Life Hacks With Judge John Hodgman

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

With me, as always,

the Ferrari of justice,

Judge John Hodgman.

He's very temperamental and he looks best in red.

Honestly, I'm really more the 2009 Volkswagen Passat station wagon of justice.

It kind of keeps going,

but I never really wanted it.

But it does a good enough job that I can't get rid of it.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, I'm here in my chambers in Brooklyn, and

I don't want to brag, but

to my left at this moment is a partially dismantled

action figure of the alien from the movie Alien with a bunch of putty on its face.

Because as you know, I've been on my Instagram, John Hodgman, for a while trying to make this thing happen.

I discovered by accident putting this kind of upscale brand of putty that, as of right now, is not sponsoring the podcast, so I'm not going to say their name.

I put one on top of a lemon and it encased the lemon in such a beautiful carbonite-style shell that now all I ever want to do is put putty on things and see what happens.

And

I'm really excited about how this alien is taking shape.

Is putty the new slime?

Yeah, I guess slime has been a major, major cultural

But I'm trying to make putty happen, and

I could die trying.

By that, I mean I might accidentally suffocate myself with putty, trying to see if I can get it to mold to my face.

Putty really hasn't been a major force in the culture since the Eight Ball jacket on Seinfeld.

You're talking about Patrick Warburton.

The actor who played putty.

Oh, Patrick Warburton is always a major force in the culture.

Yeah, you're talking about the guy who

was Brock Sampson on Venture Brothers and was the original live-action The Tick

until the role was then

taken over quite wonderfully, I dare say, by Peter Sarafinowitz in Amazon's The Tick, season two coming sometime, starring Griffin Newman, Peter Sarafinowitz, and a little bit of me.

That's my plug.

Let's get to some, oh, also the other plug.

Everyone subscribe to my Instagram and check out my putty experiments.

They're gross.

Jesse Thorne, do we still have some justice?

I still do do a podcast, right?

That's another thing I do?

As far as I know, yes.

All right, let's try it.

Let's see what if I can remember how to do it.

Here's something from Gwen.

My husband, John, insists that to see a movie in the theater, it must be a theater-worthy film.

He's the sole decider on which films are theater-worthy.

His criteria seem to be based on the amount of explosions, special effects, and kung fu.

I would like the judge to order John to expand his theater-worthy definition to include other, more subtle films, like romantic comedies.

John says, these movies are a waste of time and money.

Hmm.

Well,

imagine that.

This guy has an opinion.

There are definitely movies

that do not essentially require a perfect viewing experience.

I will grant that to John.

That there are smaller, more intimate movies

that you can enjoy very, that really lose nothing by the translation to watching them in your living room comfortably on your own time.

Compared, of course, to big visual movies that

you should only see, if possible, as many times as possible on the big screen.

I'm speaking, of course, of Spider-Man's Into the Spider-Verse, which is a beautiful movie that you really would miss out if you don't see it in the theater.

Loved it.

But even though, I know, right?

It's the best.

Thank you guys for making that movie, people who made that movie.

But even though John is not wrong that there are some movies that are, let's say, enhanced by a theater as opposed to theater-worthy, and others that are not particularly enhanced by going to see them in the theater,

he is wrong in another aspect, I'm very happy to say, which is that even if it's a movie that you don't have to see in a theater, going to a movie theater is pretty great.

I mean,

do you like going to the movie theater, Jesse?

Love it.

Love everything about it.

In the words of my friend Jimmy Pardo.

There are certainly some bad movie theaters, but even

only pretty good movie theater is better than no movie theater at all.

What's your favorite part about going to the movies, Jesse?

Honestly, I even like bad movie theaters.

You really have to, it has to be real bad for me not to like it.

I'm talking about like a lot of sound leakage.

Honestly, as a tall person, I prefer non-fancy seating to fancy seating because the fancy seating tends to have that head support bump.

And because I'm too tall, that ends up being an upper back poke bump.

Yeah.

And I don't require the raking of a

stadium style.

Stadium style, right.

Yeah, because you're already super tall.

I like to look up at it in awe.

Part of my fondness for movie theaters, of course, is the fact that I grew up going to one of the great movie theaters in the world, which is the Coolidge Corner, then called Movie House, now called Theater in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, that showed...

Not familiar.

Oh, it's a movie theater in Brookline, my hometown, which is in New England, a region in the northeast United States.

Yeah, don't know what that is.

And I grew up there going to see Marks Brothers movies and Ivanhoe.

And it was just a wonderful repertory movie house.

And then I worked there.

And when I worked there, Jesse,

we had a wonderful deal.

We had a reciprocal arrangement with...

all of the other movie theaters in the Boston area, not just the art house ones either, the regular multiplexes.

A courtesy was extended.

if you wanted to go see a movie you could call them and say i'm from the coolidge and i would like two tickets to this movie and if it wasn't sold out you'd get free tickets wasn't that nice and vice versa

and no one wanted to come see louis malls the soufflo cur so no one ever came to us but but we were going out we were dining out on all of the big movies of the day hi i'm i work at the the supermall 16 plex um i'm wondering if there are any seats available for on chienne on de Deluxe.

Yes.

All of them?

Is that acceptable to you?

They're all available.

Would you like all the tickets?

You guys are doing that Berlin Alexander plot

marathon, aren't you?

Yeah, we're showing it three times.

Buckle up.

But so my friend Charles Diggs and I, after my shift, decided we wanted to go see a midnight showing of the movie The Fly 2,

not The Fly with Jeff Goldblum, The Fly 2 with Eric Stoltz, the sequel, son of the fly.

And we called up the 57 theater down there in the theater district.

It's not there anymore.

And I said, do you have two tickets to the fly two for some Coolidge Corner employees?

And the guy said, we do.

And I said, great, put them aside.

Don't sell them.

We're coming down.

And we went to go.

And we said, is it going to be crowded?

And he said, no, you're the only ones.

You're the only ones here.

It was a 400-seat theater.

It was a 400-seat theater, and they were, and these poor people had to work, like they couldn't shut down because two dum-dums from the Coolidge came to go see a free movie.

And we went and we decided we were going to obviously sit in the front row, right beneath the movie screen.

And as we were waiting for the movie to start, we hear the sound of very distant footsteps.

And I turn around and I see the usher, this young guy, walking down clink, clunk, clink, clunk, clink down the aisle.

It takes a long time.

I'm like, did I forget something?

Did I,

what happened?

Why is he coming to us?

And he walked up to us and he silently handed us two

fly-two pins and then silently walked away.

They're promotional items.

They're like lapel pins that said fly-two on them.

And he was so angry at us as he handed them to us silently and he walked away.

That's the magic of going to the movies, John.

Not a great movie, but a great movie-going experience.

And was that movie theater-worthy?

Absolutely.

I mean, that's

seeing movies at home is great.

I do it all the time.

But especially now that so much is available all the time on our sets, it's nice to go out and see a thing.

Should you have the means to go to a movie theater from time to time?

By no means should you limit that experience by only seeing special effects and kung fu movies, or for that matter, limiting Gwen's experience.

Gwen, you can go to the movies anytime you want.

You don't have to wait for John.

But John, you're wrong and you need to rethink your life.

Enjoy some popcorn.

Here's something from Emily.

I'd like my husband, Matt, to hire a snowplow guy this winter.

We have a delightful seven-month-old baby and we live in Maine.

Now, Maine, that's in the southeastern United States, is that correct?

That's a former part of Massachusetts, which is in the New England region of the United States.

Never heard of it.

Our weekday mornings are busy.

There's a snowplow guy who lives literally across the street from us.

My husband insists on clearing the driveway himself with a snowblower and a snow scoop.

This means on stormy days, he's outside clearing snow for a bare minimum of one full hour before he can start getting ready for the day.

This is a job the snowplow guy can accomplish in about 10 minutes for $25.

Please help me right the wrong that is this colossal waste of time.

Time is precious when you have a baby, and I would like the judge to order that we pay a very worthwhile and small fee to the neighborhood snowplow guy.

In other words, she wishes to order you to call Mr.

Plow.

That's my name.

That name again is Mr.

Plow.

A Simpsons quote of note.

I love it.

By the way, John, our sister Max Fun podcast, Everything's Coming Up, Simpsons.

Yay.

did an episode on mr plow and it featured one jesse thorne

singing that song oh you bet i sang that song

we all sang that song together several times everything coming up simpsons co-hosted by allie and julia another great max fun family of podcasts podcast that you should take a listen to But let's get back to Maine, Emily and her husband.

Emily has said that time is precious when you have a baby, and that is true.

That is why your husband wants some time alone,

plowing his driveway to be by himself for a minute, because it's hard when you have, you know, an infant baby.

I'm sure you understand this very clearly, Emily, and equally deserve and want some alone time.

I don't think that he's out there because he's got some weird work ethic.

I think that he just wants to, it's fun to get out there and be alone for a little bit.

Maybe he's listening to podcasts.

Maybe he's listening to us right now talk about this.

Jesse, do you have any sort of alone rituals that you use to sort of

get outside by yourself and recharge so that you can go back in and be the amazing parent and husband that you are?

I find that my closest thing to an alone ritual is going to work.

Yeah.

That's for real.

I do occasionally when I find that I have an hour before I have to go to work and after I've dropped my middle child off at school,

sit and play Xbox in the basement.

Everyone within a parent-child grouping,

however many parents there are, however many children there are, deserves a little bit of that time alone.

And if I'm guessing right, that this is this guy's ritual.

I mean, for me, my son is in the third year of a middle school that is not very convenient to public transportation.

He can take a bus and he does it, and it's fine.

It takes a long time.

But even though he can do that, I do something that is kind of unforgivable, which is I drive him to school.

It's unforgivable in the sense of it's ecologically disastrous.

There is no point in a hyper-dense city with major public transportation and a bus line that my son could take that I should be clogging up the roads, which are already overcrowded and stinking up the air with my fumes

just to be able to spend some time with my son.

But I do it because, A, I get to spend some time with my son, which is

wonderful.

And B, after I drop him off, I'm totally by myself.

It's like plowing the snow in front of my yard.

I can just

drive back safely listening to my podcasts.

I know that it's a waste of my professional time because I could use that time to be working on stuff.

And I equally know that it's ecologically irresponsible, but that's how I get my doughboys.

I get my doughboys and my Tom Sharpling best show.

And I need that time.

So I think as long as Matt is in good health, Emily, I think you just let him do it.

I mean, I think that there could be a time where

the snow is so heavy and so onerous that even he wouldn't enjoy doing it.

And then you call your neighbor across the street and ask them to plow, but just let him do it.

Let him do it.

There you see, I ruled in favor of a husband.

It happens.

Let's take a quick break.

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

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is brought to you every week by you, our members, of course.

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Just go to maximumfund.org/slash join.

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

Let me ask you a question.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

Here's something from Sarah.

I'm currently in an airport, and the person next to me is obviously sick and with a fever.

I don't want to spend my flight next to someone who could get me sick.

I would like you to rule that airlines should offer surgical masks and hand sanitizer to the sick people for the good of my fellow passengers and of flight personnel.

So

policing other people's bodies, whether it's germs or smells or

other off-gassing of things that might make you sick or just uncomfortable, is really something that I think is unfair.

I understand where you're coming from, Sarah, but you are also making a pact when you enter into an airplane.

that you are going to bathe yourself in the germs and farts of many other people.

And so the onus is on you to protect yourself, not ask the airline to stigmatize the obviously sick people around you.

Because even sometimes, obviously, sick people need to travel.

They may have an emergency.

They may need to get home.

They may need to see someone.

Jesse, do you disagree with me on this one?

Do you have a thought about it?

Do you think airlines should be

forcing people to wear surgical masks or lucha libre masks or bubble boy bubbles?

I mean, I've long advocated for airlines to provide all passengers, sick or healthy, with hamster balls, human-sized hamster balls.

It really would solve a lot of problems.

You know, an airline can actually refuse you passage if they believe you to be

so ill that you are a danger to other passengers or that you may require medical attention while on the plane.

Sure.

Because of the fact that, particularly, that it's so expensive to

land a plane for medical reasons, which is what they are required to do if they believe there is a safety reason to do so because of someone on board's illness or whatever.

Sure.

And certainly there could be issues of creeping discourtesy, people trying to beat the system, like the people who, you know, don't need support animals, who, you know, go on Amazon and buy support animal jackets for their animals that they just don't want to have to keep in a kennel or whatever.

I think it's possible that there are people trying to push the limits of having a communicable

medical condition on an airplane.

But yeah, I mean, the red flag for me here is that our correspondent here has declared that she can tell someone obviously has a fever.

Which

is, to the best of my knowledge, not ascertainable visually even by actual doctors maybe she has one of those

you know thermopen they make the they make very very good instant meat thermometers they also have

laser guns it could be it could be she's wearing a hypercolor t-shirt

I was going to say that maybe Sarah has one of these thermopen laser guns that you point at and it's like a laser pointer, but whatever you point at, it gives a reading of the surface temperature of whatever it is you're pointing at.

So she might be hitting her neighbor's forehead with a laser and getting a reading off of it, which would be a normal thing to do in an airport.

I mean, I'm not trying to say that I'm in favor.

Let's say that she's right and this person

does have a fever.

That person should stay home and not get other people sick.

I'm not for that person.

I'm just saying that, you know, it's up to you to protect your own biome.

I guess if you really feel that this person is causing an imminent danger of infection to others, then Sarah could go drop a dime on

her neighbor there at the gate and tell the gate agent she thinks this person is too sick to fly.

And then, you know, and then if the person gets ushered in tears away from the gate because she can't go see her daughter or whatever, then maybe Sarah will finally feel that she got her way in the world and be happy.

I've never flown with a face mask, but I do wash my hands an awful lot, and I've tended to be okay on airplanes, and I think you're going to be okay too, Sarah.

Sorry that that was uncomfortable for you.

It would be nice if airlines like gave people face masks if they asked for one or like just encouraged it in general.

Sure.

It's maybe more, more broadly accepted practice in other cultures than in the United States.

For sure.

And not a bad idea.

Yeah, you know what?

Hey, Delta Airlines.

This is John Hodgman,

former Diamond Medallion member, now Platinum.

If you can still hear my voice, what a fall from Grace.

I know it's terrible.

If you can still hear my voice, and if I still matter to you at all as a customer, would you consider stocking your planes with a few disposable face masks and gloves?

So if someone is worried that they might get sick,

you can hand them out and make sure that people know that that's available.

They may have them, they're already.

I don't know.

But that's just a good idea that Jesse Thorne had, Delta.

So take, you know, give it a thought.

And, John,

Southwest Airlines, if you're listening, this is Jesse Thorne.

I have almost enough Southwest points for a flight from Burbank to Oakland.

Can I have some extra honey roasted peanuts, please?

I just like honey roasted peanuts.

They're tasty.

Yeah.

That's a request for Southwest that you have to file months in advance via a podcast or else it won't happen.

It's a good idea to get that in now.

The window opens 24 hours before boarding.

You're going to log on to the website and get right in there.

And if you're really nervous, Sarah, all you need to do is get some Purel.

And when you sit down,

squirt it into a barf bag and then just breathe into that for the rest of the trip.

Life hack.

Glad you enjoyed that joke, Jesse Thorne.

I liked it when you yelled, life hack.

That's gonna be your new thing.

Oh, yeah.

I'm all full of I got a lot of life hacks, believe me.

Tim says, it's been seven years since I earned my high school letter jacket.

I wore the jacket through my sophomore year of high school, but it's been in mothballs ever since.

I avoided wearing it in college because I didn't want to give the impression that I was living in the past.

Now that I've graduated from all forms of higher education, has anything changed?

I think I look good in the jacket, but I have the sneaking suspicion that the optics of the situation would have only gotten worse over time.

Wait a minute.

All forms of higher education?

He graduated from all forms, like high school, college, law school, med school, Navy SEAL training.

Then he got a second doctorate in Japanese literature after training for years to become a martial arts master.

Well, then, Buckaroo Bonsai, sure.

You can go ahead and wear your leather jacket and dress like Richie Cunningham.

John, once I had lunch with my godfather, whose name is Simon Ouster, and he is a GP and psychiatric physician in the Washington, D.C.

area.

And my wife was there with me, and she had just started law school, and we were talking to Simon about law school.

And he was sort of quiet for a minute, and

he sort of thoughtfully said, you know, I really enjoyed law school.

And we were like, wait a minute, you went to medical school and law school?

You never mentioned that you went to law school.

He's like, yeah, well, once I finished my residency, I went to law school at night.

And I feel like it taught me a new way of thinking.

I was like, oh my God.

I went to graduate school for two weeks.

What did you go to graduate school for for two weeks, Jesse?

I was unemployed, and my dad's a disabled veteran, so I get free tuition in public schools in California.

So I took two weeks of broadcasting master's degree at San Francisco State University, and I found out that I would have to do like two years of undergraduate coursework in order to get to the point where I could start taking master's degree classes, and I bailed.

That's me.

Bachelor's degree for life.

We're just a couple of confirmed bachelors.

So I guess if you have graduated from all the forms of higher education,

you've ascended to a different plane and can do what you want.

But other than that, I kind of feel like wearing

a high school letter jacket in your late 20s, let's say, or early 30s, it feels a little bit of a gray area.

What do you think, Jesse?

Is this good or bad?

And does it matter if you earned the letter jacket or not?

This is not a gray area for me, John.

Let me hear it.

I think that the rule that applies to letter jackets also applies to most types of military garb.

It is you can only wear it afterwards on ceremonial occasions or if it belonged to someone else.

Oh, okay.

So I have no problem with someone wearing, for example, a vintage naval pea coat, as long as they're not trying to take credit for having served in the armed forces.

Yeah, no stolen valor.

And I have no problem with adults wearing letter jackets, particularly vintage ones.

In fact, I think that's fun.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

But

if it is yours, it is sad.

Unless you're at an event, you know, at, for example,

like a reunion?

Princeton University, for example, has this tradition of these things called, I think they're called beer drinking jackets, which are these sport coats that are issued to graduating seniors that are often in some combination of orange and black, the Princeton colors.

And then when they go back to their annual reunion, they're supposed to wear this special jacket and maybe they have a little parade.

I don't know.

I went to public school.

But the point is, that's fine.

Like if there's a ceremonial reason for it, you know, if it's

Veterans Day and you were in the service and you're

marching with your fellow veterans, you know, you wear the appropriate garb for for that special event.

But generally speaking, I think that

wearing your high school letter jacket as a 29-year-old is pretty pathetic.

Strong words from menswear blogger Jesse Thorne, a guy who has never been in the military.

And did you have letter jackets at your high school?

Absolutely not.

Yeah, we had them at Brookline High School.

And to me, like one of the reasons that the hair is sticking up on the back of my neck about this is, you know, letter jackets were such,

even at a high school like Brookline High School, which had a pretty, pretty diverse,

probably was not as racially diverse as it, as it could have been, though there were efforts were being made and definitely a diverse political opinion.

And there were a bunch of freaks and stoners and metalheads and so forth.

But there was a jock culture there, and the letter jackets were such a signifier of jockdom.

And for me, it just was automatic fear of being bullied.

And, you know, we say that nostalgia is a toxic impulse on this podcast.

And high school nostalgia is kind of the worst kind of nostalgia, like wanting to be back in high school.

It's

a yearning for a particularly romanticized time that was not always very happy for other people.

Maybe if you were wearing one of those letter jackets in high school, you were having the time of your life.

But especially then, to try to recapture that dumb glory rather than engage in the present glory of the tasks and triumphs that you have today, to me feels sad.

It's all kind of grody to me.

And I have to agree with my bailiff, and I think that's a very good rule of thumb, that if a letter jacket looks good on you,

wear it so long as it's not your own.

But if you're wearing your own thing, maybe that's something you want to pass down to

a kid in your life or hold to give to a kid kid that might come in your life later on.

And go out into a vintage shop and get something else to wear.

Sorry, I hope you had a good time in high school, but it's over now, Tim.

Vintage letter jackets, usually available online at putthisonshop.com.

Oh, it was all a buzz market for your

shop.

Got to go.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll hear about bedtimes and a letter from a listener about sock folding.

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

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

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

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

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

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

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

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

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

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

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

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

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

Episode 64.

So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

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

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

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

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

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

Here is something from Alyssa.

My husband and I have a dispute about what the word bedtime means.

We've decided that going to bed at 10:30 p.m.

will give us enough sleep to be ready for our two-year-old's early wake-up time.

To me, this means we're in bed and the lamp is turned off when the clock hits 10:30.

To my husband, it means that we get off the couch and start getting ready for bed when the clock hits 10:30.

I ask that you rule in my favor and order my husband to respect my definition of bedtime.

Thank you in advance.

Hmm.

So, no, this is, in my opinion, an issue of pure semantics.

You guys have a difference of opinion about when you want to go to bed, and you're adults, and you deserve to go to bed when you're ready to.

Alyssa, you say bedtime is 10:30.

The truth is, you want to go to bed at 10 10 to be asleep by 10.30.

He wants to go to bed at 10.30 to be asleep by 11?

I don't know.

I don't care.

He's a grown-up and so are you.

My wife goes to bed early.

I sometimes join her and that's usually a good thing for me to do because I get a good night's sleep.

But there are times in my life when I just need to stay up until 2 a.m.

watching Foils War again.

I'm a grown-up.

I only got one run at this thing.

I understand that you have a two-year-old and it's very challenging in the mornings and so forth.

But if you're really disputing the 30-minute difference between

your turning out the light and him getting up to go to bed or whatever it is, it's not worth it.

When do you go to bed, Jesse?

What do you think?

Probably about 10.30.

Yeah.

I mean, depends on what you mean by go to bed.

Yeah, when's lights out?

Probably lights are out by 10.30.

Okay, wow.

In bed, boom, lights out.

I mean, the reality of the situation is that I have three children with very variable schedules, and my poor wife absorbs the brunt of the waking up in the middle of the night and the waking up very early in the morning.

So I try to follow her lead.

Well, you know, you're a very responsible husband and parent, and that is good that you are exercising that discipline.

To be clear, my wife is a very responsible husband and parent.

I think you're both doing a great job.

And, you know, I guess I do have a certain luxury now that

my children, our children, are essentially functional adults who don't care whether we live or die and keep their own schedules, that I can afford to stay up until 2 a.m.

watching Foils War, a great show that I've already seen five times all the way through.

But I cannot get enough of that Michael Kitchen and his very quiet acting.

And I can stay up real late and not be a wreck the next day.

However, Alyssa's husband isn't asking to stay up until 2 a.m.

He's not asking for anything.

He just wants to stay up a little bit later than she does.

And I feel that that's fine.

So she can turn lights out at 10.30 if she wants.

But if he needs an extra half an hour to putter around in the kitchen or read a book or do something else, that's fine.

You're not, I know that you have a kid and I know that it's hard, but you're not.

at camp and you're not in an in the army.

You're grown-ups in a house and you're adults too, who get to have a little time and make a few decisions for yourselves.

Whether you're snow blowing or staying up an extra 30 minutes.

You never thought you'd hear this on the Judge John Hodgman podcast, but even husbands have a few rights.

Sorry, Alyssa, you're wrong.

Steph wrote in about a sock folding dispute we discussed in the docket episode, Pizza is a gift.

Here is what Steph had to say.

My maternal grandmother and my mother passed on the following folding method to me, which I didn't realize was one of my little weirdsies until I got married.

Tip of the cap to our friend Linda Holmes.

I tie the socks in a knot.

I still do this out of pure habit, and frankly, it's really all I've known.

I will say though, the elastic at the top does always stay tight, and I don't experience any strange stretching of the material from the use of this method.

Onward I go, being the weird mom with the strange sock technique that will likely annoy my children when they are teenagers.

Luckily, my husband is a weird dad in all sorts of wonderful ways.

So it's a nice balance around here.

She has enclosed a picture of her sock folding technique, which truly does look like a simple knot tied between two socks.

Yeah.

What do you think about that technique?

Do you see any errors?

Do you see any potential damage to socks, Jesse?

See any reason why she should not do this?

I do,

but

I only see it in the context of the reality, which is that socks are actually quite resilient.

I think if you had delicate socks or woollen socks,

this might cause unnecessary abrasion.

And I'm not entirely convinced that it never stretches them out.

That said,

all sock folding methods have their own challenges, and I wouldn't take away anyone's little weirdsies, and I think this is pretty fun.

It does seem like what a seven-year-old would come up with, though.

Obviously, if you want to see the photo for yourself, dear listeners, just go over to the show page at maximumfun.org or our Instagram for judgejohnhodgman, which is instagram.com/slash judgejohnhodgman.

Um, and I will tell you what I think.

This all came up in a reaction to Marie Kondo's entreaty that you do not fold over the elastic top of the sock to create a ball, ball, which is how I learned to fold socks.

And

part of this is because part of the Kan Mari method is to ascribe to the items in your house a certain energy, a spirit, a life.

She feels, and this is where I love Mariakondo, but this is where she and I parted ways in my own head.

She thought that it stressed the socks out emotionally.

It was wrong to treat these wonderful, selfless servants to your feet in a way that caused them stress.

Not merely that you were stretching out the sock,

but that you were causing emotional damage to the socks.

And that was a little bit too far for me to go because I do think they are selfless servants.

That is, they do not have a self.

It took me a long time to get over the idea that my stuffed animals had no feelings and could be safely donated somewhere else or thrown away.

I mean, I'm talking about like 35, right?

I got through that, and I don't want to go back to feeling that every object in my house has feelings.

One reader wrote into me to say that I shouldn't have been so dismissive, that Mariakondo is working within a very traditional Japanese animist tradition of ascribing life energy to things around you.

I do mean no disrespect for her or for any traditional practices that are not mine.

I'm just saying it's not for me.

Socks don't have feelings in my world.

But, Steph, when I look at these photos of socks tied into knots, I feel bad for these socks.

I think they must be hurting.

It looks like you're torturing these poor guys.

I think it makes me sick to my stomach.

I want to go rescue them.

That's it.

They're not my socks.

They don't have feelings.

It's your little weirdsy.

Go forth and knot it up.

The docket is now officially clear.

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

I'm all tied up in knots.

Life hack.

Untie your socks.

Life hack.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're also on Instagram where you can see the socks in question at JudgeJohn Hodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ Ho, and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit to discuss this week's episode.

You can submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash JJHO or email hodgman at maximumfund.org.

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

Oh, yes, you will.

Life hack.

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