Edict of Worms

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, Edict of Worms.

Evan files suit against his wife, Anne.

Anne wants to get a vermicompost bin for their apartment.

Evan claims the apartment is too small and the compost bin is too messy.

He seeks an injunction prohibiting worm bins in the apartment.

Who's right, who's wrong?

Only one can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

Hi, I'd like a large podcast and a glass of water, please.

I've got water, but what did you say, a podcast?

A podcast.

It's just the internet with some microphones and usually two or three white guys talking.

Oh, a public radio show?

That's it.

But just a little shot of internet, you know, to give it a head.

Okay,

let's see.

How's that, honey?

Hey, hey, there's a worm in my podcast.

Hey, if you didn't like the public radio show, all you had to do was say so.

I got enough problems around here without comedians.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear the litigant's in.

Evan and Ann, please rise.

Raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God or whatever.

I do.

I do.

Do you you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he served me a plate of fried worms the other day?

Absolutely.

I do.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

Ugh.

I know that cultural reference, How to Eat Fried Worms, a book that traumatized me.

Evan and Anne, you may be seated, and you may rest comfortably knowing that the cultural reference is not How to Eat Fried Worms, that middle-grade book about actually eating worms.

Gross.

I think there was a scene in that book, Jesse, where the main character who's been challenged to eat a worm a day for like 50 days to get $50,

he has a dream that he's eating a giant worm that's like the size of a couch cushion.

Really grossed me out in seventh grade.

Maybe sixth.

I don't remember.

Ugh.

But of course, you know what?

If we are going to survive as a globe and as a climate, we have to be finding alternate sources of protein, bugs and worms.

Right, Ann?

That's right.

For immediate summary judgment, one of your favors, can either of you name the piece of culture that I did reference when I entered the courtroom?

I'm going to give you a hint, Evan.

That dialogue is from a movie or a play.

And when I said podcast and described what a podcast was in there, that is not from the actual movie or play.

I'll even give you more of of a hint

that when the character requests a podcast and a glass of water, in the source material, this character asks for an egg cream and a glass of water.

Does that do it for you, Evan?

Can you guess?

Is there a worm in that reference as well, or is that also?

No, there is a worm in this character's egg cream.

The character goes into a diner, asks for an egg cream and a glass of water.

The person behind the counter had never heard of an egg cream.

She makes an egg cream according to his specifications.

An egg cream, of course, being chocolate syrup, seltzer water, and a little bit of milk stirred up.

And when he drinks from it, there's a worm in his egg cream.

And he says so.

All right.

Now I've really given you a lot of hints.

Any other further follow-up questions, Evan?

No, I've never seen a movie or a play that features an egg cream.

So never mind one with a worm in it.

I know this is wrong because I'm just going to say Glen Gary Glenn Ross because that seems like fun.

Sure.

There's nothing.

Total fun.

We just missed the holidays, Evan.

And I realized that holiday tradition of sitting down with my kids and watching Glen Gary Glen Ross passed.

Missed it this year.

All right, well, we're putting it in the books, Glen Gary Glen Ross.

I mean, that's set, I think, in Chicago, right?

And egg cream is very New York-y, but it's very urban.

So I'll put it in.

Anne, it's your turn.

What's your guess?

Well, I can only recall two mentions of egg creams in my media consumption life, and one is on the West Wing, but I don't think that's right.

So I'm gonna go with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

A tree grows in Brooklyn because an egg cream is from where?

From New York.

Yeah, specifically.

Brooklyn.

I wouldn't have even known that that the egg cream was from Brooklyn if I had not, Anne, been staring at this Wikipedia page about egg cream media references.

John, is it a Wikipedia page or just a picture of Billy Crystal?

It's a Wikipedia page.

Because Evan said, I don't know what movies or plays egg cream might have been mentioned in.

So I'm like, I bet there are a lot of them.

And you're right.

First of all, Anne, that it was, egg creams were mentioned in the West Wing episode, The Midterms.

President Bartlett says, I'm drinking the most fantastic thing I've ever tasted in my life.

Toby Ziegler says, it's called an egg cream.

We invented it in Brooklyn.

President Bartlett says, in Brooklyn, not New England.

And Toby Ziegler says, there are some good things in this world not from New England, sir.

And President Bartlett says, Toby, don't ever let me hear you say that again.

Egg creams are also mentioned in the Seinfeld episode, The Dog.

Mentioned in Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse.

Spider-Man Noir says, I like to drink egg creams and I like to fight Nazis.

It's apparently mentioned in several episodes, The Golden Girls.

It's mentioned in Kramer vs.

Kramer.

It's mentioned in Touched by an Angel episode, Cry and You Cry Alone.

It's mentioned by me every time I go to Langer's, the Delicatessen across the park from Maximum Fun HQ, where I order a vanilla and egg cream because I'm not allowed to have chocolate because it's a migraine trigger.

And even if you had guessed Jesse Thorne or any of those things, I would be here telling you all guesses are wrong

because I was quoting a 1976 horror film

called Squirm.

Do you guys ever see Squirm?

You're probably too young to have seen seen Squirm.

No, but I think we lived it.

It says here that you're in the Boston area, is that correct?

We are.

Oh, boy, are you going to come see us at the Wilbur Theater

on the 14th of January this very month?

Yes, we are.

I'll look forward to seeing you there and congratulating the winner of this case and studiously avoiding the loser.

We understand.

You're younger than me, so you did not grow up in the Boston area watching Channel 56 Creature Double Feature.

No.

Saturday afternoons, you get a double dose of really shoddy, off-brand horror movies that they got off the back of a truck, including Squirm, 1976, directed by Jeff Lieberman, about a town in Georgia where the power lines go down, they electrify the ground and turn all the earthworms in town into hungry monsters that will burrow into your skin or sneak into your egg cream.

I remember this movie Squirm because it's a very famous sequence, early Rick Baker makeup design that showed these worms burrowing into a guy's face, and it's really gross.

And I remember seeing this as a kid and getting really freaked out.

Seeing that movie, whenever it was, was the first time I ever heard of an egg cream, and I've associated it with carnivorous worms ever since.

That's why I don't eat them or drink them.

I don't drink egg creams and I don't eat fried worms, and that's just me.

But that said, you want to have worms in your kitchen.

Is that correct, Anne?

Yeah, that's right.

By worms, you don't want to just have them like hanging around in your soda drinks.

You want to have them in a special bucket, correct?

Verma compost.

Tell me what that is.

So vermicompost is a form of composting that you can do indoors.

And basically what you do is create an environment where you can add food scraps.

Typically you would not add anything carnivorous because it would get kind of rancid in your apartment, but you can add food scraps and the worms will digest them and turn them into kind of a concentrated form of compost that you can mix with other soil or amend in your garden.

And it's a way of taking your household scraps and kind of having total control over what happens to them and where they go.

And another benefit to worm composting is that until the compost is fully completed, you don't actually have to remove it from your apartment because it doesn't smell.

So it is a common kind of misinformed point that compost in your apartment would smell, and certainly it would if it were not being treated.

Even though I cannot see you, when you said it is a common misinformed point, I could hear you looking at Evan.

Yeah.

Accusingly.

So I don't know at what point you want to go into this, but we've had a worm bin before.

I will go into your worm bin history, but I just want to clarify some issues about worm binning in general here.

Please.

Since you have some experience, you can tell me.

How big is the bin?

The bin that we've had previously was probably about 20 inches by 30 inches, 18 inches deep.

What's your starter situation?

Sure.

You got a bin and you got some worms.

What kind of worms are we talking about?

Night crawlers?

No, you use red wrigglers.

So you get some red wrigglers out of the FedEx.

Yep, yep.

So you can buy like 500 to 1,000 at a time and you put them in your bin, which has some holes still drilled in the bottom and in the top so that the worms can breathe.

And then you add newspaper scraps, you tear up, and then your food scraps.

And then the worms get to it.

I'm sorry,

I missed a lot of that because I stepped out of the room to get some fresh air when I heard 500 to 1,000 worms.

Just walked away.

Just walked away.

Okay, I think I understand.

You put 500 to 1,000 worms into a box

with newspaper scraps just to get them settled.

And then you start throwing food scraps in there, and they eat the food scraps, and they poop out worm castings, right?

That's worm feces.

That is nature's greatest fertilizer, correct?

They call it liquid gold.

I mean, gardeners do.

But that's because they feed the worms gold.

It's gross, but I want to hear you out.

All right.

So the worm castings and the food scraps and the worms all live together for a period of time and create this beautiful compost,

which is

very high in nutrients, very high in enzymes.

What else is good about it?

It's organic if you fed them with organic scraps.

Why did you just feed them Velveeta cheese?

I think that would probably smell in your apartment.

So how long does it take for the compost to mature?

I would say probably like you could get some out in three months.

It depends how many scraps you put in and kind of like what you need to get out.

You don't have to take it all out at once.

So you could just kind of like do it based on your gardening cycle or like when your house plants need some love.

It's going to be an ecosystem of these worms eating and pooping in this box on your countertop all the time.

That's what you're going to have in there.

It's just going to be this churn of worm golden diarrhea and scraps and everything else.

Now, let me make it clear, Anne, that I'm describing this in a humorous way to emphasize the grossness because it's gross, but I appreciate that it's natural and gardeners love it.

And I've done a little bit of research and I know that you should not

throw any Velveeta cheese or any dairy products or any meat in there because the worms don't digest that properly and that will stink up the joint.

But almost anything else can go in there.

And when you get this mature compost,

what do you do with it then?

What's the benefit?

Yeah, so you can mix it into other soil.

So like if you have a houseplant, you could mix it in as a fertilizer or if you have an outdoor garden, especially if you have raised beds, then you can amend your soil periodically to kind of make sure it has the proper nutrient balance and it can reduce dependence on chemical fertilizers or going out and buying commercially made compost.

And do you have houseplants or raised bed gardens or an outdoor garden?

Yes, we have both houseplants and raised beds in a local community garden.

Oh, okay.

So you would take your liquid gold over to the community garden and just spread it around.

What do you grow?

Tomatoes, a lot of cucumbers.

I had a very shady plot this year, so I have to admit I didn't manage to grow all that much, but I'm hoping I move up in the food chain, so to speak, in the garden.

I thought you meant your plot was suspicious.

I had a really shady plot this year.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was only thinking about that because you mentioned tomatoes, and you may not have listened to a recent episode of Judge John Hodgin, where it was a settled law that tomatoes are

very finicky and difficult to grow.

Fruit of the poison nightshade, they are night shady themselves.

I love a good tomato, but I would never grow one in a million years.

It's hard.

Yeah, it is.

So, I mean, I think it's made better when you have quality compost.

You brought that right around, that argument.

You know what you're doing.

Are you an attorney?

I'm not, but I was an English major.

All right.

Well, it sounds like you've really got the whole cycle of life going, or you did for a while.

You had one of these worm bins, right?

Yeah, I've had two previously.

And so, are you and Evan are in a relationship?

We're married.

You are married and also in in a relationship.

Okay.

And did you have a worm bin with Evan before or in a different situation?

I've had one with a roommate before Evan and I met.

And then when Evan and I moved in together, I got a worm bin again.

All right.

Now, Evan, you've had this worm bin in your life before.

What happened to that worm bin and why don't you want another one?

So a couple things happened with that worm bin before.

One is that it got infested with grubs, which then grubbed all over

the kitchen.

Goodbye.

I'm done.

I'm done, Jesse.

You know, they gave me a thousand worms to chew on first, and now I'm infested with grubs.

I'm watching people unsubscribe from the podcast right now.

It hasn't even come out yet.

But people are getting the message psychically.

You haven't even seen the evidence.

Oh, no.

This is going to be the reverse of a dog wearing a hat.

Yeah, sorry, we don't have any pets.

It's going to be a a picture of an animal that doesn't make Jesse laugh.

It just makes him cry.

Yeah, it might be.

In my evidence, I included a photo, an example photo of a grub.

This wasn't actually one of the grubs crawling across our kitchen, but I think it's representative.

Let's take a quick recess.

We'll be back in just a moment 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.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Let's go to the evidence.

These photographs will all be available on the Judge John Hodgman page at maximumfund.org.

And as well on our Instagram page at judgejohnhodgman on Instagram, we have submitted by Evan exhibit A, a convenient compost bin provided by the city of Cambridge.

I presume that you are presenting this as counter-evidence that there is some other kind of bin you can have on your counter that does not require a thousand worms to work.

That is very correct.

And now here's exhibit B, an example of the type of grub that was emerging from our compost bin.

Not an actual photo from our kitchen, but an example of the type of grub.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, would you please look at exhibit B?

Is that possible?

Yeah, I'm looking at the evidence now.

It's funny, you're not bursting into peals of laughter the way you normally do when you see an animal.

Well, the first picture is a picture of a compost bin provided by the city of Cambridge.

And it looks like a handsome and functional bin.

Table-sized, it's on a nice countertop.

Looks like it aerates, but also has an opening and closing top.

It's not that bad.

That said,

this grub is pretty gross.

I got to the grub picture, and and I'm not nuts about it.

John, I think the evidence suggests that I don't like looking at grubs.

And this is a gross grub.

And get out of my kitchen, buddy.

I don't want to speak too harshly here.

Yep.

But this grub looks like a poop.

I think this grub, I don't know what species it is, but I'm going to say brown wriggler.

Event, tell me about the grubs that infested your worm bin.

We set up the compost in the early, like late winter, early spring, and I helped Ann build it.

You took a couple of rubber-made totes and you plug it in, and you drill holes and do all that stuff.

It then went to live with one of Anne's grad school classmates for a summer, and the worm bin lived outside for the summer, and it got infested with grubs.

And then so we keep.

You keep saying that.

As though I know what you mean.

What are the grubs?

What kind of grubs are these?

You know, honestly.

I have an an answer.

You have an answer?

I do.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, so they're actually larvae of flies.

Oh.

And so

the reason that we were having issues with them is that the flies laid their eggs in the compost bin.

And normally when they lay their eggs in like an open-air compost, then the like you would never really see the larva.

They would just like hatch and be the flies.

But because of the comp, like because the compost bin has a lid, the flies couldn't fly off.

And so the grubs were basically jailbreaking the compost bin.

bin and they wanted to get out of there.

Yeah.

Or do you think maybe the worms were kicking them out?

Like the worms are like, get out of here, grubs.

Yeah, I mean, either or, I will admit, it was very gross.

When did you discover the grubs had infested your worm bin?

Something was amiss as soon as the worm bin came back into our apartment after our summer away.

So it wasn't until it came back inside that you discovered Grubfest.

Yes.

And what happened?

Tell me the whole story.

They really just wriggled everywhere.

You know,

they crawled up countertops.

They were on the floor.

They were in the shoes.

In the shoes.

Yeah.

You know, we'd be gone,

gone for the day.

I guess, what is a grub like if not a compost bin is a, you know, dark shoe.

So they'd find their way there.

Look, let me tell you this right now.

I find against both of you.

And I find against grubs and shoes.

If you bring in a warm bin and you realize, oh, that's invested with grubs,

you have two two options.

You don't leave the house until the grubs are dealt with,

or you do leave the house and never, ever come back.

What you don't do is leave the house until they can get in your shoes.

Because I don't think you're storing your shoes on your kitchen countertops, right?

So the worm bin sat on the floor.

Because of the size.

Yeah.

Everything went wrong.

Everything went wrong.

It sure did.

How big were the grubs?

They were not that big.

Like two, three inches?

No, I would say like one to two inches.

That's huge.

They were not three inches.

I would, I would say.

That's not a house fly larva three inches long.

That's a demon worm from squirm.

Basically, when we realized it was infested or that the grubs were coming from the bin, which like, yeah, it didn't take.

Initially, you didn't know.

Well, like the first one or two you see, you're not like, that's definitely coming from the worm bin, but then we figured it out.

Yeah, you figure that's just probably coming out of the sole of the shoe somehow.

Yeah, that's right.

Spontaneous generation.

Yeah.

Like the ancient Greeks thought.

That's how flies were born from rotting meat.

That's not like your first thought when you see grubs running around.

Like, hmm, maybe that has something to do with my bucket of worms.

You know, we wanted to make sure that, you know, we had exhausted all other possibilities until, you know, before disposing of the worm bin.

But upon realizing that that was the only feasible option.

Well, there was an intermediate step, which you may or may not keep in here.

But like I did a lot of research to kind of figure out like what had happened because I was confused.

The bin had a lid and I was like, how did the grubs get in?

This is very distressing for everyone, myself included.

And so basically the answer was like you could, to fix the bin, you could spread out all of the contents on a tarp and basically like wait for the worms to go to the bottom of the pile and then remove like the grubs.

and then put it all back in the bin.

And so I was researching that because like, you know, they're worms, but like it's still 500 to 1,000 worms.

And that's like a lot of lives to put into the landfill.

Have you heard of the sunk cost fallacy?

Yeah, my husband cites it often.

I think that's literally what he told me when he said we had to get rid of it.

I learned about the sunk cost fallacy from you, Jesse Thorne.

I'd never heard of it before.

Can you remind our listeners what the sunk cost fallacy is?

Once the money is spent, it cannot be unspent.

So what you must weigh is potential future benefits against potential future costs.

So if you've spent $50 building a house and to finish it would cost $100 and in the end its value would be $80,

it doesn't matter that you've spent the $50 already.

You'd have to spend another $100 to get something worth $80 and it's not worth doing.

We tend to overvalue things that we already have and we tend to overvalue expenditures that we've already made.

And expenditures of time and effort as well because it took some time to get this worm compost going.

Exactly.

And how much does a thousand worms cost?

About $40.

And how much was a tarp going to cost?

Did you already have a tarp?

Yeah, we already had a tarp, but we didn't have a backyard.

Yeah, we did.

That was the challenge.

We don't have a backyard.

This action was happening in the living room.

You were going to lay out your vermicompost in the living room to get the grubs out?

This happened.

Well, I did, I did.

Oh, it happened.

I did do it, yeah.

How successful were you?

Like, incredibly unsuccessful.

I thought I could do it while Evan was like at a haircut or something so that he wouldn't kind of be involved in it.

And when he came back, I was just sitting in a pile of mud and like eggshells.

And he just kind of looked at me and was like, it needs to go in the trash.

I'll help you.

And he did because he's a wonderful husband.

Well, it could have also just gone out into like,

I don't know, I mean, it's not landfill.

It's active compost, right?

So at the time, Cambridge didn't have composting, which was part of the reason we did the worm bin.

They do now.

Also, part of the problem with the worm bin is it didn't really compost that much.

Like, I mean, you didn't get that much compost out of it.

I would say that it was more like that particular time was not a time when we needed to harvest the compost.

Are you a more active gardener now than you were?

Yeah, I didn't have the community plot then.

So that's like one reason this has come back up.

And let me ask you this question.

Are you a more active gardener now because you have more access to gardening space and your interest has grown?

Or are you just gardening more now in order to justify getting that worm bin back?

I mean,

it's the former, but I can't deny that the latter is appealing.

You love that worm bin and you want to have it going in your kitchen so much.

Yeah, we don't have any, like, we're not allowed to have cats or dogs in our apartment.

So I think this is a way to have like

500 to 1,000 very low-level pets.

I love the way you're thinking, Anne.

Thanks.

And I appreciate your honesty.

You're welcome.

Yeah, I mean, look, that was a traumatic experience.

And I can appreciate why, Evan, you would have some trepidation about going back to the worm bin and trying again.

Tell me about your trepidation.

The grubs are a big part of that trepidation.

The grubs aren't going to happen again.

Well, you never know.

Part of my whole trepidation with this is the uncertainty.

with which this could happen again.

And do you know what you did wrong last time?

Oh, yeah.

I put it outside.

See, the answer is simple, Evan.

Your box of worms will never leave your home.

So I guess there's other sources of trepidation.

Worm bins are large, and we live in a pretty small apartment.

So there's really not a whole lot of room for these

500 to thousand little wrigglers to live.

I think part of it also is just that there now is a very convenient and accessible way to compost, which is through the citywide composting program, which, as the bailiff noted, comes with a convenient green plastic tote that is aerated.

You can just take that

little bit of compost in a green compostable bag down to a larger compost receptacle, and the city picks it up.

And the way that they do it is it's anaerobic digestion, so it's highly efficient, and it also produces fertilizer that people can use across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

And where do the Commonwealthiums get that fertilizer from?

If they want to use that mutually collected compost from all over Cambridge, where do they go to get it?

So I believe what happens is Cambridge sends the compost up to the Greater Lawrence Sanitary District, and they process it at their plant, and then they have some sort of supply chain where they sell the compost.

Sorry, you guys got like maximum pedants on your show this week.

No, it's great.

I understand better now that, you know, Evan is a straight-up socialist.

He wants the government to have its hands in all of the composting that happens in the Commonwealth.

It's all collected directly from you, and it's a centralized decomposition economy, and then it sells it back to everybody.

But whereas Anne is like a frontiers person who wants to be making her own compost in her own kitchen with her own worms that she has all named, her own pet worms.

She's come up with 500 to 1,000 little names for them.

She's got her own worm herd of her own.

And they all bear the little brand of Anne.

And then the compost that comes out of that bin goes directly into her community plot.

And she wants to benefit from her own labor.

Doesn't want to give this all up to the government, right, Ann?

Yeah.

Real, real John Galt sort of attitude.

I never read anything by Ayn Rand.

It's good to plead the fifth

to any Ayn Rand references, for sure.

You know, the project that Ann wants to undertake is not, let me get some compost for the community garden.

The project is, I want to have a thousand worms in a box that are my friends and listen to them munch all night long.

Can you hear them?

Can you hear them doing their work in there?

I would say if you like listen closely and use your imagination, you could hear some quiet rustling sounds.

Evan, when you had the worm bin before, did you ever wake up in the middle of the night and discover Anne listening to the worm bin with a stethoscope?

No, but I'm a pretty sound sleeper, so it could have happened.

She likes this idea of having a box of worms in your kitchen.

Aside from the obvious alternative, which is city-provided composting service,

how do you just on a gut level feel about box of worms, Evan?

If we had more space, you know, if it wasn't going to be directly in our kitchen or our, really, we have like four rooms in our apartment.

We have a kitchen, we have a dining room, we have a living room, and we have a bedroom.

And a bathroom.

Where do you live?

In Cambridge.

In Cambridge.

Oh, nice.

So

if we're going to have a worm bin, it's got to be in one of those four rooms.

I don't think for obvious reasons the bedroom or the living room or the dining room are good locations.

And I would also just

posit that the kitchen is not a good place for worms.

And can I also just note that a worm bin will smell probably a bit more than the city-provided compost bin because you're not taking it out frequently.

I had read that it was odorless.

Yeah, if I can direct you to the evidence I submitted, I submitted testimony from a roommate who lived with a prior worm bin.

Right.

So this is a series of text exchanges submitted by Anne between herself and her former roommate, Catherine.

Catherine lived with me in my first apartment out of college where I had my first worm bin.

That must have been fun for Catherine to discover once she moved in with you.

Yeah, well, she signed a lease.

Right.

She couldn't get out of it.

Here's the back and forth.

Anne, what did you think when I got the worm bin?

Catherine, I thought it was a little weird.

My family didn't grow up composting, so so I was new to the idea, and I definitely hadn't heard of indoor worm composting before.

But I also knew that you very likely did extensive research about worm composting before suggesting it seriously, making me think it probably wasn't as weird as it initially sounded.

Anne, were there any issues with smells or infestations?

Catherine, no issues whatsoever.

Anne, did you find it overall innocuous or even fun?

Catherine, I honestly forgot it was even there.

You likely found it more fun than me, but it did offer a good topic for parties.

And I just remembered that I taught how to start your own worm composting bin as my audition to be an SAT tutor in 2010 during the economic downturn.

So it was at least useful.

Anne, thank you.

Catherine, have I said enough yet?

Will you please call your worms off?

This is terrifying.

Please, get the worms off me, Anne.

I made up that last part.

Judge Hodgman, I move to dismiss this evidence on the grounds that there's no credibility in anyone who claims that a worm bin makes for a good topic at parties.

It was a great topic.

I think the story of Anne getting down and dirty in the garbage in the middle of the living room trying to get those grubs out before Evan can get back from his haircut and then getting caught and how their marriage survived that.

That's a terrific story.

Everybody's sitting around the dinner table and enjoying a beautiful meal, and someone says, Okay, classic conversation starter.

Where do you keep your red wrigglers?

You also sent in a picture of the worm bin and that you plan to buy.

No more DIY for you.

You've got a kit in mind, right?

Describe this kit.

So this is like a more professional grade worm bin, and by professional, it's still for the home composter.

But it really kind of streamlines the sifting of the compost that you like, that you would have to do with a DIY bin because the worms will travel upward or downward between the layers depending where the food source is.

So it's easier to remove basically one of the four trays of finished compost and, you know, kind of do what you need to with it.

So I'm seeing a picture here.

It looks like a stacked series of green bins, one, two, three, four.

Yep.

And you're suggesting that as the worms work their way through each layer, you can just sort of remove a layer, dish out the liquid gold to your plants, reset, and then it kind of cycles through.

Is that right?

That's right.

I don't see any amateur grub holes in here.

Yeah, I mean, not as far as I know.

Would you be able to guarantee to Evan that this is grub-proof?

I mean, there are no guarantees in life, but I believe that if I keep it indoors,

that we won't have any further problems.

This also seems to have windows on the side of the worm bin.

Is that just for illustration?

I think that's an illustrative cross-section.

All right, so that you won't actually be seeing.

This is not like a terrarium type situation where you're seeing the worms do their job.

I mean, I encourage worm bin manufacturers to pursue that model, but I don't think worms like light.

So I think that it is purely illustrative.

And what is the spigot down at the bottom here?

I don't know if you really want to know.

I really do now.

So, basically, like the compost, as you know, is decomposing and it gives off some liquid, so that's like a spout.

They call it worm tea.

And so, you can like drain it off and mix it with water and use it as a liquid fertilizer.

It's called kombucha.

And where would this worm bin go if I were to find in your favor?

I would put it by the back door, like next to the recycling bin.

Tower of terror.

It's not a very attractive looking thing, that's for sure.

Is there adequate space next to the recycling bin by the back door?

It kind of blocks off the emergency exit for the fire escape.

I would say, you know, I don't know if we're really here in the business of issuing compromises, but I would like to have the worm bin when we buy a house this year and keep it inside.

Oh.

Okay.

I have a question for you.

Sure.

Keeping it by the back door in your current living situation, that would be outside?

Inside.

That would be inside.

So it has to be inside.

That's how you keep the grubs out, right?

Yeah, I don't want any more grubs either.

I demand grubs.

It usually around this time of day, he does.

Well, we'll get you some grubs soon, Jesse.

It's a migraine thing.

He needs to have grubs.

5 p.m.

You mentioned buying a house, so now you're thinking about moving.

Yeah, we'd like to get a little more space.

And is this a 100% plan or a thousand percent plan or a 50% plan?

It's like a hundred percent in 2020, but the bounds of uncertainty are kind of in the timing within that.

Are you comfortable waiting until you have a house with more room?

And maybe, you know, maybe you'll find a little place in Brookline or whatever where there's already a worm bin nook already there.

You know what I mean?

Those are pretty common.

Yeah, well, so I think that this actually kind of like came up in our marriage because I was talking about things that I wanted to get when we moved.

And Evan basically said, like, I don't think that we should have another worm bin.

So it is a question of like what we have now, but I would be willing to wait, but I'm not willing to never have one again.

So Evan, you don't want a worm bin even in the new house.

I

feel concerned about smells and if I could repeat grubs and

more grubs.

Was there smell involved in the old worm bin?

I mean,

it wasn't the worst smelling thing in the world, but there were occasionally smells.

I would describe it as earthy.

That usually does sound like a code word for bad.

No spin zone over here.

I would be comfortable with worms in a detached garage if we had one.

You know, that would seem like a place where the worms can do their thing.

There's no chance of grubs infesting our house.

I see.

And Anne, a detached garage in your next living situation, is that feasible for you?

And more importantly, is that feasible for the worms?

I hope that we have a detached garage because Massachusetts does have a very snowy climate.

But I think I do have concerns for the worms' welfare because it does get quite cold here in the winter and the worms are mostly made of water.

I think they would freeze to death.

Yeah, you want to have your little buddies inside with you.

Yeah, I mean, that is kind of the fun, right?

The problem is it's not fun for Evan.

I think that it's neutral for Evan.

Well, luckily, Evan, Evan can't speak for himself, so we'll never know.

It's not usually the wife that comes across as controlling.

It's not usually the wife who says, I want to keep a box of worms in my house because I've got a plan for a new way of life.

You know, we thought that you were welcoming wives with schemes.

I am impartial until I come back with my verdict.

I would say that I want Anne to be happy.

I want her to be able to, you know, to find fulfilling friendships and, you know, and all sorts of things.

I don't, 500 to 1,000 worms.

You know, if that's what makes her truly happy, then, you know, I will support her.

I would just say that, you know, in a world in which we have a house, we also would be able to get real pets like a dog or a cat or both.

I was going to ask that question.

I mean, Anne, you had suggested that worm binning was a pet substitute because you had too small space to get a cat or a dog.

If you moved into this house and got a cat or a dog, do you feel like you would no longer look to the worms as your little friends?

I think I would shift my paradigm on them to be more of like something that works for me.

So, you know, like less of a like friendly, cuddly idea.

Not that I was really cuddling with worms, but you know, like then they would become like my

workers.

I have one more question.

We know that

worm bin two

ended in

grub apocalypse.

What happened with worm bin one?

I moved out of the city that I was living in and kind of realized that I was not going to be able to check the worm bin on my flight to New York.

Why didn't you bring it on your flight to New York?

They're your friends.

They're your service animals.

You know, it's $75 a pop to fly with a pet.

That would have been really expensive.

Okay.

So you moved and you abandoned your herd?

I gave the worm bin to another friend who was very excited about it.

And have they been happily composting since then?

As far as I know.

So, Evan, if I were to rule in your favor, what would you have me rule?

No worms in the apartment, no worms in a place where I sleep.

As long as they're in a separate structure, I'm comfortable with that.

A separate structure, like a detached garage.

For example, or a shed, or anything that isn't a place where a grub could crawl and lie upon my pillow.

And

if I were to rule in your favor, obviously worm bin, yes.

Where does worm bin go?

I mean, I think the worm bin goes where the action happens, in the kitchen.

The Vermicompost websites that I'm looking at suggest you keep that thing right in the kitchen.

Right there in the kitchen.

Countertop?

No, it doesn't need to be.

It's kind of big to be on the countertop, so it's a freestanding worm bin.

I would put it on the floor.

Question.

How wedded are you to this particular style of worm

bin?

I guess I haven't really considered alternatives, and it does seem to be the state-of-the-art structure, so I don't see why I shouldn't have it.

All right, I'm going going to text a link to Hannah Smith, our producer, to send to you while I dig deep into my big bucket of food scraps here in my chambers and chew this over, and I'll come back and poop out a verdict in a moment.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Ann, how are you feeling about your chances right now?

I feel extremely good.

You love those little creepy crawlers.

Yeah, I mean you don't have to touch them.

How do they come?

Do they come in like a

jug or?

I don't remember what the bag was like, but in kind of like a warm box

and

yeah, dump them out.

They come with like overnight shipping.

So they just come in a warm box that says dump them out.

Yeah.

You can't like order them in the winter because they'll freeze.

Evan, how are you feeling about your chances?

Well, my tactic of scaremongering and relentlessly referring back to grubs, I think the judge was getting a little tired of, but I'll be okay either way, just as long as there's no grubs on my pillow.

Grubs on my pillow,

pain

in my heart.

Well, and Evan, we'll see what the judge has to say about this when we come back in just a second.

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 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 podcast.

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 Lom.

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.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and presents his verdict.

We live in perilous times on this earth.

Obviously, climate change is affecting

water, agriculture, human sustainability, migration.

Obviously, diet and nutrition are part of how we are going to, I hope, continue to survive on this planet.

I am well aware that aside from composting and sustainability on the agricultural side, as we discussed earlier with Anne, and needing to look towards new, more sustainable forms of protein, which include eating bugs.

And I went to the Museum of Natural History to eat some bugs some years ago.

It was a seminar on different cuisines that include bugs.

I think it's Oaxacan cuisine or areas of Mexico anyway, you know, grasshoppers are eaten regularly.

I haven't had those, but I have eaten crickets.

I have indeed eaten grubs.

I've eaten mealworms that had been fried.

Even though I hate that fried, how to eat fried worms book, I did it.

I ate the fried worms.

And you know what?

They were good.

You know what they didn't look like?

Poop.

I've never been more grossed out than that photo that you sent me, Evan.

That poop grub is gross.

I can understand completely why having an infestation of anything that looks like that in your home, that you have not invited into your home on purpose by mailing away for it or by going to the Museum of Natural History and getting a bunch of takeout fried mealworms to bring home, if you have things crawling into your shoes, that is a nightmare scenario to rival the 1976 film Squirm,

only to be rivaled by the double nightmare scenario of going out to get a simple haircut and coming home to find your wife on the floor with a tarp emptying out rotting food, worms, and grubs, and trying to separate the three things from each other.

I appreciate that this was trauma.

And it's interesting because it's almost, it's Cronenbergian body horror trauma.

Of a sort that you don't have kids, right?

No, we don't.

Yeah.

And you don't have pets.

Correct.

Yeah.

Not anymore.

You mean not since you lost the worms or you had a dog or a cat or something?

No, I meant the worms.

Yeah.

How long have you been married?

A year and a half.

So your marriage is young,

and I can appreciate why finding your wife pawing through

literal garbage in the middle of the floor, trying to save her little worm friends and and get rid of these invasive grubs, which are worms by another name, is gross and horrific.

And as I say, almost like that deep Cronenbergian body horror.

Should you go on to have

pets or children, this will become routine in your marriage.

Pawing through the leavings of other creatures, be the animal or human, horrible, disgusting

secretions,

vomits, diarrhea,

all kinds of emanations that will make worm tea look like the sweetest kombucha you ever did drink.

You may choose to be childless, which is a wonderful choice for lots and lots of people, and ecologically a very sustainable choice.

You may choose to never have pets.

But if pets or children are in your future, a box of worms is just the beginning.

And maybe a good training wheel for what's to come.

But setting aside that, what I see here is evidence of a clear fascination on Anne's part.

She has had two worm farms so far.

One that ended in disgusting tragedy and the other which she abandoned due to circumstance.

I have done some research into this, and while I think and I appreciate, Evan, that not only are you traumatized appropriately, but also that you may have some instinctive repulsion to the idea of keeping a box of writhing grave dirt in your home,

for Anne, this is not a repulsion, it is an attraction.

And it is an attraction, I think, that will not cease.

It is a hobby that I think she must see her way through at least to the third iteration, because one iteration was abandoned and one iteration failed.

And I think that in a classic three strikes, you're out scenario, Anne deserves a third time at bat.

That's a baseball metaphor, Jesse.

Not sure you're catching this.

I'm doing this for you.

So I definitely rule in Anne's favor.

Evan, this presents you with a challenge.

I don't want a box of worms on my counter any more than you do, Evan.

But Anne really wants that.

And now that I've done some research, I really want Anne to have that box of worms.

I don't don't want to have to do it.

I did some research and I discovered a number of different styles of worm bins, including one that I texted to Hannah.

Hannah, were you able to get that to Anne and Evan?

Yeah, it's very elegant.

Yeah.

Looks great, doesn't it?

We'll put this up on the Judge John Hodgman show page and on the Instagram.

I don't take advertising from this company.

And I don't tend to do a lot of buzz marketing.

You know, in my research, I looked at a lot of different styles of bins.

They all look like disgusting, like rubbish bins that would be full of garbage and worms.

But this thing looks like sculpture.

It's like white.

And for the people who haven't had a chance to look at it yet, it's this white, natural formed piece of ceramic sculpture that's got a cork top with three holes in it.

What do you think about that, Evan?

What do you think about that thing?

It's attractive.

I'm not going to lie.

This actually is changing my mind about

what one of these things could look like.

What do you think about it, Anne?

I mean, this is your hobby.

What do you think about this thing?

I mean, I will say it definitely makes me think about the density of 500 to 1,000 worms in a different way.

This may not be a 1K worm situation.

It is lovely.

Straight out of MoMA.

Yeah, exactly.

Straight out of MoMA.

This is what I'm saying.

I'm buying it for you.

Have a great time.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Anne, are you excited about this new countertop appliance?

Oh, absolutely.

I'm always looking to elevate our design choices.

But you understand, Anne, I'm buying it for you.

I want reports.

I don't want a box of worms on my counter.

You and me, we're going to be worm pen pals on this.

All right.

I can send you some of the finished compost.

We're coming to the show in Boston.

Should Anne bring some of the worms or some of the compost after the show?

You know what?

That's a good point.

I don't think it'll be ready by then.

Look, if you're within the sound of my voice, go to johnhodgman.com/slash store to get tickets for this Wilbur show on January 14th if you're in the Boston area so that you can hear this report from Ann and Evan after they get this product.

Maybe this product is terrible.

And if it is, just tell me.

I'll give you another shot at a worm bin of your choice.

But like, I really like this thing, and I want to see how this goes so much that I don't care what Evan thinks at all.

Ann, this is you and me all the way here.

I love it.

All right.

Thank you.

Evan, you feeling good?

I mean, yeah,

I guess this seems like a reasonable compromise.

You know, I will support my, I'll support Anne and not try to wriggle out of my responsibilities.

Shut your pie hole.

Oh, no.

We'll see what happens.

Worm puns are a bridge too far for me.

I'm going to cut this thing off here.

Evan, and thanks for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Another Judge John Hodgman case in the books coming up in just a second.

Swift Justice.

First, our thanks to Marin Williams for naming this week's episode Edict of Worms.

If you'd like to name a future episode like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, follow us on Twitter.

John is at Hodgman.

I am at Jesse Thorne.

You can also find us on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

John is also on Instagram at JohnHodgman.

I am at put.this.

on.

Hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets.

Hashtag JJ H O and check out the Maximum Fun subreddit, maximumfun.reddit.com.

This week's episode recorded by Chris Bilius at Bristol Studios, edited by Jesus Ambrosio and produced by Hannah Smith.

Now, Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with quick judgment, Bradley asks, when someone says they are 1,000% certain, is it wrong to point out that you can't be more than 100% of anything?

I'm sorry, Jesse, I wasn't listening.

I'm just watching this instructional video on a loop of this very attractive person person in a beautiful kitchen feeding her worms.

It just goes on and on and on.

Don't worry, I'll handle it.

Bradley, crack a dictionary and turn to the page that contains the word hyperbole.

It's settled.

I'm a thousand percent in for this.

That's about it for this week's episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho or email Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

No case is too small.

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

MaximumFun.org.

Comedy and culture.

Artist owned.

Audience supported.

Worms and the scraps in this beautiful thing.

It's like a work of art.

Look at these worms go.

I'm going to say it.

Worms are better than grubs.

Better than grubs.