Judge's Court, Judge's Rules

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

With me, as always, the paragon of justice himself, Judge John Hodgman.

It's freezing in my chambers.

Why is that?

Because it's cold outside in Brooklyn.

Oh, right.

Other geographic locations have winter.

We are recording this in the dregs of Feb,

and I am having to wear a fleece collar around my trembling neck because it is so cold in here.

I don't like it.

I just made the most luxurious purchase of my life.

Let's hear it.

It's very cold in the lower level of my home, which is because I live on the side of a hill substantially, essentially, below ground.

You're in the shadow of Mount Doom.

Yes, and it is the home of my, both my sort of den, where my television is, and my office, where I often work.

And so I I have a space heater, a portable space heater that I carry between those rooms to turn on while I'm working or watching something so that I can stay warm.

Now, I just imagine you carrying around a gently pulsing, glowing orb at all times.

Is that what a space heater is?

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like a dragon's egg if a dragon was a type of alien.

Very good.

Go on.

And I, the other day, bought a second space heater so that I could have one space heater in each room and not have to carry the one space heater back and forth, which felt like the most profligate, luxurious,

like captain of industry,

gilded age extravagance of my entire life.

I want to be clear, too.

It was a $25 space heater.

It is not merely wasteful, Jesse,

but it is a reminder that this is not how the system is supposed to work.

You're supposed to feel warm in your home because of the infrastructure of your home.

Right.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like

when you're a moderately famous person on Twitter and you're having difficulty downloading the Acorn TV app for all your fine British television and getting that Series 3 of Detectorists to play.

And you say something about it on Twitter, and Acorn TV reaches out to you directly because you've you've got something of a Twitter following, and they give you a password to get it done right, and it works, and you're like, hooray, I get to see my favorite Toby Jones plus Mackenzie Crook in the beautiful Series 3 of Detectorists.

But boo, because I only get to do this because I have a number of followers on Twitter.

This is not how the system is supposed to work.

System's supposed to work for everyone, not just Hodgman.

Yeah, that's a good point.

I think Bernie Sanders is pretty mad about the fact that I get a second space heater while others have none.

And I got to watch Series 3 of Detectorists while other dumb dumbs are still getting blank screens on their Apple TV.

Let me say this.

Series 3 of Detectorists, I'll take no money from you.

You're great all the time.

Acorn TV, I'll take no money from you because you still got to get your act together on the Apple TV for everybody, not just Hodgman.

But what I have heard, if you sign up for it via Amazon, it works fine.

Anyway, thank you for bringing me Detectorus Series 3.

Thank you for trying Acorn TV.

Don't want your money.

Everybody, that's my lifestyle update for you.

Jesse Thorne,

let's have some justice up in this piece.

Okay, here's something from Jeff.

Somehow, Amazon accidentally sent me two pillows I didn't order.

Double buzz for Amazon.

It's my firm belief that the error was on the company, and I shouldn't have to waste my time or energy getting in touch with them to try and figure out what happened.

My wife says, I stole the pillows by not trying to return them.

We've brought the issue to friends, and I hate to say it, but most of them side with my wife.

But I just can't let it go.

I stole nothing.

You know what I got this week, Jesse?

What?

An email.

An email from a listener.

And the listener said, as they always do, love the podcast.

Thank you very much.

But,

and then went on to complain about something.

In this case, complaining about the fact that I officially prohibit buzz marketing in the courtroom and ask people not to name brand names, but that I sometimes name brand names, such as Acorn TV, Detector of Series 3, and now Amazon twice.

And the person said, I think that's unfair,

and you should ban it.

You should ban yourself from doing it.

You know what I wrote back to this person who said I should ban my own mentioning of brand names?

What's that?

My court, my rules.

I don't get money from Amazon.

Alexa, subscribe to Judge John Hodgman.

That's for my Amazon friends out there.

Now, look.

Wait, hold on.

Something else here.

Alexa, play Huey Lewis in the news sports.

You know what?

If that happened right now in my Alexa, I wouldn't be so mad.

I haven't heard that album in a long time.

It's great.

Huey Lewis, everybody likes Huey Lewis, unless they're dum-dums.

He's fun.

He just wants to make us all happy and have a good time.

You know what he's got?

Good brows.

I thought you were going to say the power of love.

Well, he's got the power of love.

And and also

you know what the B-side for the power of love was?

What?

Best brows in rock.

So let's see.

He's got the brows, he's got the power of love, and a surprisingly credible background in pub rock.

That's exactly so.

And a few dollars in his pocket, courtesy the Ghostbusters theme song.

Yeah.

All right.

Now, listen, let's get back to Jeff.

Jeff,

believe me, yeah, it's it's annoying when people send you stuff that you don't ask for.

Whether it's a mailer or a menu or a, even if it's a thoughtful present, you know, who sends me thoughtful presents is Jesse Thorne.

Love getting his presents.

But I won't lie to you, Jesse.

There's a little bit of homework involved.

I got to open up the cardboard.

I got to recycle it.

I got to, you know, I got to process that stuff.

Right.

You know, and I love your presence.

But especially if it's something you didn't ask for at all, like two pillows from Amazon that don't belong to you, that's not on you.

That's frustrating.

I appreciate that.

It's not your fault.

And this is as close as possible, I think, to a victimless crime.

Because probably,

I mean, even if you imagine that the people who bought those pillows are poor orphans living by their wits and nimble fingers pickpocketing on the streets of

Burbank or whatever.

And they've somehow scraped together enough Bitcoin or whatever to order two pillows that they'll lay their tiny little cold heads on.

And then they didn't get them.

Well, all they did was probably click a different button on Amazon and say, hey, we didn't get our pillows.

And Amazon figured out, oh, we sent them to the wrong place.

Send them two more pillows.

It's all fine.

And Amazon didn't contact you, even after surely realizing they had sent those pillows to the wrong place.

So no big right.

Guess what?

Two free pillows.

Right, Jeff?

Right, Jeff?

Or wrong, Jeff?

Because there are two counter-considerations

that your wife has figured out, and I have figured out, and all of your wife's friends have figured out, but you haven't yet, so I'm going to tell them to you.

One consideration is moral.

Moral dimension.

Why not just return them?

Amazon makes it very easy to return stuff.

Especially if you weren't expecting to get it.

You open it up.

You're like, whoo, pillows I don't want.

Close it up, send it back.

It's easy to return stuff to Amazon unless you've taken the pillows out of the packaging and put your monster head and danter all over them.

Sure, it's a slight inconvenience, but the pillows are not yours.

You know that.

You know that.

Everyone knows that.

I wouldn't be able to lay my head down and sleep at night on stolen pillows.

But even if you are able to, Jeff, because you're not a moral creature, There's another consideration, a practical consideration.

Amazon knows you have them

because Amazon knows everything about you.

Amazon knows where you are right now.

And those orphans called in and said, we didn't get our pillows.

And they're like, oh, looks like Jeff got those.

Send some pillows to the orphans.

Let's keep Jeff's record on file because they know you've received stolen goods and didn't return them.

And I'm not going to say.

that Amazon

is a vengeful entity.

That would be anti-buzz marketing.

I'm also not going to say it because Amazon was an incredibly, incredibly generous marketer of Vacation Land for me, without me asking.

They did incredible stuff for that book.

So thank you, Amazon.

I'm just saying to you, Jeff, that maybe the next time you order a pair of gloves or a copy of Vacation Land, somewhere in a fulfillment center, a red light will go on, and maybe you won't get those gloves or those vacation lands, or you'll just get a box full of asps, venomous asps.

So don't test fate.

Get those pillows of those ill-gained pillows out of your life.

You can't return them now.

It's too late.

You've already put your head sweat all over them.

But maybe call around and see if

I'm not sure that a human shelter for people who are homeless will take old pillows, but I bet you an animal shelter would.

Call around and see if there's an animal shelter that'll take these pillows and do yourself and your karma a favor.

Here's something from Stacy.

Dearest Judge Hodgman, my husband and I are fans of yours, but you've let me down.

Oh, here we go.

My husband wrote to you some time ago about my whistling.

He asked that you order me to stop because he doesn't feel like my whistling skills are up to par, but you provided no resolution for us.

With this lack of an official ruling, he's forcing his own sense of justice in our household.

He's begun making farting sounds when I whistle to try to drown out my tune.

Please order him to enjoy my whistling.

Dearest Judge John Hodgman, I like, first of all, I enjoy that pandering.

But then all of a sudden,

all of a sudden, it's another case against me.

People like what they like, and you know what they don't like, Stacey?

You're whistling.

Let's listen to it again.

Okay, you need to whistle.

Okay, that's enough.

That's enough.

Okay, case closed.

Wow.

Case closed.

Indeed.

Wow.

Yeah, I remember remember that case.

And

so, where is the wife?

Because all I heard was a sick bird.

No, that was the wife.

Wow.

Yeah, I made my ruling on purpose, Stacey, because your whistling is bad.

And this is, you know, this is a sensitive podcast.

We try to hear it from all sides.

We try to understand why people are doing the things that they're doing.

We try to help them to understand each other.

But that doesn't mean we have no standards.

And sometimes helping someone else means hurting them a little bit by saying, you're no good at whistling.

And there's no way, just because you come back at me

with a complaint, am I going to overturn my own ruling and order your husband to enjoy something that not only he doesn't enjoy, which goes against settled law in this courtroom, but is intrinsically unenjoyable.

Now, is this rough?

Is this hard to hear?

Of course it was.

But it was also hard to hear when

Holly Hunter told William Hurt that his imposter syndrome was absolutely justified and real in broadcast news 1987,

one of the greatest movies of all time,

and a moment in cinematic history that I think about probably once a week

when William Hurt, who is the handsome, telegenic television news personality who, because he's so handsome and charming and affable, gets promoted to being the anchor at this local news station when he meets Holly Hunter, having been the sportscaster for two weeks, having never gone to college, knowing nothing about the news and admitting to her in her hotel room when they're about to hug and kiss.

He's like, I feel like a total fraud.

And she said, everyone does once in a while.

And he goes, no, I never went to college.

I don't write.

And I don't understand the news.

And Holly Hunter can't flirt with him anymore

and says to him something that was so powerful to me when I saw it when I was 16 years old.

She said, I agree with you.

You're not qualified.

So get qualified.

You can insist on being better prepared.

You don't have to leave it with just, eh, I don't write.

I'm not schooled.

I don't understand the news I'm reading, but at least I'm upset about it, folks.

What do you want anyway from me?

Permission to be a fake?

Stop whining.

Do something about it.

End End quote, do something about it, Stacey.

You want your whistling to be good?

That's on you, not on me.

You can't legislate good whistling.

Go take a whistling class.

Literally Google whistling class.

You will be surprised at the many, many free and paying courses that you can take locally and online.

And based on my research, they work.

And pretty soon you're going to be whistling beautifully.

You're going to be whistling,

I won't say Dixie.

Let's say you'd be whistling the state song of your state or Commonwealth.

This is the sound of a gabble.

That's Roadrunner by Jonathan Richmond, the official rock song of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in my heart at least.

This is the sound of a real gabble.

Luckily, that was borderline atonal, so we don't have to worry about As Cap and BMI coming after us.

Come at me, As Cap and BMI.

I had a physical theater teacher in high school

who

had been for many years a sort of classy clown,

not to be confused with a class clown.

Or murderous clown.

Yeah, he was in this thing called Pickle Family Circus, which was a very big deal in San Francisco in the 70s and 80s, mostly into the 90s, I guess.

And

he had performed in many crazy kind of cabaret situations.

And

the most crazy situation that he had ever been in was doing an elaborate clowning routine in the middle of a variety show, hurting his back very badly so that he almost couldn't walk, walking offstage into the wings, and there was one bench on which you could sit or lie down.

And he asked the person there whether he could sit or lie down there because he'd just been hurt.

And the person there was a professional whistler, a man man whose thing was he would go out and do opera arias whistling.

And he had played Woodstock in the Peanuts television.

I was just going to say, was he the guy on Peanuts?

Because that was some.

I remember seeing a profile of that whistler on like CBS Sunday morning or something around that time.

Anyway, that guy wouldn't give up the bench.

He wouldn't give up the bench because he also had to rest.

Yeah.

It's called rank.

Professional whistler, bold rank.

Okay,

let's take a quick break.

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

Snoopy, come home.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

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

Thank you so much for your support of this podcast and all of your favorite podcasts at maximumfun.org, and they are all your favorites.

If you want to join the many member supporters of this podcast and this network, boy, oh boy, that would be fantastic.

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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But made in isn't just for professional chefs.

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Jesse, the reviews are in My new super soft hoodie from Quince that I got at the beginning of the summer is indeed super soft.

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Oh, it's like a

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It's a stink-rejecting technology, John.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket.

I'm Jesse Thorne.

With me, Judge John Hodgman.

Here's something from Scott.

My wife and I will be having twin boys.

The problem we bring to you is in regards to the last names of our children.

We like to think of ourselves as progressive, but we don't like hyphenated last names.

We also don't like the patriarchal tradition of taking the man's surname.

We thought the best solution would be for one child to have my last name and the other to have my wife's.

But we've gotten a lot of pushback on this idea.

People generally think that the children will feel like one parent likes them more or that they'll be teased at school, but we just don't see it that way.

We think as long as they're loved, all will be fine.

Please inject some sage perspective into our conundrum.

So wait a minute.

So Scott

and his, Scott wants wants to reject the patriarchy, right?

So he doesn't want to give their twin boys his last name.

They don't want to hyphenate the last name, presumably because it becomes clunky.

And his wife, what is her name?

Is she named in this, or is she just

no?

Okay, she's of Scott.

Yeah.

Right.

So Scott and of Scott are thinking about giving their upcoming twin boys, soon to be born, different last names.

One being his last name, the other being hers.

Now, I I don't know if they're identical or not, doesn't look like we know, but I think the idea of identical twins, especially, but any twins, with different last names is perversely attractive.

It seems like phase one of an incredible lifelong prank.

I'm into it.

However,

your boys'

whole lives do not exist for my amusement, nor do they exist for yours.

And I gotta say, I think that this arrangement is gonna cause both both logistical and, to some degree, emotional confusion.

If you've got, like, if Jesse and I were twin brothers, oh, were it only so,

and Jesse's last name was Thorne and my last name was Hodgman, but we're brothers, that doesn't make any sense.

Sorry.

What do you think, Jesse?

Yes or no?

I wonder if they've considered making up a new name.

That's what my, I have an aunt

who I love very much named Aunt Gail.

And Gail

became what at the time was known as a militant lesbian in the early 1980s,

which is to say she was

very actively and ideologically feminist

at the same time as she came out as a lesbian.

And one of the things that she did was change her surname from her maiden name, which was Chase, my grandfather's name, to Dorita, Rita being my grandmother's first name.

And she still has that surname, and it has worked out exceptionally well for her.

That said, we did once have a situation on Jordan Jesse Go where someone called in and asked us to rename their family

when they were being married.

We thought of something and then they didn't use it.

So I do have a little bit of saltiness around this.

What was the name that you thought of?

Do you recall?

I believe we suggested the Rockets.

Their surname should be Rocket.

Well, here are the options that I'm going to give to Scott and of Scott, his wife.

One is, I think, Jesse Thorne's very wise suggestion.

And one that has definitely happened before.

It is not a hyphenated name, but sometimes people just combine their names to make a new name.

My acquaintance, I dare say, friend, the very fine playwright David Lindsay Aber.

Lindsay Aber is not hyphenated, but it is both of his and his wife, Chris Lindsay Abear's names combined.

So everything is now just Lindsay Abaer.

That's just the way it is.

That may sound too hyphenated for you.

You can come up with a completely whole new name,

which, I think, based on precedent from Jordan Jesse Goh,

if we were to name it, it wouldn't be the Rockets.

I think it would be the Super Podcasts.

You could name your twin boys John and Jesse Super Podcast.

That's a good idea.

But one option that I noticed, Scott, that you didn't even bring up as a possibility, Mr.

Sensitive, is just giving them your wife's last name.

Your solution is to give one boy your wife's last name and the other boy your last name because you've still got to get your last name in there.

So let's face it, dude, patriarchy lives on in your house.

I would suggest that you give them your wife's last name and give them your last name as a middle name and just use all three names the whole time without a hyphen.

Just make it all part of their name, like David Foster Wallace.

Imagine that David Foster Wallace was one set of twins where his mom's last name was Wallace and his dad's last name was Foster, and his brother's name was Carl, Carl Foster Wallace.

Just like that.

That's the template.

Or

one other possibility that I will allow:

give them your

last name as a first name, which is a not uncommon thing to do.

If a woman takes her husband's name in marriage and they have a child, to give that child the husband's last name, but as that child's first name, the woman's birth last name, maiden name, as they say.

And so it would be, what was your militant lesbian aunt's original last name?

Chase.

Chase.

Right.

So her child might be named, for example, Chase Dorita, which is a pretty cool name.

That is a pretty cool name.

And since they're twins, what you can do is

let's say, Scott, that your last name is...

What's the last name?

Jesse?

Thompson.

Hunsucker?

Yeah, Hunsucker.

That's exactly what I said.

Yeah, and your wife's last name is Smith.

So

son one would be named Hunsucker I Smith, and son two would be named Hunsucker II Smith.

Those are good names.

The point is,

I agree with the people who disagree with you.

It will be confusing to give your twin sons different last names.

You got to settle on something.

Unless your wife is totally in agreement with you on this and then go do whatever you want.

But I really do think of all of these options,

John and Jesse Super Podcast is the way to go.

Speaking of Jesse, we've got something from a listener named Jesse, who is not me.

Oh.

I don't listen.

On Friday evenings, my wife Jenna teaches a body pump class at our local Y.

What if this was from you?

What if this was a secret wife?

I've got to go to the Y for body pump tonight.

It sounds like

it doesn't sound.

It sounds like you have to get something out of your body or else you'll die.

Frankly, it sounds like something that would have gone down at the Y in like the early to mid-70s.

This is about an hour of cardio strength exercises.

Okay, got it.

After the class, she meets my daughter and me at a casual pizza place for dinner.

We usually grab a quick spot at the bar and often get the same server.

Every time we go, Jenna tells the server and almost everyone she talks to, she's very sorry for being sweaty and gross because she just came from the gym.

I believe that while she may be self-conscious, it only draws more unnecessary attention to herself.

Also, she may be in gym clothes and feel this way, but she doesn't smell or look bad or out of place.

By apologizing all the time, I believe it actually makes it more embarrassing for her and us.

I request you order Jenna to stop apologizing for herself when we meet for dinner, after her gym class, when there is no apparent offense given or taken.

Hmm.

This guy's really enjoying being a dude.

Oh, tell me why.

I didn't get that take.

John, think of all of the male-female romantic couples that exist in your life.

I thought you meant in all time.

Yeah.

I was going to go into this deep fugue state.

I was going to go into a coma for five years as every romantic couple flashed before me.

John Hodgman ascends and becomes a watcher.

Uatu the watcher.

That is the role that I've decided I would like to take in the Marvel cinematic universe.

I've given up on MODOC.

I'm ready to be Uatu the Watcher.

I'm not shaving my head, though, because that would be on the nose.

Jesse, go.

Imagine all the romantic couples.

So imagine all the romantic couples you know.

In how many of them, in what proportion of them, is the man the more socially sensitive?

I see what you mean now.

Okay, now, secondary question:

In what proportion of them is

social

cohesion,

coherence, abidance by sometimes unfair social norms more expected of the man than the woman?

Good point.

I'm just saying this guy's really trusting his instincts on this one.

Now that you've opened my eyes to this lens that I should have been looking through the entire time, may I add an observation?

Sure.

Between men and women, which one is more likely to disregard the terrible smell of sweat?

And also, which one is more likely to consider it socially acceptable to arrive at a public establishment in sweaty gym clothes?

Which is more likely to be judged by their appearance by others?

I get your point now, Jesse, and thank you for helping me confront the patriarchy on my own podcast.

I will say this.

It does really hinge, though, on whether Jesse is a reliable narrator when it comes to his wife's stinkiness and appearance.

I mean, if she's sweaty and gross,

then she should not be showing up at the restaurant at all.

She should be going and taking a shower before coming there to the restaurant.

And if she is not sweaty and gross, legitimately, objectively not sweaty and gross, if his assessment of her smell and appearance is accurate, then I would say I would agree with him that there's no reason to introduce the idea of your smell to your server and your fellow diners.

Most people don't care.

And this is something that guys,

I think, intuit because it's been reinforced throughout all their lives.

But I think that it is a truism across the board.

Most people aren't paying as much attention to you and your smells as much as you worry they are.

So long as you're within a reasonable range of socially normal, acceptable smells and looks.

Like if you don't smell like, well, you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Body body stuff.

And as long as there isn't a sufficient critical mass of somewhat smelly people,

a sort of comic con

that

concentrates the accumulated medium odors into a large odor.

Yeah.

You know, it's like most people aren't noticing what kind of shoes you're wearing.

Most people aren't, you know, obviously this is different for men than for women, but I think it's the case that, you know, people aren't, in general, interrogating your appearance and your smell at the same level that you are yourself.

And there's no reason to introduce the idea of your smelliness since most people, unless you're really smelly, most people probably are not thinking about it.

And in a restaurant environment,

you know, your server and the people around you don't even want to start thinking about your smells.

Because it becomes, then you get phantom smells.

Just like that time, I was seated in an adult steak restaurant for an adult midday steak meal with some adult middle-aged dude friends of ours.

And a bunch of babies came and sat down at the next table.

And even though I'm sure they're perfectly clean babies, it was so out of context that all I could smell was diapers for the rest of the meal.

And I've changed a lot of diapers, but you know what?

They were cute babies.

They were cute babies.

I take it back.

Everything was fine.

It was fun watching those babies eat those huge hunks of steak.

Don't do that.

Don't feed your babies hunks of steak, you guys.

At least order them well.

I mean, in no other circumstance would I recommend that, but if you're going to feed the steak to the baby,

if it's going to take care of that whole porter house,

should be careful about foodborne disease.

Look, all right, look, I'm going to be honest.

Don't bring your babies to a midtown steakhouse where middle-aged men are meeting to drink a a martini in the middle of the day because they're getting laid off right and left and don't know whether their lives are going to go.

I would add to that and just say, overall, don't go to Midtown unless you have to.

Yeah, that's exactly good point.

Good point.

I guess what we're saying is be wary of context.

And

Jesse's wife, if Jesse's correct and you don't smell bad, Do yourself the favor and don't introduce that as a topic of conversation.

You're probably great.

But on the other hand,

what if Jesse's wrong?

What if his wife does smell bad?

I mean, the fact of the matter is, if you're teaching a body pump course, an hour's worth of high cardio exercise, if after an hour you haven't put some sweat out,

I'm not sure you should be getting money from the why for that.

Going harder.

You don't want to be going to the Y and pulling a Bill de Blasio, who I see at the Park Slope Y every morning doing his gentle stretches

instead of Mayer and he's got a long way to stretch.

That's true.

He's a big fellow.

He's half giraffe, you know.

Maybe he needs to keep limber.

If his nickname isn't already stretch,

I think his nickname should be Giraffe.

That's what the Bronx borough president calls him.

Yeah.

Hey, get in here, Giraffey.

We're playing stickball.

Such rivalries among the borough presidents.

that was a perfect bronx accent yeah that's right

but jenna if you're teaching your class correctly

and you're getting all sweaty then you shouldn't be apologizing even in a casual pizza place you should be hitting the showers

after

i go to the showers at the why now it took me a long

many many years of of deep psychological work and trauma to be able to be nude in the locker room at the Y for me.

It's not a comfortable place for me.

But now I've gotten used to it.

I take a shower after I work out.

I put the sweat out.

I shower it off.

I get dressed.

I listen to the old men sing doo-wop down there.

And added bonus, last week, for the first time in my

almost 25 years of living in New York City,

my naked body was seen by the mayor of New York.

So that classic rite of passage.

That's how you know you're finally a real New Yorker and not a New Englander anymore.

Yeah, I feel a sense of liberation and it makes me feel very cosmopolitan as well.

It's very important.

I mean, I think that's a central to what it means to be not just a New Yorker, but an American, to have our elected leaders see our bodies in their totality.

That's right.

And, you know, I think it was just a coincidence after years of seeing the mayor at the Y

and him sort of like brushing past me and never saying anything, even though I used to be on television sometimes, which I took to be a real affront.

A couple of days after he saw me in the nude, he's walking out.

He goes, hey, buddy.

Finally.

That's a big upgrade.

Finally, I get something out of this guy.

Anyway, to my neighbor, Bill de Blasio, thanks for keeping it real and coming back to the Parks Club Y.

It's always a thrill to see you there.

To my neighbor, Chris Claremont, the greatest writer of X-Men of all time.

Great to see you there at the Y sometimes.

We have a good time at the Y.

We take showers there.

Maybe I'll take a body pump class sometime.

But, Jenna, listen, I got to find in favor of your husband.

If you stink, take a shower.

If you don't stink, stop talking about it.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Can I put an addendum on that decision?

Yeah, of course.

The patriarchy, Jenna, is neither your fault nor your responsibility.

We all share that fault and responsibility, especially the dude ones.

Yeah, I'll take that.

I'll wear that cloak of shame.

Unless I'm in the shower and the why, then I'm just going to go totally nude.

Let's take a break and hear about some other great Max Fun shows.

We'll be back in just a second.

I love Max Fun shows.

I want to hear about them.

Yeah.

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.

This week, we're clearing the docket.

I'm Jesse Thorne.

With me, Judge John Hodgman, who you might know from the Park Slope YMCA.

Mm-hmm.

Hi, by the way, I'm Jesse Thorne of the South Pasadena YMCA.

Here's something from Megan.

I'm the mom of a family of sweet, smart introverts.

I don't like alcohol, and caffeine makes me jittery.

At a restaurant, I often order plain water with fresh-cut lemon.

I then add a packet of sugar.

It's light, refreshing, and zero calories.

Nope, not true.

Nope, there's calories in sugar.

That's where they come from.

Yeah, it's like one of their top places where they keep them.

My husband and children, ages 13, 15, 26, are appalled because I'm not paying for what they refer to as lemonade.

I'd be happy to pay for it, but these restaurants don't offer zero-calorie non-caffeinated iced drinks for sale.

I don't flaunt my drink, only request more water as needed.

Since they're a bunch of shy introverts, they're afraid I'm somehow cheating, stealing, and or drawing attention to myself, all equally horrifying.

Am I in the right, or am I truly the shame of my family?

First of all, I only half listened to that because coming back from the break when you introduced me as John Hodgman of the Park Slope YMCA, I thought you were going to say John Hodgman of Parks and Wreck, referring to my one episode on Parks and Wreck when I had five lines.

And that immediately got me thinking about a sitcom set in the men's locker room of the Park Slope YMCA, in which I am the star or co-star, and it's just an ensemble comedy of nude middle-aged men all the time.

You know what it makes me think of, Judge Hodgman?

No.

A world in which I am castable, even on a sitcom casting for NPR hosts.

If you want to be

in my locker room,

it will be called Locker Room Talk.

Uh-huh.

And you want to be in my ensemble comedy of nude men, you're in it.

Thank goodness.

Because

what I see in the locker room at the YMCA is such a variety of male physical weirdness

that it's really like you really get to see,

A, the true strangeness of the human body.

And it's reassuring that you're not alone in your strangeness, which is always great.

And it also gives you so many more reasons to feel apologetic to women.

Now you understand what they've been going through.

Women and anyone, I should say, who occasionally has to hug and kiss a nude man.

That's a lot.

I love that when you go to the YMCA, there will always be one 87-year-old man who's wearing slacks and a dress shirt and slowly turning the wheels on the recumbent stationary bike.

Yeah.

Like that man is so wonderful to me.

I know.

Just on the floor doing curls of dumbbells while wearing wingtips.

Old abused wingtips, his gym wingtips.

Yeah, it's incredible.

The personalities, those guys who are down there,

they truly are.

They're singing the doo-wop and they're talking about movies and their girlfriends and they're all

50 to 80 years old.

They've seen it all and they don't care what you look like.

That's a great place to be psychologically for me.

Anyway, sorry, Megan,

here's the deal.

First of all, maybe you're talking about a packet of a sugar substitute.

Like, I'm going to go ahead and buzz market it because I'm not going to get pushed around by that email guy.

Maybe a Splenda or a Stevia or a Sweetenlow.

Is that still a thing?

Yeah, I think so.

But if not, if you're really putting a packet of sugar in there, that is not zero calories.

That's where calories come from.

So, first, that's a little

nutritional information break for you.

That's a caloric distillate.

Yeah.

But set that aside.

If you are combining complimentary water, which I hope is complimentary,

complimentary lemon with complimentary sugar packets from the table, you're combining three complimentary things.

That's free for you.

That is fine.

Your kids, ages 13, 15, and 26, quite a spread, Medican.

Well done.

are just getting on their mom's nerves for their own amusement.

But I will also argue that most restaurants do offer zero-calorie, non-caffeinated iced drinks for sale called iced herbal tea or iced

mint tea, which I guess is an herbal tea too.

But I see nothing wrong with combining a little free water with a little free lemon, with a little free splenda packet, or whatever it is.

You can even put some free salt and pepper in there.

It's all for you.

Enjoy.

But tip your servers.

My friends from from New York City, the internet celebrities,

Dallas and Raffi.

Dallas and Giraffe, the mayor of New York City?

No, no, no, no, no.

Oh, I'm just different.

Different guy.

He's saying baby beluga.

Uh-oh, I apologize.

Yo, Raffy.

Yeah, so my friends, Dallas and Raffi, have this thing called Internet Celebrities, and they made a video called Ghetto Big Mac, which is about how to go into the McDonald's and trick them into serving you a Big Mac while only paying for a cheeseburger or whatever

through a system of requesting modifications to your cheeseburger.

It somehow magically becomes a Big Mac.

Like you get, you can I get the sauce on the side and then can I get two buns?

I don't remember how it works.

I gotta watch the video.

This is one of the first instances on the Judge John Hodgman program of me liking someone who's trying to beat the system.

But I don't think she's beating the system.

I think if she's bringing her own packet of sugar or sugar substitute in for this purpose,

then she knows she's sneaking.

She's sneaking a thing.

I'm not sure.

I just presume she was taking it off the table.

But if she's sneaking some sugar in, if you know you're sneaking, then you're sneaking.

Think about that.

Oh, wow.

Well, it's like that double pillows creep.

He knows he's sneaking.

Don't pretend you're not sneaking when you're sneaking.

We'll shine the light on you.

okay so we had an episode from sf sketch fest on the show recently and i said that one day my dream and this is absolutely real is to name a dog hambone sure i recently met a dog who by the way who was half poodle and half german shepherd

and it looked like a two-thirds size Irish wolfhound.

Maybe half-size Irish wolfhound.

It was fantastic dog.

Fantastic.

And I wanted to name it Hambone very badly.

Well, if you quietly name that dog Hambone just for yourself, then that's real.

Oh, good.

Thank you.

That's one of the unreleased chapters in The Secret.

If you name a dog inside your head, that becomes its name.

A listener named William wrote in to us about another pet named Hambone.

This is what he had to say.

I wish to present to you my cat, Hamish.

No, thank you.

I already have two dogs, but I appreciate it.

My sister adopted Hamish, a two-year-old Persian, when she was studying in Australia.

When she brought him home and introduced him to our family, my loving late grandmother couldn't learn the name Hamish and instead called him Hambone.

Needless to say, it stuck.

He's more frequently called Hambone than by any other name.

Here are some pictures of the cat and one of him with my sister.

He's a real bundle of love.

We'll have those pictures, I presume, on the Judge John Hodgman Instagram.

Jennifer's nodding yes.

Yeah.

Of course, they'll be there.

Judge John Hodgman Instagram, but I want to take a look at him with you in a minute.

He looks like a disgruntled old man, but he's one of the most gentle, cuddly cats I've ever known.

He has an Instagram account.

His username is sir underscore Hamish.

If you desire more content of the lovely hand bones, I hope Jesse gets a hand bone of his own one day.

Our thanks to William for that.

I'm going to go.

I'm going to look at this Instagram.

Yeah, let's take a look.

William.com slash sir

underscore Hamish.

Let's see what this dog is, what this cat is.

Ladies and gentlemen, what you're hearing now are the sounds of Jesse Thorne and Pure Delight responding to photos

of a cat named Hamish.

If you've been listening to the Judge John Hodgman podcast for a while,

there have been more than one occasion where Jesse Thorne has reacted to the photo of a dog or a cat or other cute animal.

It's one of the greatest delights of the podcast.

And this is John Hodgman here with a special message for you at the end of March when this podcast will be aired.

We're coming up on Max Fun Drive.

when we'll be asking for your donations in the future.

And one of the benefits of donating to Max Fun and the Judge John Hodgman podcast is you get special bonus donor content.

That might be a special episode that no one else gets to hear.

I'm here to promise you right now that we're sending Jennifer Marmor back through the archives to create a supercut of Jesse Thorne reacting to photos of dogs and cats and will only be available.

to donors to the Max Fun Drive coming up this April.

So mark your calendars and get ready to make your pledge because you don't want to miss out on this.

What are you looking at, Jesse?

He's one of those grumpy-faced cats, you know?

Yeah.

And then there's one picture where I presume the lady who wrote into us is holding him from behind and sort of lifting him up with his arms up in the air, like in sort of like cat jazz hands.

And he looks so mad about it.

He's like, I'm not celebrating anything.

The Jesse Thorne Reacts to Animals Super Cut.

I am presuming it's going to be about nine weeks long, only available as a donor bonus at Max Fun Drive coming up this April.

Well, that went about as well as it could possibly go.

Thanks.

Go ahead.

Where he's in the hibachi.

Maybe I'll just take the credits this time.

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

The show is produced by Jennifer Marmer.

Follow us on Twitter.

Jesse's at Jesse Thorne.

I'm at Hodgman, H-O-D-G-M-A-N.

We're on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohnhodgman tweets, hashtag jjh-o, j-j-ho, and check out the maximum fund subreddit to discuss this episode.

Submit your cases, as always, to maximumfund.org slash jjho or email me, john hodgman, directly, hodgman at maximumfund.org.

What do you got there, Jesse?

Now I'm looking at one.

It's the first one on the whole thing.

And it's just him staring contemplatively into a hallway mirror.

Like, who have you become?

Thanks very much for another episode of Judge John Hodgman.

Jesse Thorne, and we'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast, listeners all.

Goodbye.

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