He Bed, She Bed

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, he bed, she bed.

Tom brings the case against his wife, Miranda.

Miranda complains Tom's snoring and other nighttime habits keep her awake.

She wants to start sleeping in a separate bedroom.

Tom is opposed.

Who's right?

Who's wrong?

Only one man can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

As for my being half-witted, well, what can I say?

Except that I have survived to middle age with half my wits while thousands have died with all of theirs intact.

Evidently, quality of wits is more important than quantity, senators.

I shall do nothing unconstitutional.

I shall appear at the next session of this fake internet court, where you may confirm me in my position or not, as you wish, but if it pleases you not to, explain your reasons to my bailiff, not me.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, swear the litigants in.

Please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God or whatever?

Yes.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge Sean Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he, a lonely, individual man, somehow sleeps in two beds at once?

Yes.

I do.

Very well, Judge Hodgman.

Tom and Miranda, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment in one of yours' favors.

Can either of you name the piece of culture that I paraphrased as I entered the courtroom.

Tom, we'll say you go first.

What's your guess?

I would like to say that all guesses are wrong, but that's not a legitimate guess.

No, that is throwing, that is being playful in my court.

No, that's not playful.

What's the word I'm looking for, Jesse?

Cheeky.

Too cheeky, Tom.

You don't get to guess.

You're wrong, Miranda.

I was going to go with the

Supreme Court justice confirmation hearing.

I don't know which one.

I have no idea, honestly.

Let's pick one.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Okay.

Confirmation hearing.

So that works.

Okay.

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

We'll put that in the guess book.

All right, Tom.

I'm sorry I got mad at your cheekiness.

You can guess.

What's your guess?

Um, some senator being a jerk, I guess.

I don't know, some senator being a jerk or something.

I don't know.

I'll put that in the guess book.

And they say that Americans lack faith in their civic institutions.

It is not some senator being a jerk, nor is it Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

It is Derek Jacobi, the famous actor, playing the role of Claudius in the TV miniseries I, Claudius, based on the novels I Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves that was telecast by the BBC and public television here in the United States in the 1970s,

traumatizing a generation of children as

they overheard in their parents watch John Hurt as Caligula

eat his own baby.

There was some weird stuff that happened in that iClaudius.

Have you guys seen iClaudius?

No.

No, I've heard of it, but never seen it.

We're here, by the way, in Orland, Maine, at W-E-R-U-F-M with guest engineer Joel Mann.

Joel Mann, you ever see iClaudius?

No.

All right, moving on.

I Claudius is one of the greatest miniseries of all times.

It tells the story of the unlikely rise to power of Claudius, who was the nephew of Emperor Augustus.

He became emperor unexpectedly after Caligula and some other emperors pooped the bed, even though he was lame and stuttering, he was incredibly intelligent, though he was thought to be insane, and he ended up being a pretty good emperor.

And it's an amazing story.

Derek Jacobi's in it.

Brian Blessed is in it.

Sean Phillips plays Livia.

It's incredible acting, John Hurt, and also, as a bonus, Patrick Stewart with hair.

So you guys should go check that out right away.

The reason I brought it up for this case is that it was while watching I Claudius the first time, at one point, I believe that it is Sean Phillips' character, Livia, who is the wife of the Emperor Augustus, says to Brian Blessed, the Emperor, maybe I will visit you in your bedroom tonight.

And that's when I realized these people have separate bedrooms.

That's incredible.

It can be done.

The perfect arrangement for a marriage.

Now, I couldn't verify that that scene exists.

I remember Livia saying that to Augustus.

Augustus may have said it to Livia.

If anyone out there can find the scene where Olivia and Augustus reveal they have separate bedrooms and send it to me at hodgman at maximumfund.org

as a short video clip, we can put it up on the new Instagram account for judgejohnhodgman, instagram.com slash judgejohnhodgman, and I'll send you something from my office.

But all games and prizes aside, let us now come to your failing marriage, failing because you share a bed.

Tom, you bring Miranda to court because she wants to kick you out of bed.

Tell me more about what's going on.

All right, right.

So we've been married for over a decade now and shared the same bed, and we're pretty happy.

And

Let the record show that Tom assessed his own marriage as, we're pretty happy.

You can't edit this in post, right?

Go on.

So

so in the last few years,

I've started to snore, and there are several other things that I do that seem to drive Miranda bonkers.

And she is someone who takes her sleep very seriously.

And

it's understandable.

She needs sleep.

But I feel like her wish to sleep completely separately for the rest of our marriage is

a bit too far.

And that is the wish, Miranda?

You wish to move Tom out of your marital bed into a separate room for sleeping?

Yeah, but yes, that's correct.

But I feel like he takes it too far when he says for the rest of our marriage.

Oh, how long would you like him to get his snores and farts out of your room?

Well,

I mean, yes, I would like to, for practical purposes, weeknights when I have to get up and work the next day, have something going on, and I really need to sleep.

I would like to have separate bedrooms.

But that doesn't mean that every night for the rest of our marriage do I want to sleep separately from him.

What is it that Tom does that's so disturbing to your sleep, Miranda?

There's a bevy of things that he does.

Bring on the bevy.

Yeah.

Snores, right.

What else?

And the snores are pretty unusual, in my opinion.

I've never seen anybody snore like this before.

You're not going to get out of this without doing an imitation of it.

Okay.

All right.

Well, my favorite snore is one

that

it's kind of, it's not even like a snore.

It's like he's just blowing air out of his lips like he's making a little kiss, but it happens over and over again.

And it's just this little

over and over again.

Yeah, I know what you're saying.

And you can confirm that that air is coming out of his lips.

Yes, yes, I can confirm that.

Okay, we'll call that flappy lip exhalation.

What else?

He

moves around a lot.

He's just a very active sleeper.

His body is all, he's always moving around,

flipping over, you know, that kind of thing.

He gets up a lot in the middle of the night to use the restroom um

and he's loud about that i'd like to contest the a lot maybe once okay once but it's loud um i don't want to hear about his restroom trips being loud

okay so there first of all he tom doesn't do anything quietly nothing and former roommates can attest to that his family could attest to that and getting out of bed to go to the restroom in the middle of the night is no different there's a loud thump when he gets out of the bed he thumps thumps around and makes a lot of noise when he gets into the bathroom.

I don't want to hear any more of what the sounds after that.

I can only imagine.

And then coming back to bed is a real issue because we have two dogs.

And every time he comes to the bathroom.

What are your dogs' names and what kind of dogs are they?

We have a Shih Tzu and a Yorkie.

And their names are Liza Minelli and Rosemary Clooney.

Sure.

Yeah.

Pretty adorable.

Oh, they're adorable.

They're the cutest dogs in the world.

But he gets in the bed and then he wants to kiss the dogs and talk to them and give them, you know, pet them in the middle of the night.

And that's a long, drawn-out process.

And I'm a light sleeper.

So when he does that, I'm waiting for him to get back in bed and get settled.

So I'm awake the whole time he's doing that.

Right.

So what we got is a couple of these.

No, there's more than that.

There's more snores than that.

Give me a real one.

Okay, so like

his major snore, which is super annoying, and does not, I've tried earplugs, and it does not block it out because it's a vibration.

I don't know if I can make it because it's like a, it's like a,

I can feel it.

I can't just hear it.

Miranda?

I don't know if I could, okay.

Miranda, do your best.

Okay.

Oh, God.

It's kind of like that.

It's pretty good.

Okay, thank you.

And it's just like one long tone, one long.

No, it's like that,

and then there will be a breath, and then he'll do it again.

So it's sort of rhythmic?

Oh, yeah, yeah, very rhythmic.

Is it something, would you say, that a deaf person could put their hand on a speaker and then dance to?

Easily.

Easily.

Tom, do you dispute these charges?

I would say that they are true, but I would say they're not entirely accurate.

You guys, you do not know how excited I am about this case.

You know, many, many cases, many, many petitions are made to this fake court, and the court passes on most of them because they're almost always about,

my husband won't watch the TV show I watch the way I want it to be watched.

I can't, I love you guys, but I can't hear any more of those.

I've already talked about it.

People shouldn't watch television together ever, I guess, anymore.

This one, I mean, the court has a stated position.

I believe I laid this out in the Judge John Hodgman Hodgman New York Times Magazine short column, in which I said the appropriate, first of all, is settled law that all married couples should have king beds because they should be sleeping as far away from each other as possible.

And that the ideal marital arrangement would be separate, not just rooms, but separate sleeping villas

across from each other, across a small plaza with a reflecting pool in it.

That's my ideal.

So that you can visit each other from time to time.

Now, that said, I am a married person, and I do not sleep in a separate room from my wife.

But now I have an opportunity to force someone else to do it if the case is made.

And that is the case you have to make, Miranda.

Okay.

Will I order your husband to sleep in another room?

Tom, you don't want to sleep in another room.

Tell Miranda why not?

So my issue is that I love her very much.

And I, how should I put this?

The challenge I have is that being separated from her, it's not that being separated from her would break my heart just not spending every moment of the day together with her, but there's something very specific about sharing a bed with your partner that you don't do in any other relationship in your life.

When you have a really good friend who you spend a lot of time with, there's lots of things you do.

You can go out to eat, you can go out to watch movies, there's all kinds of things you can do.

Yeah, but you don't get sharing.

You don't get vertical and drool on each other.

That's true.

That is true.

Exactly.

Yes.

Can you, by the way, let my three-year-old know about how exclusive that sleeping-in-a-bed relationship is?

Well, we're child-free, so that isn't really an issue for us.

But

my argument effectively is that sharing a bed is something that's very, in my opinion, very special.

And it's something that, you know, people in relationships do.

There's something very intimate about sleeping next to someone.

You're in a very vulnerable state, and it really shows a shine of trust and love.

And for me, not being able to just roll over in the middle of the night and put my arm around Miranda or, you know, just know that she's there to feel the heat of her body next to me or, you know, to get poked in the back by one of her books that she has strewn about the bed,

that's something that I would miss greatly.

And sleeping by myself would be very lonely and I don't think I'd sleep well.

Now, I do understand that I'm disturbing her sleep with my sleeping like a crazy person habits,

but I have been trying to

alter those over the last few days and weeks.

She's rolling her eyes.

And

I feel that sharing a bed is important for me in my relationship.

Well, first of all, let me compliment you on the wild shift of tone from feeling the heat of her body to feeling the poke of the many books she leaves spoon about in the bed.

I've never seen

a switch in narrative go from erotica to petty complaints.

I'm trying to tell a story.

Yeah, all right.

Basically, you're painting a word picture, that's for sure.

What size bed do you have?

Ugh, we currently have a queen.

You guys, I know, I know, we know

you

do you, Miranda.

Do you think having a king-size bed would alleviate this issue?

I think it would help with, I think, like a mattress that has the motion, you know, the motion dampening transference might help.

The inertial dampener, as they say, and start taking next generation.

Yes.

I think that might help with a lot of like the moving and things like that.

But the problem that remains is the snoring.

We just can't seem to get past that one.

So, I mean, even with a king-sized bed, I'm still going to hear him and feel his snores.

That's true.

A king-sized bed is not a kind of silence.

Tom, you snore, dude.

What have you done to stop the snoring?

So I've read a lot about it.

Apparently, there's not a lot you can do.

There's a lot of homeopathic nonsense you can buy that the internet tries to sell you.

No strips and lozenges and different exercises you can do.

And there are some things I have done to cut down.

What have you done?

I have slowed down having

wine or something before I go to bed.

You know, I used to have a glass of wine.

I try to finish it off earlier in the night because I know that alcohol can exacerbate snoring.

I try not to just drink as much in general in the evenings so that I don't have to get up in the middle of the night to use the facilities.

I've tried many different sleeping positions.

It used to work kind of, but it doesn't really work well.

I do get thumped a lot in the middle of the night by Miranda to wake me up, and apparently I talk to myself quite a bit when I do that.

What does he say, Miranda?

So this is probably my favorite, even though it's obnoxious, it's one of my favorite ridiculous things that Tom does.

Tom,

when you let him know he's snoring, he can't just roll over and let it go.

He wants to have a conversation about it, which he never remembers the next day.

But it's always this conversation of,

I'll punch him or, you know, thump him or whatever just to get him to stop snoring.

And he'll go, what?

And I'll be like, you were snoring.

And I'll be like, I was?

And I'll be like, yes, you were snoring.

And he, he's, no, I wasn't.

He wants to have a full argument about whether or not he was snoring

while he's in this sleepy state.

Can I tell you something, Miranda?

I've had that argument.

I am a snorer, and I've denied snoring.

What is that?

Now, do you remember it the next day?

Yeah, well, I wouldn't.

I mean, obviously, I'm remembering it right now.

Okay, okay.

And the reason I do is that I film every night I sleep and review the tapes.

That's how I do it.

Good idea.

That's a good idea.

Good plan.

Good plan.

Let's take a quick recess and hear about what else is going on in the Maximum Fun Network.

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Court is back in session.

You're listening to He Bed, She Bed.

Miranda wants to try sleeping in separate beds, but her husband, Tom, is against it.

Tom, I have to interject here and ask you about

the snoring solutions that you dismissed as homeopathic nonsense.

Yes.

You included a physical solution, a non-homeopathic solution, nose strips.

Have you ever used a nose strip?

Yes, I actually have.

I work in the sporting goods field, and I see a lot of this stuff that they use for different athletes and stuff.

And those nose strips, from the times that I've used them and from the people that I've worked with, you put a nose strip on the bridge of your nose and it supposedly pulls your passageways open to allow more air in.

But the conceit of it is that you have a large piece of cartilage under there that doesn't move.

So I don't see how the breathe-right strips would do anything.

And also the snoring is actually the soft palate of the back of my throat.

So if I stuck a nose strip down my throat, that might help.

I'm sure Miranda has often fantasized about doing a bad story.

I'm sure she has fantasized shoving a book down my throat.

I also have never seen him wear a nose strip to bed.

Yeah, have you tried a nose strip or are you just one of these armchair debunkers of nose strips?

Okay, she's pointing at me.

That's accurate.

I've used them for breathing while exercising, and I didn't see any noticeable difference.

I would be willing to try them while I sleep.

That would be fun.

Well, I'll tell you right now, since you already mentioned the brand name, and we're not going to get any money from it.

Oh, I'm sorry.

But I can still say I've used those.

As a snorer, I've used those.

And they do definitely improve airflow into my head holes, but they do nothing for snoring for the precise reason that you said.

That's happening in your throat meat way back.

Yeah.

Did you ever try one of those

weirdo mouthpieces that my doctor tried to push on me?

It was like a retainer that holds your mouth open in a certain way all night long.

No, I've actually, I've seen those.

I believe one of the McElroy brothers uses like a C-PAP machine or something like that as well.

Yeah, but this is similar, but...

Yeah, this isn't a machine that you hook up to.

This is just like a like retainer but it's not a retainer it's something you put in your mouth and holds your jaw in a certain position that supposedly opens that back of the throat airway such a way that it mitigates snoring and my doctor probably end up just trying to talk about it in my sleep yeah my doctor well you and you wouldn't be able to because you'd be like

my mouth

my doctor so you know i said i i have snoring problems and my wife is mad at me about it and he said well you should put this thing in your mouth all night long and i'm like that's never i'm not going that's i'm not going to do do that.

So, for all I know, that could solve both of our problems

out of pure pride.

Maybe we should spend more of our time just listing which elements of medicine the two of you have contempt for,

just to get it out on the table.

It's definitely a delicate subject because, as Tom pointed out, you know, sleep is when you are at your most vulnerable.

You have no control over your body,

conscious control over your body.

Everything is being let out at that point.

We've already discussed the farting, but also the noises and the talk and the unconscious talk.

I mean, my favorite, the greatest moment of sleep talking in my marriage was when my wife uttered many years ago, it's a supermarket caper.

In the middle of her sleep, when my wife uttered, in the middle of her sleep, it's a supermarket caper.

And Fran is in charge.

Fran being our now deceased,

very lovable, very stupid cat.

So, you know,

sleep is embarrassing.

And when a doctor tells you that you have to wear, you know, a headgear in order to sleep properly, you're trying to hold on to as much pride as you can at that point.

You're just trying to have a shred of dignity and wearing headgear, just or and wearing, you know, attaching things to your face, even though it might be medically necessary in a CPAP machine is for certain people and maybe even for me, but it's just hard to accept the indignity that you now need to wear certain stuff in your mouth in order to sleep properly.

But that doesn't, I'm not suggesting, Tom, that excuses you in any way.

I understand.

Yeah.

The reason that I have not been kicked out into another room, although occasionally my wife has left the room and gone to another room to sleep.

But the fact is, and I'm sorry,

she snores as badly as I do.

So it evens out.

Is it like a mutually assured destruction situation?

That's exactly what it is.

No one has stronger claim to the bed because we both are equally disruptive to the other person.

And guess what?

We do kind of like being near each other.

Yeah.

That's what's holding back our development as humans, you guys.

This need to be near each other while we sleep.

You don't even notice the person's there.

Except when you want to feel the heat of Miranda's skin or whatever weird thing you wanted to say.

Miranda,

tell me, obviously,

Tom's vampiric need for your body heat is not going to change your mind on this.

So explain to me where he would move if I were to find in your favor.

We have a couple of rooms that are used for various purposes that we could repurpose into.

I have a gym that we could easily add, either add a bed to or move some stuff out and put a bed in.

You're going to make Tom sleep next to the rowing machine?

Next to my weightlifting gear.

Yeah.

Where do you guys live?

We live in Apex, North Carolina.

Oh.

Peak of good living.

The whole town is a pun.

It is.

North Carolina, though, no wonder you have extra rooms.

That's nice.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't like that gym idea at all, so that's a non-starter.

Give me another option.

I kind of like the idea of Tom pounding some iron in his sleep.

Could definitely be entertaining.

I like the idea of Tom sleeping in one of those spinal inversion machines.

Oh, yeah.

Hanging from his feet.

Oh, get some of those Batman shoes.

Yeah, gravity boots.

What else you got?

Okay, so we have a bonus room off of the master bedroom that we're currently using kind of as a library to keep all my books that we could add a bed.

I thought your books were all over your bed.

They're everywhere.

That's a problem.

Yeah.

Jesse Thorne, we got us a reader.

Sometimes I feel like this entire podcast is just set up to make me feel bad for living in a coastal urban center.

Yeah, you don't have a bonus room?

A bonus room that's attached to another bonus room.

Sounds so much fancier than that.

It's a second extra room attached to the first extra room.

All right, so you, yeah,

I like that option.

What kind of bed are you going to put in there for Tom?

Oh, whatever he wants.

No, no, no.

We would make it nice.

Like, yeah.

We would do, you know, whatever he wants.

He's a kind of a picky mattress person, and so, yeah, whatever he wanted.

What kind of mattress do you currently have?

It's really bad.

It's so old.

But we have a memory foam

topper that Tom picked out that's nice.

And then he's pretty picky about his sheets.

And so we have some, you know, middle-of-the-road nice sheets.

Snorers can't be choosers, Tom.

Tom and Miranda, I'm struck by one thing that came up a couple of times, which is that the snoring seems to be a newer development.

Yes.

Is this something Tom has always done, Miranda?

No.

I mean, I'd say probably the last maybe two or three years.

Yeah.

What do you think is going on?

I mean, I hate to ask you a sensitive question, Tom, but have you put on a lot of weight?

Well, no.

Well, I mean, a little bit.

I've recently switched careers.

I worked in retail for 20 years.

Now he's at a desk job.

I'm at sporting goods.

Now I'm at a desk job.

So I have gained a little bit of weight.

But not enough that you would think

that it would cause any kind of, I mean, it's not even, hardly even noticeable.

Yeah, I was actually pretty thin.

Let me tell you, Miranda, I'm in the shape of my life right now.

But if I eat one slice of pizza, it goes all to my neck meat.

So you put on a little bit of weight.

What other things have changed?

I'm just trying to, why do you think, Tom, in your gut, in your noisy gut,

has the snoring taken off?

I think it is just a little bit of weight gain and just getting older.

I'm almost 40, and

it's,

yeah, I mean, and like she said, part of it's the snoring, but you know, it's other things as well.

But I think the snoring specifically is just a little bit of weight gain.

But I don't know if I could even lose weight.

I mean, I could, but we've talked about it because I'm pretty self-conscious about my body and Miranda doesn't want me to lose weight.

No, I don't.

He was very thin before, so he's now just a normal-looking person.

Okay.

So I would like him to stay normal looking person.

Just baseline question, Tom, are you comfortable in your body and your wellness right now?

Yes.

I'm actually,

I've become a little, since I've gained the weight, I actually feel a lot more comfortable now than I have in a long time.

I didn't realize how weird I was about my weight before.

But I work in the cycling community, and everyone in there is a bunch, they're all crazy about their weight.

Athletic.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, Miranda, I'm going to have to ask some tough questions.

We've got to get back to the neck meat of this case.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm going to ask some very specific functional questions, and then I'm going to go and make my decision.

Okay.

I'm going to go into my bonus chambers.

The bonus chambers to my bonus chambers in a moment.

So

do you have a guest room in this house?

A proper guest room currently?

It's not set up as a guest room, no.

What is it set up as?

Well, we have a TV room with a pull-out couch.

Okay, and is that the only place where you watch TV?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's not true.

We also have a TV in the bedroom.

Oh, we do.

We do have a TV in the bedroom.

But we don't have to

do all of my sleep rules.

I know, we know, we know.

How dare you, Miranda, come to me and ask me to protect your inner sanctum of sleep and you have a TV in the bedroom?

We only watch Golden Girls, and usually it's just on the weekends.

Well, all right, then I'll allow it.

We only watch Golden Girls.

It's usually just on the weekends.

Yeah, that is true.

We have all of them on DVD.

That's the only thing we watch in there.

A dedicated Golden Girls TV.

Oh, and moonlighting sometimes.

Oh, you should have left it at Golden Girls.

Because that is the hipster equivalent of the fixed-gear bike.

I have a TV, but only to watch Golden Girls.

Is this what hipsters are like in places other than major coastal cities?

Like, do all hipsters have rooms dedicated to each hipster activity?

I I was just about to say the most hipstery thing in the world, but I was going to say I liked Golden Girls before.

It was cool to like Golden Girls.

The definition of Golden Girls.

She's the OGG Geophile.

There you go.

Yeah.

Which room would it be more of a sacrifice for you to give up, Miranda?

Book bonus room

or gym?

Probably

the book bonus room.

And that is directly off of your

directly off of your master bedroom.

Yeah.

There's no reflecting pool between these two rooms?

Oh, no.

There's no transitional space between them?

No.

Well, there's a, I mean, there's French doors on it

on the bonus room.

And what is the bonus room to the bonus room?

There's no bonus room to, there's just the one bonus room.

Oh, I thought, I'm sorry.

I thought that was a joke that Jesse made that I thought was real.

Yeah, no, that's not real.

And if you were, and just out of curiosity, Tom, if I were to find in Miranda's favor and you had to go sleep in one of these other rooms, which would you choose?

Honestly, I would probably just sleep on the couch in the TV room.

I don't want to sleep in the gym.

Well, no, but if we were in a gym anymore.

Oh, yeah, I'd be fine in there.

All right.

Well, I wouldn't be fine.

I'd be miserable.

No, no, I know.

And that's what I want to get at for my final question.

Miranda, you've heard Tom say that he would be miserable without you, which is something that a lot of spouses would like to hear their spouse say.

You have heard him say that he wants to feel the heat of your skin and feel sad if he's not near it.

How does that make you feel when you know that you will be causing your beloved emotional pain?

That's the biggest rub to this whole thing because it is very sweet.

And I know how much he loves me and how much this is totally motivated by a sense of wanting to be near me.

So, I mean, that is, it makes me sad and it makes me sound like a real jerk to be callous and be like, I don't care, I need to sleep.

But for, you know, practical purposes, just during the week when I have to get up and, you know, go to work the next day or have something big going on, you know, this is just a practical thing, the separate bedrooms.

This wouldn't have to be all the time or every night even.

I would just, just so I can function during the day with enough sleep at night.

Just during the week, not on weekends when all you have to do is watch

girls' room.

Can you convey to this court and Bailiff Jesse Thorne and to your husband the sense of the kind of suffering that you have endured because of your husband's snoring and talking to dogs and everything else?

Well, I mean, just it's very har.

If I don't get

my eight hours, I have a hard time at work the next day,

tired, I'm grouchy,

I'm not functioning at my highest capacity.

You know, sleep is important to me, and I really like to get all of my sleep in at night without

uninterrupted.

You turn into a real Sophia if you don't get your sleep.

That's true.

Or a Dorothy, you know.

All right.

And you did send in some evidence, which is just pictures of Liz Minellian, Rosemary Clooney, Yoshitsu, and Yorkie, which pertain not at all to this case.

You're just sending me cute pictures of dogs, which I appreciate.

They will go up on the Judge John Hodgman Instagram page where everyone can go and check them out.

And by putting up cute dogs on the Instagram page, we're going to become Instagram stars.

We're influencers.

Yeah, there we go.

Other than that, I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I'm going to go into my bonus chambers and take a little nap.

I'll be back in a moment with my verdict.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Miranda, how do you feel about your chances in the case?

I think I feel pretty good.

I feel like

the judge respects my position.

So I feel like maybe I'm on the side of winning here.

Tom, why are you torturing the woman you love?

Yeah, I don't know.

I just.

He's just sweet, and he loves me.

Ugh.

Ugh.

We'll be back in just a second with Judge John Hodgman's verdict.

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.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom to present his verdict.

Tom is correct that sleeping is

a vulnerable moment.

in one's life.

You are allowing yourself to become unconscious and let the world have its way with you.

And for that reason,

it is a moment moment of

needing and desiring companionship, but also not needing or desiring it at all because you're unconscious.

It goes in both ways.

It is not merely that he wants to feel the heat of Miranda's skin.

It is that it is more comfortable when you are surrendering to the world

to be near someone

who cares about you.

And that will give you the illusion that you are protected, but it is an illusion because the other person is going to fall asleep too.

and that's when the strangers come into your house and take you both.

It is a moment of profound togetherness, and yet, by necessity of unconsciousness, of profound aloneness.

And the marital bed serves two functions:

one of them is sleeping together, and the other one is hugging and kissing and special closeness.

And the fact of the matter is: if you want to have the hugging and kissing and special closeness, you don't need to share a bed.

It is not necessary

for intimacy.

There is no need for the proximity of sleeping together other than warmth, or if you are curious about what words and smells come out of your partner's bodies when they're unconscious, but that has nothing to do with the intimacy of special intimacy, except among very few, farting does not enhance intimacy.

That is why I have always said, get away from each other.

And in fact, the very idea that a married couple would sleep in the same room together for the purpose of enhancing romance and togetherness is new in our culture.

I mean, first of all, you go back to the Middle Ages and to the 16, 1700s.

If you were an aristocrat, a legit royal, or even just a very wealthy person, you had separate bedrooms.

This is the way it was.

Because it reflects the fact that marriage at that point was as much a business contract as it was a romantic one.

And anyone who is not super wealthy, they were sharing beds, but not because they believed like they loved each other, it was because you only owned a bed.

And they were expensive.

In the Middle Ages and then into the 16th, 17th century, you just shared beds out of necessity.

The idea that the bedroom was a private space specifically for marital togetherness and that sleep intimacy would be interwoven with romantic intimacy as a choice rather than a need is more or less, as far as I could tell in the modicum of research I did into this, something that emerged as GIs were coming back after World War II.

They had money in their pockets.

The American economy was booming.

They didn't want to live with their parents.

They wanted a place of their own.

And this idea that the nuclear family developed where mom and dad were going to sleep in a special bedroom that would serve both their sleep needs and their special intimacy needs all in one package.

But

that's new.

What you're doing is new in human culture.

The sleep needs and the intimacy needs

are two different things.

That's why

when you sleep, you need to get sleep.

And when you're doing something else, you walk across

the reflecting pool area into your beloved's special villa.

It's so much more romantic to visit your partner than to just get shoved in the back with a book and then you wake up and like, I guess we should kiss now.

It's intentional.

That's why

the writer Christopher Sykes and his wife Camilla kept separate bedrooms because they would plan little liaisons together.

It's something that

I've always felt just seems so natural

and correct for a healthy marriage.

And yet, in part because I live most of the time in Brooklyn, New York, and space is at a premium, and in part because I think my wife would get really angry at me if we have not enacted a two-bedroom policy in our home.

And now I have the chance to enact one for you

with no repercussions on my own marriage.

It's fantastic.

Do I dare to do it?

Miranda is suffering.

I know what it's like to sleep with a chronic snorer.

I not only

have one in my life, I am one.

And I've heard about it from both sides.

And Tom

has taken certain measures

to alleviate the problem.

But there are certain measures he will not take,

such as attaching a machine to his maw.

And he's also inconsiderate and big and clumps around and just can't seem to help himself and wants to talk to the dogs.

I know that Tom wants to be with Miranda, and I suspect that Miranda will miss Tom.

But if you think this court isn't going to take an opportunity to enact a mad social experiment for my own amusement, then you're wrong.

Oh, no.

Miranda, my preference would be for Tom

to be moved for a period of time into another room in the house that is set up for a proper guest room,

such that when you inevitably realize you can't live with him in that other room and it's just too sad, he can come back to you

and then you have a guest room that works in your life.

But I don't think sending Tom out to the

TV room

is

going to punish you enough for this.

Instead, I think you said that the greater sacrifice would be to lose your book bonus room.

All of those,

you know, you may keep a certain number of books in there such as they correspond to appropriate decor for a bedroom,

but you are going to invest

in a comfortable bed and mattress for Tom.

You know what?

I take this back.

I don't want him in that bonus room.

I don't want him.

There's not enough reflecting pool between the two of you for this to work properly.

You're going to see him through those French doors.

And you know what?

Probably you're going to hear those French doors rattle, and that guy snores it up.

It's not even going to be fixed.

You get rid of that fold-out couch.

You're going to convert that TV in there to a golden girls-only TV.

You're going to remodel that room into a proper guest room.

You're going to lose your TV room.

And Tom is going to go in there

and he's going to spend a month in there

with visits for weekends and special engagements.

And I'm not going to be allowed to be less than a month because I want you guys to really become your life.

And then

that is the extent of my order.

And then I want to hear from you guys how it went because I need to know.

Okay.

Okay.

Seems like everyone's cool with this.

Thought someone would be upset.

Good.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Tom, how do you feel?

I think that's a fair judgment.

I think it's worth giving it a try.

And I do believe that once we're apart for a while, I think Miranda will want to sleep with me again.

Next to me.

Miranda, how do you feel?

Do you think that you'll still want to sleep with your husband?

I mean, that's a loaded question.

To sleep next to him on a nightly basis?

No, I don't think I'll want to.

But I am sad about losing my TV room because I love it.

Well, Tom, Miranda, thanks for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

That's another Judge John Hodgman case in the books.

Before we dispense some swift justice, we want to thank Tim Malos for naming this week's episode He Bed She Bed.

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

Please follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ Ho, and check out the maximum fund subreddit to discuss this episode.

This week's episode recorded by Al Wadarski at WUNC in Durham and Joel Mann at WERU in East Orland, Maine.

Our producer, Jennifer Marmer.

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

Liz Kay asks, should consuming a quart of hot and sour soup be considered a snack or a meal?

An entire quart of hot and sour soup?

One quart.

I would say that should be considered a triumph of glorious madness.

I like hot and sour soup, and I might, I think it would be hard to drink a whole quart of it.

But looking it up on the Google, a very popular search engine, I discovered that it is surprisingly low-caloric.

A whole quart should only be about 360,400 calories,

which is, I think,

a light meal, I would say, but not a full meal.

And plus, it's a soup,

and that can never be an entree.

Sorry, soups.

Closer to snack than meal is my answer.

Here's something from Sarah E.

She asks: My husband doesn't want me to eat popcorn while he's at home because I crunch too loud.

I think I should be able to eat popcorn in my own home without fear of dirty looks.

I tolerate the smell of pickles and beef jerky and believe I should be afforded the same grace.

Well, so long as you live in North Carolina, you should have a separate room for eating popcorn and your husband should have a private jerky salon.

And that's how you're going to deal with it.

That's it.

That's my verdict.

Go eat popcorn in the other room.

I don't want to hear your mouth sounds.

And by the way, husband, jerky smells.

Believe me, I'm a jerky eater.

Take that stuff outside.

That's it for this week's episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash JJ HO or by emailing hodgman at maximumfund.org.

We are particularly looking for cases in New York and London right now.

We're looking for cases in New York and London.

So if you're in one of those places, look around you, identify your surroundings.

Are you in New York or London or environs?

Well, then, think about what beef you have with other people in your life and submit it at maximumfund.org/slash JJ Ho.

No case is too small.

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

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