Holiday Leftovers

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bill of Jesse Thorne.

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

How are you, Judge Hodgman?

I'm freezing.

It's winter really happened here in Brooklyn, New York.

It's really happening now, finally.

And of course, as I record from my office, and rather than have a proper heating system, my office instead has a giant hair dryer dryer stuck in the wall.

Loud hot air machine that just blows hot air in your face until your lips turn to corn husks.

Not good for podcast recording, so I had to, you know, turn that off.

And now I'm cold, but I can't complain.

I mean, I'm doing it, but I shouldn't because everything's great.

How are you, Jesse?

I'm doing okay.

I too could use a midwinter celebration,

a little break,

something special to remind me that spring is just around the corner.

Can you think of anything?

Let's take the day off.

Well, that's it for this week's John Odrin podcast.

We're going to go take naps.

Let's go fly to Curacao.

No, I mean, it's,

you know, we need a little something to get us over.

the darkness of the post-holiday season.

Let's think about the holidays.

We had so many letters coming in for the docket right around the holidays with holiday-related disputes that we just didn't have time to get to before the holidays actually happened.

So we have a heaping plate full of what we call holiday leftovers for you today on the docket.

And we're going to answer as many of them as possible.

Hey, speaking of leftovers, Jesse Thorne.

Yeah.

After the feast days of Saturnalia, of mid-winter of the solstice,

you got food leftovers.

What's your favorite leftover meal?

Like a turkey sandwich or old mashed potatoes or is it something that you look forward to eating later on after the meal?

Yeah, I usually like to eat stuffing and then on top of the stuffing I'll put additional stuffing.

Just in a bowl?

Yeah, yeah, but I mean I do like to, you know, some people will make sort of a pancake from the stuffing.

I do like extra browning, so I'm not above reheating my stuffing in a big pan so it gets extra crispy.

But I'm not going to go through the effort to to form it into a pancake.

I'm not that fancy.

I just give me that stuffing.

Num, nom, num.

Dear Cook's Illustrated Magazine,

I am a fan of stuffing, but I enjoy extra brown stuffing.

So I have a small propane torch.

Do you subscribe to Cook's Illustrated Magazine, part of the America's Test Kitchen Empire?

I do subscribe to Cook's Illustrated Magazine, and it has in it a section where people give the most Baroque, easy tips.

Yeah, like quick, what they call quick tips, and it's in the front of the book, as they say in magazine parlance.

And it's like

Jean McGillicuddy of Brookline, Massachusetts, finds that sometimes food goes bad when it is not wrapped up.

So she has tied her dog to a bottle of saran wrap.

It's like so much extra work to do these things.

Yeah, I just am settled for a lousy kitchen.

Dan Tongle gets annoyed when the tongs open in his kitchen drawer.

So he has personally crocheted 500 tong caddies for all of his tongs.

Anyway, tongs.

It's a fun word to say.

It is fun to say tongs.

I like stuffing.

You know how I like it?

I like it in a sandwich.

I like a stuffing sandwich.

Wow.

Do you put anything else in there?

Yeah, you know what I do?

Vegetarians aren't going to like this.

I like when the leftover gravy is in the fridge and

it congeals until it becomes a spread.

Yeah, sure.

Sometimes I'll just have toast with some congealed gravy on it.

Yeah, that sounds great.

Gravy as a condiment is my favorite thing.

I'm in.

It's basically a pate at that point.

Yeah, exactly so, right?

But is it a sandwich?

Let's not talk about it.

Moving on.

Here's something from Sam.

They write: During the holidays, my wife Jenny makes a cranberry bread recipe that's been in her family for many years.

It's a sweet quick bread, similar to banana bread or coffee cake.

She insists.

Or tomato cake.

Tomato soup cake, I mean.

Have you tasted that cake yet?

A number of listeners made that tomato soup cake.

I had tomato soup cake at the maximumfun.org office holiday party.

Oh, yeah.

KT, our office manager here at Maximum Fun, made that cake.

How was it?

A curious blend of sweet and savory.

You would not be able to guess that it had tomato soup in it.

If anything, you might guess a mushroom bisque, but it was good.

I liked it a lot.

Thanks, KT.

Everyone outside of my wife's family thinks it's bizarre.

The only justice I seek is for her to admit this bread is a dessert, and it's kind of weird to have alongside turkey and stuffing.

And

we do have the recipe here, and we'll put it on Instagram.

It is substantially similar to like a pound cake or a banana bread.

And she is serving it on the table with the entrees.

Yeah, next to the turkey or whatever.

Everyone outside of her family thinks this is bizarre.

Yeah, I have to side with everyone outside of her family.

This is one of those things like within the vacuum chamber of a family tradition, something strange or unordinary, I won't even say extraordinary, starts happening, then just gets repeated again and again and again until they think that it is normal.

And then someone in the family gets married and goes, oh no, you guys, sorry, cannibalism is wrong.

This is the wrong thing.

You can tell me if you disagree with me, Jesse.

I don't think that this cranberry bread, which has a cup of sugar in it,

is as bad as eating human flesh.

But I do think it feels an odd thing to serve.

Wait, is that the only part that I'm allowed to disagree with?

My only option to demur here is to suggest that it's as bad or worse than eating human flesh.

I'm just saying my instinct is that Sam is correct.

It's a little destabilizing to have an obvious dessert bread on the table with the entree.

Do you disagree?

I have to say this, John, and it might be because I am not a lover of dessert breads and simply never have been.

Yeah.

But if this was a dessert, I have to say I would be disappointed.

No, I see your point.

And while I think it is an odd bread to serve, you know, certainly a, you know, a dinner roll or a, or a biscuit or something would be a more likely bread to serve alongside your mains,

it doesn't offend me as part of the main

food in the same way that cranberry sauce doesn't offend me.

It is a compliment, a somewhat sweet compliment, but a compliment nonetheless.

I don't see this as solely being the province of dessert.

Yeah, maybe Jenny's trying to sneak it in there because she knows that if she serves it with the real desserts, people are going to be.

No one will eat it.

Yeah, no one will care.

No one will want it.

I don't want that gross ballast.

Why would you look at a table that had two pies and some ice cream and a plate of cookies and be like, oh, yeah, I would like some cranberry bread?

I mean, I admit that the holiday table is a time when

obviously lines blur between, you know, sweet and savory dessert and the main meal.

Cranberry sauce being an example of like, why is that even there?

But here's the thing.

I understand like coffee cake is called coffee cake because you have it with coffee as a little sort of like extension of a

English tea scenario, right?

Where you have a kind of sweet and savory cake to go with your afternoon coffee or after dinner coffee.

But when would be the right time to serve banana bread, aside from never, because it's gross.

Like, if you liked banana bread and I don't care for it.

John, I just want to warn you right here.

I once said I don't like banana bread on Twitter and the maelstrom that followed, you might have thought I'd have insulted Bernie Sanders.

Like it was, forgive the pun, bananas.

Don't forgive that pun.

For like 10 days afterwards, people were mad at me about not liking banana bread.

I'm going to write into Twitter right now, I don't like banana bread, and I'm going to let you know by the end of the episode what happened.

I don't like banana bread.

And

send.

We'll see what happens.

That's a little bit of a tease.

But my question stands.

Like,

banana bread is something you would have like in the morning, right?

Don't you think that's the morning?

Yeah, here's the thing.

I'm going to suggest a test.

Yeah.

It's not strictly a dessert if it's something that you would eat for breakfast.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I know doughnuts are a shady part of this, but that's because it's weird to just eat a donut for breakfast.

I know some people eat donuts for breakfast, but that's because they want to feel edgy and slightly mad-eyed all day.

Sugar high all day long?

Sugar high for an hour, then just absolutely the pits for three until it's lunchtime.

Yeah, here's the thing.

All right, now that we've talked about it a little bit,

I think that it's odd to have this on the table with the entrees because the truth is that it has a lot in common with banana bread and coffee cake.

And banana bread's a morning bread, and a coffee cake is an afternoon cake.

It's not properly a dessert.

So in that sense, Jenny is absolutely correct.

And obviously it's important to her that she make it, and I'm sure it's delicious.

And it certainly is holiday-y.

I think the perfect time to serve this cranberry bread would be like if you're celebrating Christmas on Christmas morning while opening presents and having coffee.

I also think it's something that you could cut up and hand around before dinner.

Yeah, I agree.

But ultimately, you know, I'm not going to rule against Jenny following her holiday tradition because that's what holidays are all about.

Weird family tradition.

But I am going to say to Sam,

don't let Jenny gaslight you.

It is unusual.

You're not wrong to think that it's unusual.

And you shall feel confident going forward that I, Judge John Hodgman, agree with you.

Here's something from Christopher.

My extended family includes some Christians who gather the family before meals to hold hands while someone says grace.

This does not take place at the table, but standing around before hitting the buffet.

A minority of the family, say 10 out of 25 people, are not believers, and I wonder how we should handle it.

A couple people have been sneaking away to avoid it, but the rest of us play along.

I figure there's no harm in playing along, but is that really true?

Shouldn't we stand up for our beliefs, too, and choose to respectfully abstain by standing away from the circle of hand-holding and head-bowing?

Does it matter if the person saying grace is not our host?

Thanks for your thoughts, and hail Satan.

Oh, hail, Satan to you, Christopher.

I mean, this is obviously an etiquette question more than it is a question of justice.

It's interesting.

What do you think, Jesse?

I'm going to buy some time by asking you your opinion while I think this through.

Well, I think Judge John Hodgman listeners probably know that I am an atheist, but I grew up going to church and worked in a church for a time.

And I have to say that when this situation has come up for me, which it has occasionally, I am pretty comfortable taking the opportunity to reflect myself on my own gratitude, whether or not it comes from a Christian God.

That a moment of grace is a moment of grace, whether or not you are religious.

I think there are people for whom it would be

upsetting or

like

deeply unsettling in some way to participate in a Christian ritual.

And

for those people, I would say simply, yeah, that seems reasonable to me.

That's fine if that's actually how you feel.

But generally speaking, for most atheists, including myself that I know, it's not a big imposition, and it is a nice opportunity to basically engage in the same ritual that the Christians around you are engaging in, but in

a non-religious manner.

Aaron Powell, yeah, I often reflect upon what Adam Savage, the former mythbuster, says,

which is that he does not believe in God, but he does believe in prayer in the sense of quiet reflection and meditation and a sense of seeking of purpose and meaning in a moment of silence, you know, whether that is by yourself or in a group before having a meal.

I don't want to speak for him.

I don't know how he would answer this particular question.

But I do think that, you know, this is a big family and you're all getting together for the holidays.

And I would think that while families are always diverse and not everyone gets along with everyone else,

I admire the fact that you are all gathering together

in peace and fellowship.

Even though, you know, you say a minority, but it's like almost 50% of you do not have strong religious beliefs that would cause you to say grace.

And yet you are rightly, I think the family is rightly

tolerant of those who do have that faith.

I think that it would be inappropriate to make a scene about it.

I would hope that the people in your family who are observant are themselves tolerant and understanding of those who might want to quietly step away.

And since the option of quietly stepping away is

readily available here.

You know, you're not all seated around a table, but you're going to the buffet.

You don't have to be part of that prayer circle.

And I think that that's fine.

And those people who are in that circle know that not everyone's there, and everything seems to have gone along smoothly so far.

So it sounds to me like this problem was solved before you ever wrote to us.

So the only thing that I might add is you should follow your own conscience and comfort.

But if you choose to join, don't, how did you put it?

Play along.

Don't fake it.

Don't hold the hands of your family members and just sort of

roll your eyes even though your eyes are closed.

Reflect upon something that is meaningful to you in that moment.

Reflect upon what you're grateful for, as Jesse Thorne said.

and reflect upon how it feels to have the family together and to be holding their hands.

There can be meaningful grace in that moment, even if you are not a believer.

And of course, it is a great show of familial solidarity and support.

But ultimately, if it's not for you, that's fine.

Just go into the kitchen for a second and grab some congealed gravy and bread.

That's a nice snack to have.

And as far as etiquette goes, I mean, you should follow your host's lead.

If your host is comfortable with it,

then I think you need to be comfortable with it.

And I don't think you need to necessarily form an anti-prayer circle in the kind of protest of your other family members, because that's just

what a jerk would do.

Yeah, that would make you a poopster, and I would not support that.

But if you're this goes for whether they're people of faith or not,

but if they're using that prayer circle to speak to openly

religious intolerance, you know, or to get political or to pray for something that is against your values, I do think that you could then have a conversation with the host and say, or to your relative and say, I'm all for saying grace, but, you know, I'm not here out here saying, hail, Satan, so please don't say bad stuff about gay people or trans people or something in your prayer.

I don't think that that's what's happening.

Do you know what I mean?

But if there's, there, there, there are certain flavors of religion that are stronger than others.

And if that's what's coming into the situation, I think you can stand up for principles in a polite way, too.

So there, that's what I would say.

Keep stepping away if that's how you feel like it.

And if you step in, try to focus on the stuff that is meaningful to you.

Oh, and hail Satan.

Hail Satan, by the way.

Hail Satan to you, Judge Hodgman.

Let's take a quick break.

More holiday leftovers coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

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

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

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

Let me ask you a question.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

This week, we're clearing the leftover holiday disputes from the docket in honor of the depths of winter.

Here's something from Andrea.

My parents updated their kitchen recently and have a beautiful stainless steel stove with gas burners.

They aren't big chefs and they tend to prepare simple, heart-healthy meals like salmon on the grill, steamed broccoli, and roasted sweet potatoes.

When I go home for the holidays and attempt to use the stove to saute vegetables, my parents yell at me, I'm getting oil splattered everywhere.

They quickly intervene to put pieces of foil or lids on the pans.

I say stoves should be used for cooking, and I need the pan exposed to constantly stir whatever's sautéing.

I wipe the stove after I use it, but my parents still insist on lids.

Please tell my parents to stop policing my proper use of their stove.

Yeah, Andrew, your parents don't deserve those big big open gas burners, that restaurant style stove that you want to cook all of your high heat sautés on because they don't want to use that stuff.

They'd be happier with a, with a hot plate.

They'd be happier with like an induction range top or an electric range top because they're not using the range the way you want to use it, the way it's meant to be used.

But too bad, Andrea, because their burners, they're rules.

It's their house.

Like, I don't think they made the right choice for them.

You know, I got a,

when we moved into our place here in Brooklyn, we had to buy a stove.

And I got,

in envy of my friend Adam Sachs, who had

a real commercial stove, I got a brand of commercial stove that had these really big, high heat open burners.

And they looked really metal.

And I loved them.

And it would boil water like in a second.

But the truth is, we don't have proper ventilation in our apartment.

And these things were useless.

They were so powerful that you put anything in there and you were setting off the smoke alarm in a second.

And finally, the fire department came and knocked down, well, they were let into our apartment and took the stove apart because there was a gas leak.

Someone smelled gas in the hallway.

Luckily, no one was hurt.

And we knew we could never trust that stove again after a decade of using it.

And we went and we got a proper stove that was the right power for our apartment.

And I'm thrilled to use it every day.

Like it was the greatest thing that ever happened.

Well, no, not the greatest thing that ever happened in history, but it was

a life improvement.

It's a good thing to,

when you are purchasing things for your home, if you have the ability to do so, it's exciting to get stuff that you see in magazines or on cooking shows or whatever.

But you really have to think, what is my life all about?

And your life is maybe not about searing steaks in a cast iron griddle at high heat and then setting off the fire alarm and running through the house waving brooms around to get to disperse the smoke.

Maybe you're, maybe you're a retired older couple that likes to eat steamed broccoli.

And when you do something high heat, you put some salmon on the grill.

And then your daughter, Andrea, comes in and messes up your spot.

I got to feel for the parents in this one, Jesse.

What do you think?

Yeah, I'm with you 100%.

My parents have unremarkable stoves.

My father has a tiny ancient stove that I imagine is collectible,

but is not very convenient to cook on.

And my mom has a rental stove top that has been the same since she moved in there 25 years ago.

But

my in-laws have recently moved to a house with that's like,

I don't know, it's like maybe 20 feet by 20 feet, something like that.

Right.

Maybe even a little bit less.

Yeah.

And they don't have a stove anymore.

They just hang on the wall one of those single induction burners.

That makes it hard to cook on if it's hanging on the wall, though.

Well, you take it down

on the tiny slice of counter

when it's time to cook.

But yeah, I can imagine that if they had a big, beautiful commercial range, and every time I visited, I was gazing at it lovingly because at my house, there's no gas line, and so I have to cook on an electric stovetop, which stinks.

And

I just wanted to saute all day on that beautiful big commercial range that I'd be pretty steamed if they were telling me I had to put lids on top of everything and I couldn't use my wooden spoon to keep things moving on the, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But their house, their rules.

I'm with you 100%.

You wouldn't be steamed.

You'd be seared.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And here's another thing.

It might not be the mess of the oil splattering, although I could see why that would be annoying to them.

It might be a smell issue, an odor issue for them.

Because that stuff, long after you go, Andrea, the smell of your sauteed vegetables and your burnt oil might be hanging around.

And maybe you say you wipe it up.

Maybe you don't do a good job.

Maybe you need to do better.

But yeah, just go out there on the grill if you want to do something.

Get a grill basket.

Or if they have outdoor space and they have a plug outside, get one of those

single-unit induction burners.

They're only like $75.

That's what we used for two weeks while we were waiting for our new oven to come in.

And that thing's amazing and it gets hot.

You can go out there and outside and stir-fry to your heart's delight.

Just show up with your own induction burner and go for it.

Our next question concerns some specifics about Santa Claus.

So parents, if you celebrate Christmas and Santa Claus is part of it, you might want to hit that 15-second ahead button a couple of times.

And Santa, if you're listening and you don't like hearing what people say about you behind your back, you might also want to skip ahead.

Andrew says, My wife just proposed the madcap notion that Santa not wrap his gifts this year.

All the other gifts would be wrapped, not Santa's.

I say this strikes a blow at a foundational Christmas tradition, opening presents.

She argues the time, energy, money, and paper savings.

We have four and a half-year-old triplets.

Wow, we

I find in favor of the parents, whatever,

forever and ever.

And my wife is a superhero.

She's responsible for the vast majority of holiday prep, with the exception of gift wrapping, which I've historically handled late at night while binge-watching my favorite holiday TV episodes.

I believe she's succumbing to internet trendiness and sacrificing a time-honored holiday tradition from both our childhoods.

This will be our kids' fifth Christmas, and Santa has been delivering wrapped presents every year prior.

She says it will eliminate confusion about whose presents are from whom, but I believe this scheme can only introduce potential confusion to their young, impressionable minds.

Yeah, wow.

I mean, I would say that this notion that Andrew's wife has is genuinely mad cap.

If you are celebrating Christmas Christmas and Santa is part of that tradition, it is not uncommon to have some presents be from Santa and some presents be from mom and dad and cousin Billy or whatever it is.

And it's not uncommon for the Santa presents to be wrapped with a certain kind of wrapping paper, which I think is a good solution.

Like a Santa-only wrapping paper.

But this idea of leaving Santa's gifts unwrapped,

I mean, I don't want to, this is why we ask you to skip ahead.

Santa Claus is not a real human being.

Santa Claus is a very important tradition to a lot of families.

And what I advise people who have kids to say to their kids is that Santa is as real as your favorite fictional character, which is pretty darn real.

And you can be forthright with your kids about the fact that Santa is a story.

And I guarantee you, it'll still be enjoyable that morning when the kids see the cookie nibbled,

the wrapping paper, the special wrapping,

when they see that live reindeer that you brought in that got left behind by Santa Slay.

However, it is that you do the Santa play in your house.

Even kids who know what the straight dope is on Santa will find it charming.

And, you know, suspension of disbelief is not something that just happens to adults going to see movies.

Kids do it all the time, too.

It's fun.

I have to say, my eight-year-old daughter

has been told the truth, so, quote-unquote, about Santa Claus and has rejected it.

Right.

Yeah.

Exactly.

First of all, I like the fact that you put quote marks around the truth because, as we know, it's 2020.

There is no objective truth anymore.

Well, there is a truth about Santa and there is a truth about Santa with a capital T.

And I think

your plan speaks to the capital T truth of Santa,

the idea that we all deserve something in the darkest time of year, especially if we've been trying to be virtuous.

Yeah.

But also, I respect and admire your daughter's decision, and I don't think it's an unusual one.

I mean, the reason I came to the firm conclusion.

If you haven't been listening to this for years and years and years,

my wife, when our daughter was born, before our son was born, my wife really wanted to do Santa as a, well, frankly, as

a deception.

Like, she wanted to pretend that Santa was a, to tell our daughter that Santa was really, there was a

man who was actually intruding our home to leave presents, who then left by the piping or whatever.

And

I was like, I don't think that's a great idea because eventually you got to come clean.

And I don't ever remember being told that Santa was an actual person.

I always remember it being just sort of a fantasy play.

But my wife won the day and then regretted it because I was out there at the Daily Show holiday party singing karaoke with Paul Rudd, probably the whole reason I was born.

And I got a call from my wife saying our daughter asked to know the real, real truth, because some kids at school were saying it was just a lie.

And my wife, you know, sort of took a deep breath and said, do you really want to know?

And our daughter said, yep.

And she said, well, your friends are right.

And then our daughter went into a,

you know, a horrible sobbing that didn't stop for hours because for her, she felt she had lost a friend.

She was like the equivalent in her emotional life of having a loved one pass away.

And when she later said,

I know about Santa.

What about the tooth fairy?

My wife was like, ah, what do I say now?

And my daughter leaned in, our daughter leaned in and whispered, I know what the real truth is, but just say the thing.

And my wife said, tooth fairy is real.

And our daughter was like, great, now that's fine.

Kids can do this.

It's fine.

You don't have to create a deception in their lives and all that entails.

Now,

to this point, I do not know what Andrew's wife is trying to get away with here.

I am all for reducing the amount of wrapping that happens at holiday time because it is a drudge.

I would argue that the best way to reduce the amount of wrapping at the holiday time is to have fewer presents because

once you get to be my age, you realize this is all just a bunch of junk that I don't want.

It's too much stuff.

Just have a couple of very special items and then you have great pleasure in wrapping those.

But leaving, quote-unquote, Santa's presents unwrapped feels, I hate to to say this about Andrew's wife, but like lazy, like a weird shortcut that frankly dishonors the whole point of the Santa fantasy roleplay.

Sorry to call you lazy, Andrew's wife, but it's not a meaningful saving of paper to not wrap one or two of those presents.

Like, it's just,

it just feels like shoddy to me.

What do you think, Jesse?

Yeah, the whole point of Christmas is opening presents.

There you have it, everybody.

It's all about stuff.

Get as much as you can, kids.

That's what Jesse Thorne says.

It's all about getting the good toys and getting that snow speeder that you remember from the Empire Strikes Back.

That was my favorite one.

That was probably my favorite, favorite Christmas present that I ever got.

What was your favorite Christmas present you ever got?

My dad got me a scooter, which I had always wanted to have his scooter

when I was probably about nine years old, eight or nine years old, who got it for me.

And it was the first major gift my dad had ever gotten for me like that.

you know i had two christmases one at each my parents house and

um

and my dad that day put about half of it together and then lost some pieces and never put the rest together oh no

oh it's a sad story

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll hear a case about holiday travel and a letter from a friend of the court about the recent episode, Snicker Snicker Due Diligence.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years, and

maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened, and you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news, we still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket of leftover holiday crap.

We're not just clearing the docket, Jesse.

We are also getting a lot of feedback on Twitter for my explosive tweet, I don't like banana bread.

How's it going, John?

A lot of people are...

A lot of people are being fairly kind, saying, I'm just here for the ratio.

Mostly it's just sort of good-hearted,

you know,

there's a gif of

Carrie Grant saying, get out.

There's a guy saying, blocked and reported.

There are a few people saying, I agree with you, and zucchini bread is worse, and I heartily agree.

Yeah, that's the truth.

Yeah.

But, you know, I don't really get in trouble that much.

when I say something controversial on Twitter because I'm a man.

Mostly that's a protective force field from abuse.

I think when I posted something about banana bread, I said that banana bread was a trick and it was actually just a way to get rid of garbage bananas.

Well, that's exactly what it is.

Yeah, and I was like, and I think I said you should just freeze those and use them for smoothies.

But then everybody said they love to make banana bread for everyone at their office and everyone loves it.

And I was like, eh, I don't know.

I think just people eat anything you put on the conference table at the office.

Yeah, Mike McLaughlin says you hate to see it.

Mad Historian says it's gross and bananas are the fruit of oppression, which is kind of true.

Yeah,

that's an interesting sociopolitical perspective that I wasn't even prepared to get into.

I wasn't prepared to engage with the colonialist legacy of the fruit.

Yeah, I imagine that

if I had said I like bananas, then I didn't realize I would be coming under attack for being an imperialist, but it would be right.

Yeah, well, I like Babar, so imagine how bad I am.

Right.

Zoikes says, I love banana bread, might be related.

I've never eaten a burger in my entire life, which is that's that's a weird choice to make, but the person I suppose is a vegetarian.

And one of my favorites is,

hang on, I got to go back to the top.

I had a lot of replies all of a sudden.

It's going fast and furious here.

How dare you not like a thing?

Which came from Elon Gale, the creator of The Bachelor.

And he and I have never met, but I saw him.

He's a very distinctive looking guy because he's got a big, big hair and big beard.

And

we were on a flight together at one point.

And

we never met, but

he had a rolling suitcase, like a hard shell rolling suitcase.

And the hard shell was transparent.

So you could see everything in his suitcase.

And I had to say to him, that's one of the bravest things I've ever seen anyone do.

And he says,

that's what they call a boss move right there.

He says it helps me to be mindful about how much I'm bringing.

I'm like, wow.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's what's happening on my Twitter feed, at Ojman.

But let's go ahead and hear some more justice or dispense it anyway.

Here's something from Amanda.

Is it a sin to ask my husband to take a car to my parents' house on Christmas Day?

Several factors combine, such that I will be at my parents' house several days before Christmas.

But my husband will arrive in the evening of the day.

I suggested he grab a car from the airport instead of having me leave the festivities for over an hour to pick him up.

He is offended.

I think it's practical.

What say you?

Yeah, I think that this is a little bit of a regional thing.

And I have that impression because once I was flying to Seattle, and John Roderick, our friend who lives in Seattle, said that he would pick me up at the airport.

And I was like, why would you do that?

Do you not have taxi cabs in Seattle?

Are there no rideshare services?

He's like, no, we have those, but

in the West, we pick people up at the airport.

And maybe there's something to that.

Well, I think you live in New York, a place where there are many, many, many, many transportation options.

Right.

And very few people have a car.

Yes.

And even for those people who have a car, getting to the airport and back is a real nightmare.

And those people that do have cars are constantly driving them all the time to the point that the roads are basically impassable 24 hours a day.

But that's just because they can't find a place to park.

Exactly so.

I would say that picking people up at the airport is an extremely gracious thing to do,

but something that works best at an airport that is relatively

low-key in its traffic situation.

And frankly, not something that should be demanded or even expected.

It's a nice thing to do for someone else.

I would even limit it it to be like, you should only offer to pick someone up if it is not a hindrance to you, the driver, and also if it's not a hindrance to all of the other traffic at the airport.

Because why add another car

to that scrum of

RAV4s and Kia Souls that are just jammed up in there?

You know, offer to pay for a cab, I think, is a very gracious thing to do if that's within your means as well.

And in this case, like, I get get why your husband might be,

you know, sad to not be picked up by his own wife to go to his parents' house on Christmas Day, but to be offended, particularly when,

you know, it's a busy time for everybody, feels a little bit much.

Do you pick up people at the Los Angeles International Airport, Jesse?

No.

Right?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

A thousand times no.

That would be a bad caption.

Never, never in a million, billion, trillion years would I make an unnecessary trip to Los Angeles International Airport.

I would rather rent out my house and

sleep, you know, on a friend's couch for a week and use the money to get a taxi cab for someone.

than pick someone up at the Los Angeles International Airport.

I might, I have taken people and picked people up at the Burbank Airport, which is much much smaller, much closer to my house, and is pretty easy.

That saves a taxi fare for someone.

But yeah, if you're flying into a big urban airport, never in a million years.

And I certainly would never expect someone to pick me up at the airport.

It would always be a lovely thing that they were doing on my behalf.

And I have traveled to and from airports by every means imaginable.

You know, I'm a big public transportation user.

If I fly into San Francisco to visit my family,

I will take the BART train to my mother's house.

If I'm staying at my mother's house, I won't ask her to come pick me up.

So,

yeah, no, not in a million, billion, trillion years.

And I am happily married, and my wife has not picked me up at the airport in a decade or more.

Even if it's an airport that is very, you know, small and charming, like an airport that I would like to drive to, even if no one was coming in, like the Santa Fe Municipal Municipal Airport, my favorite airport in the world.

It looks like airport from Wings.

Yeah, I love that one.

Because everyone there is so funny.

I was just having fun.

And it would be fun to see Tony Shaloup, you know?

Yeah, it would be fun.

That's a reason to take a taxi.

Yeah.

And Raleigh-Durham Airport is very, a very sort of reasonable, small metropolitan airport.

The Asheville North Carolina airport has an incredible outside of security, so you can just go there and check it out anytime you want, and I urge you to do it.

It's a museum of the history of commercial air travel.

And it's a cool.

And by that, by museum, I mean

maybe five, but probably four glass display cases

that has one tray of all of the silverware and cutlery and glassware that Piedmont Airlines used to offer in like 1979.

Like it looks awesome.

And then they also have...

a pair of shoes with a little placard saying, after 9-11, people had to take their shoes off.

It's just shoes.

It's just a pair of shoes.

They had a copy of Stephen King's Carry there, a paperback copy.

It's like an example of some stuff that people like to read on the airplane.

It was the greatest.

But even if that were the situation, I would not expect someone to come pick me up at a small airport, even the smallest airport, on Christmas Day.

Because

I think it's hard to remember.

I mean, I don't know what's going on in Amanda's family's house on Christmas Day, what kind of rituals they have, what kind of cranberry cake they're handing out, or whatever it is.

But, you know, leaving, as she points out, leaving the festivities for over an hour, that may seem like a little bit of time for

Amanda's husband.

But on the holidays, Amanda's husband may not realize

that in family gatherings on holidays,

not everyone just gets to sit around and drink Nog and eat cranberry cake and watch television.

In a lot of households, that tends to be the quote-unquote job of the dudes.

While often

the women in the family are keeping things rolling and taking things into and out of the kitchen, getting things set up and doing other things.

There's a lot of labor that goes on, even on Christmas Day.

It is not necessarily a relaxing time for everybody.

And it is not uncommon that labor be divided unequally between men and women.

And I think Amanda's husband has to

maybe should be conscious of that if he is not already.

So, dude, just get a cab.

Yeah, and I want to be clear that

I think we are presuming here that there is not a financial impediment or it would have been mentioned, but there are also plenty of other ways to get home from an airport besides a cab, which can tend to be expensive.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, you know, if

affordability is the issue, that's a different question, but that didn't seem to be this question.

Judge Hodgman, we received a letter from friend of the court, Afton, who works at America's Test Kitchen.

Speaking of America's Test Kitchen.

Afton is a friend of the court.

She was part of one of our shows in Portland, Maine, a couple of years ago.

She took her sister, Hannah, to court for not having a cell phone that got reception where she lived in Maine.

Afton lives in, or works at least in Brookline, Massachusetts.

And I don't think she would mind if we said her last name because she's a great person and kind of a public figure.

Afton Cyrus.

What did Afton have to say?

Well, she had some thoughts about the recipe in our recent dispute, Snicker Due Diligence.

And in that case, if you don't remember, Rachel introduced a cookie recipe to her husband, Doug's family.

And then her husband, Doug's family, quickly started referring to it as Great Grandma Haybig's recipe over Rachel's objections, given that it had actually been Rachel's recipe.

It was a combination of a joke, and it reminded them of some cookies that their great-grandmother had made.

Essentially,

Rachel was erased from the conversation.

She made these cookies, and her husband and his brothers ignored her role in making these cookies and redubbed them Great Grandma Haybig's cookies year after year after year.

And she had enough of it, and I cited in her favor.

And then they came to

my Chicago event for medallion status and brought

cookies, which I had ordered to be called Great Rachel's cookies, and the Great Rachel's were delicious.

So that's the backstory, but what does Afton have to say about that?

Well, of course, Afton has created many recipes in the test kitchen.

Right.

And she says, I spend my days developing recipes destined to end up in cookbooks and online publications and eventually someone's kitchen.

I often wonder when they stop being mine and truly become someone else's once they're out there in the world.

The recipes I develop here don't usually have my name attached to them, and recipes can't be copyrighted so they exist in a strange liminal space of ownership.

Are they mine?

I love a liminal space.

Love liminality.

Love liminality.

Is it mine because I wrote it and tested it over and over and over again over many weeks to perfect it?

Or is it yours because you bought the book and love it and make it all the time?

I was delighted to hear in your ruling your encouragement for the litigants to try and find the original recipe developer of this cookie recipe.

For those publications that have test kitchens with cooks on staff, we can be a sort of nameless, mysterious group, but we're real people who do a lot of hard work to make these recipes the best they can be for home cooks.

If Doug would like advice on where to start his own home testing to recreate his beloved family cookie, I'd be more than happy to consult and maybe after experiencing the process of recipe development himself, he might come to appreciate it's nice to give credit where it's due, when one can.

That being said, if one of my recipes ever ended up as a family tradition for someone someday, that would be a high honor indeed, and I'd happily relinquish so-called ownership.

I'd also be thrilled to hear about it if an internet court so ordered it.

Well, I have something to say about this, John.

Yes.

You know,

a couple years ago in the Max Fun Drive, we gave out a recipe book of family recipes from MaxFun hosts.

I recall.

And it was much demanded of me that I give out my famous blondie recipe.

It used to be that when people became Max Fund members at a certain level, I would personally bake them

a pan of blondies and mail it to them overnight.

It was very expensive.

It was a bad thing to offer.

That's why we don't offer it anymore.

But the blondies were good.

And

I put that recipe into the MaxFun family cookbook.

And that recipe came straight from America's Test Kitchen.

I took out the chocolate because I can't eat chocolate.

A lot of blondies include chocolate.

And I don't remember.

They might have had white chocolate and nuts in there in the original recipe, which I think are gross.

And I like nuts as a snack, but I don't like nuts in baked goods generally.

And white chocolate is an abomination.

But yeah, it was just an America's Test Kitchen recipe.

It was from America's Best Recipes, I want to say, their famous cookbook, which is a wonderful guide to how to make a really good version of every

regular boring food you would want to make at home

in a typical American home that I love to cook from.

And, you know,

I think I might have credited them, but I might not have.

I don't know.

I wasn't really paying attention.

So let that name ring out.

First and last name, Afton Cyrus of America's Test Kitchen, not only a Judge John Hodgman listener and litigant, but also the inventor of the blondie

and

banana bread.

The first person to have pulled bananas out of the garbage and thought, I bet I could make something that's worse than cake from this.

Greg Burpee wrote to me to simply say,

swear word you, exclamation point.

C Vins at C.

Vins says, if it's hot and fresh,

all responds to my banana bread.

This is going on and on and on.

If it's hot and fresh out the oven and like 60-40 butter to bread, I'll take a sniff.

But otherwise, nah.

I'm just like, can you imagine cooking a banana bread to C-Vins's exacting specifications of butter-to-bread ratio and having it fresh out of the oven and handing it to that person and C Vins smelling it and then just like, that's all I needed.

Thanks.

Bye.

Yeah, I'm actually right there with C Vins.

That's about where I'm at on banana bread.

If it's hot and it's covered in butter, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to not eat it, I guess.

And meanwhile,

I have now composed another tweet to take us out, and you guys can check it out on my feed.

It is, quote, and white chocolate is an abomination, end quote, at Jesse Thorne.

And we'll see where that gets you.

I don't think anyone's going to disagree with you.

I think you're going to get some good feedback there.

I just want to be clear.

I have no beef with basketball legend Jason Williams, otherwise known as White Chocolate.

That guy had extraordinary handles, and I really enjoyed that video of him as like a 46-year-old man playing in his local YMCA and just embarrassing everyone recently.

That was a lot of fun.

The docket is clear.

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

This week's episode, produced by Jennifer Marmor and Hannah Smith.

Welcome back to Jennifer Marmer.

Our immense thanks to the great Hannah Smith, who has done such a wonderful job filling in for Jen.

Well, Jen was on parental leave.

We're so grateful to Hannah.

She did a great job saw us through two tours and months and months of programs without so much as a hitch.

So thank you, Hannah, for the wonderful work that you did.

You can hear Hannah's productions elsewhere on Maximum Fund.

She remains the producer of One Bad Mother.

So those of you out there who are parents or are just interested in parenting, go check out One Bad Mother.

Hannah produces that show each and every week and has for some years now.

She does a great job over there, too.

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

We're on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ Ho.

Check out the Max Fund subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com if you want to chat about this episode.

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

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

I'm stuffed.

Time for more congealed gravy.

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