Tic or Tac

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 man who invented the television, John Hodgman.

Beep, beep, beef.

I'm tuning you in now, Jesse Thorne.

I have decided to invent something else.

It's like the television, but without pictures.

And it goes out over my other invention, the internet.

Thank you.

You're welcome, everyone.

Podcasting was invented today by me, John Odgman.

We also have a guest with us in chambers this week.

So excited.

She is, of course, known as a songwriter and songstress.

She also has a brand new podcast here at maximumfun.org called The Art of Process, alongside the great Teddy Rock star, Ted Leo.

Her name, Amy Mann.

Teddy Rockstar is a really good term for Ted Leo.

Yep.

It's a good one.

He will enjoy that.

And your podcast is terrific, Amy Mann.

I subscribed to it.

I listened to the first episode with Wyatt Sanak.

I'm looking forward to the next episode with the wonderful Rebecca Sugar.

And by the time this episode of the Judge John Hodgman podcast airs, there will be so much more interesting conversations about the process of making art.

There will be a lot of people.

Thank you very much.

It's very nice of you to download and listen.

We have some justice to dispense, do we not, Bailiff Jesse Thorne?

We do.

Here's something from Derek.

I've been divorced for two years, and in that time, I haven't dated anyone for more than a couple of months.

My daughter's mother, my former wife, met someone on an online dating site and is soon to be remarried.

My daughter, Ray, says it's time for me to get back out there and subscribe to one of these sites.

Should I sign up for a dating site and start dating again, or is it okay for me to live like a hermit and just enjoy that last 30 or 40 years of my life.

Call it playing out the string.

Well,

all three of us here are married people.

True.

I enjoy being married very much.

And having just spent some time on the road with you, Jesse, on our live justice tour, episodes of which have been seeded out onto the podcast internet that I invented.

I know what it is like to be alone.

I know it's very, very, very lonely.

I mean, that's why they call it alone, because it's so lonely.

And yet, I also know what it's like to be able to put something down and have it be there the next day.

I know what it's like, say, in San Francisco, to decide, oh, I've got a room that has two double beds in it.

I'm going to put all my clothes out on that other double bed and I'm going to Marie Kondo it so they're all perfectly at right angles and look beautiful.

And I know that no one is going to judge me or mess it up out of spite or in the case of the cat, climb up on it and vomit all over those things.

When Derek says, Should I just be a hermit for 30 or 40 years?

I have to say, there's part of me that's like, oh, yes.

Like, I'm very sorry that your marriage didn't work out, but now's your time to get weird and alone.

Yeah, three words, buddy, on Walden Pond.

Control of your own space.

So, Amy and Jesse, what do you think about Derek's situation?

My feeling about Derek,

the key to Derek is in the last sentence.

Okay, for me to live like a hermit and just enjoy that last 30, 40 years of my life.

That says to me, I'm harboring an enormous amount of resentment.

It's eating me alive.

I'm going to take it out on myself by being alone and proclaiming to the world that relationships are garbage.

I think the point about Derek is not whether he should get out there again or not, but more that he should get into therapy

and

work out some of his stuff.

Get some of those resentments out of the way because that is going to be transmitted to his lovely daughter, Ray, who has found an online relationship.

No, the ex, oh, the ex found an online relationship, yeah.

I don't know what Ray's status is, only that she wants her dad to start hooking up as quickly as possible.

Dad's hermitage is probably becoming a real pain in the ass and an eyesore, and she wants, you know, she's like, get out of here.

You're annoying me.

Jesse, what do you think?

I grew up with divorced parents.

My parents divorced when I was a toddler.

And my father remarried when I was young and had a very serious long-term relationship in between my mother and remarrying.

And my mother, to the extent that she had romantic relationships, it was largely outside of my view.

So I had both of these experiences from a child's perspective, and I will say that both of them were totally great for me.

I was lucky to have a loving stepmother, and I was lucky to have a wonderful mother who wasn't spending her time doing other things or whatever.

My mom also did have a romantic life outside of my view and also had a vibrant social life.

I think that locking it down like a hermit is not necessarily a useful or productive way to live your life.

I don't think that that means that it has to be full of romantic relationships, but

I do think that the idea that because you were once married means you can never have meaningful relationships outside of your children

is

not the case.

And if the child is suggesting this, the child probably has some insight.

Yeah, agree.

Well, I I could not disagree with you both more strongly.

I think we're going to get a little bit of the old only child special for Mr.

John Hodgman.

Yep, as someone who grew up essentially with all the solitude that he could ever want and now has lived for the past decades happily, happily,

with very little solitude.

Very happily.

Look how happy you are.

Well, yeah, except for the one thing that's missing.

I'm happy.

Which is solitude.

Which is my opportunity to sit in my wingchair and read a novel or look at a book of maps in a perfectly clean apartment where everything is at right angles, just like Tintin had before he moved into Marlon Spike Hall, which has always been my dream.

But that said, that is my dream and not necessarily Derek's dream.

And while it pains me to acknowledge that there are certain emotional problems that cannot be solved by writing into a podcast, I agree with you, Amy, that Derek's yearning for solitude here is not necessarily an aspirational yearning, but a desperational yearning.

And he should definitely seek some help.

Insofar as Ray wants him out of the house, I don't know where she lives.

I don't know what her age is.

I don't know what the relationship is.

Insofar as she might want him out of the house or she might want him to emotionally progress, I'm sure her motives are great.

But that's not really what's important.

What's important is that Derek have someone that he can bounce his feelings off of and process his grief so that when he is ready, he can then go online and set up an internet dating account and discover how quickly people are hugging and kissing on the first date.

Something I also de facto invented.

You're welcome.

Here's something from Nick.

Dear Judge Hodgman, my wife Karina and I have an ongoing issue with our favorite candy, tic-tacs.

Wow.

I don't like to judge after the first sentence of a letter, though I do find myself often doing that.

But if Tic Tacs are your favorite candy, you need to try candy.

Yeah.

Well, you have to understand, we have to put this in because Tic Tacs are paying us an enormous amount of money to talk about the...

What's that, Jennifer Marmor?

Oh, they're not paying us any money?

Oh.

Our next segment is about the dangers of Retsen.

I like to generously sprinkle a measure of 10 to 12 of the minty capsules, while she will limit me to three, sometimes four.

We need your wisdom to get us past this source of pain and anxiety.

What's the call, Judge?

Is a box of Tic Tacs a short-term treat meant to last a day or two, or a long-term commitment of a couple of weeks?

So I took the liberty of using the internet, again, for free.

I can do this.

And I discovered...

Do you know what the suggested serving is for Tic-Tacs, Jesse Thorne or Amy Mann?

Either you want to guess?

I would feel feel that four is a serving.

That sounds about right.

I would have guessed one Tic Tac.

Oh, wow.

Jesse Thorne, you win.

Wow.

According to Tic Tac headquarters website, the suggested serving for a Tic Tac is one, either a tick or a tack.

They would sell a lot more if 20 was the suggested serving.

And you know what's insidious about this is that because each tick/slash tack, each one only has less than half a gram of sugar.

They are able, under FDA laws, they are able to say that each one has zero sugar.

That is why they say that one serving is one tic-tac, so that the entire box can be, you know, somehow added up to zero sugars.

Yeah, no one on earth would ever eat a single tick or tack.

I know I didn't.

I was pounding those orange tic-tacs when I was in fifth grade.

Back in your tic-tac days?

Yeah, back in my, yeah, there were dark times.

No, tic-tac days.

Tic-tac days is a good song.

It's a great song by Wang Chung.

Hooray.

It's our first Wang Chung reference.

I love Wang Chung so much.

I mean, to go from Dance All Days, which is, for me, it was a seminally evocative song of sixth grade or whatever.

It was nice.

Yeah, it was a nice song.

It's got a sound to it.

It makes the lyrics make no sense.

It's like take your baby by the nose at some point, it says,

and then to disappear and then come back with everybody have fun tonight and then flip it, everybody, Wang Chung tonight.

I was so happy for those guys.

That was the greatest.

The first self-branding song.

Welcome to Generation X Talk with Amy and John.

It's very.

Jen, you want to talk about where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

How much money are we getting from that reboot on Netflix or whatever?

I was a grown adult playing gigs with Wang Chung when you were in sixth grade.

Well, I played one.

I played one gig,

but it did happen.

Jesse Thorne and Jennifer Marmer, Marmer, you can leave now and turn out the lights because we've just invented a new podcast.

Whatever it was you called it, Jesse.

All right, we're going to get to Tic Tacs in a second here, but Amy Mann, tell me about your gig with Wang Chung.

All I remember, it was some kind of outdoor,

sort of like pre,

festivals weren't really a thing, but it was some summertime outdoor thing.

And there were several bands on the bill, and Wang Chung was one of them.

And I remember sort of hearing them from the trailer that we were in, and there was a bridge to a song.

I was like, that's really nice.

Like, it was a very unexpectedly musical bridge.

I can't remember what song it was.

Right.

And, you know, so I always had a small soft spot for Wang Chung that was erased by everybody, Wang Chung Tonight.

No, no, that's when the affection grew.

Guys, I like Dexie's Midnight Runners.

Oh, sure.

Turatural A.

I do not

like that song.

Wow, and I think that's a great song.

I have more than one Dexie's Midnight Runner album.

I'm very angry.

But honestly, that's one of my favorite rock radio hits of the 1980s.

In the conversations that one has on the bus with the band, where we debate what the worst song ever written is,

that is always in my top three.

Wow.

Yeah.

I love it.

Come on, Eileen.

God, does that song annoy me?

Come on, Amy.

I'm sorry, Dexie's Midnight Runners.

I don't mean to criticize you, but it's just, it's the truth.

Why don't you like it, Amy?

I'm sorry, but I need to know.

It's irritating in a number of ways.

He's singing way at the top of his range.

It's just like got a beggy pleaty feeling.

It's too

scrampity-doo.

It's like it's...

My toes are tapping already.

It is a classic scrampity-do jam.

It's too scrampity-doo for me.

I like a begging, pleading song.

Burnadette by the Four Tops.

That's another one of my all-time favorites yeah but that's got some actual feeling this this is just like a guy trying to talk a lady into giving it up and it's a little too naked every four tops song you know that right

it's nice to have like a little actual heart yearning in there right besides the uh the the downstairs yearning i can understand that i also am a big supporter of overalls

yeah and the overalls

Overall, the overalls are 50% of my dislike.

That is a big turnoff.

But let's get back to Tic Tacs.

How many Tic Tacs in a serving for you, Amy Mann, if you're going to eat some?

I mean, two to four.

But here are my problems with this.

Our favorite candy, I'm with you.

What are you talking about?

It's not candy.

It's a mint.

And mint is a small serving.

And I don't even like to call it a serving.

That's how inconsequential it should be.

To load up your hand with, you know, 10 to 12 Tic Tacs is weird.

I think you should get a bigger mint or a different kind of candy.

Or a smaller hand.

A smaller hand as an adjunct.

And or just buy more tic-tac.

Like, does the wife just, is there like an allotment of one box of tic-tacs every two weeks?

Yeah, they share.

I guess the question is, are they, do they share their tic-tac supply?

And is he taking more than his share, Jesse?

I don't really have an opinion.

I'm really only into Icebreakers duo cool watermelon flavor.

Here's the thing.

Seriously, John, my kids somehow got their hands on a cool watermelon-flavored icebreakers duo, which is like a contemporary Tic-Tac.

It tastes so good.

I became so obsessed with eating cool watermelon icebreaker duos.

You could see Jesse right now.

I had to

quickly get it.

His hands are on the sides of his face.

I was like,

he's seen a ghost made of cool ice watermelon, whatever that is.

Cool, cool, what is it?

Icebreakers, cool watermelon.

Icebreakers duo's cool watermelon.

There's too many adjectives.

I don't like too many modifiers.

I don't like this one.

That's cool.

That's

fruit plus.

That's cool.

If you wanted your fruit to cool down,

this is your move.

When candies and stuff has,

simple foods have too many adjectives and modifiers, as you say, Amy.

I feel like I'm listening to

Lil Pump.

Like, I don't understand any of this.

This is for a new generation.

It's not for me.

Not for me.

Like, I'm not a person who eats candy, and rarely do I eat mint.

But Tic Tac is a beautiful candy.

And I used to, like, it's simple.

It's simplicity itself.

It's very satisfying to shake it up.

When you're a kid, it's very satisfying to eat Kid Kats because you can pretend you're taking Valiums like your mom.

Or Milltown's for my generation.

I mean, if you want to really pretend to be your mom, you've got to find some white wine to wash it down.

That's what Capri's son is for.

Got it.

My husband is taken to eating mint lifesavers, and he gets a paper sack full of them.

Hell yeah.

And he always has them, and he just crunches away all day.

A paper sack.

He's got a paper sack in the car

for his rides, and he just crunches.

I used to buy with my mom.

We used to go to the grocery store by our house was a Latin American grocery store, Mexican grocery store.

And they would sell Ricola cough drops, which I love,

love to eat.

But they would sell them in tubs with a plastic top that you pull out, like a tub, like

a Pringles can with a plastic top that you pull up.

And then there's just a pile of them sort of stuck together inside.

Oh, I loved it.

I loved it.

They weren't individually wrapped in there.

They were all melted together.

They were all melted together.

It was a nightmare.

I loved it.

When I was in high school, we used to eat cherry hauls.

And that's, you know,

it's barely even a candy, but, you know.

Loudens is what you want.

That girl.

Gives you a little kick, a little eucalyptus kick.

I used to fill up my little palm with orange Tic Tacs, and I would shove them in my mouth, and I was not unhappy about it.

If you guys are sharing a Tic-Tac store in your survival bunker, and there is only a limited amount of Tic Tac that you can have, then Nick is going too far.

Knickknack, go easy on the Tic Tac.

But if presumably you are living in society like us, and he's buying his own Tic Tac, or even if you're sharing Tic Tacs, just split them in half and eat them as many as you like.

It doesn't matter.

Karina does not need to police Nick's Tic Tac consumption.

And by the way, they're produced by Ferrero, the same company, the Italian candy company that makes Ferrero Roche and Nutella.

So really, they should be pronounced Tic-Tac.

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 maximumfund.org/slash join.

And you can join them by going 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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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket with our special guest, Amy Mann, one of the two hosts alongside Ted Leo of the brand new maximum fun podcast, The Art of Process, which you can listen to right now.

Here is a question from Alyssa.

Some nights, my wife and I will watch TV on a laptop computer while we're in bed.

The password on the laptop is 39 characters long.

She refuses to change it to something shorter, even though this computer has no personal information and never leaves the house.

There are several sticking keys that make this password easy to mistype.

I'm the person who types in the password most often, as my wife is the sleepier of the two of us.

Please.

Please.

Please order her to either shorten the password or unlock the computer herself so I don't have to buy a $400 new password machine.

Okay, point of clarification, Jesse Thorne, do you know what Alyssa is referring to when she says a $400 new password machine?

I think she's talking about buying an entire new computer so that it can have a new password on it.

Oh, okay, I got you.

I thought maybe there was like, you know,

security is a topic in the news, I dare say.

Computer security, folks who are listening at home, this is a topic in the news.

It's a matter of international policy at this point.

We're under threat from other countries and people who want to take advantage of our computers and see what Alyssa and her wife are watching on Hulu.

So I was fully prepared to accept the idea that they are now selling little black boxes that churn out super hard-to-crack passwords across 40%.

It's a chain that turns off any television.

Yeah, exactly so.

The clapper, I think that's what that's called.

Okay, now that I understand that Alyssa was just referring to

a euphemism for a new computer, let's decide whether there should be any computer there.

I've gone on record on this podcast saying that it is preferable to not have televisions in your bedroom, especially if it's a marital bedroom, and to stay off your phones and your devices because it not only compromises your sleep, but it turns into kind of a grim scene at 2 o'clock in the morning when someone's watching a kung fu movie and the other person's trying to sleep.

And there's food all over the bed somehow, and it messes up the right angles on the laundry that you put on the bed.

But that said, I'm a total hypocrite as I went last night into a deep dive until 2 a.m.

on the history of the Spider-Man black symbiote symbiote costume last night on my phone.

So what do I know?

Amy, how do you feel about using screens in bed?

You know, it's a bad idea, and yet everyone does it.

Right.

You know, I always say I'm not going to, and then I check Twitter for 45 minutes before I go to sleep like some kind of dumb-dumb.

That is kind of the worst.

And I do this too.

I'm accusing myself as much as you of doing the dumbest thing in the world.

by checking Twitter before going to bed.

Because that activates the dopamine seeking part of the brain that will keep you up much later than you need to be, because you're on the hunt now.

It's like a predatory instinct to go on the hunt for the new thing that will give you that little spark of dopamine.

I've heard that you get a little charge of dopamine from new pieces of new information, and that's sort of part of what, you know, that it's not only

seeking positive

regard for yourself in some way, but that it's just seeking new information gives you a little thrill.

And that sort of makes sense to me.

Yeah, I did not know that, Amy, and now I have a dopamine hit.

Now tell me something else new.

That's the entire basis of NPR's business model.

Just like whatever new factoids.

Oh, now I know a new thing.

Which is kind of nice to think that our brains are primed to actually want information since you often feel like people don't want to know things.

Yeah,

that's fair.

I think generally speaking, NPR's new information dopamine hits are directly connected to the part of your brain that says, maybe it wasn't a bad idea that I went to Bard.

Jesse Thornton, do you guys, do you use devices in bed?

Do you watch movies in bed with Teresa from time to time or anything like that?

We don't.

I plug my phone in in my office, which is a different room.

Yes.

And then you sleep there?

Yeah, and then I sleep there.

When I'm in the doghouse.

No, I plug my phone in in a different room, and my wife is pretty good about not checking her phone before bed.

And

if we're watching television, it's on our television, which is not in our bedroom.

So I'm pretty good about that.

The place where I fall down is when my closet is in the office, and so I will dress for bed in there, and I will go sit down at my desktop computer and look for something to be upset about on Twitter.

And

often I have come up to bed in a miserable mood and my wife has correctly said to me, you just went on Twitter, didn't you?

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But at least Alyssa and wife are not laying down some hot Twitter threads in bed.

They're looking at movies together.

And Alyssa points out that there isn't personal information on the computer that if it were stolen and

hacked into, would be

devastating to their lives to have lost or have exposed so i agree i feel like this a 39 character password is probably not necessary for this single-use computer just to watch you know mrs misel or whatever uh so here here's the deal alyssa and wife i order you to uh simplify that password.

You can make it something as simple as

John Hodgman invented podcasts, all one word, all small letters, or just one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, because no one's ever going to,

it's not going to be an issue.

It's not, even though computer security is a big issue in the news today, it is not in your bedroom.

Here's something from Jordan.

I live in a duplex and just got new neighbors.

Last night, one of them introduced themselves and asked if we could split the Wi-Fi and share while we lived in the same house.

Little do they know, I work at a major internet provider and only pay $10 per month purely for my HD cable.

Should I tell them no?

Should I tell them just to pay me the $10 while I cover the rest?

Should I ask for more?

What's the right thing to do?

Well, listeners to Judge John Hodgman, as you know, I am the inventor of internet podcasting.

So I can tell you with some assurance that computer security is a topic in the news.

And for good reason, computers are insecure.

And malicious parties are attempting to get into your world,

your computer world, which is what I originally called the World Wide Web before my idea was stolen from me.

I think this proposes some both ethical issues and legitimate security issues.

But first of all, what's going on?

He's working for the Internet provider, so he gets super cheap Internet.

Is that what he's saying?

He only pays to get HD added to his cable.

So he gets free internet and cable and pays a $10 charge to get the HD channels.

Whew.

He's got almost as good a deal as I do with the podcasts.

And by the way, I'm presuming that Jordan uses he, him pronouns.

And if I'm wrong, I apologize in advance

or in retrospect.

Amy, do you have an opinion about what's going on with Jordan?

Should Jordan admit that Jordan is paying almost nothing for internet and upcharge his neighbor to get some money off of this?

It all feels weird.

I think he should just say no.

It feels weird, and it's an intrusive request and feels fishy, and it doesn't matter how much they pay, or don't pay, or where they get their internet.

It's just get your own thing.

It's weird.

Like, you're not friends.

You're not, you know, it's not like my brother lives in the same duplex and, you know, and you'd be like, the br brother's trying to freeload.

Maybe, yes, maybe no.

It's just weird.

I don't, I don't like, I don't know, something's fishy about it.

Something feels off, right?

It feels hinky.

This feels hinky.

Jesse, hinky or not hinky?

I'm just wondering if anybody has cable in the Bay Area and wants to give me their passwords so that I can watch Warriors games on my phone.

I agree with Amy Mann.

Even if you have figured out a way to save a little bit of money by sharing the burden with someone else, there's still a moral value in being self-sufficient and getting your own thing.

And I'm going to tell you, like, generally speaking, people who are looking to rope you in to their super secret new ways that they devised of beating the system are not people you want to be sharing your passwords with.

And there is a legitimate security concern here because once you share your Wi-Fi with someone else, they're on the safe side of the firewall that your router provides.

So I use some of the internet that I get for free to find this out, but there are situations where, out of

sort of neglect, they could infect your computer with malware if they're careless, or they could peek at your data if they're malicious.

You don't know this person.

And if they're downloading bad stuff, like illegal stuff, like stuff that attracts the attention of law enforcement,

all of a sudden you're implicated too because you're using the same network.

So, I would say, tell your deadbeat neighbor, no, go away, deadbeat neighbor.

I would say also,

it feels like

that this person's way of getting their needs met is to manipulate other people into providing those needs rather than figuring it out for themselves.

And if it's not going to end here, there's going to be other requests for other, quote, sharings.

And even them sort of putting it like, while we live in the same house, you don't live in the same house.

It's like

sharing an apartment in a same building is not like sharing a house.

So yeah, I don't like anything about this.

It feels like it's not going to be the last time that something is

free is requested.

Absolutely right.

And Jordan, by the way, Jordan,

you don't come out of this blameless.

I think you should consider the fact that your first instinct was, huh, maybe I could make some money off of this guy.

I don't pay anything for this.

Maybe I'll tell him I pay 50 bucks a month and suddenly I got free $25 a month.

Well, he gets a perk because

of the work he does.

That is a kind of payment.

Like he's not paying for it in other ways.

No, I'm not saying it differently, but we got one neighbor coming in trying to scam some half-price Wi-Fi.

And Jordan's initial instinct is, how can I scam back the scammer?

This is not how you build good neighborly relationships.

How you build good neighborly relationships is very, very high fences.

And like a curt, hey, how you doing in the hall.

That's it.

Sorry, this is my industrial barrel of Tic Tacs, and I eat them by the handful.

You can't have any.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll hear about self-care and we'll get an update from a past litigant.

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 Long.

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 here with the great Amy Mann and we're clearing the docket.

Here's something from Mary Beth.

I really want to try out a foot peel mask.

My husband, James, says they may be dangerous.

He's concerned that the packaging says the product can't be used while pregnant or breastfeeding.

He also doesn't believe the ingredient list on the package says what's actually in there.

There are a lot of products that can't be used while pregnant or breastfeeding out there, but that are otherwise safe.

There are thousands of five-star reviews with amazing and gross results on a major online retailer's site.

And we trust companies every day to use the ingredients that they list.

I'll be weaning our son over the next couple of months.

I would love for the judge to rule that I can do a celebratory foot mask after having a baby and nursing him for a year.

I've been slacking on self-care.

This would be a simple, inexpensive way to feel a little prettier.

All right, first, can we stipulate that we shall not be calling this a foot mask anymore?

I mean, I understand what a foot peel is.

It's something you apply to your feet to exfoliate dead skin cells and make your feet feel more youthful.

But

I don't want to think about about feet wearing masks.

A mask is for the face.

Now, my second question is, or really my first, because that was just a statement.

Why would you do

this foot peel

when you could go to Cabo San Lucas and put your feet into a tank full of little fish that will nibble all the dead skin cells off your feet?

Amy Mann, did you do that on the last Jonathan Colton cruise?

No, as you know, I'm always put to work, and I have no leisure time on that cruise to

get off the boat and do anything fun.

Although

that sounds half fun, half gross.

Your proportions are a little off.

It sounds all gross and no fun?

Yeah.

Did you do it?

My family and I, on the last Jonathan Colton cruise, my family and I went ashore in Cabo St.

Lucas.

To my great relief and pleasure, our paragliding trip was canceled due to high winds.

So we had only all the time in the world to wander through this moss Isley of tourist traps that accrue around the marina there in Cabo San Lucas.

And one of the things we noticed was some fellow cruisers, some

non-performer cruisers, like very regular people,

calling to us like, hey, Judge John Hodgman.

And it was a guy and his wife.

And they were sitting up on what looked like shoe shine stands.

But instead of having their shoes shined, they had their bare feet in these tanks of fish that were swarming all around

their feet and presumably therapeutically nibbling dead skin off their feet.

And he said, you should really do this.

It's fun.

You should go next after me.

And I demurred, but I could not stop my wife or our children from hopping up there.

and putting their feet in the tank.

And all in all, they said it was a very pleasant, tingly experience.

I I don't think that it made for a huge difference in their foot smoothness ratio, but it made for some good boomerangs that I could post to my social medias.

Fish chewing on my kids' feets.

It sounds pretty gross, just the thought of the variety of feet that have gone before you.

Fish,

water, everything about it sounds bad.

So I am led to understand that this procedure is also gross.

And Jennifer Marmer,

our producer, tipped me off that this is probably a reference to a product called Babyfoot,

which is a product from Japan.

And it is a fruit acid application that causes dead skin to peel off your feet within three to fourteen days.

And sure enough,

according to an internet website that I used for free,

it is not recommended for women who are pregnant or nursing, specifically because,

according to the product, and this is a quote, during this period, that is to say pregnancy or lactation, the skin becomes more sensitive to the disruption of normal hormone balance.

So I gather this does not mean that it is going to poison your child.

It's just going to peel more off your feet than should be peeled.

You don't want raw feet is what we're getting at.

Yeah, look, I mean, I'm not Mary Beth.

I don't want to do this at all, never mind when it fits into the weaning period of my infant.

But I am only pointing out that husband James's concerns are perhaps a bit overwrought,

given that the worst case scenario is that her feet

have all the skin peeled off and she just has skeleton feet from then on,

which

I'm sure can be adjusted medically.

I think that she's probably fine.

I think that at the point she's weaning whatever sort of hormone changes that they're discussing that might lead your skin to be more sensitive are probably

on their way out, and

it's probably fine.

And as I investigated this, there was some conversation on the internet about the lack of transparency with regards to the ingredients in this

imported product.

So I get the concern, but I'm sure Mary Beth has a doctor.

And

unless that doctor is her husband, James really shouldn't say anything about it at all.

It's not his feet.

It has nothing to do with him.

If there is a concern,

I think that there's maybe 5% of a concern.

She should just talk to her doctor and take an actual medical doctor's advice rather than just

have her husband police her body.

Sometimes being a lady means you have to pour acid all over your feet to make yourself pretty.

Yes,

it's called feeling good about yourself.

Baby feet.

They're called baby feet because it strips away all the gunk of adulthood and you're left with tiny baby feet.

Gross.

Naive little trotters.

That's right.

But Mary Beth, I do not judge.

I don't think you have anything to worry about.

I think you should talk to your doctor just to make yourself feel reassured because if you weren't, you wouldn't be be writing to me.

You would have just told James to mind his own beeswax.

Tom from the dispute he bed she bed wrote in with an update.

His wife Miranda wanted to try sleeping in separate beds, but he was opposed.

Here is what Tom said.

Hi, I'm Tom.

Miranda and I moved into separate beds and separate rooms, and believe it or not, We're both sleeping better.

It took a little time for everyone, including the dogs, to get used to it.

The transition went differently than either of us expected.

Miranda had much stronger separation anxiety than I did, and the dogs didn't seem to care once they got used to it.

It's been several months now, and we're both much happier.

We wanted to thank the venerable judge, hey, that's me, for his sage advice.

So, Amy Mann,

this is a couple that was having difficulty sleeping together in the same bed.

They were disrupting each other's sleep, and the dogs were too.

And I propose to them what I think is the ultimate and best sleeping arrangement for married couples, if it is available to you in your life in terms of space and financing, which is to have two separate bedroom villas connected by an outdoor reflecting pool.

And that may be outside of your reach, but you work backwards from there.

And Tom and Miranda were trying to decide whether they were going to use this other small room as a separate bedroom and they would sleep separately.

And I, in almost kind of perverse, mad scientific impulse, said, yes, you must sleep separately, never thinking in a million bazillion years that they would do it.

But look, they did it.

You see the power that I wield?

I see.

And also, they thanked you and said your advice was sage.

So you should feel pretty good about yourself, possibly even believe that you have special magical powers.

Please don't encourage that.

Please don't encourage that I feel good about myself.

It might just start making me feel like I deserve to feel good about myself, and that's not a place that I feel very comfortable in.

What do you think about my advice to married couples that they should sleep in separate rooms?

I think your advice is great.

I sleep in a different room because I, you know, I started not being able to sleep very well.

Someone else started maybe snoring or making sounds that were snore-like.

Or maybe he was just chewing window green lifesavers one after the other, making sparks in the room.

He goes to bed much later than I do.

That's also a thing.

You know, if you start waking up very easily, you wake up when the other person comes into the room late at night.

They wake up when you, you know.

And so, and I'm half the time I wake up in the middle of the night and have to read for a while before I can get back to sleep.

So who wants that?

It's just, you know, getting older.

That's what happens.

I've certainly thought about giving up my spot.

in the bed I share with my wife to my five-year-old Oscar and taking his place in the bunk bed in the room that he shares with his sister and brother because it would just be easier for everyone.

Let's do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it's what works.

What works.

People have to sleep.

You have to sleep as much as you can.

Whatever gets you through the night.

All right.

All right.

The docket is clear.

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

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

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

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Hashtag your judgejohnhodgman tweets.

Hashtag JJHO.

You can go to maximumfund.reddit.com if you want to chat about this week's episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org slash jjho or just email hodgman at maximumfund.org.

Our illustrious guest on this week's program is the great Amy Mann.

Yay for me.

Co-host of the Art of Process.

Amy, what's your current record in stores right now?

It is called Mental Illness.

It's a pretty good one.

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

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