A Zither Jam

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

And with me, as always, is the world's most justice man, Judge John Hodgman.

That's

hello.

Jesse Thorne, how are you?

You know what?

Hang on a second.

Let me tell you, I'm on top of the world.

You know why?

No, I don't.

I'm looking here at a copy of this week's weekly packet, the weekly five-page newspaper from the part of Maine where I go some of the time, to see this headline.

GSA Combo places second at National Jazz Festival.

Jesse, you remember when we did our live show up there in Portland, Maine?

Sure.

And we had the night and day trio starring Joel Mann, the taciturn bassman?

Of course.

Did I introduce you to the sexophanist, Mr.

O, Mr.

Olofsky?

Yes, I met Mr.

O.

Yeah, Mr.

O is the jazz band teacher at the high school.

Every summer, he performs at the Blue Hill Fair.

It's my favorite thing in the world.

The jazz combo is so hot.

These kids playing the jazz are so adorable and good at it.

The drummer was incredible.

Check my Instagram feed to find out.

They just went to Philadelphia.

They took second in the nation.

Second in the nation, Mr.

O, bringing home the silver.

The silver in jazz.

I would expect nothing less of Maynards.

That's probably America's greatest hotbed for jazz.

Perhaps second only to Salt Lake City, home of the Utah Jazz.

That's why they call it Jazzland USA.

I just want to say congratulations to Melodious Thunk, the GSA Senior Jazz Ensemble, and Mr.

O for bringing home the silver from Philadelphia.

But I'm also on top of the world because I'm talking to you, my friend Jesse Thorne.

And I hope you're doing okay.

I hope you're up there on the top of the world with me.

And we have another friend here.

Yeah, I'm doing great because I was singing musical theater on the way here in my car.

That's a safe space for me to be a 16-year-old again, performing musical theater in my car.

And I decided I made arrangements.

I'm not going to look.

This is just what they call in show business, which I am definitely in as a professional podcaster.

That's right.

This is what they call a tease.

But my friend Renee and I, Renee being one of the hosts of the great MaxFun dog podcast, Can I Pet Your Dog?

My friend Renee and I have made some arrangements to perform some musical theater at the Max Fun Drive live finale show

on the last day of the Max Fun Drive.

It's very exciting.

I'm not going to reveal anything further other than to say

KT has been, our office manager has been looking into costuming.

She has a sideline in roller derby coaching, so she's ready to go on that front.

front.

And KT has placed a few orders on my behalf, and I think I'm going to be looking great.

That's all I'm going to say.

That's all I'm going to say, John.

Don't browbeat me.

That's all I'm going to say.

No, I'm not going to browbeat.

I know what the surprise is because we were chatting off the air before we got to recording here.

This is going to be very, very exciting.

Jesse, the one time I happened to be in L.A.

for the big Max Fun Drive finale in Max Fun HQ.

One of the best nights of my life.

So much fun.

So exciting.

I wish I could be there to see whatever surprise you and Renee have got cooked up, but I guess the doors are closed and the blinds are down, and you have to be there in order to see it, right?

No, it's going to be live streaming on the internet for all to see

and mock.

For all.

For all to see my shame, witness my shame

as I do my best to recreate

the

production I was was in when I was 16 years old.

Okay, we have a guest on the program.

One half of Maximum Funds brand new Smash Hit Podcast.

It's taking off like a rocket ship.

Fantai Trevell Anderson.

Hi, Trevelle.

Hello, hello, hello.

What a joy to have you.

Trevell.

Thank you for having me.

I now see the entire world through the Fantai lens.

As you should.

Fantai is like

to call it a podcast, like I've been saying podcast about problematic faves or favorite problematics,

but that sells short what it is.

I was just talking with a friend of Judge John Hodgman, Linda Holmes, about how much she loves the show.

And she was like, you know, I feel like when you say that, people expect a certain thing, and it's so much more than that.

It's so much funnier and like more big-hearted and

more insightful, like actually insightful.

But now I feel like I am obsessing over

what are my fantasies and what are the fantasies of, like, I just learned, I've been watching the new Star Trek show.

And I talked to my friend Benjamin Harrison, who's a host on Max Fun and has been podcasting about the new Star Trek show.

Right.

And he told me that apparently the guy who invented Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, was maybe a bad person, which I didn't know.

Does that surprise you, though?

Well,

here's the thing.

Then he also pointed out to me, you you know, like Star Trek takes one of the great selling points.

I'm taking this from my high school AP U.S.

history teacher, Miss Lederer, who was a real trekker, very committed trekker, talked about it in class a lot.

But like one of the big selling points of Star Trek is that it's like a utopian post-conflict world, right?

Post-conflict, post-scarcity, like it's an amazing world of magic where, you know, in 1967 or whenever Star Trek was on television,

there were people of many races.

There were, you know,

women could even be executive officers in the pilot that they had to refilm.

Then Michelle Nichols, who's incredible as Uhura, of course, gets the job of space operator.

Yeah.

Space telephone operator.

But it is an idealistic show that presents a vision of an enviable future.

But, as Ben pointed out, it's basically fundamentally completely imperialist.

And I was like, yeah, i guess i never really thought about that but definitely so

so i guess i i'm wondering trevell if the fact that you are doing this show on a week-to-week basis has completely altered your perspective on the entire world well i don't know i feel like i've always been a person who has like looked at things through many different lenses right able to like uplift and recognize somebody or something for like what they mean to the culture but also be like

they're a little shady or a little problematic as well.

And so, like, we say that Fantai is the home for complex and complicated conversations about the gray areas in your lives, the people, the places, the things that you love, even though they may not love you back, right?

And so, like, I feel like that's my default as a black queer person.

I have a variety of parts of my identity that don't like the other parts.

Trevell, are you telling me that the world may contain some problematics for

a non-binary African-American person?

It is not as rosy as the girls like to think it is out here in these streets.

What is the next thing that you're really excited about busting into on Fanta?

Well, you know, we get into it all.

You know, we're talking about

the black, the invasion, we're calling it an invasion of black British actors coming over and taking all of the

quote-unquote taking all of the jobs from the black American actors.

We've already got...

They're taking all the jobs from the rappers who act.

Which is probably for the better, now that we think about it.

But we're also going to get into one of my faves who's Monique, who I love.

She's my favorite actress of all time.

But, like, you know, she tried to have us boycott Netflix, you know, a few months ago.

And we're like, girl, what are you doing?

We're already sharing, you know, our passwords among five people.

Why would we?

I'm trying to watch Touke and Bernie here.

Right.

So, yeah, we're getting into all of that complicated, complex stuff about some of our problematic faves and favorite problematics, in your words.

Well, Trevell, you know, a piece of settled law on the Judge John Hodgman podcast, of course, is people like what they like, but what if you like something that maybe you shouldn't like totally?

Right.

It's hard to work through those feelings, and that's why Fantai is so much fun.

And we're going to give you all the fun you need, myself and my co-host, Jared Hill.

We do what needs to be done, if I say so myself.

Thank you for doing that emotional labor for us.

That's what I'm here for.

I really appreciate it.

I really appreciate it.

Let's get into the justice.

Here's something from Elise.

She says, My husband and I go out to eat once a week, and we alternate who chooses the restaurant.

When it's my husband's turn to choose, he presents two to three options he likes, and he makes me choose from those options.

I contend that presenting two to three options doesn't count as choosing.

And in effect, I end up deciding where we go each week.

Please order my husband to choose a single restaurant so I don't have to choose for him.

I can relate to this dilemma.

Not directly, my wife and I don't have the conflict of

around choosing a restaurant,

mostly because we never leave the house because we have three children.

But

I, deep inside me, have a terror.

that unless I have

explicit, specific permission and like a demand for me to choose based on my preferences that if I choose something for my wife,

I am walking into some kind of trap and I will ruin our relationship and end up divorced, basically.

And I want to be clear, John, not because my wife has ever led me into a trap.

She never has in her entire life.

It is truly about my own childhood emotional trauma that remains unprocessed.

Like, so what kind of choice, if it's not going out to dinner, what kind of choice are you making for you and Teresa that you're afraid will lead to her divorcing you?

Like picking out something to listen to on the stereo or picking out a movie or what?

Yeah, I think picking out a movie is a pretty perfect example.

Teresa and I have been together since,

frankly, Teresa and I have been together since the VHS era.

I think we started dating in 1997 or eight.

Oh, wow.

So we used to go to the video store on Valencia Street in San Francisco when I was still living at my mother's house.

And we'd wander down there.

I found the anxiety of picking a video for the two of us to watch completely debilitating.

And my wife has extraordinarily democratic and generous tastes.

She's not picky, and I am picky.

I'm a weird picky grumpus about that kind of stuff.

And she isn't, but I was terrified that I was going to mess it up for that same reason.

What did you pick?

I picked a bootleg VHS of the British television show Brass Eye, created by Chris Morris, that they had at this particular video store, which unfortunately this video store closed a couple years ago, but it was called Lost Weekend Video.

But they had a whole section of bootleg Chris Morris videos.

You could rent the day-to-day in brass eye.

And my friends from Casper Hauser had told me I should check it out.

I can't stand up right now because I'd be off mic, but let me give you a mental standing ovation.

Because

one thing I admire about that is, Jesse, you are not hiding yourself to the woman that you love.

For someone who was just making the case that he he overthinks the choices that might affect his life with his loved one

and gets trapped in a cycle of self-doubt, you really picked a pure Jesse Thorne pick, a bootleg of brass eye, a bootleg of esoteric comedy, which, by the way, is pretty much the most brilliant thing I ever saw when Jay Evans, my old dear friend from home, showed me the same, not the same bootleg, but another bootleg in Brooklyn, Massachusetts, probably around the same time.

Trevell,

does this happen to you do you ever get paralyzed making a decision for other people well i kind of feel like i am elisa's husband um so like with me and my partner i do this thing where i present options for him to choose but the reason why i do it is because he's always on somebody's diet or he's always like has feelings about what we eat whereas like i eat everything wait on somebody's diet somebody's diet atkins diet or dr atkins you know So that would be an example of being on Dr.

Atkins diet.

I don't know.

Weight Watchers.

I don't know.

Mr.

T diet.

Doing

a juice cleanse or some foolishness.

And so I provide options for him because he's got everything going on.

And I will literally eat anything all the time.

You know that diet.

Jesse Thorne that's developed by that famous nutritionist, Dr.

Phineas T.

Keto?

Sure.

So for you, Trevell, it comes down to food.

Yes, it comes down to my partner having specific thoughts about what he should or should not be eating and me being able to eat literally everything.

And so I provide options so that he can choose a restaurant that will have something that fits within whatever dietary restrictions he has that week.

Yeah, my trap, John, is definitely about me having hyperspecific tastes, like overdeveloped, hyperspecific tastes in a variety of areas and opinions, as listeners of this show probably know.

And then, but me also being terrified

that if I express those hyperspecific tastes, it's going to lead to disaster and thus desperately begging my wife for a kind of explicit blanket permission to express my hyperspecific tastes when she's pretty chill.

She's more of a Trevell.

I think she's probably pretty used to your hyperspecific tastes by now.

She knows you're a bootleg of brass guy.

She did ask that we stop watching that new Star Trek show the other night because

we were eating dinner while we were watching it and they were removing a cybernetic eye.

That sounds like a good reason to stop watching that.

There was a lot of robot blood.

Yes.

But Trevell, if you feel like Elise's husband sometimes,

do you get the sense that your partner feels like Elise that he feels frustrated that you're just not that you're not making the call?

Or does he appreciate the fact that you're like, I don't know what you're eating these days.

So

here's a bunch of rice.

Here's a steak.

And here's a jello shot.

Like, whatever you're doing, let me know.

I'm sure he probably feels closer to Elise in that, you know, he tells me to make a decision and I don't make a decision.

I end up making him make the decision.

But, you know, I always tell him that like he could also not make the decision and I can choose something, but then he just has to deal with whatever I've chosen.

And like.

If his diet is that important to him, then, you know, that could create some issues, right?

Like, if I choose something that like he he can't eat this week you know then he's gonna be staring at me stuff my face at the table I think for us in in our relationship that that with me and my wife we've managed this a lot by just making the rules a little more explicit and the expectations a little more explicit so sometimes

if I'm having a bad day emotionally and it gets to be 830 which is the time when we have time to watch one television show I will just let my wife know that I only have a 30-rock Brooklyn 9-9

or Cheers level of emotional bandwidth.

I need to watch a show that will make me feel nice and happy.

And then

sometimes the palette is broader

and we can watch

Lodge 49

or

Barry.

I'm basically at the end of the evening emotional state now where I can't even watch a show.

The most culture I can take in is staring at a single panel illustration of Green Arrow drawn by Neil Adams circa 1977 and just fall asleep to that.

That's all I need.

But see, Trevelle, what you're describing to me

feels more like

communication

between two adults.

than what Jesse is describing, which is pure mind chaos.

And what I feel like Elise is describing here, like I feel like, I think that Jesse, you and you, Trevell, have sort of maybe opened Elise's eyes a little bit to what's going on behind the curtain with regard to her husband and his terror of making decisions.

There may be real emotions involved, fear of making the wrong decision or feeling paralyzed with an abundance of decisions and so forth.

But that said, this reminds me of something.

Now, I have been spending a lot of, you know, I was just saying, like, like, most of the time, it is true that I think last night I just looked at one panel of a 1977 Justice League of America, no, excuse me, it was

a Neil Adams illustration from an old X-Men comic book.

Let's not talk about it anymore.

I've also, when I'm not able to consume real culture, like full novels and junk, I read little short stories.

And by short stories, I mean I read Yelp reviews of restaurants because Yelp is my favorite collection of very short fiction written by incredibly unreliable narrators.

Where all the conflict is either racism or parking-based.

I've also been reading, I've also,

and I blame the maximum fun Reddit for this, honestly, Jesse, because you tricked me.

You didn't lie, but you said the maximum fun sub-reddit on Reddit is the only nice part of Reddit.

And that's true.

And I've really been, I've really enjoyed engaging with all of the maximum fun subredditors on the Maximum Fun subreddit.

And I've been commenting and responding to people's nice comments on the Judge John Hodgman episode stuff and the I Pottias episode threads and so forth.

And then I got started, like, I'm like, maybe there's some other parts of Reddit that I can read.

And unfortunately, I did.

And now I'm addicted to a different book of incredibly unreliable short stories called The Subreddit is, and this is, I'm going to have to use some strong language here, Am I the

and this

I looked at that one before.

That's really intense.

It's really intense.

I mean, it is like Judge John Hodgman with zero guardrails.

It is people writing in going,

in this situation where I disagree with my partner, my spouse, my father-in-law, or whatever,

am I the a-hole or is this other person the a-hole?

And it's intense.

It's like,

I feel like we're Gilligan's Island and it's the sopranos, basically, of conflict resolution.

Or non-resolution in this case.

Yeah, I mean, if you've ever thought that Judge John Hodgman is a lesson in the manifestations of structural misogyny in American society,

and the sort of as particularly in it's particularly in a domestic context, like the

little here and there manifestations of what it means, the many casual ways that men don't even realize they're being monsters.

That subreddit, wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I'm just going to say it here.

When a dude is asking, usually the answer is yes.

When a dude is asking, am I the a-hole?

Usually the answer is yes.

Yeah.

I know, Trevell, you know, in the now coming up on 10 years of doing this podcast, it has been, and I've said this before, it has been incredibly instructive to me to see the data in the disputes, particularly small domestic disputes between

heterosexual,

romantic, domestic partners.

I would have presumed that dudes are always the monsters and are always wrong.

But I can't argue with the data.

It's just time and time and time and time again.

Not always, not 100%.

Not all men.

Ha ha.

But it happens a lot and in small ways.

And

AITA, as it's called,

is truly you know

as as Jesse says it's a data set worth reckoning with I'm just surprised that y'all can actually like

like stomach the Reddit of it all

because I haven't touched reddit in years and don't plan to there are some friendly reddits besides the maximum fun reddit which is almost universally really sweet and friendly and what they love fantai by the way oh great maybe i should check it out now but like i haven't encountered any toxicity on my slow cooker subreddit subreddit or my

or my people who collect VHS tape subreddit or my vintage stereo equipment subreddit.

All of those are really chill and positive.

Did not know all of these subreddits existed.

Oh, there's a subreddit for a thing where you go onto a bridge and you get an industrial magnet attached to a fishing line and you drop it into the river and then you pull up something made out of metal and it's just like, oh, I found a half a carburetor.

Wow.

It's amazing.

Interesting.

It is amazing.

But I will say, Trevell, I would not encourage anyone to go to this subreddit, Am I the A-Hole?

Unless you really want to feel bad feelings.

I'll keep that after you.

After a while.

It's hard.

It's hard.

And people are in hard circumstances there.

And you're just reminded, yeah,

there are a-holes, really bad ones.

But I give it credit and I bring it up here only because

it introduced me to a cartoonist named Emma.

Emma is a commenter from time to time on this board.

She lives in France and I believe is French.

And she did this whole cartoon

about

what it feels like when you are a woman and a heterosexual couple.

And you're trying to feed your child and get dinner on the table and something boils over.

and the dude goes, you should have asked me for help.

I would have helped you.

And the whole comic is about how that is entirely an inappropriate thing to ask.

Like, you are a whole human being, dude.

You have field awareness of what's happening.

You do not need your mommy wife's specific request that you help out in order to realize that another human being needs help.

You just need to open your eyes.

And she wrote a whole comic about that and then put that along with a bunch of her other comics in a whole book called The Mental Load, which is about

the mental load that, and it doesn't have, obviously it's not necessarily only in male-female partnerships, although there are reasons that it happens that way.

But it's often the case in a relationship where one person is doing a lot of the thinking about everything that needs to happen.

And the other person is just like, I'll just let you handle this.

Let me know if you need anything.

And that's not fair.

So I was really thrilled.

And I bought her book, The Mental Load, from Books Are Magic here in Brooklyn.

It's great.

And I think it really, it really described a lot of what these disputes that come up often on Am I the A-Hole or the Judge John Hodgman podcast, the one you're listening to right now.

You know, what Elise resents here, I suspect, no matter what her husband's mental chaos is,

The whole point of this exercise of trading off choice of restaurant is,

A,

everyone gets to try something that they want and it's fair and it's equal.

And B, half the time, I don't have to think about it.

I don't want to think about where we're going for dinner.

I just want you to make the decision.

And Elise's husband is making her bear the mental load not only of her night to decide, but also his night to decide.

And it might be because he's trying to be conscientious.

It might be because

he's nervous that if he chooses the wrong restaurant, she will divorce him.

Some people think that way.

I have 100% confidence that Elise's husband has a defense, but I would still say, Elise's husband, you're wrong.

Take the mental load of this one thing.

Choose that restaurant.

If it's not to Elise's liking,

I guarantee you, you're not going to get divorced.

If it's a bad choice and it's humiliating to you, I guarantee you.

Humiliation happens to everybody all the time, and you can deal with it a little bit.

You can deal with one bad dinner.

It is not conscientious to put the mental load on the person who's trying to unload.

By the way, Jesse Thorne, I just want to say, I find it so adorable that you and I share this bootleg of brass eye experience.

So exciting to me.

It really warmed my heart.

I miss Jay Evans so much.

He lives down in Richmond, Virginia, and works in the art store there.

Love him.

I mean, I think that thing probably,

I mean, you know, that thing probably shaped my mind in an important way, and I never would have gotten there without Jay.

So thank you, Jay.

But also,

I will say, I've known my wife and have been in love with her.

Forget about the VHS era, the beta era.

And on one of our very first, maybe our first date,

I was the kind of guy who did not feel the way you did, Jesse.

I was like, I am going to decide what movie we're going to watch because it is my job job as a guy to put my taste into your head.

And she came over and I said, would you like to watch with me my very favorite movie, The Third Man, starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles?

And my wife said,

no.

Smart woman.

She has not seen it to this day.

And I thank her for that lesson, that that's not what dating is about, especially since if she had, if she had watched The Third Man that night of our first date, I guarantee you she would have divorced me even before we got married, years before we got married.

Divorced.

I mean, that's because of her legendary antipathy towards zither music.

You're talking about Anton Karras'

hit song, the theme from The Third Man?

Performing the Man.

Number one Zither.

The number one Zither song of all time?

Oh, my.

Trevell, do you ever see The Third Man?

No,

I don't think that's something I should be doing.

I mean, consider it.

It's pretty great, but we're not going to make that.

I used to advocate for The Third Man a lot.

It's fine.

It's good.

It's fine.

It's not.

But that song, boy, that theme song.

That song was on jukeboxes.

If you ever need a Zither jam.

Whoever needs a zither jam, though.

Who knows?

When it comes up,

you're locked and loaded now.

You know what your zither jam is.

Okay, let's take a quick break.

More items on the docket to be cleared with Trevell Anderson from Fantai on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

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

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

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Made In.

Let me ask you a question.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket with our Pal Traveller Anderson from the Smash It podcast, Fantai.

Here is a justice request from Tom.

I work in the dish room at Pizzeria Bedia.

in Philadelphia.

One of my coworkers often puts on music before I get there for my shift, even when they're not actually working in the room.

How can we best equally divide the speaker time?

I'm hesitant to address it with them directly because they have a bad temper, and I don't want to start a fight over something so small.

Also, I'm an only child, so I am not a fan of conflict.

I hope you can stop in for a pie next time you're in Philly.

I think it might even give Regina Pizzeria a run for its money.

That's the one you guys talked about on the Doughboys, right?

Yeah,

we'll not talk about Pizzeria Regina right now, unless you want want to, Trevell.

Do you know Pizzeria Regina?

I'm not familiar.

I'm not real.

I'm into, you know, regular pizza joints, like dominoes.

Wow.

That's a problematic fave.

Yeah.

That's maybe one of the original problematic faves.

Right.

First of all, Trevelle, sometimes things slip through the docket that aren't proper disputes.

Like sometimes people are having fights with themselves.

Sometimes people are really just asking more etiquette questions, which is this is sort of like a workplace etiquette question.

Yeah.

This is also kind of a pre-dispute, right?

Because Tom is afraid of getting into a fight with his coworker.

I think this coworker sounds scary.

What do you think, Treville?

I think that Tom needs to step his cookies up.

And by that, what I mean is, you know, Tom presents themselves as a grown person.

Yes, true.

You know?

And so if you want to change the music on the speaker, you should confront the person and say, hey, sis, this cute song, but can I play something?

I think from now on, all of your verdicts, John, should start with patient presents as a grown-ass person.

Doing the rounds.

Dr.

Trevell, the patient presents.

It's a grown-ass human.

John, this is truly a classic Judge John Hodgman dispute

that anticipates conflict that might not even exist due to social anxiety.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, the patient presents as a grown human, but also presents as an only child.

Emphasis on a child.

And I, Trevelle, am an only child, and therefore I grew up without any rehearsal of conflict whatsoever, and it terrifies me.

Yeah, why do you think, Trevelle, that I thought I would get divorced if I picked the wrong video?

But I think you're absolutely right, Trevell.

I mean, this is a part of just being a grown-up human being in the world

is being able to say,

do you mind if I put on something else for a little while, right?

I also wonder if it's like, is the music bad?

Because like if the music is bad, then that's one thing.

Or is it just like you don't like...

you don't like hip-hop or you don't like country or you don't like you know mariachi music or whatever the case is and you just want a little diversity.

I think you can have that conversation, right, in a way that is like easy and approachable and like won't lead to a big blow up or anything.

What kind of music do you think

a guy with a bad temper who works in a pizzeria in Philadelphia, who turns on the music and then leaves the room,

is listening to?

I mean, I'm going to venture to say bad music.

Well, I don't, let's not say bad music, perhaps specialized music.

Ooh, specialized.

You know, I think if I worked in a pizzeria with a pizzeria guy who got there before me and turned on the music, my imagination says that they're playing relatively brutal metal.

That's what I was going to go say.

Which is by no means bad music, but it is one of the musics I would least want to listen to while working in the back of a pizza shop.

Can we agree that since Tom describes this person as having a bad temper, and that's just Tom's point of view, who knows?

But can we agree that probably this music, the bad temper pizzeria guy is listening to, is scary to Tom?

That Tom finds this music scary music.

I think it would be great if Tom just got in there every day and this

person

that he was so scared of at the Pizzeria was just putting on like Natalie and Bruglia or something like that.

Like, I don't know.

I just get overwhelmed by feelings.

So, Trevell, I'm going to be Tom Tom, and you be my co-worker.

Okay.

All right.

I'm going to do a little role play.

All right.

And you choose how you want to respond.

Okay.

Oh, hey, Trevell.

I know you're usually,

I don't know how to say it.

Do you mind if I put on

the third man theme by Anton Karas?

I don't know what the hell that is.

I do mind.

Oh, okay.

Can we listen to something else?

Yeah, you took a really intense tack on this roleplay, Treville.

It was like my worst nightmare.

Tom said that the person has a bad temper.

And so I was just like, the person's probably going to be very like no at the beginning.

You know?

Right.

And you've got to like wear them down or something.

Here's the thing.

I think

it's conceivable that they will have a reaction like that.

But I think it's much more likely that you don't even have to approach this as a conflict because it is not yet a conflict.

As far as this person knows, as far as this coworker knows to this point, they're doing a great job by making sure there's music in the back so that people can enjoy some music while they work.

All Tom really has to do is go to that person and say, like,

hey, I'd love to contribute to the music.

Is it okay if I change it when you're not here?

Or is there some kind of timeshare arrangement on the play button or whatever?

And the odds are that even for a person with a terrible temper,

that will be totally fine and will not lead to a tempestuous situation.

Odds are, but you heard my role play with Trevell.

Yeah.

That could happen.

Could break otherwise.

That could happen.

And it was my worst nightmare and it made me feel awful, but you did the right thing.

That was the right thing to do.

Tom could also just take like, you know, some other steps and like

unplug the speaker.

Oh, sabotage.

I don't want anyone's answer to this to be passive aggression.

Passive.

There's not even regular aggression yet present.

Let's establish regular

aggression from this other person before we start

coming up with undermining stuff.

I could hear that.

Fine, fine.

I don't know what happened,

co-worker.

For some reason, the Bluetooth speaker just ended up in the bottom of this vad of tomato sauce.

It just slipped.

It fell.

I was over on this side of the room and I saw it jump off.

Look, Tom, Trevell is right.

Go to your coworker.

You're both human beings.

Human beings can say to one another,

hey, do you mind if I put something else on the speaker for a little bit, if you don't mind?

I was thinking of this, this, and this.

Probably that person will be like, yeah, obviously.

I'm a human being too.

Now, that person might be a monster and go, no!

Or cut you to the quick the way Trevell did me.

But look what what happened.

I lived.

I'm alive.

It's not fatal.

It's not fatal to be shut down.

Maybe your boss will be in the room and your boss will be like, that's terrible.

You're fired, tempered, bad-tempered guy.

And then you get to pick all the music, all of the music.

And you know what music you have to pick.

The only music that should be playing while you're making a pizza.

The theme from The Third Man by Anton Karis.

We're going to move on.

But Trevell, I ask you, at some point, when it is convenient to you,

just dial up on your machine the third man theme by Anton Karras, Master of the Zither, and imagine making a pizza to that music.

I think you'll be delighted.

I will figure that out.

Thank you.

Here's something from James.

I detest washing dishes.

Whenever I prepare a snack, I will...

This is amazing.

This is beautiful.

I love that James is the one who wrote this in.

Bless you, James.

A thousand thank yous.

Whenever I prepare a snack, I will tear off a section of cardboard from one of the many packaging boxes that have been set aside for the recycling and use this as a makeshift paper plate.

My roommate thinks this is uncouth and wants me to use regular ceramic dishware.

I argue, as long as I'm not serving food to others in this way or using it for something messy, it's completely harmless.

I'm eating French toast off of popsicle packaging as I type this message.

Who here is right?

Trevell?

Jesus.

I heard you.

Trevell, I heard you say, I can't.

And I understand.

But what if I were to say politely, you must?

I just.

There are such things as paper plates.

There's no need for you to

ecological choice.

Is it?

Well,

it keeps you from having to use the paper plates as well.

It's the popsicle packaging.

I guess if you're eating something like French toast, you will not be able to recycle that popsicle packaging after you've eaten off of it.

Exactly.

It will be food-soiled and no longer recyclable.

Exactly.

That's not the point I was going to make, but that is a very good one that helps my side.

Yeah, no, I think

you're still reacting to the astonishing fact that this man eats French toast off of a popsicle box off of a popsicle box.

I'm just confused.

Like, I wonder how he started doing this.

Like, were there no plates to do that?

Let me explain.

When you're a heterosexual man,

this is definitely some straight stuff, right?

Here,

the gays know better.

In a roommate situation, and especially if the other people in your house are also heterosexual men,

and especially if you are a young person who's relatively new to independent living,

you will go to extraordinary lengths to,

or many will, go to extraordinary lengths to avoid behaving like an adult human being.

And justifying your laziness with some kind of crackpot theory that you will then type into a podcast with your maple syrup-covered fingers.

I mean, that's the thing.

We know exactly.

James is, I admire James for being very upfront about this.

He doesn't like to do the dishes.

One day,

he had some French toast cooking, and he looks in that sink full of dishes, and he's like, I don't want to clean that dish.

I'm going to tear off this piece of popsicle cardboard.

And now I've solved the problem.

I am lazy and I get to put a gloss of eco-responsibility on top of it.

Hooray for me.

Once again, I triumph and am the hero of every story.

That's James's point of view.

But it's gross, right?

I mean, Treyell, it's gross.

Listen, you're not going to see me eating off of no cardboard.

I have plastic plates at my house and I still use the glass.

It just, I just, it just, I think you're right, Jesse, that they're, they're probably in school, very young, and like it just makes sense to James to do this.

But coming from an adult, I'm going to need James to do better.

And I can let you know, John, you're in New York, we're in Los Angeles together,

that Trevell presents as a

grown-up human being.

I mean, we have to agree, this is uncouth, right?

He says his roommate thinks this is uncouth, right?

Who here votes that that's coup?

Yes, so stipulated.

Yes.

I have to say, I'm tempted to James' argument that even though it's uncouth, if he's not serving food to others,

it's completely harmless.

And I guess that's true.

I think it hurts yourself to some degree, James, to be eating French toast off of a popsicle carton.

Mostly because

that stuff doesn't have a rim.

You can't have French toast and syrup on a conveyance that does not have a rim.

It's just not going to work as a plate.

And that cardboard is too flimsy.

Like, even if I were to give you every benefit of every doubt, what you have described is a bad idea.

Now, I will say this.

Lots of places won't accept pizza boxes for recycling because they are already food soiled.

If you were to spend an afternoon, James, with a box cutter or an X-Acto knife, cutting out perfectly pizza slice-shaped pieces of cardboard from old pizza boxes and using those to eat a single piece of pizza, that would be some flair.

That I would enjoy.

But if you're eating your food off of just trash, uh-uh.

You deserve better than that, James.

You deserve better than to eat food off of trash.

Make that trash into an artwork, then you got something.

Then you can be ecologically responsible.

A shared living situation

is

a social contract.

You are responsible for obeying shared social norms with the people with whom you live.

In this case, we're talking about basic kuth.

Listen.

And

so for me, if I were in this situation, I didn't live that long in a shared living situation, but if my college roommate Nathaniel, for example, in a non-romantic shared living situation, but if my college roommate Nathaniel, if I had come home and seen him eating off of a cardboard box, I would have felt the same way as James's roommate.

And, but if he ate off of a cardboard box at home alone while I was not there, I guess I could have dealt dealt with that.

But like at a certain point, I know we all have our way that we like to do things, and I think that having roommates involves some accommodation of that.

There also has to be, in order to just establish a baseline for human life, some basic expectations of Kuth

in any shared living situation.

And this is not an unreasonable one from James's roommate.

It's just asking you to use a plate.

It's very simple.

Yeah, Jesse,

I very rarely say this

to you, my friend, but nope.

To me, that's not the issue at all.

Really?

Even if he's alone,

eating French toast off of a popsicle carton is a perversion.

This is not about putting calorie ballast into your mouth as quickly as possible.

Feeding yourself, even alone, deserves self-respect and ritual.

So, as I say, if you make your own paper plates that are, you know, circular or triangular, if you add something, if you're bringing something literally to the table in terms of thoughtfulness and mindfulness, eat off of whatever you want, especially if you're alone.

But, you know, don't, don't take that.

When was the last time you guys saw a popsicle box?

I've seen them.

That's the fin stuff.

You can't put French toast on there.

Respect yourself, James.

Do better.

Take it from the staplesingers.

Respect yourself.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll hear some letters about Santa Claus and have some in-depth Santa Claus discussion after the break.

We're going to get into Santa Claus.

That's a content warning.

Okay, parents.

That's a content warning.

We're going to get into it from a parent's perspective.

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 Law.

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.

We've got Trevell Anderson.

They're one of the hosts of Fanta, the brand new smash hit

arts and culture podcast for Maximum Fun.

I don't know.

It counts as smash hits, right?

Take it.

Do you feel like a hit?

I am always a hit with or without the podcast, so I guess

you know, with the podcast, it's a smash hit.

That's fair.

That's very fair.

We're going gonna get into santa claus now travelle do you have santa claus experience i mean yes like at home as a child right i'm gonna say i don't know what you mean by santa claus experience but

like i don't know where this is going um but i think so yeah does santa claus visit your home around the holidays now uh no not now um but you know i feel like when i was younger there was some talk of a of a santa to a point yeah to a point a modest santa Modest dose of Santa.

I feel like after my mom got tired of me like thanking Santa too many times, she was like, okay, I bought it.

All right.

You know, I think it was one of those situations.

Santa is a problematic fave on this podcast.

I think so.

I'd agree with that.

Yeah.

In life.

Yeah.

There is a lot of problems with Santa.

There's a lot of illogic to Santa.

And then one of the things that we've discussed, and here is really, we gave you the content warning, parents.

If you don't want to hear any more about this, turn it off.

Trevell,

is a myth.

Santa's not real.

It's not a real guy.

Not a real home invader.

It's a story that parents tell to children.

I hope this is not news to you, Trevell.

It is not.

It is not.

And I have a strong opinion that parents shouldn't lie to their kids.

And to encourage them to think of Santa as being as real as their favorite fictional character, which is pretty real.

But to not actually trick kids.

Because there's a bad experience in my family when our daughter just got really upset and felt like a friend died when we explained that there was no real Santa.

It was hard.

That's just my opinion.

People can do what they want.

This dispute was whether or not the gifts from Santa

on Christmas morning should be wrapped.

And I said, this goes back a couple weeks now,

and I said, of course they should be wrapped.

They should be wrapped in special Santa paper.

But I got a bunch of letters.

Before we get into them, Trevell, do you have an opinion based on your experience or just good taste?

Should gifts from Santa be wrapped?

I feel like all gifts should be wrapped, right?

I think so.

Like, why?

Because if it's an unwrapped, you remove kind of that

Christmas morning energy of unwrapping.

Yeah, I'm with you, and yet, I got many, many, many letters basically telling me to, in so many words, eat French toast off a popsicle box in my bad opinion.

People saying, lots of people saying, where I grew up, Santa presents were always unwrapped.

And that's how we knew which ones were coming from Santa.

And a lot of the people writing in said, and this is like a consistent thing.

It's like the story was, Santa is making

these presents up in the North Pole.

He's not buying them from a store.

He made that Atari 2600.

Well, he didn't.

He actually, you know, he's got

an army of elf

flunkies who I hope are in a union making this stuff.

And therefore, it would never be wrapped.

What did one, someone wrote in, Jesse, what was one of the letters that we got there?

This is one from Sharon.

She said, imagine the kids' surprise when, wow, their most wanted gifts are sitting next to Santa's empty glass of milk.

Moreover, in the loopy wee hours of Christmas Eve when Santa is most active, there's room for boundless creativity.

It's fun to pull out a minifigure and arrange it next to Rudolph's uneaten carrot, setting the box of Lego underneath the plate.

You can also pose Barbie and her Corvette jauntily waving to a stuffed octopus who has a tentacle on one of Santa's cookies.

It's nice of Santa to share his cookies with the stuffed octopus, I think.

I think the stuffed octopus is one of Santa's gifts, though, right?

Because it's unwrapped, I guess.

Yeah, but I mean, it's a long trip from the North Pole.

It would die if it didn't get anything to eat.

Oh, Lord.

I think ideally it would be eating krill or whatever.

Anyway,

Trevelle, what I'm saying, like, we got this letter from all over the country.

I thought maybe it would be a regional thing.

Some people wrote in to say, you know, the Santa president is purposefully unwrapped so that the kids can go down and play with it while their parents get a little extra sleep that morning or whatever.

But I got letters from Jennifer, from Hannah, from Alberto, from Jason, Kurt, Wayne, Alex, so many people.

And this is one of those rare situations, Trevell, and I'm glad you're here to see this.

Where I'm going to say, and I don't think I've ever said this on the podcast,

you're right, I'm wrong.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

I don't like that.

I don't like saying it.

Are you wrong, though?

Ah!

Yeah.

Teach.

How about this?

How about this?

Is it possible that John is right and these people are right and that there's no exact right way to make Santa Claus?

I mean, yes, that is possible that everyone is right and you can do whatever the hell you want to do in your house with your presence.

I'm just thinking of like, y'all must have a lot of presents to have some presents that are Santa's that are unwrapped and other presents that I guess are from the family that are wrapped.

Because in my household, there wasn't two separate groups.

You just, your presents is your presence is your presents, whether they're from Santa or your parents.

And like, and it's already limited because we didn't grow up with a lot of money.

So like, we don't have time for this.

These are Santa's.

Game time decision for your mom?

No,

we would write, you know, to such and such from Santa or from mom or whatever on the package.

So like, right.

But part of the idea of Christmas morning, I feel like, is, you know, making the youngest kid that is there clean up all of the wrapping.

Yeah, sure.

You can't do that when all of Santa's gifts are unwrapped.

That's a treasured tradition.

You know, I just, but yes, maybe everyone is right in this situation, and you do what works for you and the Santa from your region.

There's also something from Emily who pointed out that the letter writers can't stop wrapping their presents from Santa now.

Like the regrettable elf on the shelf, you can't give up the tradition once you've started it.

And that does feel like it drives at the heart of it to me, John, which is

part of the point of a tradition is its arbitrariness.

And so, you know, when you are enacting a ritual of some kind, you are committing yourself to enacting that ritual.

And maybe

it was inappropriate to ask someone else to change their ritual.

I don't know.

You know,

I really feel like, okay.

Yeah, but America has a lot of traditions that I'm glad we've gotten rid of.

You and me both.

I think that,

yeah,

I think that we need to have some flexibility with regard to tradition.

I think that we need to appreciate that

a gift-giving situation such as Christmas is a moment of thoughtful generosity.

I think that our rituals and our traditions should emphasize

that we are lucky to be together and that we have the means and the ability to be generous with one another.

And whatever ritual best expresses that is the one you should go for.

And if there, and what I'm saying, I'm wrong about Santa wrapping.

Look, I think all presents should be wrapped.

That's what presents are.

But I do acknowledge that there is an existing beyond regional tradition of unwrapped presents from Santa that I was not aware of.

I apologize to all of you who wrote in.

I think your Santa kink is valid.

Fine.

And I think that if two families come together that have different traditions, you sit down, you work out, and you make a new tradition for the family.

And I hope that the tradition is don't trick your kids into thinking there's actually a man coming into the house because that's A, scary and B, a deception.

But that's me.

That's my Santa Kink.

No Santa kink.

Our docket is clear.

Trevell, if you were going to recommend one episode of Fantai for our listeners to check out, which one would you recommend?

Well, I would recommend all of them first and foremost because they're all wonderful.

But

let's say our listeners are anxious people who would like their decisions to be made for them in a clear manner.

Yeah, don't put that mental load on me.

I can do that.

I would say I would listen to our conversation about Gail King's interview with Lisa Leslie around Kobe Bryant's death.

A lot of people had feelings about it, and Jared and I, as journalists, had special feelings about it.

As a semi-journalist myself, I listened to that episode and found it incredibly insightful and compelling and

spoke to my own strong feelings about the situation from a variety of perspectives.

Trevell, thank you so much for being here and for showing yourself and being so awesome and for doing fantai with Jared.

It's available every Thursday on maximumfund.org or wherever you get your podcast, right, Jesse?

You got it.

F-A-N-T-I is how it's spelled.

It's a portmanteau of fan and anti if you haven't figured it out yet.

Our thanks to Trevell Anderson for joining us this week.

They're on Twitter at Trevell Anderson, T-R-E-V-E-L-L-A-N-D-E-R-S-O-N.

And Trevelle's a very fun follow on Twitter.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We are on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohnhodgman tweets, hashtag jjho, and check out the MaxFund subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com, where John Hodgman has been showing up a lot lately.

Submit your cases, please, at maximumfund.org/slash JJHO or by email at hodgman at maximumfund.org.

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

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