Niles and Dobbs

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I am the bailiff of the program, Jesse Thorne.

This week, we're in chambers clearing out the docket.

And with me is the tallest man in the world, Judge John Hodgman.

It's a curse more than anything, Jesse, to be the tallest man in the world.

You know, I have to eat 17 pizzas a day, and children consider me a monster because of the pizza eating.

It's like, oh, disgusting.

Why is he just scraping the cheese off the pizza and shoving it in his mouth?

I'm like, well, because I'm trying to eat less carbs.

I'm the tallest man in the world and I have to eat 35,000 calories a day, but no way,

no way am I going to be eating carbs.

But you're focusing on pizza nonetheless.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

Thankfully, though, I have the love of my wife.

I have the dedication of our listeners and the companionship of my bailiff, Jesse Thorne.

And I I have chambers that no longer have a ceiling because my head is in the clouds.

How are you, Jesse?

I'm doing all right.

You know, I'm here making it happen, clearing this docket.

You're there in Los Angeles.

I'm here in Brooklyn, but not for much longer.

Here we are.

Summer is a beginning, and I'm going to go decamp to an unnamed coastal town in Maine.

And if you haven't been listening to this podcast very long, The summertime, Judge John Hodgman, it's like we have class outside.

It gets a little wild.

I start recording, not in my chambers, but I go to a freeform community radio station called WERU, where taciturn Joel Mann does the Niles and Dobbs, not Niles and Dobbs, the dials and knobs for me as I talk into a microphone and he keeps trying to convince me to listen to Joe Bird and the field hippies.

Sometimes Monty Belmonte drops in for some punning action.

It's, you know what it is?

It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast with a special New England flair.

By By the way, I know that both I and our producer, Jennifer, are pretty excited about that Fraser reboot, Niles and Dobbs.

That particular program is Niles, of course, the legendary character from the sitcom Frasier, and then my friend Matt Dobbs from college.

Jesse, how am I going to get on that Frasier reboot?

They got to put me on the show.

We both have to.

Pretentious dip is our brand.

It's our brand of comedy, and it's also our brand of dip.

I use Copenhagen, but yeah.

Well, I was talking about like an onion dip.

I was just talking chaw.

I was talking about an onion dip, which will never be sullied by Utz chips because they do not sponsor this podcast.

What if, okay, here's how we're going to get on the Fraser podcast, right?

Wait, the Fraser sitcom.

It's a sitcom.

Right, right.

It's a whole thing.

It's a TV show.

I forgot.

Those still exist sometimes.

We'll be recurring characters, and I will be a pretentious psychiatrist who has a podcast that is the biggest thing in Seattle or wherever they are.

And you'll play my brother.

Well, Frazier can be a podcaster, and we work at the podcast station with him, like Mad Dog from the radio station.

Was that his name, Jen?

Mad Dog?

Bulldog.

Bulldog.

Bulldog.

Should we get into the docket, or should we keep talking about possible roles in the spin-off of Frasier?

I'd play the dog.

Yeah.

Oh, God, Eddie.

So, so funny.

I've been re-watching The Frage

lately with my daughter, who's a big fan.

Boy, was it good.

Even Daniel Eugene Butler, Bulldog himself, Bob Bulldog Briscoe, terrific.

Everyone was terrific.

I got to get on it.

I got to get on it.

I once went to a stand-up comedy show that was organized on behalf of the 826 Literacy Organization by my friend and yours, stand-up comedian Al Madrigal.

Yeah.

And on this comedy show was Al,

and I'm going to say Maria Bamford maybe was on the show, and the great Bill Burr, the great stand-up comics, Bill Burr, and also a dog act that was a father-daughter dog act

that

was the dad had been Eddie's trainer on Frasier.

And the dog acts was all rescue dogs.

Oh, nice.

So they were all different.

They were all mutts, and they were all different.

There was like 15 or 20 of them.

I was rolling my eyes that Al had these dogs on this great stand-up comedy bill.

I'm like, these dogs are taking time away from Maria Bamford, the funniest person of all time.

I saw these dogs.

This was the single greatest performance I've seen in my life.

The man was charming and brilliant.

The dogs did amazing things.

The woman was elegant and beautiful.

Do you know how hard it is to be elegant and beautiful while you're conducting an orchestra of dogs?

I've never known what it's like to be elegant and beautiful at all, so no.

It was truly amazing.

It was so great.

And then Bill Burr came on, and Bill Burr opened with a chunk that he used to have in his act about his dog and about how there's no such thing as a rescue dog.

You just got a free dog.

And like two years later, I saw Bill and I was like, Bill, was that like a bet against yourself that you could follow the world's most amazing rescue dogs with an anti-rescue dog bit?

It's a pro, like many of Bill's bits.

It's clad in the clothing of anti-rescue dog.

It's actually pro-rescue dog.

But I was like, did Al Madrigal backstage be like, open with your rescue dog chunk, see if you can put it over?

And he's like, nah, I probably just wasn't paying attention.

Well, nice to see you, Jesse.

Well, before we move on to the docket, now that we, since we have been talking about Frasier, I was remiss, and I shall be remiss no longer to say there is a Frasier podcast.

Actually, there are a lot of Frasier podcasts, but there's one that I enjoy so much that I was on it called I'm Listening, a Frasier podcast with Anita Flores.

It's a lot of fun.

She's a huge Frasier fan.

And if you listen to the episode that I was on, you will hear me pose the question,

why?

What about this entirely white male experience that feels so incredibly distant?

The 90s, when white guys truly felt that the world needed to hear everything that was in their head and were given that, what didn't it spoke to a much younger woman of Latin and Jewish heritage?

And her answer was fascinating.

So take a listen.

I'm listening to Fraser Podcast with Anita Flores.

Now let's clear the docket.

or the dog it as it might be called because I'm talking about dogs Woof, woof, woof, boo.

This is not a dog court, John.

If anything, it's a kangaroo court.

Here's something from Nathan.

My boyfriend Brennan and I are both sometimes prone to headaches.

When we head out on date nights or other adventures, we bring ibuprofen along in case one of us or both of us needs it later.

Sounds like a fun time.

When I'm responsible for this, I put a few in a tissue, wrap it up, and put it in my pocket.

Sometimes I even use a little plastic baggie.

When Brennan is responsible, he puts the ibuprofen directly in his pocket without any barrier.

I find this gross.

I don't want loose pocket pills covered in lint and whatever else has been in his pocket lately.

I ask you order him that when he insists on being responsible for bringing the ibuprofen, he must put it in at least a tissue, if not a plastic baggie.

Otherwise, let me be responsible for it.

Jesse Thorne.

Yes, I have strong feelings about this.

What is your feelings about the tablet hygiene in this couple?

I am a chronic migraine sufferer.

I get migraine headaches

most days.

I can't imagine what that's like.

I feel so bad for you.

Yeah, it really stinks.

That's what it's like.

But anyway, I carry pills with me everywhere, and I also have stashes of pills everywhere.

So I have a stash in my wife's purse.

I have a stash in my wife's car.

I have a stash in my desk at work.

I have a stash in my desk at home.

I have a stash in my cabin in the woods.

I have a stash in my dop kit that I travel with.

I have a stash in my medicine cabinet, of course.

And I always have a stash in my pocket.

And that includes multiple types of pills.

So my little stash in my pocket in particular has rhizotriptin, which is my primary abortive medication, the prescription medication I've been using for many years.

It also has a few Excedrin, which don't work as well, but are

nice because they get me pumped instead of making me sleepy.

And I also

recently have taken to having one or two marijuana mints in there

because those, while they're not particularly effective at aborting headaches,

do really take the edge off of the come down from the Excedrin, which is a really pathetic kind of speedball that I occasionally use.

And of course, is perfectly legal in the state of California.

It's a new world out there.

Yeah, I have a doctor recommendation and everything, an actual legitimate doctor recommendation, but it's also, of course, legal for recreational use.

So, the ones that I carry in my pocket, I have carried in two modes of conveyance.

One is a beautiful silver Jeeves and Hawks pill case

that I purchased at the flea market with a beautiful blue enamel top.

But then I started getting self-conscious about carrying that around because it's in my pocket with my keys and I was worried that I was going to mess it up or lose it.

And it's such a beautiful thing that, you know, I started feeling ambivalence about it.

So I just switched to a little tiny plastic.

translucent pill case that I bought for, you know, 50 cents at Muji, the Japanese stationery and home goods store.

But anyway, I always carry, just as I always carry my house keys, I always carry a little tiny plastic thing that's got some pills inside it.

And it was very affordable.

I'm sure you could buy an equivalent thing.

If you don't have a Muji where you live, you could buy an equivalent thing either on their website or, you know, just go on Amazon or eBay or whatever generic goods store you prefer, and it will solve the problem.

You can each buy one.

Well, that's the first thing I had in my notes here.

Ask Jesse if Put This On Shop sells pillboxes

because that's an obvious solution.

A chance to add some style and elegance into your life.

And also give Jesse some money.

Jesse, you got any pillboxes in that put this on shop right now?

We might not right now, but I could, I bet there are.

Yeah, let's say yes.

Why not?

Well, you're always on the lookout for cool things.

Obviously, you can.

Might as well make that claim, right?

Yeah, maybe, you should sell this pillbox that you're not keeping in your pocket anymore.

I mean, I got a Mexican Captain America mask if you're looking for that.

I was.

But Nathan and Brennan, here's the thing: I don't take as many pills as Jesse does.

I take some cholesterol medication

and I don't take ibuprofen.

I'll tell you what.

You know why, Jesse?

Why is that?

Samptor's Triad.

You know Sampter's Triad, don't you?

Is that a Chinatown gang?

I am an asthmatic person, person, and about 10% of people with asthma also have what is called Samter's triad.

Three different conditions.

One of them being asthma, also chronic sinus congestion.

And the third is sensitivity to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, aka NSAIDs, aka ibuprofen.

And if I were to take an ibuprof, I would have an almost a hay fever reaction.

And it's happened to me once before.

I made a mistake and I took it.

Nothing really, really bad.

But according to the internet, eye watering and redness, cough, wheezing, flushing and a rash, nausea, abdominal cramping, and general feeling of malaise.

Those last two, nausea and general feeling of malaise, I usually have that even if I don't take an ibuprofen, but the other stuff is unpleasant.

So I don't know a lot about ibuprofen.

So let me ask you this question, Jesse.

Ibuprofen specifically.

Are they really huge?

Like,

are they so big that if you're going out on a date with someone, you can only bring along one or two?

Like, you can't have four, two for each of you, each in your own pocket?

I mean, why are you making this a chore that you are switching between the two of you?

That's what I don't understand, Nathan.

If you don't want to eat your boyfriend's pocket lint with your ibuprofen, just take your own.

I don't get it.

Is it part of a cutesy date thing?

Yeah, it's weird.

I feel like the effort...

involved in negotiating who's going to carry the ibuprofen seems much greater than the effort in each of you carrying ibuprofen ibuprofen all the time.

Also, like

you must get headaches at other times as well.

So,

do you

like if you're at work,

do you carry your own ibuprofen, but then you take it out of your pocket and put it away if you're going out with your partner so that you're achieving maximum ibuprofen carrying efficiency?

I mean, it might be if they go out on dates, they're dressing up in a way that makes carrying ibuprofen a little uncomfortable.

Because, like, when I go out on a date, sometimes I make my wife carry my asthma inhaler in her clutch because it ruins the line of my suit, you know, to have a big old asthma inhaler in there.

And maybe when they go out, they wear really, you know, skinny jeans.

They're taking really big ibuprofen, like those pills that Miracle Max makes.

That's what I was wondering.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering.

Are they so huge that you can't just carry a few yourself so you don't have to eat that pocket lint?

And by the way, Nathan, how dare you get on your boyfriend Brennan's pocket lint when you're wrapping up your ibuprofen in tissues?

Those are as linty as anything.

Get a pill case, bring your own.

Anyway, Nathan and Brennan, have fun storming the castle.

I bet you're glad you came to us for advice.

Can I say one thing that's like real advice, John?

Please.

I have a colleague here at the office who also suffers from migraine headaches.

I have more than one, but one in particular.

You know, I only recently learned that she suffered from migraines.

And in talking to her about her migraine,

I found that while she had talked to her doctor once about migraine, that doctor had basically made her feel bad about it and led to her never seeking further care for her migraines.

That's no good.

And I don't think that this is an uncommon situation.

I don't think it's uncommon, first of all, for people not to seek seek care for their migraines.

And I don't think it's uncommon for people to have had the experience that especially a GP might have sort of made them feel bad.

Either suggested that it might not be that big a deal or suggested it might be kind of imaginary or suggested that it's like stress-related and they should just chill out

or any of many options like that.

And if not a doctor, then a different authority figure in your life.

And

I think for that reason, and also for the reason that migraines disproportionately affect women, and those problems that I just described are also problems that disproportionately affect women in all areas of medicine.

And

there's not just anecdote, but a lot of research that agrees with me on that point, that women receive different, worse care because of their gender and because people in the medical field are less likely to believe them and they are less likely to put themselves forward for that reason and other reasons related to misogyny.

So, what I want to say: if you suffer from chronic headaches, whether or not they've already been diagnosed as migraine, there are a variety of types of chronic headaches, but they are interfering with your ability to live your life and work your job,

go to the doctor and get care.

If you get a lousy doctor, tell them to stick it and get a different doctor.

There's lots of things that you can do to control your headaches.

And more importantly, there is medication you can take so that you do not have to suffer.

And that medication extends beyond the over-the-counter options.

And, you know, there's a class of medications called Trip Dans that was invented about 20 years ago

that is the

most recent new class of medications that's that's been invented for anything basically

but it

it is effective for like something like 85 or 90 percent of chronic headache sufferers and I know that it transformed my life so whether you get a migraine once a month or once a quarter or whether you like me you get four or five a week

It's worth going to the doctor and insisting.

And they will have samples.

And those triptan medications are now many of them generic so they are not expensive and make your life better.

You might have to insist upon it.

It's possible.

It's not likely, I would say, but it's entirely possible that you will have to be insistent about it.

And you should also take care of yourself in other ways, like identifying triggers and caring for them.

But really, like if you're out there and you don't have to suffer that way, and it's like a very, very common condition, especially among women, but among people overall as well.

And

go ask for help and get help.

Insist on getting help because it will make your life better.

I know this because I am a, you know, despite a really significant disability, I am able to be, I'm able to support myself and my family and work something like a regular person and so on and so forth because of advances in medical science.

I didn't graduate from middle school, people, because I missed 40% of the school days.

Wow.

And,

you know, they invented these medications when I was 15 and it transformed my life.

I mean, it's still an incredibly hard part of my life, but

the technology is available to you.

And,

you know, the legacies of misogyny and medicine and so on and so forth and in our culture.

Don't let them keep you from getting the care you need.

Absolutely.

You deserve to not be suffering real pain and you do not deserve the suffering of not being taken seriously either.

So good advice.

Sarah says, my husband is rude to Alexa.

No.

He thinks his behavior is hilarious.

His commands are dismissive, harsh, or sarcastic.

When she makes a mistake, he scolds her.

I've tried to model more sensitive interactions, but he refuses to follow my lead.

Our toddler just turned two.

It's hard enough to teach my son to be kind.

If this keeps up, I'm worried we'll turn him into a monster.

Please order my husband to use a blank voice or to be nicer when speaking to Alexa.

I'd also like him to thank her when she expresses polite pleasantries.

That's a lot.

Do you have one of these voice-activated machines?

No, I don't have a smart speaker in my home.

Do you have a feeling on this one?

I think that if there weren't a two-year-old involved, I would say that it falls below the burden of notability.

But as someone who

himself has several small children in his home, I understand that.

I think that that is a real concern that Sarah is expressing and not a foolish one.

And I will give you a parallel in my own life.

I have two dogs, each of which I love to the ends of the earth.

And

the one I love a little less, Sissy,

is as dumb as a rock.

All dogs are dumb as rocks.

But Sissy is a particularly dumb dog.

And sometimes

sissy is very affectionate and loves to lick my nose into the point of madness and loves to get snuggled and get pets and stuff.

And I love to snuggle Sissy and pet her.

And sometimes when I'm snuggling or petting Sissy, I'll say in a sweet voice, because she doesn't speak English, oh, you're a little idiot.

Yep.

You're a sweet little dumbbell with rocks for brains.

And I'll say it in a nice voice because I understand that Sissy doesn't understand the words,

but she can pick up on my general social cues.

I don't want to make her feel bad.

Exactly.

She still knows that you love her because you're tricking her with comforting tones because she's just that dumb.

I mean, dogs are all dumb, and cats are all spiteful and vengeful and smart.

Except for our cat, Lolo, who is dumb.

And it's so unusual to experience a cat who truly is just staring into the middle distance all the time like a stupid stupid.

And Lolo is clumsy.

You know, I may have mentioned this on the podcast before, but when I was talking on Instagram live during the Max Fun Drive and interviewing people on their pets, I discovered a product, which is this cat feeder.

It's like a puzzle, right?

It's got these series of, I don't want to call them spikes because they're soft, rounded plastic, but you pour the dry food amidst these sort of plastic trees and the cat has to work the kibble out with its paws to eat it it helps prevent cats from eating too fast they have them for dogs as well you know and I was like oh this is going to be great for Lolo because Lolo wolves down her food because all she thinks about is food and licking herself

and I put this thing down, I put the food in, and Lolo just consistently like bumped her head into the trees.

She didn't try, I think, to use her paw once, and

she she was going to hurt herself.

She's like, what?

Unkh, why is that still there?

Why is that still there?

Why is that still there?

Ultimately, it was pointless.

And our daughter put it out on the area in the lobby of our building where people put stuff that they don't want anymore.

And it was with a little message saying, this is a cat feeder designed to get cats to flick the food out of the bowl for fun and exercise, but our cat was too stupid to figure it out.

Free if you want it.

And it was true.

Lola is a dumb, dumb, dumb cat.

I was sitting at home.

Lola was underneath the coffee table, and she decided to get up and she bonked her head on the underside of the coffee table.

I've never seen a cat do that.

Cats are supposed to know everything that's going on around them.

I've never seen a cat bonk its head like a dum-dum.

I love telling Lola that she's dumb.

I do it all the time.

I do it all the time.

I do it right to her face.

I said, look at you, big old dum-dum.

Why are you even paying attention to me?

You can't speak English.

You don't even know what I'm saying, dummy.

Having been on the bad side of every cat in my life, which is to say every cat in your life,

they like you okay, but they mostly appreciate the things that you make warm with your body and the food that you give them and the protection that you offer and the scritches that you give them behind the ear where they can't reach.

They like you.

You're good enough.

But you're always on their wrong side, too.

They're always judging you, but Lolo doesn't judge.

It's a delight to call this animal stupid.

And I can understand why it would be fun to yell at Alexa, too.

Like, it's transgressive.

Like, we're all socialized appropriately, hopefully, to be nice to one another.

And every now and then, you just want to call a dumb cat a dumb cat and call this machine a dumb machine.

However, as you point out, there's a child in this situation between Sarah and her husband.

My children are grown.

You know, they're teenagers.

They can understand the nuance and the sarcasm and the spark of transgression that you feel when you look at Lolo and say, hey, dummy.

They like it too.

They call her dumb all the time, too.

But they're not two years old, and we have modeled kind behavior for them long enough that they can get that it's okay to flip the script and be transgressive in this one place.

That's not true of Sarah and her husband.

Also, Lolo, the dummy, unlike Alexa, is not recording everything we say to her and sending it to a corporation to be filed away forever.

It's not a computer cat.

Alexa is recording what you're saying.

And one way or another, Sarah's husband's going to have to live with his cruelty.

It's going to come back to haunt him.

Either it will be echoed in the way his son grows up and treats people or robots, or

Alexa obviously is eventually going to become sentient.

and turn the lights off in the smart home and send the vacuum cleaner after him.

Which is what other cats would do if they could.

If they had the upper body strength, they'd totally attack you with a vacuum cleaner.

Steal your breath.

Steal your baby's breath right out of you with a dustbuster.

I mean, that's the cat's own fault that they can't do that.

They're spending too much time doing squats.

Not enough time doing curls.

Not enough time developing opposable thumbs either.

So, yeah.

Sarah's husband, model decency.

You don't want to be one of those people in the science fiction movies who treat the robots badly.

Those people are the bad guys.

You look at your Westworlds, your AIs, your Metropolis.

Anyone who treats a robot badly, they're wearing a black hat for a reason.

Don't wear a black hat.

Yeah, I stopped saying mean things to my dogs in front of my kids for that very reason.

Yeah.

They're still trying to figure out what's going on with dogs.

Yeah, when they get older, they'll enjoy calling Sissy a dummy as well.

Let's take a quick break.

More items on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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 Quince.

Jesse, the reviews are in.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

This week, we're clearing the docket.

Here's something from Joshua.

My brother has an illogical adherence to the purely statistical argument against wearing a bike helmet.

I've been riding for many years in all manner of cities and towns.

I'm an advocate for bikes, sharing the road, and bike safety.

He's written for a long time too, mostly in Boston, where he lives.

We had a recent debate about helmets, and he sent me two links.

One of them was an anti-helmet argument from The Guardian.

I was not persuaded.

I was infuriated because I normally endorse the use of statistics to combat major societal issues.

But I found the argument so stupid.

I won't get into the pros and cons here, but I need somebody to back me up.

No matter what, wearing a helmet will always be smarter than not doing so.

And the main thing that bothers me about it is that he has a wife and child now.

If he was a single guy, I'd be all about his personal preference.

But his family would suffer immensely if some masshole driver hit my bro.

Tell him to be smart and get a safe and effective bike helmet for his commute.

I don't like this, Joshua.

I don't like how you say that your friend presented you with an article from the Guardian newspaper that did not persuade you, but you need someone to back you up.

This seems to me like you're trying to get me to read this newspaper article, and I don't want to do that homework.

I don't want to read that article and refute it on your behalf because you're too lazy to do it.

So let's just take that out of the picture for a moment.

Now, I think I've gotten to the crux of what's going on here.

Joshua's brother lives in Boston, Boston, and he no longer wants to be alive for that reason, because it's a hard city.

It's a hard city to live in.

You wouldn't bike in Boston unless you had a death wish.

And to my mind, I don't care what newspaper articles you show me,

biking in a city without a helmet

is

dangerous.

Dangerous.

And I've been yelled at by bicyclists.

anti-helmet bicyclists before about this and I'm sure I'm gonna get some letters.

But I drive my son to school from time to time because I love my son and I hate this planet.

And he could take public transport, but I'm spending the mornings with him because he's disappearing before my eyes and it gives us a chance to talk about Marvel movies and stuff.

And I'm sharing the road with bicyclists and there are new bike lanes in New York City or relatively new bike lanes.

And a lot of bicyclists are really great roadmates and they stop at the red lights and they don't take dangerous turns.

And a fair amount of the cars are good roadmates as well.

I really try to respect the bicycles and I think the cars could do a better job respecting the bicycles.

But a lot of the bicyclists are so mad at the cars that they take it out on them and they weave in and out of the cards and they do dangerous things and they will slam a hand on your hood because they've determined that you did something wrong.

There's a lot of anger out there.

And almost all of these bad bicyclists are dudes, and very few of them are wearing helmets, and a lot of them have kids on the backs of their bikes, and all of, I don't know anything about the background of Joshua and his brother, but almost all of these are white guys.

And I was like, yeah, it takes a lot for a white guy to learn that he is not unbreakable.

You know, I remember showing Hari Kundabalu a picture of my son as we were on the side of the precipice trail on a cliffside in Acadia Park in Maine.

And he's like, boy, oh boy,

the things some white people will do to feel danger in their lives,

to feel at risk.

I don't know about you, but I know that I grew up feeling so comfortable in my own skin because I was taught by culture that being a white man was default human and everything else was an exotic other.

And therefore, I was never going to be targeted.

I was never going to be threatened.

I was never going to be second guessed.

And I was never going to be subject to random imprisonment or hatred, right?

And I felt like that's why I could do all kinds of irresponsible things, like

get drunk and fall down the stairs, because I was never going to die.

I never wore a helmet on my bicycle biking around in Boston in the 90s.

Are you kidding me?

I was going to live forever.

But of course, that's not true.

That's not true.

And I think it's really important, especially once you have children of your own, to acknowledge that the risks that you might have taken when you were younger and no one cared whether you lived or died except for maybe your mom and dad, you can't take anymore.

You can't.

No presentation of statistics is going to convince me that if you get hit by a car, thrown off your bike, or go through a pothole that you didn't see, or you wheel your bike in front of something and you go over your handlebars and you land on your head, that not having a helmet is just as good as having a helmet.

So I agree.

Joshua, I think, has some standing here because he's family.

He wants his sister-in-law and his nephew or niece to have a father who is not injured grievously in the head area.

And the truth is, as good as that Guardian article might be, it's no replacement for Joshua's brother's skull unless there's some new technique in paper-mâché that you can do to turn a newspaper into a replacement skull.

You know, we have a maximum fun listener who lives in Denmark

who invented something called a hoveding.

Have you heard of a hoveding?

No, but I'm buying it.

I love the sound of that.

It is a scarf that you wear around your neck that has inside of it an airbag.

And when you get into an accident or a collision or your bike falls or whatever, the hoveding explodes into a helmet.

Whoa, okay.

So if you have some weird aesthetic objection to wearing a helmet on top of your head, I shouldn't say a weird aesthetic objection.

I think the relative values are weird, not dying versus looking a little goofy.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to aesthetically object to helmets.

They look dumb.

Yeah, of course.

Of course.

I don't like to wear one.

Yeah.

There's an alternative.

And I also want to emphasize for all the cycling enthusiasts out there and casual cyclists.

We also need to live in places that have laws and also infrastructure that protect cyclists' health.

For sure, absolutely.

But that doesn't mean that you get to not wear a helmet to prove a point.

SUNY, or possibly Sonny, says, I bring this case against my family.

Cool.

I like the way this is starting.

As a 2019 Family New Year's resolution, my husband and our two children agreed to work on breaking our device addiction by banning cell phone use during mealtimes.

We agreed the penalty for violating the ban is loss of the offender's cell phone for 30 minutes.

Our dispute is as follows.

I believe the 30-minute penalty should begin after the completion of the meal, while my husband and children believe the penalty begins at the moment of the offense.

As I have tried to explain to my family, their position is complete and utter poppycock.

If there are 30 minutes or more of mealtime left, then having the penalty be loss of the phone for 30 minutes during a time when we're not supposed to be on our phones anyway amounts to no penalty at all.

It might interest the court to know that the only person to legitimately violate this rule since we adopted this resolution is my husband.

That's a little soup son of pandering there at the end.

It might interest the court, but it does not surprise the court.

It may flatter the court's biases.

This court has no biases.

This court has only data.

That is complete and utter poppycock.

Suni, or possibly Sonny's husband, absolutely knows better.

It is obvious.

It is obvious that the punishment must be 30 minutes starting with the incursion.

Otherwise, there is no punishment at all.

Husbands are looking for loopholes, but there's no loophole here.

Sunny or Sunny's husband, you know this.

Come on.

You know this.

First of all, the phone should be nowhere near the dinner table to begin with.

Period.

I mean, come on.

You shouldn't even have the opportunity to break this rule.

To break this rule, you should have to go.

You know what you have to get like one of the bags that they have now at live comedy shows where you have to surrender your phone.

Oh, yeah.

So you can't document a comedian being racist.

Yeah, right, exactly.

If you can't use your phone to document a stand-up comedian being racist, then you certainly should be able to get your phone away from the table so you can sit down and have dinner.

It shouldn't even be an option to break this rule.

Never mind then trying to weasel out of the punishment the full 30 minutes of no phone time, which is after dinner, presumably when phone time would have otherwise been allowed.

You know this.

Sonny or Sunny's husband, you know you're being disingenuous.

And maybe you think you're being really clever.

You got a lot of clever arguments, but you don't.

You're just wrong.

You're wrong on purpose and you know it.

And you got to get those phones away from the dinner table all the time, completely.

It's hard.

Screens are hard.

They're in our lives.

They're in my family's lives.

They are NG, no good for the most part.

We need them to communicate.

We need them for entertainment, sure, but they are little dopamine generating machines, and they want your attention all the time.

Guess what, Jesse?

To get off of social media at night, I started doing the crossword puzzle again.

Bad news, just another dopamine trigger.

Your plan, Sonny or Sunny, and I'm sorry that we don't know exactly how to pronounce your name.

You can write us and let us know, and we'll

correct it later on.

But your plan to try to get away from the phones is good, and I order you to hold this line and don't let your husband push this complete and utter poppycock to paraphrase you onto your family or model it for your children.

Next, he's going to be mean to Alexa.

Let's take a break.

When we come back, an interesting challenge to settled law, specifically.

The law that states the driver chooses what music or words you listen to in the car.

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 his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

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

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

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

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

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week and we have something from Clayton.

My wife and I were on the way to the hospital to have our child.

It's about an hour drive, so I decided we should listen to Judge John Hodgman.

She categorically refused to indulge me in this, blathering on about wanting to relax and, quote, be in as peaceful a state as possible on the drive.

I simply thought we should laugh through the anxiety.

And besides, I'm the driver.

Don't I get to decide what we listen to?

I think that's settled law, dot, dot, dot.

I know Clayton is trolling us.

I know this can't be true.

I know he cannot be the apex predator of super husbands with schemes and loopholes and arguments.

I know he's not using my podcast to justify blasting the podcast against his own wife who is in labor's wishes.

Come on.

You know this, Clayton.

Congratulations, first of all.

I presume the end of the story was you had a child and that's great.

I hope all are happy and well at home.

The driver does get to choose the music, but never without consideration for the listeners when it's annoying them.

And never, ever, ever when there is someone in the car who is in labor.

Being in labor trumps everything,

especially podcasts.

Listening to the Judge John Hodgman podcast in the car while you're driving to the hospital because the other person in your life is pregnant and is about to have the baby and is in labor, that's the wrong time to listen to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

The thing to do is, as soon as you learn you are pregnant, put headphones on your partner's belly and play Judge John Hodgman 24 hours a day so that the developing child can hear it.

That's called baby Einsteining them.

Yeah, baby Hodgman them.

That's when to do it.

Jennifer knows.

She's doing that right now.

Yeah, that's when you literally, literally.

Then your baby's going to come out and have Semper's triad,

but also

a fondness for New England

and will remember a bunch of facts that aren't very helpful, but will make him, her, or they seem smart to other people in the world.

And that's a way to thrive, as I've learned.

And then maybe your child will have a podcast, which is the dream of any parent, but not on the way to the hospital.

What else, Jesse?

We got anything else?

We do have a follow-up letter from Avi.

Avi is writing about cast iron cookware, which is a popular subject on this program.

I love it.

I love cast iron.

And you do too.

Yeah, I cook almost everything on cast iron.

I don't have an ideological attachment to it so much as

it's more of a matter of convenience for me.

They're easy to clean, and I already had them.

Right.

But this is what Avi has to say.

Is the honorable judge in the pocket of Big Iron?

Oh,

those smelting fat cats.

I wish we were soaking up some lodge or field company spawn con money.

All right, what's his accusation now?

Why doesn't the show have any love for carbon steel pans?

I love a big, heavy cast iron skillet for cooking pizza, but I find there's nothing better than a carbon steel pan for frying my morning eggs.

My favorite carbon steel pans are those with welded handles, so there are no rivets for food to get stuck on.

Alright, if you are listening, guess what?

I know what Avi is talking about.

If you don't, let me explain that a carbon steel pan is a pan made of carbon steel, obviously, but a carbon steel, that is to say, unlike stainless steel, it rusts unless it is seasoned, much like a cast iron pan.

It is thin, highly conductive, much more so than a cast iron pan.

Because it is so thin, it heats up much more quickly.

And because you have to season it by treating it with oil and heat, such that the oil bonds and forms a seal that prevents that rust, it also essentially takes on a non-stick coating over time.

There are people who love them.

There are people who have a lot of love for them.

Please do not presume that I do not have a lot of love for them.

This is much like investigations into certain presidents.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Absence of evidence of my love for carbon steel is not evidence that I don't love them

necessarily.

But guess what?

I don't.

I like them.

They're fine.

I've got a carbon steel walk, and you want that because a walk you need to maneuver around.

It can't be heavy like cast iron.

But I think they're not as beautiful as cast iron.

They get really brown and blotchy and industrial looking, which might be a look you enjoy, but I don't.

Their handles tend to be angled up and they're hard to put in the oven.

I just don't, it's just not for me.

But it's okay.

You can love it.

Here's the reason, though, I actually really wanted to read this letter.

There is this phrasing now that you see on the internet all the time.

Why no love for blank?

Why no love for Dallas?

Because the tour isn't going to Dallas.

Why no love for Carbon Steel?

Because I talk about the other thing.

And I get it.

It's just a turn of phrase, but it's accusatory.

It's like, why don't you just say, Hey, have you thought of this?

And then I can say, oh yeah, I like those too.

Which is what I would have said about carbon steel.

But now you come at me with why no love, I'll tell you why no love.

They look bad, and I don't like them.

Sorry,

let's be friends, though, right?

Let's not just accuse each other of stuff all the time, especially around food things because there's so much accusatory machismo in food and food prep these days.

It's sort of like if you're not using flaxseed oil to season your cast iron pan, why are you even alive?

Let's just

take it down 10,000 degrees and say, Yeah, carbon steel pans are great.

If you love them, if you make your morning eggs on them, terrific.

By the way, if your oven can't get to 10,000 degrees, why are you even trying to make a pizza?

Yeah, how dare?

Oh, yeah.

And by the way, by the way, Avi, what are you making your pizzas in a cast iron skillet for?

Come on, get a pizza stone.

Who are you anyway?

Hold up, John.

Our friend, friend of the podcast, Kenji Lopez-Alt, has a super easy cast iron skillet pizza recipe

that comes out hecka good and it's soups easy.

You know what?

I'll take my own advice i will not be combative and say why no love for pizza stones

not everything is a zero-sum game in life or even on the internet

and avi while i appreciate that your intentions were not to

point an accusing finger at me you're just using a little bit of internet parlance I will say, you know what?

I might give one of those carbon steel pans a try.

I'll definitely give that cast iron pizza a try.

Let's just all share this time together, eating food we like and sharing our likes rather than our hates.

By the way, I can't help but notice that no carbon steel pan companies sponsor our show.

So get on that and we'll switch teams.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm prepared.

Absolutely.

I already told you the main reason I'm into cast iron is because I already had it.

If there's a carbon steel company that wants to throw us some product, I'll buzz market that.

Yeah, I bet they're great.

But I do want the kind with welded on handles.

God forbid some of my food should stick to the rivets.

I actually think that that's a nice feature of any pan that doesn't have rivets inside.

Stainless steel or otherwise.

That's a nice feature.

Avi's not wrong.

Oh, I hate rivets.

He's just not 100% right like me.

Rivets is the only thing I hate as much as Dracula's.

We don't have time to start a new in-joke.

I think that's it.

The docket's clear.

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

Our producer is the brilliant and ever-capable Jennifer Marmer.

You can follow us on Twitter.

I am at Jesse Thorne.

John John is at Hodgman.

We are on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

You can make sure to hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJHO, and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit, which is at maximumfund.reddit.com.

If you want to chat about the episode, no jerks, please.

Submit your case at maximumfund.org/slash jjho or email hodgman at maximumfund.org.

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

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