Snickerdoodiligence

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, snickerdoodle diligence.

Rachel files suit against her husband, Doug.

Early in their marriage, she brought cookies to his family's Christmas Eve celebration.

Doug and his brothers realized the cookies were similar to a beloved family recipe that had been lost to time.

20 years later, Doug and his brothers still refer to these cookies as their great-grandma Haybig's cookies.

But Rachel thinks she deserves the credit for the cookies.

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.

Early podcasts were different, with the ingredients being flour, oats, and water.

In addition, the Advent season was a time of fasting, and podcasters were not allowed to use butter, only oil, and the podcasts were tasteless and hard.

In the 15th century, in medieval Saxony, the Prince Elector Ernst decided to remedy this by writing to the Pope in Rome.

He said the Saxon bakers needed to use butter, as oil in Saxony was expensive.

Pope Nicholas V denied the first appeal.

Five popes died before finally, in 1490, Pope Innocent VIII sent a letter, known as the Butter Letter, to the Prince.

This granted the use of butter in podcasts, but only for the Prince Elector and his family and podcast network.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, swear them in.

Please rise, Rachel and Doug, and raise your right hands.

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

So help you, God, or whatever?

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he believes brownies are a cookie?

I do.

I do.

That's not confirmed.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

No, of course not.

Brownies are a sandwich.

Doug and Rachel, you may be seated.

And since we're stirring the pot with a culinary episode,

I made a wordplay.

And also with that Brownies are a sandwich comment, I don't want to stir it further, oh bailiff, my bailiff, because Jeremy Frank sent in this week's title, and I read it as Snicker due diligence.

You read it as Snickerdoodle Diligence, which I think both are equally pretty clever.

But if I didn't point out that it's Snicker Due Diligence, we'd be getting a lot of letters from Jeremy.

So, Jeremy.

I think we'll get a lot of letters from Jeremy.

We're going to get a lot of letters from Jeremy anyway.

Yeah.

Mayor of Max Funcom Town.

But Jeremy, stand down.

Stand down, Jeremy.

Now, it's not about you, Jeremy.

It's about Rachel and Doug.

Rachel and Doug, for an immediate summary judgment in one of yours favors, can either of you name the piece of culture that I paraphrased as I entered this fake internet courtroom.

How about you, Rachel?

What's your guess?

I'm going to guess Back to the Table, The Reunion of Food and Family by Oprah Winfrey's personal chef, Art Smith.

Back to the table.

You're coming in with a heavy-duty, prepared but solid guess.

Off the top of my head.

Really, you didn't have that written down in front of you?

Is that one of your favorite cookbooks?

I may have written it down.

Is this the cookbook where the cookies in questioning recipe come from?

No, no, it's not.

I should have figured that one out.

That would have been a good cultural reference.

Okay.

But I'm not saying you're wrong yet.

I'm just putting it in the guest book.

Doug, what's your deal?

What's your guess?

Let's hear it.

I'm going to say the wooden spoon cookbook.

The wooden spoon cookbook.

It's really the one cookbook you need when you're eating wooden spoons.

Yeah, you've got to cook them slow.

Slow and low.

Yeah, exactly.

You can't just throw them on the grill.

A lot of liquid or they'll dry out.

That's right.

They're braising.

They're a braising cut for sure.

The wooden spoon cookbook.

What is that, Doug?

Is that something you just made up off your dome?

It's a cookbook that we have in our house that has lots of old-timey cakes and cookies and things like that that we've used for years.

Is this possibly where the recipe for the disputed cookies comes from?

No, it does not.

All right.

Well, it doesn't matter because both of your guesses, and indeed all of them, are wrong.

The correct answer was a Wikipedia page.

I don't like to float from Wikipedia very often.

This is a hard one because you're talking about cookie recipes and the ownership of that IP.

And I was having a hard time coming up with a cultural reference.

But then I found a Wikipedia page for a particular fruitcake.

Not only that, a holiday fruitcake, because these are holiday cookies.

And not only that, but a Germanic, an old Germanic fruitcake.

Part of the dispute is that the cookies that Rachel makes reminds you, Doug, of your grandmother's German-style holiday cookies.

Is that right?

Correct.

So I thought I was really onto something.

And as I'm reading the history of this particular style of fruitcake, I get to this thing called the butter letter, where Pope Innocent VIII

gave the Prince-elect of Saxony the right to use butter in this fruitcake instead of oil.

And I'm like, I got to get my hands on this butter letter.

I'm going to read this butter letter, also referred to as the butter brief in history.

I'm wearing butter briefs right now.

I'm wearing butter boxer briefs.

But the thing is, nowhere on the internet could I find the text, translated or untranslated, of the butter brief.

So I put this to you, Judge John Hodgman fans, particularly those of you who work in libraries, which is, I think, 83% of you.

Could you please find me the text of the butter brief?

Because I just had to read this thing from the, alluded to it from the Wikipedia.

Now, can either of you guess the particular style of buttery, dense,

German holiday fruitcake made, most famous perhaps in Dresden, that this Wikipedia page is for.

Rachel, Doug, Doug, Rachel, can you guess?

Can you guess?

I'm going to say stolen.

Stolen is correct.

This doesn't win you the case, but I'm really impressed.

Stolen is correct.

Just like the legacy of the cookies that Rachel has made have been stolen by your family

and attributed to your great Grammy Haybig.

Is that right?

Correct.

Rachel, you come to this court seeking justice.

Tell me about great Grammy Haybig and the case of the stolen cookies.

Sure.

So I found this recipe for giant ginger cookies in a popular home magazine in 1998.

And it was the following year in 1999 when we were spending the holidays with Doug's family and participating in their tradition, which is the annual Christmas Eve Buffet, which is a day-long feast of various noshes, mostly meat-based.

I thought this would be a good addition to the Christmas Eve Buffet table.

There were no desserts planned.

I'm not a big dessert fan, but these are pretty much as close as you can get to savory cookies.

And so I thought this would be a good addition.

Could I ask you to pause for one second before we get into what a huge hit they were?

I just have to.

Two quick questions.

I don't care for sweets, but I occasionally enjoy a gingery cookie because they are savory.

Is it always the the case that Doug and his family put out all the meats in the world but not a single dessert?

Because even I, not a dessert person, thinks that that's a little imbalanced.

I mean, there's usually some cookies, maybe some fudge, but the main focus is

meat-based dips.

Whoa.

Because we were talking about meat, I was like, oh, we should have put a content warning on top of this for the vegans and vegetarians like we did with the barbecue episode.

So I'm going to give a content warning right now because I'm a carnivore and meat-based dips just triggered me.

That is gross.

Doug, what is this?

What's a meat-based dip?

So we have what we refer to in my family as the holy trinity of dips that come out every year for the Christmas Eve Buffet.

There's a different epistolary about the dips, by the way.

Wait, you guys are in Chicago, right?

Correct.

Are you Midwesterners?

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So the Christmas Eve buffet takes place in my hometown in rural Iowa.

Oh, okay.

So let me hear about the Holy Trinity of dips.

So they're not all meat-based.

There's one of them is a spinach dip, but then the other two are a dried beef dip.

Wait, when you say a dried beef dip, are you referring to jerky?

No, it's a thinly sliced, air-dried beef.

We find it and use it, but I can't remember where we find it.

Find it and use it.

I appreciate your every part of the buffalo sentiments here,

but you find it and use it.

That's part of the tradition, Jesse.

You can't buy it.

You have to find it.

It's part of the Christmas miracle of the finding of the dried beef.

I know what you're talking about.

It's kind of like a bresso-la, but it's flakier.

Yeah, exactly.

All right.

So dried beef dip.

You're cutting up the dried beef and then mixing it in with mayonnaise and sour cream or something?

Yeah, it's dairy products.

Cream cheese is involved.

I can't remember the full recipe, but it's, yeah.

Yeah.

And what's the third one?

It's Braunschweiger dip.

You're talking about a liverwurst dip.

You're talking about chopped liver.

Yeah.

Okay, that's the Holy Trinity.

Correct.

Which is the Father, which is the Son, and which is the Holy Ghost of those dips, would you say?

Shockingly, we've never debated that.

I am shocked.

Off the top of your head, so you can have a fight with your brothers later.

What do you maintain?

I would say the spinach dip would have to be the Holy Spirit.

Of course.

I'd say dried beef is Jesus and Brown Schweiger is God.

I think that that's right.

I agree with you.

I'm not going to fight that.

Rachel, you've married into an interesting family.

How long have you been married?

21 years.

Wow, congratulations.

Thank you.

Thanks.

So, Rachel, the other thing that I wanted to ask was you very coyly eluded saying the name of the popular home magazine that you got this recipe from.

But it's okay for us to say brand names on this podcast now because usually getting around saying the brand names just ends up being confusing.

Was it perhaps good housekeeping?

No, it was Better Homes and Gardens, the November 1998 issue.

Oh, and I take it back now.

I find in Doug's favor, get out of here.

Only because, and I feel, Jesse, that we have not made a big enough deal about this,

but we have literally received the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, have we not, Jesse Thorne?

Yeah, Judge John Hodgman, as seen in Good Housekeeping magazine, or at least goodhousekeeping.com.

This is not the ancient times of 1998 when Rachel was tearing out giant ginger cookie recipes from, what was it, Better Homes and Gardens?

Good thing you were tearing that recipe out.

You shouldn't be tearing up the rest of that magazine.

They didn't put us on any lists.

I have no beef with them.

I have no dried beef with Better Homes and Gardens.

So the recipe has a point of origin that is established.

It is a provenance, as they say.

Correct?

Correct.

And you made these cookies and you brought them and you plopped them right next down to the Holy Trinity of meat dips in a huge open space where Doug's family didn't even bother to provide a decent dessert.

And what happened?

They were a huge hit.

Everybody loved them.

Yeah, they were devoured.

Everybody wanted the recipe.

Who's everybody?

Brother Jim, Brother Scott.

I know those guys from the evidence.

We're talking about mother-in-law, father-in-law.

Correct.

Yeah.

And at that point, Doug was the only one who'd brought somebody else into the family so far.

So.

But that evening, the three brothers who have a well-documented history of, let's call it brotherly banter gone too far, they started kind of winding each other up with this story about these cookies, that they were not actually cookies that I had brought into the family but they were in fact cookies that reminded them of the ones made by their grandma Mary and that they ate when they would come home from school and be with her and then they decided that she had learned the recipe for those cookies from her mother their great-grandmother Habig who they'd never met

or had cookies from or had any evidence that she'd ever made cookies like this.

They just reminded them of the ones their grandmother had made.

Okay, so let me make sure that I understand this.

You drop these cookies, everyone enjoys them, and then Doug and his two brothers say, you know what, these remind me of those cookies that our grandmother used to give us.

And those cookies originated with our great-grammy Haybig.

So now we're going to call these great-grammy haybig cookies.

Is that right?

That's right.

And they had had a couple drinks at this point and were

coming on.

You know, Doug and Jim and Scott.

Doug, where are you in the birth order of Jim and Scott?

I'm the middle child.

And so, all right, so you're doing whatever you need to to just get attention, like go on a podcast on a cookie fight.

I got you.

Okay.

Is this true about like brotherly banter go too far?

Well, I wouldn't say it's gone too far, but it was definitely brotherly banter.

The way we see it is we were kind of appreciating Rachel reintroducing this cookie that we have really fond memories of from our childhood.

My dad has fond memories of from his childhood.

And it was this recipe that my grandmother had made, was lost to time.

We have no idea what happened to it.

And we thought, you know, we appreciate that Rachel was reinvigorating this tradition of these cookies and bringing them back in a way to our family.

And so.

So you were surprised and happy.

Exactly.

Let me be perfectly clear here.

Do the cookies remind you of these childhood cookies you used to have from your grandmother?

Or did you believe that somehow, through the magic of the Holy Trinity of dips, Rachel's cookies had been transubstantiated into the very cookies, the body of Haybig, that you would eat at this Last Supper?

Is that what happened here?

I really like that explanation, yes.

Well, you set a magical table, but you are a rational person.

You're just saying that these cookies reminded you of Grandma Haybig's cookies, but since then, you refer to them how?

How do you refer to these cookies, should Rachel ever make them?

As great-Grandma Haybig's ginger or molasses cookies.

Who else is making the cookies now?

Everybody.

Who else, Rachel?

Who else is stealing your IP?

Well, so when the other sister-in-laws married into the family, you know, they were told these were Great Grandma Haybig's cookies.

They, Doug, his brothers, they've all made them for office parties, for neighbors.

Nieces and nephews now have made the cookies.

They've really gotten around and people always ask for the recipe.

And even more than that, Doug's brothers, Scott and Jim, have infiltrated two children's cookbooks and gotten this recipe put into those cookbooks, the one from the magazine with the title Great Grandma Haybig's Cookies.

And so, I mean, who knows how many people are making these cookies now?

So your accusation is that they are messing with the timeline.

They are changing history.

They are erasing not only that recipe's original origin in that magazine, but also your legacy of bringing them to the table at the first place.

Correct.

Their nostalgia for their childhood is short-circuiting the true narrative of these cookies.

Well, let's talk about nostalgia, the most toxic impulse, for a moment, Doug.

Describe for me the moment that you ate this cookie and flashed back to that time when you were a French novelist eating a Madeleine.

What was wonderful about rediscovering molasses cookies was I spent, you know, when I was young, my grandmother would, you know, watch us after school.

So I spent a lot of time at her house and a lot of really fond memories of that time with her.

And my brothers similarly have fond memories.

And so

honestly, hadn't thought about those particular cookies for a number of years because grandmother at that point wasn't making those anymore and it had been a while since she made them.

And so it really was, it's a warm, kind of good memory for me and for my brothers from childhood.

And so it was just really exciting to kind of be reconnected to that and be able to reminisce and to think that this has been brought back to our family.

Let's take a quick recess.

We'll be back in just a moment on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

May I presume that your grandmother, Mary, is no longer living?

Correct.

I mean, did she ever write down the recipe for the actual Hay cookies?

To the best of my knowledge, no.

There are other recipes of things that she would make that survived, but we don't know where that recipe is, if it lives on somewhere, or we have no idea.

Once the style of molassesy, gingery, savory cookie was reintroduced to your taste bud, sending you hurtling back through time to your beloved childhood, and you sought to reclaim that childhood, did it occur to you that you could maybe ask,

go through her stuff, see if that original recipe was there somewhere?

Did not that curiosity spark you to go on a journey to find the original recipe?

Because I would have.

No, I, at that point, felt like we had, in essence, rediscovered her recipe and felt like it was already there with us.

Was it you, Doug, or was it Jim or Scott who led the charge to take these cookies and ascribe them to your mythical great-grandmother if she did indeed exist?

I was the first person to bring up the idea, and both my brothers heartily agreed.

Oh, okay.

So you are the originator of this.

I think I am, yeah.

How does it make you feel, Rachel, when they are referred to as great-grandma Ebig's cookies?

I think that food has a really important place in family history.

And I think looking at the stories of food and families, it both brings back memories, but it also,

you know, there's something about it and families merging and how when new people come into families, recipes change and new recipes are introduced.

And I feel like they have kind of short-circuited that story for our nieces and nephews who they love these cookies.

They now are a part of our Christmas traditions with Doug's families.

They've all, you know, made them for other parties.

And I think they've lost the opportunity to have.

that full family story and what really happened with these cookies.

And I think it's an interesting and nuanced story.

When I brought this case, that was the moment, unfortunately, when some of the children in the family learned the true origins of the recipe.

And I think it was really upsetting for one of them in particular, my nephew Jack.

And I submitted evidence for the case about Jack's reaction.

And I just, you know, lying to children isn't great.

They don't like it.

You know, I brought this case on behalf of my nephew Jack and others who have learned by my bringing this case that they were not great-grandma Haybig's recipe.

You did send in some evidence, and let me please take a look at that now.

All of the evidence that is visual in nature, of course, will be available on the Judge John Hodgman page at maximumfund.org, as well as on our Instagram page at instagram.com/slash judgejohnhodgman.

And as long as I'm saying URLs, I might as well just say bit.ly/slash medallion status.

Always be plugging.

Okay, here we go.

Exhibit A, the original recipe, Better Homes and Garden, November 1998.

Here is the recipe itself for giant ginger cookies is published.

Wow.

You still have this piece of paper.

Is that correct?

I sure do.

Wow.

Doug, your wife is coming in with a lot of hard evidence.

A paper trail, I dare say.

This isn't something that she retrieved off of

like Google search or Google Magazine doc.

This is the thing.

This is a picture you took.

It includes the incredibly disgusting advertisement at the bottom of the page.

An advertisement for Lysol that says, Spread joy, not salmonella this holiday.

And it's a Lysol bottle pointed at a raw turkey.

They really knew how to sell products in those days.

Now, you've circled something here, and I'm trying to get closer to see it.

Oh, it's just the date.

It's just the date.

Yeah.

Who is the author of this recipe, I wonder?

Did it ever occur to you to look into that,

Rachel?

Or were you content to steal?

I guess

my feeling is that unless you you have a professional chef in your family, every recipe that's assigned to a member of that family probably came from somewhere, a cookbook or a magazine.

Right, but you're here petitioning to have your name re-entered into family history after it has been erased by Doug and his brothers, and yet you're content to sit and erase the name of this person.

You also felt no curiosity to go back to the original source.

I'm just bringing it up.

It's not determining.

I'm just bringing it up.

It's a little of what we we call whataboutism that we use to muddy the waters

when one obvious crime has been committed and

you want to keep it interesting

so that cable news will have something to talk about or you keep the podcast going.

All right, exhibit B, the compromised nephew.

Look, everybody, I've seen a lot of evidence in my time here on the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast.

Rachel is killing it with her evidence.

Killing it.

This is well organized.

It's pertinent.

I don't see one gratuitous picture of a pet yet.

Actually, there's a lot of evidence.

I didn't even see all of this.

But let's go to this.

This is Jack ready for his bake sale.

I'm quoting your caption.

And then the thread between Jack, Aunt Rachel, uncles Doug and Jim, that's you, Doug, and Jack's dad, Scott, after Jack learned that his cookies were a fraud.

Jack says, I've been lied to my whole life, and I will not take these crimes lightly.

And then Jim says, what is the truth, Jack?

Where did the cookies really originate?

And Jack says, cookie fraud.

And Doug says, your parents need to sit you down and talk this through with you.

And Jack says, they have.

I've never been the same.

Sometimes it's hard to face crimes in history.

Has he learned about Native American genocide yet?

He seems very sensitive.

I'm concerned.

He's actually a huge history buff.

He's a big World War II history buff.

Oh, right.

Yeah, exactly.

Jack is into this.

Doug says, then you understand that history is a complex narrative.

Oh, Doug, weasel words.

Jack says, I'm already preparing my case.

Scott says, this is a complex narrative, Jack.

Life isn't black and white.

Jack says, that's very clear now.

Hmm.

And then someone jumps in and says, I will always tell you the truth, Jack.

Who's that?

That's me.

Yeah, Rachel.

Let me ask you a question, and then there's more evidence.

We'll come back to this in a second.

But

do you still make the cookies, Rachel?

I don't often have a chance anymore because Doug

rushes to make them usually a few weeks before Christmas and then again for the Christmas Eve buffet.

He also makes them for office parties.

He's kind of taken over that recipe to the point that when I brought this case, he admitted to me that he had actually forgotten that I had been the one to make them first and he thought he had.

Wow, that is a total rewriting of history.

Exhibit C, the compromise cookbook, great recipes from great grandparents.

Is this Jack's cookbook?

No, this is a cookbook that my mother prepared for our son a couple years ago.

Our son was an aspiring chef at the time, and she compiled recipes from his great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents from both sides of the family.

Wow.

And she did biographies of all of them and collected recipes by interviewing all of our family members.

And I submitted as evidence where Scott and Jim trolled his cookbook and got that recipe put in.

And you can see my mom's author note that

the relationship of these cookies to Great Grandma Haybig is not entirely clear, but that Uncle Jim and Uncle Scott felt the recipe definitely had to be in the cookbook.

This is an incredible thing that Rachel's mom made

for her grandson Sam with a long and wonderful introduction.

to this family cookbook.

And here is a very detailed biography of Great great-grandma haybig born and raised on a farm in minnesota she moved to carroll iowa to attend boarding school at st angeles domestic sciences school for girls was etc etc fantastic just biographies of everybody putting them in as great grandma mary haybig's ginger cookies although the relationship of their great grandma haybig your great great grandma haybig to these cookies is as you know not entirely clear What

Jim and Scott both feel the recipe should be included in the cookbook.

Shocking.

Not entirely clear.

It's obvious.

We know where these cookies came from.

Doug, the relationship is entirely clear.

It is the imagination of you and your brothers.

We're expanding upon family history.

We're expanding upon family history.

Right.

Okay, I see.

This is like fan fiction.

Family history fanfic.

In your head canon, these are your great-grandmother's cookies.

I I think we really just found a new lane of revenue for ancestry.com.

And now I'm scrolling through this cookbook through all of these bios like great-grandma Nana, great-grandpa Victor, blah, blah, blah.

And then it comes down to Rachel, not sure who she is, maybe your mom.

That was a weird bio to put in this thing.

And there's lots more evidence that you can peruse, but I think that we've seen most of the important stuff here.

And then there's evidence that you submitted,

Doug,

an affidavit from your brothers.

Correct.

I'll just read a slightly shortened version of this.

Molasses cookies were introduced to us by our grandmother.

As children, we only knew this type of cookie to exist in one place, our grandmother's kitchen.

It's a very strange argument to make.

We were so ignorant of this kind of cookie that once we learned that other people in the world made it, we had to have it for our grandmother.

All right.

It wasn't until we were adults that we discovered that a recipe existed that replicates our grandmother's cookies.

It was introduced to us by by our brother Doug and sister-in-law.

We don't remember the first time the cookies were baked by our brother and sister-in-law, but we do remember how they immediately reminded us of our grandmother and her kitchen from childhood.

When Doug named them Great Grandma Haybig's Molasses Cookies, we immediately understood the joke.

Oh, they're joking.

It's comedy.

They were doing it as a character.

I get it.

And thought it was a fine name for the recipe.

The name we have given to the cookies is in no way meant to lessen or denigrate the contributions Rachel has made to our family.

We are grateful that Rachel found the recipe and helped reintroduce a treat to our family that connected the generations.

Wow.

So basically,

Doug, your brothers are basically saying it was just a joke.

We are boundary pushers.

We take risks as comedians.

Their intention was never to hurt anyone.

And they're sorry if anyone was actually offended.

Do you stand by that?

Do you stand by your two brothers?

I don't know if I would characterize it so much as a joke.

Their words, sir.

Their words.

Right, right.

And I appreciate it.

I understand kind of the sentiment that they are expressing.

You know, when I come at it, it's more about, you know, how do we both honor kind of what the history, you know, generations of our family had contributed.

And I think it's just really fantastic that Rachel, as a new member to the family, was able to connect this history of this cookie and bring it in.

I think it's a really neat storyline to have

she didn't connect

it's a neat storyline

we're just waiting for her heel turn

I think is it gonna come in this podcast

Rachel do you correct people when they claim this cookie for great grandma Haybig and how do they feel when you do it I probably gave up a couple years in trying to correct it only because

Again, he and his brothers, they're like this little improv troupe that just gets on a roll and their mom is pretty much the only one who can shut them down.

So, you know, I haven't put a lot of effort into it.

I kind of push back on Doug sometimes about it.

But when Jack had this cookie bake sale and I saw that, you know, he was sort of being implicated in this, that's when I felt like it was time to come forward with the truth.

When you say that these guys have sort of an improv troupe element to them, and Scott and Jim did refer to a joke.

Like, do you think that part of this is them

getting your goat for a laugh?

I mean, there's a precedent.

Go on.

I'll allow it.

I mean, I can't think of a particular sort of joke.

I mean, this is really kind of a long con.

The other ones are usually just kind of in the moment, and they do it with everybody in the family.

They do it with each other.

They gaslight them into saying, these cookies are not your cookies.

What do they do?

So

there's a very famous family story of when the boys were young, they were watching TV and Jim, the youngest, there was a J.C.

Penny White Sale add-on and he asked his brothers what a white sale was and he was about five or six at the time.

And they told him and they kept this going the whole day until their mom got home.

They told him that white sales.

I'm nervous about where this is going, but I'll allow it.

He told them that a J.C.

JCPenney white sale is where their parents got him.

That that's where he had come from, was a J.C.

Penney white sale.

That he'd been purchased from J.C.

Penney as a child.

Exactly.

And he was in tears by the end of the day.

And his mom, you know, I think there were some Hail Marys in the corner for Doug and Scott.

But that basically,

that's kind of precedent.

They're pranksters.

They're jokesters.

Yes.

Right?

They're just, everyone's too sensitive.

Why can't they just laugh?

They're equal opportunity offenders.

I don't know what I'm referring to here.

Someone does, though.

All right, anyway.

Doug, you've invented this connection between this cookie, which has an obvious provenance, that is not your great-grandmother.

You've made this connection to your great-grandmother as a storyline and gone back through and created a new history, which erases your wife.

Is this a joke or is this sincere that you really love these cookies?

And like, you know what I mean?

Is your connection that you are fabricating to your great-grandmother, Haybig,

born of a genuine love for that family history, or are you just trying to get Rachel's goat?

And I'll remind you, you're under fake oath.

I think there's a little in both camps.

I'd say that I

truly love these cookies, and they truly remind me of really fond childhood memories.

And I like the fact that calling them great-grandma Haybig's cookies gives an opportunity to talk about our childhood and where these cookies fit in that history and everything like that.

There's no intention to erase Rachel.

I don't deny

when asked if the specific recipe came from somewhere other than my great-grandma Haywig.

You know, they came from Better Homes and Garden magazine.

And you know, I would say, like, if Rachel had developed the recipe herself, you know, like tinkered and figured out the different measurements and everything like that, I never would have in any way called them anything but Rachel's cookies.

But, you know, as you pointed out, it came from a magazine that could be anybody's.

It's just like jokes.

They have no author.

You can just take them.

Yeah, and post them on Instagram, rewrite them in the notes app, screen cap it, post it in Instagram.

That's right.

Because, you know, even if someone else makes a joke, it's just the way you put your spin on it.

She didn't actually put anything into this.

I got you.

I got you, Red.

I'm holding a side trial in my own mind, I think.

Rachel, what would you have me order if I were defined in your favor?

I think, you know, I'd want to think of a new name for this cookie that creates an opportunity to really acknowledge their true history in our family.

At one point, I was thinking of kind of a mashup of my name and Doug's grandmother, but I think that the adjudication of this recipe is now a part of their history, and it's now a part of our family history.

And in an effort to not sort of halt history with nostalgia and just say they're mine, I would be fine with some kind of ruling that we rename these cookies in a way that reflects their appearance on fake internet court.

But most of all, I'd seek a mandate that when asked about the name or the cookie, the Doug and his brothers have to tell the full and true story and that they all share that story with their children.

Do they dissemble when asked?

You know, when someone says, these are amazing, are these really your great-grandmother's cookies?

Do they lie or evade the truth?

Yes, they absolutely do.

I would say we always do that.

It's happened, but

I think lots of times I say that they're from a magazine.

Yeah, the number of...

You can't say the word Rachel, can you?

Is that the problem?

Magazine slash Rachel.

Doug, you make the cookies a lot now, right?

I do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're a baker as well, right?

Yeah.

Super cool.

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

You know, I don't expect Rachel to embrace great-grandma Haybig's cookies in the same way that I and my brothers.

I think she would enjoy embracing that family tradition and speaking to it if she chose to.

When you say embrace this tradition, you mean embrace it with a web of lies?

There's different ways to talk about it, but, you know, it's I think there's fun in lifting up that family history.

And at the very least, it'd be nice if when we talk about them and say that they're

Grandma's Habeck's cookies that she doesn't instantly respond that we're liars.

Why is it important to you, Doug?

I think it's important because I

really do enjoy, you know, talking about them as a cookie that has a family tradition.

And I like to talk about the fact that...

It has a family tradition.

Your wife made them and brought them 20 years ago.

that's the tradition that is part of the tradition that is true do you lack a connection to your ancestral past such that you need to create this fetish object out of nothing in order to feel a connection to it well i will say that my family particularly the the side of the family that referring to with great grandma hibig we're not big history folks we don't have a lot of conversation about kind of our roots or a lot of stories that are passed down.

It's just not what we've done.

Have you read the cookbook that your mother-in-law, Rachel's mother, made?

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a fantastic.

She did an amazing job at that.

She did the homework.

She didn't just steal a cookie.

I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I'm going to go into my test kitchen, and I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Doug.

It's been an intense grilling for you.

How are you feeling right now?

Really bad.

Yeah, I'm not feeling good at all.

Just

overall, physically, emotionally, or specifically about your chances in the case?

I think my chances in the case have affected my overall

feeling.

Doug, we got to tear you down if we're going to build you up.

Rachel, how are you feeling?

I have to say, having the judge say that this is the greatest set of evidence ever submitted makes this pretty much the best day of my life.

It is genuinely genuinely impressive.

You put together a PDF.

You really went all the way here.

I feel like instead of evidence, I received a deck.

Whatever business people call a deck, I think that's what this is.

It's 20 years in the making.

Doug, Rachel, we'll see what Judge Hodgman has to say about all 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 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.

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

So recipes are like jokes.

That was the half-joke that I was making or alluding to earlier on, and that authorship is something that has traditionally been a little slippery, right?

People create recipes and then they give them away in cookbooks, and then those recipes get taken and made.

They are designed to be reproduced.

and essentially reproduced over and over and over again until the author kind of disappears.

Very rarely do do authors retain a kind of ownership aside from that original edition of the cookbook over the recipes that they put out into the world.

And similarly, jokes are something that a certain subset of people feel are similarly just like, here's a funny idea, take it, share it.

I had an original observation, but now it is for the world.

And that's how joke theory happens.

And it happens often with, I won't say the best of intentions, but the mediumest of intentions, without fully understanding that work goes into creating a recipe just like work work goes into creating a joke.

It requires imagination and self-editing and reworking and testing.

And they are not just things to be taken away and re-ascribed to someone else.

Rachel, of course, you know, this is especially true.

I mean, this is true for jokes, but it's like especially true for baking, right?

Which is very specific.

Like, unlike the kind of cooking I do, which is like, that looks brown.

Baking is chemistry and it requires very specific ingredients.

There are a wide variety of different kinds of molasses-y, gingery-type cookies.

Shout out to Elizabeth Connor's Rugby Cookies, one of the greatest cookie I've ever eaten in my life.

Give me a Guinness pound cake.

These are the sweets that I like.

This is why this whole conversation to me is delicious, even though I do not have a sweet tooth.

As you know, I have an alcohol molar.

And Rachel took a recipe and brought it to her new husband's family gathering, and her intentions were fine.

She did not go in there saying, I invented this recipe.

She took it as anyone would from a magazine.

Only to have her labor stolen from her almost immediately by Doug and his brothers, and to create this fantasy that this is in fact Great Grandma Haybig's recipe.

You could probably sense, Doug,

my immediate frustration with this IP theft,

and my double frustration with this rewriting of history in a gaslighty kind of way, where Rachel's position with regard to these cookies was gradually being erased, and a new history was being written in to the record to prop up the fantasy.

But rather than being simply grateful that Rachel had introduced a memory of these cookies that you had basically forgotten about but now zoomed you back in a series of sensations back to being a kid when your grandma Mary baked Haybig's cookies for you.

You instead take the away from Rachel and give them to Haybig.

And that's frustrating too, because joining a family is hard.

You guys have been married for 21 years, is that right?

Yes.

Yeah, joining a family is a hard thing, especially if you're joining a close-knit family that itself has a lot of tri-brother traditions of bullying and choking

and lying, and also a family that has long traditions of meat dips.

You are the outsider coming in, and I feel bad for Rachel almost at the very beginning of your marriage,

having her work essentially ignored by you and your brothers and only sort of like like grudgingly acknowledged when forced to.

I know that your intentions are good.

I believe that your brothers, your brothers' apology, or non-apology in their letter is clearly like they didn't mean to hurt anybody.

And even though Rachel isn't here saying this hurts me, I am hurt on her behalf, and there's a reason that she brought this to the courtroom, right?

One of the hardest things that we have to learn to understand is that even when our intentions are good and fine and we don't think we're doing anything wrong, sometimes someone says, hey, you know what?

That hurts me.

And because you never intended to hurt that person,

you're like, what are you talking about?

You're easily offended.

Get out of here.

These are my great-grandma's cookies, period, or whatever it is.

And this is the third point of frustration that I feel.

There's a hard thing in life to learn for all of us.

And some of us more than others, that even when we feel our intentions are good and we didn't think we were doing anything wrong, when someone says, this makes me feel bad, you have a choice to become either defensive and double down and say, you shouldn't feel this way.

It's just a fun family tradition, or to say, oh, holy moly, you know, I didn't think about it.

Let me think about that some more.

You're right.

Rachel, you have a place in this family history.

She is now part of the family.

And part of the history is

she sparked a memory in your mind with cookies, which is obviously what cookies are so good for.

That's what Proust knew.

Sparking mems.

And she deserves a place in that history.

Now, here's what I'm going to order.

And this goes for every member of your family.

And it includes you, Rachel.

First of all, I want you both to do some homework, just like Rachel's mom did.

Try to find out who wrote that good housekeeping recipe.

Rachel, that's your job, so that you can credit it properly.

You may never find out.

And I accept that, but you can give it a try.

It wasn't good housekeeping, I'm sorry, it's better homes and gardens.

They still exist.

Somewhere in there, you could probably narrow it down.

I'd like you to make a good faith effort.

And similarly, and perhaps more successfully, I'd like you, Doug, and Jim and Scott, to make a good faith effort.

Try to find that recipe for Haybig's molasses cookies.

There were some recipes written down.

There have to be more of them.

It may not be possible.

All that stuff may have burned in a fire.

I don't know.

But you owe it to people who create recipes to try to find out where they came from and to credit them properly.

At least make a good faith effort.

I get that it might not work.

The main reason I'm ordering this of both of you is that my hope is that Rachel is going to find out that the person who wrote the good housekeeping article is actually your great-grandmother Haybig.

And it'll be another,

yet another Doug family try-meat dip miracle.

But my main order is this: from From now on,

Rachel's recipe, the Better Homes and Gardens recipe, will no longer be called Great Grandma Haybig's cookies.

Sorry, Doug's family.

You are feasting in a palace of lies when you do that.

And the repercussions are already clear.

Jack was traumatized to learn that his family history had been falsified.

And Jack is our future.

And I encourage, I want Jacks of the world to believe, especially in this time, that facts are facts and not storylines.

That history is real and not a narrative.

Even when that real history is uncomfortable, Jack wants to confront it and I want to give him every opportunity to do it.

From now on, those cookies, which are part of family lore, will be called Great Rachels

as adapted from Better Homes and Gardens 1998 or whatever.

And that all needs to be there.

Great Rachels, as adapted from Better Homes and Garden, dateline November 98, or whatever it is.

And now you,

do not despair, though, Doug.

You are a nice guy,

and I bet you make really good cookies.

All you need to do, my friend, is get in there and mess around with that recipe a little bit more.

Tinker with it.

Put in the work.

Find a new angle.

Add the pith of a mandarin orange or a satsuma or something.

Figure out some new cookie.

First of all, a new cookie is a way forward as opposed to this nostalgic path backwards.

But second of all, maybe you'll spark an even stronger memory of your grandma and your great-grandma and your family history.

And those cookies, when you make that small addition, that small change, and that literally could be an extra gram of sugar.

It doesn't matter.

You have naming rights over those.

Those become great-grandma Haybigs cookies because you're allowed to make up that false story if it's your own cookie.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

A somewhat more expansive verdict than you might have anticipated, Doug.

How are you feeling?

I think it's fair.

He makes a lot of good points about respecting what Rachel's contributed and

honoring her perspective.

So I think that's all very fair.

And I'm excited about

the opportunity to tinker with the recipe to be able to kind of make it my own and give it a name.

And so I might like, you know, see how I can get any of the dips in there or something like that to change it up.

Wait a minute,

you're talking about putting dried beef dip into the cookies, Doug?

It's experimentation.

We'll see.

Okay.

Rachel, how are you feeling?

I feel good.

I'm excited about trying to track down the origins of the Better Homes and Gardens recipe.

And maybe I will bring my nephew Jack, the aspiring historian, in on that with me to figure that out.

Rachel, Doug, thanks for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Another Judge John Hodgman case in the books.

Before we dispense some swift justice, we want to thank Jeremy Frank for naming this week's episode Snickerdo Diligence or Snickerdoodle Diligence as you prefer.

If you'd like to name a future episode like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, that's where we put out our calls for submissions.

And hey, remember that Jesse Thorne and I are going to be on tour with the Judge John Hodgman Live Justice Show this fall, as well as I'll be out there promoting my book Medallion Status.

In fact, I had a little conversation with Doug and Rachel.

They're going to be at my Chicago event at the Chicago Festival of the Humanities in November.

And they're going to bring me a great Rachel and they're going to bring me a new haybig.

And I'm going to figure out which one is better.

So you can be there when that happens if you wish, or at any of our great events across this land of ours and Toronto by going to johnhodgman.com slash tour or the events page on Maximum Fun.

Where can they follow us, Jesse?

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

Hashtag your judge John Hodgman tweets.

Hashtag JJ H O.

I love to see what folks are saying about the show.

Check out the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfun.reddit.com.

Another place for pleasant discussion.

Yeah, I've been enjoying it.

I've been dropping in.

I discovered that I have a login at Reddit that I forgot about from my book six years ago.

And now I'm getting in the mix.

I'm talking to people over there.

It's a lot of fun.

It's great.

I love checking out what everyone is talking about about the show.

I love deleting the posts of people who are being jerks.

I love everything about it.

It's a great place.

It's one of the warmest and friendliest places on Reddit, maximumfund.reddit.com.

And of course, our evidence, including some really beautiful evidence for this week's show, is on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

You can follow us there.

We post evidence there, other fun stuff.

It's great at JudgeJohnHodgman.

This week's episode recorded by Colin Ashmead Bobbitt at WBEZ in Chicago.

Our editor is Jesus Ambrosio.

This episode produced by Hannah Smith and Jennifer Marmer.

Now, Swift Justice, we answer your small disputes with quick judgment.

Andrew wants to know, Judge Hodgman, penguins adorable or terrifying?

I have never thought this was a question at all.

I love a penguin.

All penguins are great.

They're adorable.

Everybody loves penguins except for little fish.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Everyone loves penguins.

You know, I've been in a penguin tank inside.

When I was young and dumb and thought I was immortal and figured that I probably would never be prosecuted for anything in my life because of what I look like.

And I was kind of right.

I snuck into the London Zoo.

You may have heard about this on This American Life many years ago.

Snuck into that London zoo.

Very little security at the London Zoo at this time.

1990s.

It was a great, great decade for sneaking into zoos.

I got there.

I looked at the penguins.

I'm like, those penguins look great.

I'm going to climb in that enclosure with them.

And I did it.

And I walked among the sleeping penguins.

And I reached up to pet a penguin.

And that penguin bit me on the finger.

And even that was adorable.

And obviously warranted, too, because I was invading its home.

And that's the story of how John was cast in the film The Batman.

I only wish.

I just got thrown in a London jail for a night, immediately caught.

And they had to hold me until they could determine that none of the penguins were harmed or injured.

And then they let us go because there was a bombing in Paddington Station.

It was the 90s in London, the swinging 90s.

They were adorable, Andrew.

Penguins are wonderful.

But you know what?

Give them their space.

They deserve it.

They're creatures.

That's it for this week's Judge John Hodgman.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org slash JJ HO.

And remember, we are particularly looking for cases in those cities that we are visiting on our national tour of several cities.

That's Durham, North Carolina, Washington, D.C., our nation's capital.

Portland, Maine, of course.

Toronto, which everyone is yelling at me on the internet to say Toronto instead of Toronto.

And a fifth city, which you're going to remember, Jesse.

Atlanta, Georgia.

Yes, Atlanta, the capital of Georgia.

I will, from now on, always remember to say Tirana as a native of San Francisco.

If you've got a dispute in any of those cities or you're coming to the show from wherever you may be coming, please write in.

maximumfund.org slash jjho or hodgman at maximumfund.org.

Let us know that it's for consideration in a particular city.

We'll put it in a special pile.

And if we choose to hear your case on stage, guess what?

You're getting in for free.

And I'll say hello to you.

So come on, pick a fight.

I'll stare at you isolate.

You've got the warmest.

I'll probably say I'll probably say hello, John.

You're so no,

you've got the warmest eyes in podcasting, I have to say, Jesse Thorne.

The kindest eyes in podcasting.

And basically, because of your beard, it's the only part of your face that's visible.

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

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