The Doctorow Doctrine

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

And with me is Brooklyn's own, Judge John Hodgman.

Brookline and Brooklyn's own, and also unnamed town in Maine that sounds like that.

I only live in certain places, Jesse.

Don't ask me why I'm drawn to them.

I like a place where the line is delineated by a brook or any body of water, actually.

Don't like it.

If there's no river, I'm not there.

Anyway, here I am.

And guess what, Jesse Thorne?

I'm not going to keep talking because we've got an incredible guest to join us in our

trademark mix, as we determined before we started recording, our trademark mix of camaraderie and pettiness.

Please welcome Jesse Thorne and listeners to Judge John Hodgman, the incredible Corey Doctorow.

Hi, Corey.

Hi, John.

Hi, Jesse.

Hi, Jennifer.

It's so great to be here.

It's great to have you, folks.

If you don't know who Corey Doctorow is, you've done some things wrong in your life, but it's fine.

Corey is an author, an electronic freedom frontiersman, a digital rights activist,

a really fun, smart, and funny guy.

He was one of the editorial team at Boing Boing for a long, long time.

Boing Boing, one of the Judge Sean Hodgman favorite, favorite websites.

And you may remember Corey Doctorow as the author of one of the very nicest reviews I've ever gotten for anything I've ever written in his review of Vacation Land and Medallion Status.

Two books that I wrote.

So this is, as Spy Magazine used to call, log rolling in our time, but it is genuine affection with which we, and appreciation with which we ask Corey to join us today.

Corey's the author of a whole bunch of novels.

You should read them all.

He's got one that just came out yesterday called Attack Surface, which is part three in the Little Brother

series.

Is that correct, Corey?

It is correct-ish.

It is the third Little Brother book, but it's a standalone novel for adults.

So you can read it even if you haven't read the other two, but you should read the other two.

Cool.

And what is it all about, the Attack Surface?

So Attack Surface, like Little Brother, is a techno-thriller.

And what sets it apart from most of the rest of the genre is that instead of treating computers as like metaphors the way that novelists and Congress does, it treats computers as actual things that have capabilities and limitations and finds the storylines that are latent in there.

And it's a book about a young woman who spent her whole life being a surveillance contractor.

She starts off working in the DHS on domestic surveillance, becomes a beltway bandit, and ends up in a forward operations base in Iraq where she's spying on insurgents.

Then she's in the former Soviet Union spying on pro-democracy activists.

And she has to confront what her life's work is.

The whole time she's been trying to make herself out to be a good person by finding compromises, none of which are very good or sustainable.

Like, you know, teaching the people she's spying on how to avoid the surveillance in secret.

This is not the kind of thing your bosses are gonna like.

So, she ends up back in San Francisco in her hometown, where her childhood best friend is now a Black Lives Matter activist, and she is being surveilled by the very same cyber weapons that this character, Masha Maximov, has spent her whole life building.

And she has to figure out what it means to have talked yourself into doing something not so great and then to

come back and confront your moral legacy and how you can be better.

John, just to,

let me help you out here, just for context and what Corey said, San Francisco is a city on the western coast of the United States.

It sits on a peninsula that protects a beautiful bay called the San Francisco Bay.

Yeah, I always thought that that was just a novelistic metaphor like a computer, but you're saying it's a real thing?

No, a lot of people think that it was invented for Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

But no, it's a real city, yeah.

Yeah, known for such notable foodstuffs as cylinders of rice and hot meat and a tortilla and also rice.

Wow.

Corey is coming out guns blazing against the San Francisco burrito.

He's shooting directly from my heart.

Luckily, your bullet bounced off of the it's it that I always keep in my breast pocket.

A tax surface.

So, you know, Corey, you've made your life talking about, thinking about, writing about, both in fiction and non-fiction, about non-metaphoric computers, their capabilities, their limitations, their scary capabilities, their thankful limitations.

And this sounds like a really fun thriller about someone having to reckon with the fact that they didn't do great stuff all the time.

And how do they make amends, which is something that we deal with a lot in society right now and here on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

And to be clear, the capabilities aren't just the scary ones, right?

Like part of the story of this book and the story of my career and the story of how we think about computers is balancing the liberatory power of computers with their power to control and manipulate us.

And, you know, this is someone who said, well, we'll probably never be able to make computers into a force for liberation.

So I'll just work on making them a force for control.

Who's meeting her childhood friend who's made computers the center of how she plans to liberate her city and her society from reaction and oppression and who is running up against the ways that computers can be used for control and manipulation.

So Attack Surface is available as of yesterday, if you're listening on release day of Judge John Odgman, anywhere books are sold, loaned, traded on the internet, and as an audio book as well, right?

Yeah, there's a really great audio book.

I don't allow DRM on any of my work because that is a centerpiece of my doctrine.

And that's digital rights management.

We've got a lot of smart 13-year-olds who listen to this who know what you're talking about, but their parents are currently going, what the huh?

The doctrine in question is the Doctor O doctrine.

The Doctor O doctrine.

It's pajamas on airplanes, no DRM,

coffee and aeropresses.

Those are the three central tenets.

We'll get to pajamas on airplanes in the second.

I know, I know.

But explain to the dum-dums like me what DRM means and why it's bad and why you don't, why it's not part of the doctor o, doctor, and doctoral program at Dr.

Doctor O's University.

My parents are doctor and doctor Doctor O's.

So DRM is the stuff that stops you from using technology the way you want, like, you know, watching a European DVD in your DVD play or something you may remember from your video store days, John.

And

it doesn't work very well.

Like all of the audiobooks sold on Audible, which is the largest audiobook store in the world.

It's owned by Amazon.

They control more than 90% of the market.

And all of their audiobooks are sold with DRM.

And if you want to remove it, you just type, how do I remove DRM from an Audible book into a search engine?

So it's clearly not helping us.

But thanks to an American law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that's been in place since 1998, it's a felony to remove it.

It's a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense.

So you have this technology that doesn't stop piracy at all, but does make it illegal for you, my customer, for my work, to take your audiobook to a non-Amzon player or reader or platform unless Amazon authorizes it.

And you have to ask yourself, how is this possibly good for me?

Now, of course, this is also like expanded into other domains.

So, you know, the fact that if it's digital, you can put DRM on it means that you have companies like Medtronic, who make the biggest ventilator, you know, the workhorse ventilator.

They use DRM to stop independent hospital technicians from fixing their own ventilators.

And it's a felony to do that.

Why would that even be timely to talk about right now?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Notice to people in the future, ventilators are timely.

So all of that to say that

this is a really toxic dynamic.

And the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit I've worked for for nearly 20 years now, we're actually suing the U.S.

government to overturn this law so that you can break DRM if you have a legitimate reason to do it.

But in the meantime, Macmillan, my lovely publishers, who are very good to me, quite reasonably said, hey, you don't want to sell your audiobook in the marketplace that is 90% of our sales, so we're just not going to give you any money for the rights, but you can keep them if you want, which was a very reasonable thing for them to do.

And I don't want anyone to think I'm down on them for this.

And I was like, I'll keep them.

So I hired my friend Amber Benson, who lives here in Southern California with me.

You mean the actor?

The actor, Tara from Buffy, also the novelist.

She's an amazing novelist.

And we went to Skyboat Media, which is one of the powerhouse audiobook studios, also pretty close to us here in North Hollywood.

And we got my sound editor, John Taylor Williams, to edit it.

And then to prove that it could be a success commercially without

Amazon, I put it up for sale as a Kickstarter pre-sale.

And we just, as we're recording this, a few days before it's going live, we closed the Kickstarter at about $270,000.

Oh, congratulations.

Yes,

it's really good.

It's a record-breaking Kickstarter.

My hope is that this might convince publishers and authors, best-selling authors, authors who know how to reach a big audience, that they can make more money by doing a different kind of Audible exclusive, the kind that is exclusive of Audible.

Because I'm going to sell this everywhere except Audible afterwards.

Now, Corey, we released Judge Sean Hodgman as a.zune file.

Oh, good.

So mad at you, Jesse.

I was just getting up to a Zoom joke.

You got there first.

You win.

You win?

I want to know why I can't get it in.MIDI format.

Well, Corey Doctorow,

author, digital privacy activist, thank you so much for joining us today via Zoom so that we can peer into your home and record your facial data for some database probably owned by a foreign government as we speak.

So thank you.

I don't know why you need my social security number for me to appear, but I'm sure that the fact that you want to put it in the episode title will work out fine for you.

And also, you did mention wearing pajamas on airplanes, a precedent of the Judge John Hodgman courtroom being that that is not allowable.

You're going to make a counter-argument to that a little later on in the podcast, but right now, we've got a lot of justice to clear off this docket.

Jesse, let's get going.

Here's something from Spencer: My housemate Josh refuses to contribute to the internet bill because he claims it's a luxury which he does not require since he uses his phone's unlimited unlimited data plan.

I maintain internet is a communal utility available to everyone in the house regardless of how much they choose to use it.

It's not about the money to me, but as the one responsible for collecting, it feels wrong and uncomfortable to ask everyone else to bow to his cheapness.

Besides myself, I've spoken with two more of the six total occupants.

They agree he should contribute his share.

Corey, what is your impression?

I struggled with this one, because at first I was like, well, if he's really not using the internet, why should he contribute?

But then I thought, what if this guy walked around with a candle all the time and said, why should I pay for the light bulbs?

And, you know,

the house wouldn't be a house without the internet, right?

They wouldn't be able to do all the things they need to do.

They wouldn't have jobs.

They wouldn't be able to summon 911.

They wouldn't be able to...

you know, go to school, they wouldn't be able to order dinner, they wouldn't be able to do all the things.

I mean, the internet is now just firmly enmeshed in our life.

Before the plague, it was a thing that was involved in everything we do.

Now it's required for everything we do.

And I just think that even if you don't use it, it's like, even if I don't admire the shrubs, why should I pay to water them?

You're part of the household.

It's a household necessity.

I think you got a pitch in.

I did actually follow up because that was my obvious question.

Like, can it be true that Josh

really only uses his phone for data?

And specifically, his paid by himself,

presumably grand personed in Unlimited Data Plan.

And according to Spencer, Josh does claim he only uses his phone data and he has no other devices that he's using that require Wi-Fi access.

And also Spencer has checked with the rest of the housemates and they all want, they all want Josh to subsidize their Wi-Fi usage.

You know, my one question, John, was why he had checked with two of the housemates, but but not the other ones.

It seemed a little shady, but if he's now checked with all of them.

Well, Corey is an expert in fictional utopian societies or dystopian societies.

It might be the rules of the house.

They form a council.

There's a quorum

to divide the Wi-Fi.

I think Corey still has...

an open Wi-Fi network for people who are passing by his front door, like it was San Francisco in 1996.

I did have one of those in San Francisco in 1999 in Petrero Hill.

And people used to, it was on the early Wi-Fi maps.

I would always know if someone was lost on the way to the airport because they'd pull up in front of my house to get directions from MapQuest.

So

I do not presently have an open Wi-Fi network because I live in the city of Burbank, where we have 100-gigabit fiber passing under our foundation slab that the city pays for it, but which I'm not allowed to use.

It's only for large businesses, and I have to use Charter Spectrum or from hell.

Yeah, I know.

It's almost as like corporations are interfering with technology for their own benefit.

I mean, this is a radical hypothesis, but I think we could come up with a falsifiable experiment and see whether it's true.

So I don't think these guys have a utopian society, by the way.

I think that they are, in fact, members of different subcultures.

And the reason that he only has two of the roommates is that the other four are steampunks.

Why do you get that?

I just need to say that.

If we're going to imagine a radical

social experiment household with new social arrangements, I just like the idea that there's a couple of them who are just LARPing Victorianism and therefore only communicate by semaphore.

I can't wait to read this novel by you, Corey Doctora, but let me ask you this technical question because you know more about it than I do.

Which is the better way to get your...

your means and your and your funds up and down the internet highway?

Over the phone via unlimited data or via Wi-Fi?

And you can answer that question in terms of quality, in terms of security, in terms of cost, in terms of benefit to society.

I don't know.

But like, if Josh is really just using his phone for data and nothing else in the house, is that good, bad, neutral?

I think it's okay.

I mean,

I think that in general, mobile hotspots are a little less reliable than fixed-line hotspots.

So, I mean, the question isn't Wi-Fi.

It's like how the Wi-Fi gets into the house.

I mean, one way to think about this is that we have one universe with one electromagnetic spectrum and you're sharing it with everybody else, right?

And only the slice of it.

Once you take a wire and you wrap it in some insulation, then you've got like a little pocket universe, right?

It has its own electromagnetic spectrum that is different from the electromagnetic spectrum that's right next to it, even if you're broadcasting the same frequencies.

And so there is a capacity thing.

So this is the nexus of the non-outlandish, stupid claims about 5G.

There are outlandish, stupid claims about 5G, which made people go and burn them down.

But the stupid claims about 5G are just that we can use 5G instead of fiber to wire up our cities because somehow these radio-based stations will give us fast internet without them needing to be connected to the fast internet.

And that's like saying you could have a really big faucet on your house and it doesn't matter what kind of water main it's connected to.

The faucet is not your problem there.

So let's talk about water for a second, because I'm not sure I agree with you on this.

Let's talk about water, right?

If the house pays a water bill and

Josh

decides to only drink bottled water that he brings in,

he only pees into

a composting toilet that he has in his house.

And he takes care of all of it.

He never touches a drop of water.

This is like a dune-type situation.

Dude wears a still suit, totally water-independent of the rest of the house.

Should he have to pay part of the water bill?

Simply because it's available.

Okay, I'm going to make a different argument here.

I'm going to scratch and refactor here.

The reason he should do it is the categorical imperative.

If all six of these people sat down and said, well, you know, we all pitch in for the groceries, but I never eat lettuce.

So I want 18 cents off my grocery bill.

And, you know, we all pitch in for this, we all pitch in for that.

And

I don't even like the TV.

Why am I paying for the wall space that it occupies?

You know, I never sat on that sofa.

That six square feet of the sitting room that it occupies should be deducted from my share of the rent.

To live in a house

is not to have that arrangement.

To live in a house communally and happily is to have an arrangement where you acknowledge that there are some positive externalities that other people benefit from, just as you benefit from their positive externalities.

I agree with all those things except the Wi-Fi.

I'm sorry.

Here's what I'm going to say.

I'm going to give you, it pains me to disagree with my friend Corey Doctorow.

Even though I agree with Corey on all points,

if it can be said truthfully, if Josh is not using that Wi-Fi,

if he's not watching the television, right?

If he's not streaming a thing, if he's like, if it's true that the only internet that he's getting is off of his own phone in no other way, then I do not feel that he needs to contribute to the Wi-Fi bill.

Okay?

But because I'm going this as far as to disagree even slightly with Corey Doctorow, I'm going to give the most anti-Corey Doctorow ruling I can.

Spencer, you should spy on him.

Spy on him.

Get a thing.

Look,

I know there's a thing because I have this thing, but I'm not going to advertise this thing.

But you can get a Wi-Fi system that is monitoring who is using it at any given time.

You will know.

You will know, Spencer.

If Josh even takes one,

what's the smallest bit there is?

Many bit?

A bit.

A bit?

There's nothing small here.

I'm going to make it a half bit.

You know what?

That's not small.

I'm going to make it.

It's pronounced a hay bit, John.

It's a groat.

It's a groat.

If you haven't got a bit, a hay bit will do.

If he takes even a hay bit of internet off you guys,

Split it up evenly.

Then he's taking advantage of the common good.

But if he's not taking advantage of the common good, I don't think he has to pay for it.

I bet you he is.

Spencer, I bet you're going to spy on him, and then you guys are going to have so much fun as your perfect society dissolves into chaos and anger and resentment and bitterness and camaraderie, just like the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

This is like one of those people who goes to dinner with a group of people and says, There, well, I only got a drink, so I'm only paying the tip on the cost of the drink.

Yeah, I won't split the tip.

Yeah, look,

I'm not saying that Josh is a generous person or even a genial person.

But

I think this is slightly different than the kind of person who goes to dinner and says, I really wasn't that hungry.

So I'm not.

How about the kind of person who says, my gate-guarded community should have a private firefighting arrangement.

And if you don't pay the firefighter tax, they should let your house burn down.

Yeah.

What about you?

Those are a thing.

But

if I lived in, all right, all right, all right, you know what?

fine.

I'm living in your gated community.

I've taken a look at your fire department, and I think it's dumb.

I don't think they're good at it.

I'm hiring a private firefighter to live with me.

That's the name of this sitcom, my private firefighter.

John Hodgman and his private firefighter.

Played by Rob Riggle.

Played by Rob Riggle.

Oh, sold in the room.

Come on.

Living together in a gated community, just for a fire to bust out.

Is the character's catch line, thank you for your service?

Shall it be like, sure,

pass me the salt.

Thank you for your service.

You didn't get in on this IP.

Who ate my peanut butter?

And then Rob Wriggle says, I did.

And then you say, thank you for your service.

Here's something from Rob, not Wriggle.

I seek to file suit against, or maybe it's Wriggle.

Doesn't say that it's not Wriggle.

I just presumed it's not Rob Wriggle.

Wriggle here.

Could be Rob Cordre.

Who knows what Rob it is?

Probably Rob Hubel, though.

I seek to file suit against my friend Tyler.

Tyler will not update software on his phone until the device forces him.

Every time this happens, he sends me a message complaining about an update that the general public received months and sometimes years before him.

His complaints are usually trivial, like the position of a button being a farther reach for him now.

I would like you to order him to update his phone software and stop making me relive a software update months after it happened.

I love how Rob acknowledges that a software update is inherently traumatic and something you don't want to relive.

No matter what so-called improvements are there, it is like, why have you just changed my whole world around?

I just got used to having my thumb there.

Corey, what do you think?

So I think that he's right for the wrong reason.

I mean, keeping your software updated is like getting vaccinated because the problem with your phone being broken into is not just what happens to you, although that can be really horrific, but also what happens to the people you communicate with and their data being compromised and the people whose data you have on your phone.

It's actually, you could subtitle this, Why Andrew Yang is Wrong.

Because the whole idea that you should be paid for your data.

Oh, oh boy, I'm getting out of here.

Yeah, yeah, right.

These letters.

But the idea that you should be paid for your data.

It's a lot of only podcast.

Well, look, just the idea that you should be paid for your data is really incoherent.

Because, like, who owns the fact that we're having this conversation?

Is it me or you?

Which one of us gets to sell it to Facebook?

Me.

Really?

Yeah.

And what if you're rude to me?

But what if you're rude to me and I want to disclose that fact to other potential guests?

Should you get a veto?

Because you have a property right in the fact that I was on your podcast?

Wait a minute.

I just think that it...

Jennifer, did Corey not sign the NDA?

So anyway, I just think that, like,

this is the thing, right?

I have your data on my phone because it's also my data, right?

The pictures of us together, your phone number in my address book, all of that stuff.

It's starting to sound like a threat.

Yeah.

So for that reason, you should be updated.

And then the other thing is that he's right that updates suck because they break everything.

And you should have the right and ability to put it back the way you want it.

I miss old Twitter.

So in a perfect world,

Tyler's unwillingness to update should be tolerated and encouraged.

Wait a minute.

in terms of features, but not in terms of security.

Right.

Tyler should be updating regularly for the purpose of the security of his data and the other people whose data he's collected in his own phone, correct?

Sure.

And just so his phone doesn't end up part of a botnet that's being used to spread ransomware to hospitals and shut them down.

You know, just for all of that good stuff.

Yeah, Tyler, does that sound like fun to you?

Also, you're bothering your buddy Rob by complaining about something you should have done months or years ago, apparently.

Yeah, update your stuff.

What kind of phone and kind of phone security do you have going on, Corey Doctoro?

Do you have a rec?

So I don't have a phone wreck.

I just have like a phone council of despair, which is that we live in feudal times and there are bandits and there are warlords.

And the warlords have got these castles called Google and Facebook.

So you can have a PDP-11, you can have a PDP-8, you can have a PDP-9.

Anyway, you know,

that basically, if you stay updated and it's a reputable vendor and they're large, they will keep you safe from everyone except them most of the time.

And that's where I've landed.

On my laptop, it's a little better.

I use, you know, ThinkPad hardware, but I use a version of Linux called Ubuntu that I've used for 15 years now, and I love to pieces.

It's easy, it works, it's great.

Ubuntu by Corey Doctorow, a brand new fragrance.

Yeah, yeah, brand new fragrance.

It smells like

my palm sweat.

It smells like palm sweat and privacy.

Oh, so final ruling.

Tyler, update your phone.

Let's take a quick 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.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We are clearing out the docket with our friend Corey Doctorow, whose new book, Attack Surface, is available now in both book and audio book form.

Read by Amber Penson.

Yeah, Corey, we have something we need to address here.

Yeah.

So

you may remember that there was a time when we had a partially functioning society that included air travel as a part of day-to-day life for most people.

Many anyway.

And we established a precedent on this podcast that people who change into pajamas for an airplane flight are monsters.

And yet we have learned that our dear friend Corey Doctro

practices this very monstrous habit.

Tell me about your talk about your airplane PJs.

And when was the last time you flew?

Yeah, so let me tell you a story of the Great Before when we flew on airplanes.

And I fly a lot.

I was EFF's European director for several years.

I lived in London for 13 years and most of my family and work were in the U.S.

and Canada.

and there were months when I flew across the ocean four times and I have a chronic pain problem

like so many dudes who spend too much time in front of keyboards and do duts

and

I

discovered that I could build a thing called the most comfortable man in this in the sky kit and in that kit

was a little sleeping bag that was silk on one side and down on the other.

So you had a cold side and a warm side, a pair of really nice pajamas that I would iron before I flew, a buckwheat eye mask, a pair of slippers, a hot water bottle and an ice pack, some pretty good painkillers, and that I could just get on a plane, change into my brain.

And you realize the last thing is all you need.

No, no, no, it's not true because I tried it.

I understand.

Now I understand how it works.

Change into my gym jams, crawl into my sleep sack, and estivate like a lungfish, right?

That like it was as close close as I could come to my dream of ninja air, which is when you're flying tomorrow, long haul,

in the middle of the night, a ninja breaks into your house and blow darts you with sedative and shrink-wraps you and packs your suitcase and packs you in the cargo hold of the airplane.

And then you're like wheeled to the curb, driven to your hotel, unshrink-wrapped.

All of your stuff is unpacked.

You're tucked into bed.

The ninja opens the window.

This is the most unrealistic part because they never open.

And then the ninja blow darts you with the antidote and like repels down the side of the building as you yawn and stretch with no perception of time having gone by.

You don't need a ninja to do that, Corey.

You just need what I have, a butler, a good one.

Alfred.

No, but seriously,

look, airplanes are so uncomfortable and pajamas are so comfortable.

And they're much more comfortable than the most comfortable clothes that you can wear that aren't pajamas, right?

They're much more comfortable than a track suit.

Do you wear a a a sleeping cap a scrooge style sleeping cap i have pondered this but i do not wear a scrooge style sleeping cap i do i do just keep uh a bare head but i do have um bluetooth like sleep mask slash headphones yeah for that came up on the judge shun hodgman podcast recently oh i love them because falling asleep to podcasts

a woman was concerned about her partner falling asleep to podcasts and getting tangled in his earbud cords yep but now they have special sleep masks with the Bluetooth

things so people can listen to my dulcet tones as they fall asleep.

Well, Jesse Thorne, you are the sartorial expert.

How do you feel about Corey Doctorow's long-haul most comfortable person in the sky kit?

I mean, Corey Doctorow is introducing two special circumstances to this situation.

One is a physical disability.

And as someone who suffers from a physical disability that's exacerbated by airplanes myself, I'm a chronic migraine sufferer and

airline travel is a big trigger for me, as you know, John, from having toured with me.

It's really tough.

I'm hesitant to get in the way of anyone's accommodations.

Also, Corey is specifically talking about overnight flights.

actual sleep flights, not just red eyes from coast to coast, but

real 10-hour

long haul.

I mean, these are flights where if you fly on a fancy enough airline, they give you pajamas to wear.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

I think it is reasonable to wear pajamas on an overnight flight where you expect to sleep a night's sleep.

And it's reasonable to do all this other stuff when you are trying to accommodate a physical ailment.

I think it's entirely possible to wear pajamas while sleeping on an airplane without, you know,

getting in a taxicab to the airport in your pajamas,

or hanging out

in a flight waiting area in your pajamas.

or standing in a bunch of lines in front of normal adult humans in your pajamas.

But if if you're on an airplane

and you're actually sleeping and you're wearing pajamas and

they're appropriately modest,

then I don't have a problem with that.

You make me realize that I omitted something, which is that I change into the pajamas.

And this is actually a feature and not a bug.

It's gross changing in an airplane

bathroom, but you land with clothes that you haven't slept in.

Right.

And sometimes you got to hit the road running and and you get out of Heathrow and you got to go straight to, or JFK or whatever, and you got to go straight and do something.

Well, if you're going to do that, it's so nice to have put on some clothes, gone to the airport, packed them away again neatly

in the bathroom just a few hours after you put them on so they're still pretty fresh and then change just before landing.

Yeah, I'm generally a proponent of clothing being utilized for its purpose.

And I think Corey sleeping in pajamas on an airplane that he has changed into is a perfectly appropriate use of pajamas, even though it is a weird situation where you're sleeping in public.

And it's the same reason that I don't begrudge people wearing sweatsuits on airplanes,

even though I wouldn't wear a sweatsuit in public unless I was

starring on a stage production of Rocky.

But I and you know, any kind of comfort, it's fine.

But just

a little

acknowledgement that you're in public is nice.

That's what I'm asking.

But just a little acknowledgement of the other people.

What does that involve?

I think there's a certain amount in people who are

in their jam jams

at the gate or going through security in their jam jams, which is

to heck with y'all, I'm a do-me.

And part of dressing is about

respecting the other people around you, whether you like it or not.

Like that, that's the reason why we wear clothes most of the time.

Sometimes we wear it because otherwise we'd be too cold or we'd get sunburned.

But the main reason is to, you know, have a communication, have a conversation with the people around us.

And the message that you send when you're, you know,

using an airport bathroom in your jam jams is

my comfort is more important than anything else in the world.

Well, I'll say this.

The other benefit of changing

in the airplane lavatory,

you do this after takeoff, as you're getting ready to go.

No, no, before takeoff.

Before takeoff.

No,

I have medallion status, so I board first and I make good use of that time.

Well, I'm changing the climate.

Ask me how.

Jennifer and Jesse, you may hang up now.

I did not realize that I was talking to a fellow Diamond Medallion member.

Oh, no, I'm BA, so I'm like a 33rd order mason.

In any case,

changing in the airplane lavatory

before settling into bed is more acceptable than hanging around the airport in your pajamas because that's unnerving to other people.

And also, you're doing a service to

the rest of your companions on the flight.

Because after they see that you've changed into your silk pajamas, they're like, oh, well, he effectively just cleaned up all the pee and hairs from the floor.

Very true.

While changing, while putting his clothes on the floor in there.

So now it's much more clean in there for me.

And you know, we share a book birthday, right?

I heard you mention that Medallion Status Paperback's out on the 13th.

That's when Attack Surface is out.

And it made me think about it.

It's not a competition.

No, no, it's great.

I love sharing book birthdays.

If the world wasn't wrapped in plague, we would probably run into each other on the road in airport lounges and be in the same bookstore one after the other.

And then I could do that.

I could go up to you in the airport and say, you're still wearing your pajamas.

I'm doing a gig at the Brookline Book Smith for Attack Surface.

I mean, like, we're in each other's tracks.

I once followed Salman Rushdie on a book tour, and every bookstore I went to was like, you wouldn't believe the security.

But

I did, for Walkaway, I did.

You inadvertently were part of the fatwa.

You were following Salman Rushdie around the country.

That's right.

And running into him in lounges and just like was seeing him look just exhausted.

So I went on 35 cities in 45 days for a walkaway in the U.S., Canada, and

the UK.

And in the U.S., they put me up in the same brand of hotel over and over and over again.

And you know how when you take like a

glass from the bar up to your room, it's okay.

I was flying really early in the morning and I really wanted to get just like one more hour of sleep on the plane.

And so I thought, if I just take this pillow from like one Marriott and then leave it in another Marriott, it's okay, right?

What a chain hotel life hack.

And it's totally not okay.

And I, you know, every time I did it, I had the voice of John Hodgman in my head explaining why it wasn't okay.

But I rationalized my way into it.

I think that Marriott pillows are fungible.

I think it's fine.

You move one to the other, that's fine.

Here's what I got to say, say, though.

The one thing you haven't considered, I'm going to allow this.

Presuming that you and your little sleep sack are not blocking access for other people to go use the bathroom.

And I see he's waving me off.

No, no way.

100%.

Personally, I would never take a window seat unless I was wearing a still suit.

You heard me mention that before.

That's a thing from Dune.

If you listen to my Maximum Members Only

special episode where I guessed on Friendly Fire, we talked about the movie Dune.

We talked about still suits.

I would wear a stillsuit if I had a window seat because because I wouldn't have to use the bathroom because the urine and feces are processed in the thigh pads.

That's a shout out to my David Lynch Dune pals.

So

I will allow this

doctor, doctoro, doctorine regarding pajamas on long-haul flights.

The most comfortable person in the air kit sounds fine to me, but You are missing one thing, Corey, and I'm surprised that you're missing this because you are such an advocacy of privacy.

You're not thinking about dream theft.

You're sleeping with an open dome.

Anyone could shoot a dream drone over your head and pick up your dreams.

That's why you got to wear a sleeping cap, specifically a Judge John Hodgman brand dream theft prevention device sleeping cap.

It has that embroidered on there.

And we're going to make this product.

I'm going to say I just ordered that product in my mind.

So I'm 100% all over that.

I know, because I stole your dreams.

I knew you were going to order order it.

That's why you got to get one.

I'm going to get a sleeping cap, and we're going to get it up at the Max Fun Shop.

And it's going to say, Judge John Hodgman patented

DRM-protected dream theft prevention device.

It's a Faraday cage for your mind.

There you go.

Here's something from Savannah.

My husband Brent plays gospel a cappella quartet music from the late 1980s and early 1990s with relative frequency.

He says he finds it funny.

I think he actually really likes it.

We're not religious.

I grew up as a preacher's daughter in a strict church where no musical instruments were allowed.

I hate hearing these songs.

They make me feel strangely claustrophobic.

He thinks I should learn to laugh at them.

I want the judge to order an injunction stating that Brent cannot play these songs over our shared house speakers and especially not in the car on road trips.

Then in parentheses, ask me about the Josh Groband incident.

We did request some information about the Josh Groban incident, and it's about as you would imagine, Corey.

Essentially, Savannah went on a road.

It's a classic Groban incident.

It's a classic Groban incident.

Brent and Savannah were on a 14-hour road trip from Indiana to South Dakota, and Brent made her listen to a Josh Groban religious song over and over and over again.

And she found herself to

distracted

and frankly triggered by it.

And it was very uncomfortable for her.

So, Corey, let me ask you this question.

This is a personal question.

Are you a religious person?

Do you believe in God or whatever of any kind?

No, I am irreligious.

You are irreligious.

Yes.

Do you?

This is something of

a leading question.

Do you think it's funny to play

sincere, if somewhat sappy or ridiculous,

but sincere religious music over and over to laugh at in your house

whether or not your formerly religious wife, who was raised in a religious environment, tells you that it's annoying to her specifically.

Is that funny?

Is it funny to make fun of religious music?

Is it funny to you, Corey?

Is that funny?

I sincerely like a lot of religious music.

So, this is a somewhat difficult discussion for me.

Gordon Gano, the front man from the Viennfemms, had a whole side hustle called The Mercy Seat that recorded some incredibly good gospel music.

I could listen to it all day long.

I often do.

I mean, I think this is kind of a no-brainer, right?

You share a space with other people.

You've got to find a playlist that you both like, and each of you might ask the other one to tolerate a little bit of your favorite music.

Like, for example, I live with someone who labors under the unfortunate misapprehension that listening to Talking Heads all day, every day for the rest of your life is not good.

And

you know, you ask yourself, how did you get there?

And who is this beautiful wife?

Where is that beautiful wife?

And so on.

And, you know, she's wrong, but I love her.

And so sometimes I put on David Burns solo albums instead.

And that's how we arrive at a marital bliss.

Yeah, but she's not playing the Talking Heads

because she thinks they're dumb and that it's hilarious.

And she goes around the house going, listen to this big suit music.

And also, she knows that you toured with the Talking Heads and it was a horrible experience in your life.

Yeah, just to be clear, never toured with Talking Heads.

It would have been great.

I know, but it would never be a bad experience.

It would be the greatest.

No, no, no, no.

In fact, I once did a gig with David Byrne, back to book tours, right?

I was on

a tour.

He was on a tour.

We did a thing together.

It was so good.

He's so nice.

So nice.

Anyway,

I once did a book event.

I hosted a book event with David Byrne at the Free Library in Philadelphia.

And the decision was made.

We both lived in New York.

And we both had independently come to the decision we were going to go back to New York that night on Amtrak.

And I got, and the train was delayed by hours.

And I sat with David Byrne and his, the woman who was helping him on his tour at the Dunkin' Donuts at 30th Street Station at one o'clock in the morning

in Philadelphia for about an hour.

It was the strangest and best David Byrne experience I could ever have in my life.

People are like, are you going to go see David Byrne's American Utopia?

I know it's brilliant, but I've already seen the greatest show on earth.

David Byrne.

Yeah.

David Byrne drinking a Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

Oh my God, dude.

You're living the dream.

But, you know, the most salient fact about any of this is that he's doing a thing that annoys his partner and he does it all the time and that's not cool.

I agree.

I mean, it doesn't matter that he's laughing at it or not laughing at it.

If it was something that was not gospel and he wasn't laughing at it and he still was like, Hey, honey, here's a thing you hate.

Can I play this thing you hate a lot?

It would still make him a jerk.

Right.

And but I don't see the point that I'm trying to make is

I, it seems to me pretty clear that not even Brent likes this music.

If he genuinely liked it, right,

then you would have a point of discussion.

But he enjoys it ironically.

It's like for him, it's the 90s or something.

He's enjoying it ironically.

And

it bothers his partner.

So

I am a non-religious person myself.

And in terms of my faith, I have very little, very little faith.

But I will say that liking a thing ironically and hurting your partner is bad for your soul and earns you eternal damnation in the court of Judge John Hodgman.

I once was on a sailboat that used to belong to Tina Weymouth.

I'm going to get a connection to all of these talking heads.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll hear about using smartphone maps with our guest, Corey Doctorow.

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.

We're clearing the docket.

Here's something from Jeremy.

He says, my girlfriend gets mad at me when we look at my phone's map for directions while walking around.

She insists the phone should be oriented with north on the top, the way you might normally look at a map so you can get a sense of where you are within a neighborhood.

I orient the map so that it reflects the direction we're currently facing, allowing me to more easily plan left and right turns.

Who's right, who's wrong?

All right, for clarity here, Corey Doctorow, you should know that this isn't just some any Jeremy.

This isn't some regular Jeremy.

This Jeremy is a big Maximum Fund supporter.

He's the mayor of Maximum Funtown, New York City.

And

he's slowly trying to take over this podcast by submitting cases five to ten times a day.

And we've already heard one from him, I think also between him and his partner, with regard to he would go into grocery stores and trim the vegetables before he took them to pay and leave the trimmings behind.

Like, so he would grab a bunch of radishes, right, and trim off all the radish leaves and just leave them for someone else to clean up and then weigh that and then pay that amount.

Obviously, very wrong on many, many levels.

And he was judged extremely harshly, maybe not even harshly enough.

So you can tell that this court is somewhat prejudiced.

I should recuse myself.

So I'm going to let Corey Doctorow judge this one solo.

It's a no-brainer.

He's right.

He's right because you do you.

He's right because all of us have different navigational capabilities.

I often get lost in hotels that I've stayed in for multiple days and I get out of the elevator, and I still go the wrong direction when I get out of the elevator, like six times in a row.

I have no sense of direction, I have no spatial sense, I knock things over, I trip over things, and I drop things all the time.

And my wife has the most incredible spatial sense of all.

She can like look down a corridor at a picture at the end of the corridor, 100 yards away, and say, That picture is two degrees off true.

And she will be absolutely right.

It's a crazy superpower.

Did you marry an AI?

I married a former Quake champion.

She was on the British Quake team.

She has this incredible gamer sense.

And, you know, and she's brilliant and she's always in charge when we go out.

And I have learned the hard way that every time I feel, no matter how strongly I feel, like we're going in the wrong direction, I'm wrong.

And so like now I say things like, it feels like we should turn left, but you think we should turn right.

So we're going to turn right because even though I feel that, I'm going to turn right.

Okay.

And she's like, yes, you're wrong again.

So this person is clearly married to someone who is much better at orienting themselves in space than he is or partnered with.

And so that person, when they're controlling the map, should orient the map in ways that make sense to them because they're able to orient themselves around an abstract like north.

Whereas if you are a poor and shrunken thing like me with a debilitating geospatial deficit, then you need your map pointing in the direction that you're going.

I also need to make the L and the R with my fingers to know which one is left and right.

So, you know, there you go.

Well, I'll tell you what.

That's a very, very reasoned judgment, and it's hard to find a single flaw with it.

Spatial relations and how you relate and perceive space in your own body is very highly personal.

I cannot imagine personally using a GPS

on a phone while walking around or in a car while driving with it oriented north

as opposed to having it oriented towards the direction in which I'm going.

I can't, the whole thing makes me nervous.

I think you're absolutely right, except for one small problem with your judgment, Corey, and that is that if we were to follow your judgment, Jeremy would be correct.

And I'm not sure that I can allow that in this courtroom.

Jesse, you're the tiebreaker in this literal tribunal.

Do we give this one to Jeremy?

or no?

Honestly, I don't even know how you would even get your phone to to always show the map pointing due north.

It has a little sensor in it to tell what direction you're walking specifically, so it won't do that.

So I got to, I mean, it's a noble impulse, John,

to rule against Jeremy.

And I, every fiber of my being wants to rule against Jeremy.

But it's his phone.

It's how the phone is designed to work.

I think I got to go with Corey and say, Jeremy's right?

Well,

I got to say, you know, I recused myself for a reason, and now I regret it.

What about you, Jennifer Marmor?

Is there any way I can get out of this, or do we got a rule for Jeremy?

Yeah, you got to go with Jeremy.

Even though I think this sets an extremely dangerous precedent and an extremely slippery slope, I find in Jeremy's favor.

Here's a final question from Jess.

My wife loves spoilers.

For example, she will stop the movie and say, I need to know, does Gandalf survive?

I've seen the studies that say spoiling things doesn't actually reduce the enjoyment of them, so I shouldn't really care.

But here's what I see as the crux.

Oh, wow, Jess nominating themselves to be the crux finder.

I like to suspend my disbelief during a rewatch.

Maybe this time, spoiler alert, Gandalf doesn't doesn't survive.

When I have to take myself out of the artist's own narrative and explain what happens, it hurts my own enjoyment of the piece and does a disservice to the work.

My wife says that if I know the answer to a question she asks, I should just tell her.

But why should we stop a piece of culture in order for me to explain what is going to happen five minutes later?

All right.

Well, before we dig into Jess's issue with their wife,

Corey, quick question.

And this is a

name one of your favorite books or movies or pieces of culture.

Not your favorite favorite, but just something you really love.

And I've seen many or read many times.

Neil Stevenson's novel Interface about election shenanigans.

Yeah.

Great seasonal book.

That's a timely one.

Would you rather read a new book that

gets you as excited as when you read Neil Stevenson's interface for the first time?

Or would you rather take,

this is science fictiony, so you'll like it, or would you rather take a pill that would erase the memory of that book every time you read it so you could read it new over and over and over again?

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, I don't like either of those options.

I reread that book because as a writer, I'm really interested in how he does it.

Right.

So I like the spoilers.

And I, and, you know, as everyone knows, the world has 10 kinds of people in it, people who understand binary, people who don't, and people who understand ternary.

And

I am one of those people who, when I see a magic trick done really well, the thing I want to know is how it's done, and that makes me happier.

Right.

And when, you know, I worked for Imagineering for a while, and the best night of my life was the overnight in the haunted mansion, because even though I knew like intellectually I was all done, I think that there is a kind of enjoyment that you get from knowing what's coming and going, hey, look at how they're foreshadowing it.

Look at how they set that up.

Look at how they fake you you out.

All of that stuff actually, for me, really enhances the enjoyment of it.

Would you enjoy a magic trick?

I mean, I understand when you see the magic trick, you then want to see how it works.

When you enjoy the haunted mansion, then you do, then you then want to sleep over.

I don't want to sleep over in the haunted mansion ever.

That's scary to me.

That's a scary idea.

That's as scary as swimming in the former 10,000 leagues under the sea lagoon with the robot underwater monsters in it.

Scary.

But I understand that impulse.

But for example, would you you want to be like, I'm going to show you a magic trick, but before I show the magic trick, I'm going to show you what the gimmick is.

I'm going to show you how it works.

Would that be a good idea?

Yeah, Penn and Teller doing the cup and balls with the transparent cup.

100%.

I love

seeing the Praxis, the artistry.

It's great.

So here's the thing, though.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Jess, the letter writer, the complainant,

is stating that they have this ability to turn off their memory of a thing, to literally suspend their disbelief again and pretend they are watching it for the very first time.

Now, if that's true, Jess, don't hide your light under a bushel.

That's a superpower.

If you have a switch in your head to erase your memory of a thing that you love, that's something science should study.

Don't be like Daredevil.

and hide your radar sense from the world so you can climb up and down buildings and punch people.

Help solve a problem called blindness by sharing your superpower with the world.

I guess what I'm saying is that if Jess does have this superpower, this ability to turn off their literal memory and re-enjoy, say, the Lord of the Rings movie fresh, that it would be unenjoyable to have that spell broken by your wife asking, what's about to happen?

You're down there in the minds of Mori, and all of a sudden your wife makes you remember, all right, maybe this ballrog shall not pass.

But I think that maybe what's really happening here, because I'm not sure that you can really turn off your memory of a piece of work,

that, frankly, Jess simply is annoyed by the interruption of the moment of Jess's wife saying,

stop.

Is he going to live or die?

And by the way, now I can even remember.

Gandalf does live, but also dies.

I don't even know.

Maybe I have the superpower.

No, you're thinking of Jesus.

I think there's some parallels, on-purpose parallels, perhaps.

The hair, the tablets.

Yeah, that's right.

The blowing of smoke rings.

Famous part of the Sermon on the Mount.

I think that Jess is throwing up all kinds of interference.

Like, this is a disservice to the work for me to explain what's about to happen.

The work doesn't care.

The work doesn't care what you think.

I was trained in literary theory at Yale University.

The author is dead.

All that remains is the text, and the text lives without you.

It does not care if you are spoiling it for your wife, Jess.

You are not probably able to actually erase your memory.

Your wife is not ruining your enjoyment of this by making you, bringing you out of the story.

Your wife is annoying you because she's making you stop this thing, tell what's going to happen.

And in this, in this point only, I have great sympathy.

I see there's no problem with Jess's wife wanting to know what's going to happen ahead of time in the story, but that is not Jess's burden to inform her.

There is a thing, Wikipedia, if you want to know what's going to happen in the story because you want to know how the Lord of the Rings sausage is made,

or you want to know, now I'm trying very hard, now the back of my head is trying to remember what's the name of that special fancy traveling bread that they ate, because that's what I want to say.

What's the name of that bread?

That elf bread that they raised.

Montreal bagels.

Yeah, if you want to know how the elf and Montreal bagels are made, go read the Wikipedia page before you see the movie.

If you want to admire the film craft,

read how the movie was made.

But don't put it on your partner, Jess's wife, to explain it for you, especially not in real time, because that's not a fun way to experience that movie.

That is an excellent ruling.

Look it up for yourself.

Don't subject someone else to your weird way of enjoying stuff.

That's right.

Someone who enjoys stuff in weird ways.

That's right.

So, Corey, before you go, just want to remind everybody: Attack Service is out now

as a print book, as an audio book, as an electronic book, I would imagine.

Certainly.

Absolutely.

And are you doing any events associated this?

There are eight nights of bookstore-sponsored events from the 13th to the 22nd of October, the Attack Surface lectures, each with different guests ranging from Amber Benson and John Rogers to Sarah Gailey and Chuck Wendig, Runa Senvik and Window Snyder, and many other amazing guests.

Bruce Sterling's doing a cyberpunk night with me, and you can get the whole schedule at tinyearl.com/slash go getemcore.

G-O-G-E-T-E-M-C-O-R-Y.

That shortened website again is tinyearl.com slash go get em Corey.

TinyEarl.com, T-I-N-Y-U-R-L dot com slash G-O-G-E-T-E-M-C-O-R-Y.

Just rolls right off the tongue.

These shortened URLs sure are handy.

Unforgettable, every one of them.

Thank you very much.

I'll look forward to seeing you and following you on the road.

The virtual road.

The docket is clear.

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

Our thanks to Corey for joining us today on the show.

Thank you, Corey.

Thank you.

Corey's new book is called Attack Surface.

It's the third little brother novel.

It is out now.

You can visit Corey's website, craphhound.com, for more information on where to buy it.

John, did you know that that website is named after a short story that Corey wrote?

And in the dawning days of podcasting, when I basically didn't know Corey, I may have emailed with him once, I read it for a still extant science fiction story podcast called Escape Pod.

That was

one of the first professionally produced podcasts.

Yeah, they had to make Escape Pod.

That was

written in the stars.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, in more ways than one.

Right.

While you're at craphound.com, you can check out...

Corey's August 2020 book about tech monopolies, how to destroy surveillance capitalism, and Posey the Monster Slayer, Corey's new picture book about a little maker girl who turns her toys into monster hunting weapons.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohodgman tweets, hashtag jjho,

and check out the maximum fun subreddit.

That's at maximumfun.reddit.com to chat about this week's episode.

You can submit your cases to judgejohnhodgman at maximumfun.org/slash jjho or just email hodgman at maximumfun.org.

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

Hi, John Hodgman here again with a very special message.

I apologize for not remembering that the special elven energy bar that Galadriel gives

Frodo and company wrapped up in leaves is called Lembus Bread.

There's a time when I knew all of this, cold.

But I'm getting older now, and I can't remember.

I don't even remember if Candolph lives or dies or what's going on with him.

Lembus bread, save your time.

Don't write me a letter.

But thanks.

Also, don't write me a letter about this.

Yeah, we should have called this the Doctoro It.

Or we should have, you know, we're making so many jokes about Corey Doctorow's doctoral school.

At no point did we ever make a Doctoro docket joke.

So

now I did.

So you don't have to write me a letter about that either.

But of course, if you want to write me a letter about anything under the sun, you're always welcome to Hodgman at maximumfun.org.

Maybe this is a new segment.

Don't write me a letter, but you can still do it anyway.

All right, thanks.

That's our show.

MaximumFun.org.

Comedy and culture.

Artist-owned.

Audience supported.