go eat mosquitoes and whatnot i heard the rustling in the wall area that goes from the basement up through that shower

and then i it emerged from that area and flew straight towards me.

It then kind of just bounced around in that area until I was able to kind of jump out and run for the living room.

Did it bang its gross, mousy, greasy body against your face?

It did not.

Did it make any contact with you whatsoever?

No.

All right.

And what sound did you make as this was happening?

I don't know.

I think it's like the Confederate yell, that's where you can't really make it unless you're in that situation.

But I imagine it was very high-pitched and not very manly.

Okay, let's do it this way.

I'm a bat.

You make the sound.

That's the sound of my wings.

What?

Are you a bat, too?

No, that was the kind of eek that would come out.

Come on.

It's a very girlish.

Take another bat off the scale.

Don't Photoshop it.

Just do it.

What do you sound like when you scream?

We need to get a sense of this.

I don't scream enough to really be able to tell you what it was like.

It's probably like, whoa, okay.

Yeah.

All right.

So you weren't that scared.

Adam, describe to me the bat problem you have in your house.

Are there a lot of bats, or is this a one-time occurrence?

Approximately every three months, one comes out until I kill it.

What?

Okay.

One comes out every three months until you kill it.

Every three months, a bat emerges from the bathroom?

No.

I've had them come out through my room.

Basically, this house was originally built in around 1890, and then the people that added on to it just kind of put rooms in places.

One of my closets used to be the exterior.

So, like, there's siding inside the closet.

It's, you know, a hodgepodge house basically.

What's that supposed to mean, sir?

Like if you took two or three different houses and kind of put them together.

Oh a hodgepodge house?

Yeah.

Three bats off.

Take three bats.

It's a fensive wall.

Oh.

Fensive.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So it's basically the Winchester mystery house that you're living in.

Bunch of different rooms added on to one another.

There's no code observed when building it.

Doubtful.

Okay.

Let's take a quick break from this classic episode of Judge John Hodgman.

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 Quince.

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Yeah, I'm talking about entree bowls, but you know what?

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I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you what.

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Welcome back to a classic episode of Judge John Hodgman.

Let's go back into our time machine in 2012.

And so bats will emerge from any place once every three months or so.

And then describe to me,

what do you do?

How do you take care of these things?

I think the first time it happened, I was asleep and then I noticed a bat coming at me.

So I laid there trying to figure out if I was still asleep and then I got up and got a book and hit it.

And that's basically variations of that have happened.

Sometimes

basically any flat aerodynamic object becomes a cudgel.

And when you say the bat was coming at you...

Like,

was it crawling up your chest or was it fluttering around?

It just flew near enough to me to startle me.

Did it look like it was freaking out and was trying to get out, or did it look like it was coming at you?

No, I think they're trying to get out, and I've actually, a couple times, tried to, you know, usher them out, but they don't cooperate.

So eventually, since I don't want rabies, I end up, you know, killing them.

Well, right.

I mean, that's an important thing, right?

Because bats are vectors for a lot of different diseases.

Most humans who get rabies get them from bats, according to my research.

They also are a vector for uh the respiratory ailment known as sars which i would think could would concern you as a reparatory a respiratory therapist in training you don't want to have to trake yourself do you no i think it'd concern anybody with lungs so why do you want so so why do you want to live with these bats i don't necessarily want to we've looked into getting them done and the areas around here say they don't do that the people we've contacted.

I just want to throw some poison up in the attics and I've been vetoed.

I'm perfectly confident that you are willing and eager to take matters into your own hands with poison and cudgels.

It's really pragmatic.

Yeah, I'm sure you would trake all these bats to death in one night if you were given leave to.

But there's no professional exterminator that you've researched that will take care of all these bats?

Not sure the price range.

Oh, okay.

That's a different story.

Noah,

what's your take on this?

There are none very close.

There's some within maybe 40 miles or so, but they're charging more than we're willing to spend at this point, not having jobs.

Everyone knows you live in the scary bat house of Kansas.

What's the town again?

Payola.

Payola.

Payola, Kansas?

Like P-A-Y-O-L-A?

P-A-O-L-A.

Oh, Paola.

Okay.

You know, you live in the creepy house you live in the creepy bat house of Payola, Kansas.

You're the two brothers who were fool enough to buy this place.

No one's ever going to go a bat wing's length near it.

But if they're not giving an estimate, how do you know that it's out of your price range?

Well, they wouldn't look around to really pin it down, but they said just the bare minimum would be about $400 just for them to look around.

And that wasn't just kind of off the top of their head.

Right.

And you guys are living in a fiberglass fiberglass and drywall shack full of bats.

So I'm just going to stipulate that $400 is more than you are able to pay for the peace of mind.

No, I'd pay that if that was, you know, for the job, not to just come and look.

What's the maximum amount you would pay to get the bats?

$600.

$600.

Okay.

Because at that point, they're going to be doing with fancy machines what you could just do with a dictionary, right, sir?

Or poison.

Or what kind of poison would you put up there?

I don't know, like those bombs they put, you know, when they put in when they tent a house.

I figure that should kill pretty much anything.

Right, but your house has completely porous walls.

There's no way a bug bomb is going to work in there.

I don't know.

I mean, you throw a couple of them in there, it should be all right.

So, Noah, your brother seems extremely eager to pump your house full of toxins and try to take care of his bat problem.

Why is that not sufficient for you?

Well, in addition to being a coward, I also would prefer not to harm animals if at all possible.

What?

They're not, and they're good for the, you know, getting mosquitoes and everything else.

They didn't ask for us to move in.

I mean, they're not malicious in their intent.

They're just confused and visiting where we'd prefer not to have them.

So what solution do you propose?

If we could bat-proof the house at some point to where they could get out but not come back in.

So basically just make them homeless but not dead.

Noah,

bat-proof the house.

How are you you going to.

So there's a colony of bats clearly living.

You have a basement?

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

You think that's where the bats are?

They have access through the attic, basement, and all over.

They run the house.

Yeah.

They're most likely in the chimney.

That's from research seems to be where they go in older houses.

So you've done some research into bats?

It's not uncommon, apparently.

Just

uncommon to keep them there.

And so, how could you possibly without just as an alter as an alternative

as an okay Bailiff Jesse?

I think you have I think you have been bitten by a bat and you've now gotten laughing rabies.

It's just uncommon to keep them there.

But I don't know that.

Because there's bats in their house.

That's why.

I'd prefer they be just relocated, but not slaughtered.

Sure.

And just for maybe the fact that I know with Adam's method of beating them with whatever seems to be handy

that some of the diseases can be transmitted through saliva and blood which he could easily be covered in so I would you know I would prefer to

go in my mind I pictured him covered in saliva and blood right now

that was the mental picture I haven't seen him lately it's possible

and how are you guys what do you guys get the public library how are you reaching me by a computer you live in a room full of of

a shack full of holes and bats.

You have broadband up in there?

Yes.

Huh?

Yeah.

I wonder what your priorities really are.

So you want to get rid of the bats.

What's the method that you're going to suggest?

I said just waiting until they're out.

I've looked at sealing up holes and things, but giving them some kind of exit when they go out to feed at night and then sealing it up so they can't come back in.

Or a drum circle.

Okay.

uh i don't know i mean that's that seems like a a more or less effective method if you seal up the holes in the bathroom right

and if you seal up all the other holes that the bats are coming through which i would recommend you do anyway right

and then you i guess wait

maybe you both climb on to the roof

and wait until dark of night and watch all the bats fly out of the chimney and then seal up the chimney,

wouldn't that solve the problem, Adam?

No, because one, we don't have a count of them.

Two, they're like mice.

They can squeeze their body and get through lots of areas.

It's not really feasible.

I mean, without basically plastering the entire house over, you know, from the foundation up, it's not going to happen.

It would go into many thousands of dollars rather than poison.

Well,

just before,

just to consider your hypothetical bat a cost further, if you were to poison them all, Adam, wouldn't that mean your house would be packed full of bat corpses that would just rot there?

Yeah.

Well,

do you happen to know whether professional bat removal actually removes the carcasses of the bats?

I'm not sure.

No, I don't know.

Okay.

I believe they do, but if we don't seal up the house, then they're just going to, a new brood will come in at some point.

What do you mean?

There's another gang of bats next door just waiting to move in once these guys are killed?

Could be.

I haven't kept tabs on the bat population.

So let me just make sure I understand.

Noah, you're saying you want to go through a house sealing up process and hope that the bats self-deport, basically, right?

To urge them along that way, but in the meantime, don't make it easy for them to come out of that bathroom area and surprise us.

How would you accomplish that?

Keeping the lights on and keeping the door closed.

If you see that one picture where I have

cardboard blocking the top area so they can't squeeze through.

You really know how to do it up nice, that's for sure.

Or to finish the ceiling.

Yeah,

you're like the Renovation Brothers on HGTV.

You know how I got some cardboard and I put that up?

Here's what I see.

Is it the Renovation Brothers, Jesse?

What are those two weird Canadian dudes?

One of them is a magician.

I think,

wait a minute,

property brothers.

You're just describing Cirque du Soleil.

Well, I know, it's true.

Property brothers, two Canadian guys go around renovating houses, and one of them is a part-time stage magician in Las Vegas.

You can tell he's the magician because he's got blonde highlights.

And they go around describing their vision.

And you're like those guys.

Like, let's just put up some cardboard.

I see the cardboard here and the duct tape solution.

guys i have to ask you what's your long-term plan for this house that's not representative of the rest of the house but there was mold in there when we got it and it just hasn't the ceiling hasn't been put up that's due to basically laziness and procrastination yeah most of the house is much nicer than that that's just i think they're coming through there because that is the the open area Well, how much would it cost for you to finish this bathroom?

Why don't you just finish this bathroom up?

Good.

I'm not sure how much it would cost.

We'd have to look into that.

Not very much.

We have the ceiling materials.

So it's just through laziness and procrastination?

Pretty much.

Who's laziness and who's procrastination?

Both.

It's a group effort.

The two of you are fixing this up yourselves.

No,

obviously not.

My dad is going to help us with it.

Neither of us is very handy.

I've started on it, but if I do it, it'll just

be

done, but it'll be ugly.

ugly.

Okay.

I think I have everything I need to make my decision.

Let me go into chambers.

Jesse, clear the chambers of snakes and bats.

I'll go in there and I'll hide for a little while and then I'll come back.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Noah, can you sleep at night with the constant threat of bat attacks?

It's difficult because they also come out right next to my bedroom here, and I hear them in the walls of my bedroom.

So it's a little scary.

Have you thought about renting?

That would be more expensive.

This is a very cheaper house payment's maybe $200 a month.

So it's kind of a trade-off.

Holy mackerel.

So this is actually a cheaper solution than living in a car.

Probably.

If it was a halfway decent car, yes.

Wow.

Adam,

are you really

more lazy than you are, afraid of being attacked by a bat while you're asleep?

No, I'm less handy than I am anything.

But yeah, it doesn't really bother me that much.

It happens on occasion, and finishing the bathroom just fixes that one room.

Like I said, they've come in through my room a couple times.

They go up through other areas.

Killing the bat's the solution to that.

Wouldn't the bats just come?

Wouldn't different bats just come if you killed the bats that were in the house?

That's Noah's theory.

I don't know.

Adam, I get the impression that there's not a lot that bothers you.

I guess not.

Would you say that you've lived in places that were worse?

I lived in a basement that flooded on occasion because of a slum lord in college.

So, yeah, this is better than being constantly sick due to mildew.

Fair enough.

We'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say.

Before we get to the verdict, I'm going to head over to the chambers so that Judge and I can briefly discuss the Max Fun Drive.

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The Wizards answer eight by eight.

The Conclaves call to demonstrate their arcane gift, their single spell.

They number 64

until a conflagration

63

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till one remains to reign on high.

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Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom.

Guys, you got to do something about these bats.

They're inside your house.

I lived for a period of time in a house that was infested with mice, which are very similar to bats except less creepy.

And

I can understand how even

good-intentioned people can come to live as animals, as

the presence of an invasive species seems more and more

intractable and normal, and such that you do not pause.

when you open your silverware drawer to find it full of rolling mouse feces.

Nor do you pause to continue to invite friends over for weekends in the country and serve them food from silverware that has touched mouse feces.

This is a terrible, terrible

animalistic spiral that the two species are going through together.

You are being dragged down to

Winchester Mystery House style craziness by these bats.

And I don't think the bats are enjoying it very much either.

Two of you have to end this codependent relationship as soon as possible, and you need to begin living again like humans.

In many ways, the problem is not that you're living with bats.

The most interesting problem is that you're living with each other.

Yeah.

I would agree.

You guys have very different

worldviews, and I'm trying to

put my finger on exactly what pop cultural reference I can make, but there may not be one.

There's certainly not the same.

Rabies-infested odd couple.

Yeah, all right, there you go.

See, this is what I'm saying.

Rabies Infested Odd Couple.

That's better than anything I could have come up with.

Who's that?

Noah.

All right, Noah.

You seem to be the one with your finger on the pulse of entertainment.

Here's what you're going to do.

Yes, I have no life.

Yes, I agree.

Here's what you're going to do.

You're going to call up, I don't care who it is, TLC, Discovery, History Channel.

There's got to be a historical.

Is there any history to this house?

I haven't researched.

It's old enough to be, but we're in an area that it's probably just very sad.

Let me put it this way.

Is there anything in the house that you could potentially sell at a pawn shop?

No, if there's anything at that point, then

that was taken whenever we moved in.

I'm trying to help you here.

Yes, I understand.

Just say, yeah, I suppose there's something.

Sure, there's got to be something.

Great.

Then it's for the history channel, HGTV.

You call them them up, you explain to them.

It's like rabies-infested, odd couple.

We're the bat brothers.

We live in a crazy, foreclosed home full of bats, and every now and then they come out and

frighten us.

And one of us screams like a baby, and the other one smashes it with an OED.

Come down and film this.

Just give us enough money to take care of the bats.

Because here's the thing: there is a big part of me that really wants to tell Adam, go it.

Bug bomb those bats out of existence.

Because I think it would be amusing to him.

And would go a long way to getting rid of the problem.

But I don't think a solution to this problem involves adding on to this house that is plugged up with cardboard and fiberglass.

the problem of walls and basements full of bat corpses slowly decaying.

I don't think that's going to be a good solution.

But you really do need to get rid of the bats because, you know, I don't mean to be alarmist.

There are those who believe that bats come into your house.

It's a superstition

that is an omen of your death.

I do not believe in that.

But

it is the case that bats are vectors for a lot of different diseases.

Bat bites can be very subtle, and you might not detect them until it's too late to be properly vaccinated against rabies.

It's a big deal.

This is not a way that you want to live your life.

So, I order you, and I order everyone in the audience to contact everyone you know at every cable channel and encourage them to contact the Bat Brothers via me to do an episode of some TV show, or maybe even a series, The Deadliest Bats,

and allow that to

subsidize the bat removal that these guys aren't willing to pay for and if that does not come to fruition i am telling you guys put a bat jar aside and every time your brother kills something

or every time your other brother screams put five dollars in there and raise the money to get some professional bat removal experts down there and get rid of it.

Or else you don't deserve to live in a ramshackle shack.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Whee, we, we.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Noah, Adam, you're living in nightmarish squalor.

But at least you have the comfort of a firm decision, right?

Yes, it's more cut and dried than many that I've heard from this podcast.

Noah, has Adam ever not grumbled about anything?

Like if I told Adam I was getting him Maserati for his birthday, would he grumble about that?

You heard that he likes to beat things with blunt objects, and I live in the same house.

What would you answer?

Well, Noah, Adam, I hope we've helped a little bit.

Thank you very much for joining us on the Judge John Hoshman podcast.

Thank you, Maserati, coming.

Put that in with the TLC or whatever, deal.

And

with all due respect, Jesse,

the next time you have another child or you have to go to Europe to put on some...

ties and special socks or whatever it is you do that takes you away from this podcast from time to time, I would like to recruit Adam as a new guest bailiff in the future.

I think Adam is much better equipped to be the bailiff than I am.

Thank you.

Good luck with the bats.

Take care.

So that was our classic episode.

I would dare say, Jesse Thorne, that you as a vintage enthusiast, we might call it a vintage episode.

A flea market episode of Judge John Hodgman, if you will.

All the Judge John Hodgman episodes are flea market episodes, let's be honest.

That's true.

When it comes down to it, you know, I kind of wish that this were true, that it was just you and me and a ratty card table in the middle of a parking lot selling podcasts on a Sunday afternoon.

John, flea market episode may be too generous.

Swap meat episode.

We are selling tube socks at the drive-in movie theater.

Oh, but if you want to catch up with what the Bat Brothers were doing, at least in 2013, go to our show page at maximumfund.org.

There's a follow-up interview from a year later.

And if you want to know at least what Noah Bat Brother is up to these days, you can join me in following him on Instagram.

He's Noah K.

Sterdivant,

N-O-A-H-K-S-T-U-R-D-E-V-A-N-T.

The brothers no longer live together.

Noah has traveled the world, has a child, and they're all doing fine,

and the bats in that house are free to live.

They actually ended up selling the house to the bats.

That's right.

And you know what?

The bats flipped it.

The bats

total in some of that horizontal fencing.

Yeah, yeah.

They put subway tile on the kitchen walls, broke it out into an open living space, and they flipped it for a lot of bat money.

Luckily, none of the bats were Draculas.

I looked into it, Jesse.

None of the bats were Draculas.

Thank goodness.

However, you're feeling out there in the world about the world.

I hope you enjoyed this vintage episode of Judge John Hodgman, Jesse Thorne, My Bailiff, and yours.

And I shall return next week with a brand new episode of Judge John Hodgman.

Until then, please take good care.

Our producer is the ever-capable Jennifer Marmer.

Back then, it was the great Julia Smith.

You can find us, of course, on Instagram.

You can find us on Twitter.

And you can submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash JJ HO.

We do not accept cases against

elected officials unless the elected official is down.

I mean, if the elected official is into it, we might.

Yeah, look at this.

Here's Noah posted a photo from 2019.

Look what I found in a used bookstore in Bangkok on his 40th birthday, a copy of the Aries My Expertise.

If nothing else, this episode reminds us that time is a thing.

It does pass and things do change.

And we'll talk to you next week on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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