Pile of Pits

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

We'll be talking about litter, family reimbursements, plus another edition of our beloved segment status conference.

We're going to catch up with Nancy and Becky from episode 166, My Legal Pony, true Judge John Hodgman legends.

With me, by the way, Judge John Hodgman.

Hi, Judge Hodgman.

Jesse.

What's wrong?

What's wrong, friend?

I don't want you to sneeze around me, but you might, because I'm still covered with dust from the American and UK road.

Oh, yeah.

Well, we should not have.

Like a lot of bands get a van or something to tour, and we chose to get a hay wagon.

Yep.

And only dirt roads.

Retrospectively, probably a mistake.

Yeah, absolutely.

Also, those times when I was dragged behind the wagon, I thought that would be good for my back.

Yeah, we also should have gotten horses instead of just making our sound guy Matt pull it.

You know, first of all, thanks to Matt and Danielle, who traveled with us, and to Jen Marmor in London.

It was an incredible experience.

And we actually used mechanized conveyances most of the time, although I did feel like I was dragged

behind a cart for a long time because my body is old.

My spirit is youthful, and my youth is spirited.

But

this body is

not made for all of that.

But it was so great to see everyone in all the cities we went to, and to see them come from far away from those cities as well, and particularly in London.

We had people from Germany, from Amsterdam, and one young man from Alabama via Iceland.

And I have a letter from him later that we'll read.

But it was so fun.

Thank you, everybody, for coming out.

Yeah, what a joy to get to do that and get to meet everybody.

But, you know, while we were out on the road, the docket got pretty full, so maybe we should get started clearing it.

Sure.

I'm just going to do it all from this massage chair if you don't mind.

No problem.

Josh writes, My fiancé, Wendy.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

I'm listening.

Do you have any other gadgets from the Sharper Image Store that you'd like to?

All of them.

Any other Hermacker Schlemmer devices you'd like to use?

Oh, my chambers is actually a perfect replica of

the late and lamented Sharper Image store in Quincy Market in Boston.

Boy, oh, boy.

Look,

when I was in high school and I was getting into all kinds of trouble, such as going to Quincy Market and wandering around Sharper Image, completely sober, what a time I had.

That was my idea of a Friday night.

I bet you would bring in your own cassette tapes to put into the cassette tape AM-FM alarm clock.

I wanted to hear how my Billy Bragg would sound.

I don't know.

Would it play metal tapes?

Those are the high-quality tapes that I liked.

A higher dynamic range.

That's right.

Anyway,

my fiancé Wendy and I have a dispute about littering.

If I throw biodegradable food waste, like cherry pits, apple cores, and grape stems, into nature, she considers it littering.

Her only exception seems to be that items that come from the sea can be returned to the sea.

For example,

if we're eating oysters on a boat, we can throw the shells overboard.

Right.

Growing up, I learned that biodegradable food waste is the only kind of littering that's okay as long as it's done in a way that's not going to get in someone's way or affect their enjoyment of the area.

For instance, a banana peel thrown out the window of a moving car on an empty country road will eventually break down into dirt and will likely never be encountered by anyone, so it's totally okay.

Alternatively, the same banana peel left on the ground in a public park is both a slipping hazard and an unsightly reminder of human activity in a natural setting.

I'm asking the court to allow me to practice the harmless disposal of food waste into nature and to bar Wendy from calling me a litter bug.

Well, first of all, I'm not even sure we can say that word on our program.

This is a family show.

We don't use words like litterbug on it.

Oh, I did it again.

Stop it, Jesse.

Well, do you know what, though?

We have to say it because it's newsworthy.

That's why the New York Times had to print litter bug on its front page.

Recent current events reference that I trust adults will get, and probably most children too by now.

We've all heard about it.

You can grab that litter bug if you're famous.

Well, first of all, this dude, Josh likes fruit a lot.

Cherry pits and apple cores and grape stems and

banana peels.

And you know what I don't like, Jesse?

What?

Setsumas aside.

Fruits.

Fruit?

I don't like them.

What?

I really don't.

I really don't.

I like all foods.

I like all foods.

But fruit skeeves me out.

What?

Yeah.

I'll never eat a hand fruit.

Almost never.

A satsuma, of course.

Sometimes a satsuma is the perfect, perfect thing.

But like, you know, 90% of all apples are merely bags of garbage.

Oh, not this apple that I just ate yesterday from my mom's apple tree.

Well, let me put it this way: the right piece.

The right piece of fruit is the most glorious thing of all time.

But the right piece of fruit happens once per year for me.

Otherwise, I think that's because you live in the frozen East.

You're going to get yourself over to America's breadbasket over here.

Yeah, oh,

I certainly acknowledge.

We're eating like kings.

There are some ginger gold apples.

I had never heard of that before.

But they probably don't taste like ginger, right?

It doesn't seem likely.

I mean, that's the thing.

I'm not a sweet person.

You know that about me.

I'm a savory dude.

You get me a savory fruit?

What fruit has the most umami?

I'll eat that.

You know what I love?

Dulce.

Dulce gathered.

Dulce.

What is that?

That's seaweed gathered from the shores of Grand Manan Island up in New Brunswick, Canada.

Oh my gosh.

You put a little dulc in a hot pan.

It fries up like bacon.

It's the most delicious thing.

That's my style.

Cherry pits.

Look, everyone likes what they like, but that's fine.

So this guy likes to spit pits all over the place like a monster.

And I'm supposed to say that's okay.

Well, of course.

Of course it's okay.

This guy's got it right.

He's got a good sense of boundaries.

He's not going to sit on a park bench and spit 100 cherry pits into a disgusting mound of what look like little eyeballs for another person to see.

He's going to

spit them where the sun don't shine, presumably.

Are you going to make the first found footage horror film that's based on a man encountering fruit leavings?

Really is.

I mean, you know, think about a pile.

If you think about a pile of pits, it's a little gross.

So you want to make sure that, A,

it's not going to be unsightly, but he already knows that it's not going to be unsightly.

Now, if you're going to eat a ginger gold apple or whatever, and you're in a moving car, and you're not in the suburbs, but there's just woods off to the side, and your aim is good, and you're not the one driving,

I see no reason why you can't throw that apple core into the deep, deep, dark woods.

You're giving back.

Some little creature is going to enjoy it.

In 2004, I think, I went over to England to profile a fantasy author named Susannah Clark.

She wrote Jonathan Strange and Mr.

Norrell, which is a great book.

It was turned into a BBC miniseries, a lot of fun.

And she and I and her

non-husband husband, Colin Greenland, tramped around central England because that's what they liked to do.

And she would point out these like, you know, in the country, sometimes you'll see these sort of natural clearings.

They're not, it's not a path made by man.

It just looks like a path.

And she would say that in traditional English folklore, those would be called fairy roads.

I don't know if she was making this up to make me look foolish or if this is true, but she said these, we call those fairy roads.

And it was believed that these are the paths the fairies would take.

And if you wanted to keep the fairies on your good side, you would leave them gifts and often gifts of food

at the foot of the fairy road.

And in our house in western Massachusetts,

there is a fairy road behind the house.

And

in one of my many, many deceptions and tricks and manipulations that I used to try to get the children to lift a damn finger once in a while,

I would take our biodegradable food leavings and tempt my children to go and leave them by the ferry road.

I would say, take this up for a trip up the ferry road.

And about 13% of the time, my daughter or son would do that, my daughter in particular.

And you know what happened?

What's that?

The fairies took her.

Never saw her again.

That's really a tragic story.

This is essentially, this is a comedy podcast, Judge Hodgman.

Oh, really?

I thought,

you know, look, we've been doing the podcast for five years.

You don't think our listenership is interested in my emotional life enough that they want to hear about fairies kidnapping my daughter?

I mean, this is a big part of my life.

Let's be honest.

I think our listenership is surprised that you have an emotional life.

This is why I became, this is why I became, I can't say professional fairy hunter because I accept no payment.

I do it only for revenge.

No, what happens is.

Is that why you have that tiny bow and arrow?

That's right.

I have two of them, one for each hand.

Pew pew.

I'll get those fairies.

But that made me think of our friend Josie Long in England.

But hang on.

The truth is, my daughter's fine,

and the animals would come and eat it.

I don't know if there are fairies out there, but it is a good way to make raccoons feel that they're welcome to come around your house and poop on the porch, and then you have to move it with big old gloves because that poop is poisonous.

But yes, you can give back to nature,

just as that from the sea can be given back to the sea.

Oyster shells, Wendy.

As long as you're tossing that stuff way into the woods where it's not going to be gross, it's fine.

Leave your husband alone.

Here's a question from Ty:

I'm engaged in a very heated debate with my wife regarding proper reimbursement etiquette.

My wife's brother has invited our children, ages 9 and 10, to go on vacation with his family.

He wants us to pay for our children's airfare and possible expenses on this vacation, which we were not invited to attend.

What are the possible expenses?

You know, the kids are going to bought them.

The kids are going to have some business dinners.

Okay.

Go on.

Smartphone taxicab rides.

Yeah, that's right.

While I appreciate he wants to spend time with his nieces, we should not be expected to pay for any expenses.

It's not our vacation.

My wife disagrees and thinks it's okay for us to reimburse her brother so he can spend time with our children.

He lives a mile from us, so he can see them anytime he wants.

It was his invitation, not ours.

What is your ruling on this issue?

Before I rule, Jesse, that reminds me.

I am going on vacation next month, and I would like to take your two sons with me.

Isn't that nice of me?

Very nice.

I'm going on a tour of museums of medical oddities.

So I'm going to hit the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, and I'm going to go check out those babies in jars at the Hunterian Museum in London that Haley Campbell took me to see.

I think it's going to be very educational and fun for your sons, and I would like for you to pay for them.

How does that sound?

Yeah, I'm pretty ambivalent about this.

I mean, on the one hand, I get rid of my children who've been a real millstone around my neck.

Well, not forever.

I'm going to bring at least one of them back.

Yeah.

Yeah, I kind of feel like it's all or nothing

in terms of you taking them away from me.

I'm not a fairy.

And by fairy, I obviously mean mythical creature.

This dispute is bonkers to me.

Yeah, tell me why you think it's bonkers, and I'll tell you why I think it's bonkers.

First of all, I think it's bonkers because this guy has brought this dispute against his wife to settle this thing with her brother.

Her deadbeat brother.

Which already is trouble.

Yeah.

You know, there's no way that this can go right.

Clearly, there's a history of this husband resenting his brother-in-law.

That's my guess.

Yeah, I bet his his brother-in-law is more fun than he is.

Probably so.

Likes to go on vacations.

Seems likely.

And then there's also these weird internal familial dynamics that there's no way for us to understand.

No.

And I think it's bonkers to invite someone to go on vacation with you and track their expenses and charge them to the parents.

Right.

However,

I

also think

that it would be reasonable to offer that.

Like, Mike, the question in my,

if you're like broke, but you're like, well, you know, if you want to take a week off from your kids, like, if my in-laws, my, my wife's parents offered to take our kids on vacation if we paid for it, I would think about it because I love my in-laws.

They'd be wonderful.

You know, my in-laws are nearing retirement.

You know, maybe they're not in a position to pay for it, but they'd love to do that.

And, you know, I can understand that.

That's a transaction.

I get the feeling that like, maybe what happened is he invited, like, it's hard to tell because it's clearly an unreliable narrator.

I would really like to get a few more perspectives so that we can rush him on this thing.

Yeah.

But it seems like

there's one side of the Yelp review on this situation.

In my imagination, and there's no information about how the parking is, so this Yelp review is not going to fly in Los Angeles.

In my imagination, from my sort of

two-levels abstracted reconstruction of this situation, what happened is the brother-in-law said to the children, Do you want to go on vacation with me?

The children were like, Hawaii, Hawaii, Hawaii.

And then the brother-in-law went to his sister and said,

Hey, they're going to come on vacation with me.

You're paying for it, right?

It does smack of that.

So

let's work out a couple of different scenarios.

Because

in one of the scenarios, the brother-in-law is a monster.

And in others of the scenarios, the petitioner, what's his name?

Ty?

He's a monster.

Ty.

Right.

There are all kinds of nuances to this.

The polite thing is that,

first of all, presume that everyone can more or less afford the airfare, right?

If your brother comes to you and says, I would like to take, we're planning a vacation and I would like to invite the kids.

The polite thing is,

and the presumption will be, I'm inviting you to my party, therefore I'm going to pay for the airfare.

But the next polite thing to do would be to say, that's wonderful, and we would love for them to do that.

Please let me, please let me pay for all or part of the airfare.

And then the other person could say, okay, or no, I insist, depending on what you work out between family.

Do you know what I mean?

Just like your parents or

your in-laws.

You can work that out between family.

But

if this brother-in-law has revealed to the kids that they're invited to this thing and then turned around and I'm asking for airfare and are holding you hostage for dough, that's extortion at that point because you can't say no.

Or else you are the meanest parents in the world.

And then he is a monster.

Generally speaking, if it's your party, you're paying for it.

And if you can't afford it, don't invite.

And certainly beyond the airfare.

I mean, the airfare is a meaningful expense that is worth a little bit of negotiation.

But if this were a road trip, you wouldn't be asking these kids to chip in gas.

Like, no.

Well, it's the part that's crazy to me is the expenses part.

Like, if he's me, if by expenses, he means airfare or even airfare, and like if they're going to stay in a hotel, you know, the cost of their room, both of those are things that there could be a discussion about that could be based on, you know, oh, I can't bring them, I can't afford to bring them unless we do this, or we would like to pay for that so that because you're doing us the favor of taking care of our children for a week.

But, like,

are they going to save receipts from dinner?

Are they going to itemize all the receipts?

Like, yeah, are they going to get one of those receipt scanners so they can do it all in Excel?

They're children.

They're nine and ten-year-old children, So there's no way, like, if their kids have a hotel room,

then

their cousins will stay with them.

There's not going to be an extra hotel room.

It's crazy.

But I hear you.

There's going to be a $1.79 charge for Big League Chew.

Yeah, exactly.

I just need another 69 cents because they got the super meal.

I didn't authorize that.

Here's a rule of thumb for the Judge John Hodgman courtroom.

If you want to be generous, you have to be generous.

You can't be half generous.

If you can't afford to be generous in the way you want to be, save up.

Or be generous in a way that you can afford.

Yeah, like with time and consideration, for example.

Time and consids.

Yeah.

Classic TNC.

Sorry, Ty.

I mean, you know, unless I'm missing something and I might be, your brother-in-law

out of luck.

You can offer to pay that airfare, but

that would be a nice thing for you to do.

I think you should just be.

Go ahead and tell the kids

you can't afford for them to go to Disneyland.

Have fun.

You can't afford to go to Disneyland with

uncle and auntie.

Time for a break.

I need a break.

Yeah, let's clear some more docket.

Plus, talk to Nancy and Becky from My Legal Pony after the break.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

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

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Just go to maximumfund.org/slash join.

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

Let me ask you a question.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

Plus, we've got everybody's favorite miniature animal owners, Nancy and Becky, coming up on the program.

Here's something from Jay.

My wife of 12 years enjoys writing fiction and hopes that one day her stories will be published.

As far as I know, she's never shared her writing with anybody except me.

I've only gotten to read three pages in all the years I've known her.

I ask the court to compel her to share at least ten pages of a story, finished or not, to at least five different people of her choosing and ask them for their comments.

I request that she complete this within 30 days of hearing your decision, provided the court rules in my favor.

I'm coming to this court because she told me that she's the sort of person who needs to be compelled to do something that makes her nervous, even if it's something she wants to do.

Right.

Well, of course she's nervous.

She's only 12 years old, right?

That's what he said, my wife of 12 years.

Did I misunderstand that?

I thought he was a person from the past talking about his 12-year-old wife.

You may have misunderstood.

Well, it's

this last bit.

I'm presuming this guy isn't a first-class liar.

He's saying, I'm coming to this court because she told me she's the sort of person who needs to be compelled to do something that makes her nervous.

He's basically saying, I'm coming to the court because my wife told me I need permission to bully her into doing stuff that makes her uncomfortable.

Normally, I would say writing is very personal,

and it's obviously a very scary thing to put your work out there in the world.

It is the case that if you actually would like people to read it and maybe publish it and pay you money for it, you will have to do that eventually.

That's the whole point of being published, right?

But

I often will rely upon,

or I often would,

you know, err on the side of the writer for finding the moment when that is an appropriate thing to do.

But

if you are representing your wife of 12 years of age correctly, Jay,

and she is dropping this hint that she needs to be compelled to do something that makes her nervous, I'm going to find a little bit in your favor because the truth is that

you have to desensitize yourself to the fear of being judged by others if you wish to make a life in the arts or a life outside of your home to some degree.

But I will not say ten pages to five people of her choosing.

Ten pages is too long, five people is too many, and why should anyone have choice but me?

Five pages of a story to me, John Hodgman.

I will read it, and I will privately give her an assessment of her skills.

And by privately, I mean, you're not invited, Jay.

And then,

and I will instruct her to never reveal what I say to her.

And then she gets to maintain the privacy of her work, and you get to know that you got her to do something that you wanted to, which I guess makes you proud as a husband.

And maybe I get to discover the great new short story writer of all time.

And only 12 years old.

That would be fantastic.

Here's something from Nikki.

Hello, Judge and Jesse.

Hi, Nikki.

Hi, Nikki.

I'm emailing you not to solve a dispute, but as an appeal for life advice.

No, thank you.

Goodbye, Nikki.

I'm a 21-year-old college student studying conference.

No, Nikki, no.

No, no, Jesse.

I get so many of these letters from college students.

And I find that it seems like I'm lost in charging for this failure at 800 miles an hour.

All right.

I will stop interrupting.

And I'm going to get over myself.

My parents?

Wait, wait.

I'm not done by interrupting.

Then I'll stop.

Children,

remember, it always hurts to ask.

You're always writing me

like I'm your dad or weird.

Like I'm your weird dad or weird uncle or weird judge.

How can I get ahead?

How can I do better?

This is a dispute program.

This is a dispute program, and you're taking advantage of the fact that I'm a know-it-all, and I like to tell people what to do with their lives, even if they don't have a dispute.

And

then I have to think about it and give you the best advice possible.

But I'm fine.

It's okay, Nikki.

I'm ready.

I'm here for you.

Now I got that out of my system.

Go on.

Did you read Jack Handy's piece in the most recent New Yorker?

No.

How did I miss that?

It's called Never Give Up.

And

it opens with the paragraph, if I could say one thing to the young people of today, it would be this.

Never give up.

Keep trying and pushing and struggling, even if you don't know what your goal is or why you would want to achieve it.

I love Jack Handy.

There's a part where he says,

keep pushing ahead, not in a way that seems pushy, but in a way that says you won't stop.

Some people say you shouldn't bang your head against a wall.

Tell that to the woodpecker.

Jack Handy's probably the funniest person in the world.

I would refer, from now on, I'm referring all young people to that essay by Jack Handy.

I think I'll never give up.

I think it's about as good advice as I'm going to give to Nikki.

But let's start again with Nikki.

Here we go.

I'm ready.

I'm a 21-year-old college student studying communications in Oregon, and I find that it seems like I'm lost and charging towards failure at 800 miles an hour.

My parents aren't in the picture.

I've been on my own for several years now.

While I've been fortunate to have many friends and colleagues to help me along the way with advice, I've come to respect you two as sound wisdom givers.

I'm hoping you can suggest a manner of coping with university study as I've started second term, or at least give me some solace that everything is not wrong.

Thank you for reading this, and I hope you can help an out-of-sorts millennial with the path I'm taking.

So, do I.

Nikki is just feeling a vague malaise?

Is this what's happening?

I think the situation is a sort of ennui.

Ennui.

She's 21 years old.

I was depressed for half of college.

At least.

Everyone is depressed for at least half of college, except the people who are drunk for three-quarters of college.

Oh, hello.

Those people who are not to be emulated.

Hi, everyone.

I'm sitting right here.

No, I, Nikki,

you, I guess, are feeling anxiety as the end of college approaches.

And you're probably exhausted

because you have been doing this

certainly without the emotional support of parents, and I would presume as well without the financial support.

of parents.

And so that you probably have been working real hard.

And especially as this end point is coming up in college, it's, I'm sure, very stressful.

I can give you these consolations.

One,

I think communications is a pretty valuable degree.

You're not getting a degree in comparative literary theory like I did, and then

realized my choices were to be a receptionist or a cheesemonger.

Two, you live in one of the most beautiful states and commonwealths in our union,

and it's still a pretty livable place to be.

And certainly there are certain towns in Oregon, I won't name them, that are very tolerant of people not knowing what they're doing with their lives and taking some time to figure it out.

He's talking about Bend, folks.

Yeah.

And three,

you're still in college.

Everything you're experiencing is exactly, emotionally is exactly what you're supposed to be experiencing experiencing in college.

I hope a certain amount of elation, but also a lot of confusion, a lot of self-doubt, a lot of self-questioning, a lot of exploration.

The real time to worry about is when you have graduated from college, then everything is terrible because that's when you start feeling like instead of becoming something, you're starting to end up as something.

That's that's a bad patch, too.

There are all bad patches and transitions in life, and you will go through them and you will be fine.

My only advice is:

if you are anywhere near Portland,

go easy on the tattoos

and

stay away from alternative modeling, if you know what I'm talking about.

Can I offer a very sincere piece of advice?

Yeah.

I don't think that Nikki would have mentioned that I'm presuming her, based on the spelling of Nikki, but I could be mistaken,

that her folks aren't in the picture if that weren't a pain point for her.

And I can understand certainly why it would be.

At most colleges, even community colleges and other

low-cost institutions, there's free or very, very low-cost mental health help.

And I just want to emphasize that you don't have to be suicidal or

struggling to maintain your grip on reality to benefit from mental health care.

I mean, if if you have either of those other problems, then you should certainly seek mental health care as well.

But,

you know, if you just have pain or malaise in your life, mental health care can be really, really helpful.

And I speak from personal experience.

So

seek that.

I mean,

make the time and put in the effort.

Even if you have to pay for it, it's probably worth it.

And it will really,

you know,

you don't have to feel like your problems don't merit it when, in fact, I think there's just a lot of benefit in the amount of joy that you get from your life and the amount of stress that you can leave out of your life and so on and so forth that you can get from even short-term mental health care.

Absolutely.

And, you know, for me, I had a great time in college.

And it was after college that I kind of had the rug pulled out from under me.

And I had my degree in literary theory, and I didn't know what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

And I was this feeling that I'm not becoming something anymore.

I'm ending up as something.

And I didn't feel like I had anything to complain about.

I just felt terrible.

And I ended up going to a sliding scale,

a sliding-scale therapy shop

where therapists in training at NYU could try out their skills.

It was like the barber school of therapy.

And it was an incredibly valuable experience because I would sit there and talk and talk and talk and talk.

And therapy

is just the opportunity in many ways

to be selfish enough to sit in a room and talk about yourself.

You don't even necessarily have to have another person there.

You can have a cardboard cut out of Captain Kirk a lot of the time, and it feels fantastic.

So quoth the cheesemonger.

By the way, cheesemonging is a great way to live.

You know, my co-host on Jordan SE Go, Jordan Morris, was also a cheesemonger.

Nothing wrong with cheesemonging.

We're going to come back in just a second with Nancy and Becky from My Legal Pony on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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 listen.

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.

Okay, Judge Hodgman,

should we dip into my magic bag and grab my legal pony?

That's right.

Every case is recorded on

a red marble.

The details are engraved on a wooden red marble and put into a bag.

Minority report style.

So let's pick one out at random.

Well, it just so happens that I've randomly picked the case where we have the litigants on the line already.

Whoa,

it's like you're a precog or something.

What a remarkable coincidence.

It's my legal pony, Nancy and Becky.

Folks who don't remember this case might remember it if I describe it.

They're both country veterinarians.

Nancy has a herd of 11 Shetland ponies.

Becky said that the ponies were a little bit nasty.

They were, were, well, a little bit ill-mannered.

Weren't they?

And knocking.

Well, you know, as a matter of fact, they're both country veterinarians, and I believe there's a horse that needs suturing right now.

Is that not correct?

Yeah, that's my understanding.

So

we better get into this so that the horse can get his sutures.

Nancy or Becky,

who has to take care of this horse?

Becky.

Becky, what's going on?

The horse got into trouble?

The horse got into a knife fight?

No, it got into a fight with a fence.

Oh, no.

I'm sorry, horse.

You know, I was attacked by a barn door in Maine just a couple of months ago, and I had to get some sutures.

But I went to see a human doctor.

Yeah, that's probably for the best.

As great as fun as it is to watch all creatures, great and small, and as inspirational as that might be, a country veterinarian is not the best choice for all lacerations.

Becky, it was not just that you accused Nancy's herd of Shetlands of being rude, but also potentially dangerous.

Didn't they knock her over or something?

Yeah, they get pretty pushy with her, especially if she's out there with food, and they have, on occasion, knocked her down.

And Nancy, how are the ponies?

How are the ponies doing?

The ponies are doing very well, and I have to admit that I think they are ill-mannered.

Oh.

How is the herd?

So, do you still have 11 of them?

Yes.

And all the same ones?

Yes.

Oh, that's great.

And so,

what opened your eyes to the fact that your ponies are rude?

Well, I moved.

And so, in the process of moving, the younger ones, the three younger ones, Berger, Fraser, and Niles, had to have some new experiences.

loading on a trailer, getting off a trailer, moving into a barn, and they were very naughty.

And

did they steal the trailer

and go for a joyride?

No.

Well, they were actually really good on the trailer, but they just didn't like getting in and out of the trailer.

And kind of realized that maybe what I thought was good behavior was just that they had a routine and habits.

And

when we took them out of those, their true nature and my lack of skills.

and

you know

it was a stampede they had a stampede is that what you're saying

well it was a little bit of a stampede yeah oh all right

did you at any point did you feel like you might lose a lose a pony or your own life

uh no I thought my life was okay but there were a couple close calls losing ponies but we didn't lose any and and we got them all moved but they were they were pretty bad.

And so

I blame you, Judge Hodgman, actually.

Why?

Because

maybe if you had come down harder on me the last time, I would have

been a little more diligent with my training.

What did I rule?

I ruled, sometimes you need a friend to tell you a hard truth.

Becky said that to you.

You had to hear that, but apparently you didn't hear it.

And then you said that you would, according to my notes,

on this wooden marble, you pledged to pay more careful attention to how the ponies were perceived.

I'm not even sure what that means.

Yeah,

I didn't do that.

You didn't do it.

You didn't do it.

Well, of course you should blame me.

Now you know.

So where did you move to?

I moved to kind of the Pocono Mountains part of Pennsylvania.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Are you coming to Max FunCon East and bringing the ponies?

Where is Max FunCon East?

It's in the Poconos.

Oh, it is?

Yeah.

Sure.

It's going to be over Labor Day.

It's going to be great.

Can you bring like one or two good ponies?

Not those bad ponies like Burger and Frazier and Niles.

What's the best of your ponies?

Well, you know who the best is.

It's Ian Charles.

Ian Charles.

The pony's so nice they named him twice.

You could bring everybody to my place and we could have a real, you know, ho-down.

No, no, no.

We don't want any of the Max Funakon attendees to be trampled by your demon ponies.

Just get Ian Charles

in it.

Get Ian Charles in your car, drive them over to the hotel for an afternoon, a little bit of petting, a little bit of visiting, and we'll put you up for the night.

I feel like if we went to her house and we brought Dan Deacon, we could get a pony party started.

I guarantee you,

half of the attendees would be stomped to death after a Dan Deacon pony party.

It would be the greatest night of all time.

Look,

we'll work this out.

We'll work this out offline.

But Nancy, now that your eyes are opened and it's all my fault and you're in the polkonos, how are you handling these ponies differently?

I'm not.

You're just indulging them.

Well, the one time we did try to do things in a civilized manner, you know, I put halters on them, led them around.

It just ended in frustrations.

So now that the way they live now there in the Poconos is they're all out standing in their fields.

I'm a dad.

They're all out there, just feral.

And every now and then you throw them some feed and run away.

Yeah, I do kind of run sometimes.

yeah, but that's how they see that's how they were at the old place.

It's just that the new place isn't as easy to work around with them being feral.

Are they in a bigger pony paddock?

Are they in a bigger enclosure or smaller?

It's

well, it's a little of both.

It's smaller ones and a bigger one.

And I can't just let them loose to go in one.

it can't be smaller and bigger you have to you have to answer you have to rejoin our reality

do you have more property or less property for ponies to roam on now

more property more property all right so now they have a whole empire a Pocono pony empire

yes yeah you are you are

yeah they're the they're the dothraki of ponies they were gonna they're gonna run over your civilization right quick

Well,

Becky,

are you still visiting and close with Nancy?

We're still close, but I have yet to come visit her farm.

Yeah, I don't think you should go out there.

I think it's turning into a Mad Max situation out there.

Now Pony is king.

But I've always wanted to visit a bigger, smaller farm.

It's a farm in a pocket dimension.

Nancy,

I wish you the best of luck.

And now that your eyes are open, I mean, I don't know what to say.

As your judge, I simply want you to stay alive and be careful.

But I will order you to name all of the ponies again because I forget.

I know Ian, Charles, Berger, Niles, and Fraser.

That's four.

But there are

seven more.

Russell Stover, Maddie, Sprite, Dewdrop, Connie.

Is that everybody now?

Russell Stover, Maddie, Dewdrop, Sprite, Connie.

You're too short.

Oh, Godiva, Goddiva, Godiviva.

Godiva.

No, that's right.

That's 11 by my count.

Godiva.

So you have some chocolates.

You have some fairy names.

You have some homages to the television show Frasier.

And then there's Ian Charles.

Yes.

I can't wait to see Ian Charles, the best pony.

And boo.

This is what you do.

Here's what you do.

You go out there, you get all those ponies, gather around, have a pony moot, and say, listen up, y'all.

Ian Charles, still the best.

Berger, Frazier, and Niles,

one million years dungeon,

says John Hodgman.

I'll do that.

I'm sure it'll help.

I bet it'll help as much as anything.

Good luck to you, Nancy.

Becky, go patch up a horse.

Okay.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Now, Judge Hodgman, you mentioned.

And we saw Nancy and Becky on tour.

We did.

They came to our Philadelphia show.

They came all the way in.

They did not bring any ponies, I was sad to say.

It was great to see so many people

from the world that we knew and so many people from the world that we have not yet known.

And one of the people who I met, I'm not sure if you talked to this guy after,

he mentioned that he listens to us

while working at night in a greenhouse in Iceland alone.

And he's from Alabama.

And I put out a call via my lifestyle newsletter, which you can subscribe to, everyone.

It's just go to bit.ly/slash hodgemail.

And James McDaniel wrote back, and I just want to read a little bit of the letter that he wrote to me.

Hi, John Hodgman.

I'm the Alabama guy working at the geothermal greenhouse in rural Iceland who stopped by for a hello after your first London show.

My name is James McDaniel.

And I wanted to know all about

this greenhouse.

The greenhouse is actually five large industrial greenhouses a couple of hours outside the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik in a very little place called Artangi, population three, including me.

I've been working at the Gro Rosteschn Artongi, I can't read Icelandic, Grostation Rivertongue is the translation for about two years.

I live in a cozy, geothermally heated apartment attached to one of the older abandoned greenhouses.

It's a strange life.

Most days I am working long stretches by myself in various greenhouses, mostly the one where we are growing cooking herbs, your

basil, thyme, mints, cilantros, rosemaries, etc.

So usually I'm listening to podcasts or audiobooks seven to eight hours a day.

Podcasts like yours and Jesse's are a godsend for people in places like this.

It's a very calm and pastoral life, but results in too much thinking and contemplation, which we all know only leads people to become radicals and dreamers in one way or another.

Having grown up in Birmingham, Alabama, and then having spent six years studying Chinese language and literature, living for a time in Beijing, then working as a guide in the West Tibetan communities, I never would have imagined this rural Icelandic life up here in the North Atlantic.

It's a beautiful and harsh island with a language that I find much more challenging than Mandarin, but the people are warmer than the landscape once you get to know them.

Thanks again for the show.

It was a pleasure to get out of the isolation for a bit and jump into the constant overstimulation of a long weekend in London.

Best regards, James.

Now,

what I'm imagining right now is James in his greenhouse

listening to these very words

as he slowly and methodically kills his two co-workers,

having gone crazy working in a greenhouse in Iceland.

James, I hope that's not what's happening.

But your life does sound like the beginning of a horror movie, and I wish you the best.

That's it for this week's episode of Judge John Hodgman.

Thanks to Dimitri Portnoy for naming Status Conference.

Ah, that's my friend Dimitri.

Yeah, Dimitri.

Good luck to the Washington Nationals, who may already have lost by the time this is on the air.

Baseball update from Busy.

and to our old friends Julia Smith and Mark McConville, who helped produce that episode.

If you'd like to submit a case to the Judge John Hodgman podcast, you can do so at maximumfund.org/slash JJ H O.

That's maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho.

If you want to email us, it's hodgman at maximumfund.org.

This episode, edited by Christian Duenez, and our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Judge Hodgman, you and I are both still on the road working our fingers to the bone, entertaining America.

Sorry, I'm not groaning in anticipation of the fantastic live shows we're going to be doing, but because this massage chair is really doing good by my calves right now.

Got

those

calf squeezers.

Jesse, where are you going to be?

Well, I am going to be with my colleague Jordan Morris doing Jordan, Jesse Go at the Now Here, This Festival, which is in Anaheim at the end of October.

And if you use the code JJGo, you get, I believe it's 25% off a three-day pass for that festival.

Tons of other great podcasts from friends of ours.

Our friend Paul F.

Tompkins is doing spontaneation.

Mark McConville, I believe, will be there doing a super ego show.

There's going to be a comedy bang bang, all kinds of fun stuff.

And we're going to have special guests from one of my favorite podcasts, The Dough Boys, on Jordan Jesse Go there.

And then in November, I'm going to be at the Chicago Podcast Festival

doing a live taping of Bullseye with our friends Lady to Lady.

So that is going to be a lot of fun.

And so you should look out for that, Chicago.

I can't come to those shows, and I miss traveling on the roads with you.

I know.

Well, good news.

I'm not going to spill any beans, but let's say you live in Chicago.

Yeah.

And you're looking forward to a cold, bleak, frozen winter.

Yeah.

And you're thinking, man, that one bullseye show from Jesse in November, that's not going to be enough to cover me.

Just not keep, that won't keep me warm through the early months of 2017.

Well, good news is on the way.

That's all I have to say.

That's all I can say.

It's all I can say.

I'll stay tuned.

And in the meantime, I am doing some solo appearances of different kinds coming up on October 22nd.

I am going to appear on a Prairie Home Companion.

I feel it has been my destiny to do this since I was 13 years old.

Of course, this is the new Prairie Home Companion, hosted by Chris Thieley, a really talented mandolinist and member of Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers, an incredible guy whose name I finally just learned how to pronounce.

It's Thiele, everybody.

Thiele.

Yeah,

I hear that guy's a really great guy.

Everybody.

My colleagues who came back from the Public Radio Program Directors Conference said everyone there was buzzing about how wonderful his new Prairie Home Companion is.

It's going to be so much fun.

It's going to be even more wonderful with you involved.

Well, you can get tickets.

I believe there's still tickets available for the live show at the Fitzgerald Theater on October 22nd.

All tickets for these things are available via links on johnhodgman.com slash tour, including my appearance at MIT in conversation with Seth Manookin on November 10th, and then Seattle, Washington, 11-11, Corduroy Day.

I'll be performing Vacationland, my one-person show at the Neptune.

And then I'll be performing it again in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania as part of the ArtsQuest Festival on on November 17th.

Once again, all that information is at johnhodgman.com/slash tour.

And if I may mention one last thing before we go, Jesse, by now you may already know that there is a new podcast in the Maximum Fun family called Dead Pilot Society.

It was created by TV writer Andrew Reich and Ben Blacker, who is part of Blacker and Acker, who created Thrilling Adventure Hour.

This is a podcast that takes great scripts written by some of your favorite funny people that were written as pilots or pilot presentations for television that didn't make it.

And then they do staged readings of them with some of your other very famous and favorite funny people like Molly Shannon and Ben Schwartz.

And the third episode, they're all great, but the third episode featured my failed pilot, Only Child, which we recorded in 2015, January at Sketchfest.

And it was so, such a great moment in my creative life.

And I would really love it.

If you listened to it and enjoyed it, and spread the word, if you did, and if you don't, don't say anything, but keep listening to Dead Pilot Society as well because I think it's a great project.

Yeah, it's a really fantastic and exciting show with

lots of amazing pilots.

And also, you get to hear a little bit often of the story behind the pilots, sort of what happened and

how things went right or wrong.

It's a really amazing show.

Thanks to Jennifer Marmer, who produces our show.

We hope that you will join us on Twitter with the hashtag JJ H O at Hodgman and at Jesse Thorne, J-E-S-S-E-T-H-R-R.

And join us in the Maximum Fun Facebook group and at maximumfund.reddit.com.

And we'll talk to you next time on the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast.

Bye-bye.

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