Big Chomp

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're clearing the docket this week in Chambers.

Sitting alongside me, the great Judge John Hodgman.

How are you, Judge Hodgman?

Well, I'm fine, but I will not play along with your lie that I'm sitting beside you.

I wish I were, Jesse, because I always enjoy sitting beside you.

It's not a lie, it's a metaphor.

Okay, that's fair enough.

All metaphors are lies, by the way.

That's why they're illegal.

And Judge Hodgman, you know, when there was one set of footprints, that's when you were carrying me.

Yes.

And you know what?

You're a tall fella, but surprisingly light.

Yeah.

I'm actually in my summertime chambers here at W-E-R-U-F-M 89.9 on your FM dial in Blue Hill, Maine.

Technically, we're in Orland, Maine.

I'm here with our fantastic guest engineer, Joel.

Joel, how are you?

Great.

Great to be back with you, Judge.

I know.

Well, I had to go down to New York and I did some summertime courts down there, but it's better to be back here in the WERU community radio and community supported radio.

Is that not so?

That is very much so.

All right, Joel.

And one last question, Joel, you're going to be playing some jazz down in Stonington this year?

We'll be down in Castine at the Pentagoet Inn every Tuesday from 5 to 8.

All through the summer?

Through September.

Oh, okay.

Oh, so plenty of time.

If you're within driving distance of Castine, and if you're in North America, you are.

Go check out Joel.

Joel, what instrument do you play again?

Bass?

Bass, and the name of the group is Night and Day, a jazz trio.

A jazz trio.

Sacks, guitar.

Bass.

Oh.

And vocals.

Oh, okay.

Well, great.

Bass?

Do you do the vocals?

Backup.

You do backup?

Is there a lot of scat singing?

Do you do a lot of scats on?

My guitar player does.

Okay.

Let me know when he's sick, and I'll come down and see the show.

Okay, good.

Man, I got a question for Joel.

You know, I worked for years in community radio, so my question is, how many DJs at your station bring their dog?

Well, we have a rule against that.

Ah, what a terrible rule.

Actually, but to set your mind at ease, there is a cat in the building.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

There's a cat in the building.

Believe me, it is the talk of WERU today as I'm walking in.

Don't let a stray cat is in the building.

Don't let it out.

And her name is DJ.

Oh, well.

Why don't you name her on the nose?

Well, we've got a lot of great cases to talk about, and I think we should do just that.

What do you say, Jesse?

I say yes.

Here's something from Lilia.

My husband has a habit of leaving his dirty dishes piled up on the counter next to the sink.

It irritates me to no end as it creates unnecessary clutter and takes up valuable counter space.

I believe dirty dishes should be placed in the sink if they can't be washed immediately.

My husband's a bit of a germaphobe.

He thinks that washing our hands over a sink full of dishes is icky and will somehow contaminate the dishes.

But as an infectious disease epidemiologist, I maintain this is ridiculous.

I thoroughly wash all of the dishes either by hand or in the dishwasher by the end of the day, and to my knowledge, I have never poisoned my husband with unsanitary tableware.

As an alternative to the sink, I've suggested that he should put his dishes directly in the dishwasher if he first empties it of the clean dishes.

However, he continues to litter the counters with his plates, silverware, and mugs.

As the person who does the majority of the cooking and dishwashing, I think it's only fair that my husband abide by my wishes.

Therefore, I respectfully request that the honorable judge issue an order against my husband to cease and desist with his annoying habit of placing dirty dishes on the counter and instead put them directly in the sink.

Jesse, in your household,

what's your dishes washes policy?

Well, you know, this is always, I feel like this is always a culture clash.

Like every household, my parents were divorced and did it different ways.

And if I messed up and did it the other house's way, it was like a constant source of stress and terror.

And you were revealing which parent you loved more.

Yeah, exactly.

So in my house now,

we do it my wife's way, which is dirty dishes go in the sink.

And then in the evening, we run the dishwasher.

So every night after dinner, I clear the dishwasher and fill the dishwasher and then run it.

And it runs, you know, it it runs overnight, basically.

Yeah, you want to run it overnight when the sun is down because it saves energy.

Right?

But there, yeah, but there's a reason, like I can understand not wanting to.

So, in one of my houses growing up, it was a put your dishes next to the sink situation.

Right.

And there's a reason it's so that you can use the sink for dishes.

Correct.

For to do the dishes.

Yeah, but this idea that the germs are floating upward like bad air in 18th century London

is pretty questionable.

I got the impression that he felt that if he washed his hands, the germs were going to flow through hot soapy water down off his hands onto the dishes, which were going to still be washed anyway.

But I want to put a pin in this germaphobia argument for one second just to, Joel, what's your dishes washing?

Oh, wait a minute.

Do you have a policy?

I do.

Okay.

Now let me guess.

You're a jazz bassist in Maine

and a radio DJ, so you just throw away the microwave popcorn bag and that's it?

It's all paper plates.

Is it really?

The only rule is if you cook, you don't have to clean up.

Yeah.

Well, that's

that.

That's why you're Vice Judge Joel today, because

the president of the Court of Judge Sean Hodgman is the person who does the work gets to decide.

And in this case,

Lilia, is that how we're pronouncing her name?

Sure.

Lilia.

Yeah, I think we're looking at Lilia.

Could be Lelia, but I'm going to say Lilia.

Lila.

I'm just going to go.

Do you know how a not-so-very young human who lives with me used to say bananas

when this human was very young?

No, but I'm excited to learn.

He would say, la la la la la la.

And sometimes he would ask for fresh la la la la.

Well, you have to admit, it's a ridiculous word to learn how to pronounce.

Somebody in my family adds F L to the beginning, substitutes F L for almost any consonant beginning a word, so like

when

our grocery delivery comes, he says,

here comes the fluck.

And it's the most wonderful thing in the world.

I just hope he I hope that he is, I mean, I guess he probably couldn't get through middle school with that speech impediment without trouble.

But like, if he has it until he's 11, I'm happy.

For right now, that's an incredible thing.

But let's get back to the flodcast.

Yeah.

All right.

Lelia,

first of all, points out that she does most of the dishwashing, and I believe her.

She wouldn't lie

just to, just to win this case.

But if that is true, then obviously she should be able to determine what to do.

The arguments over whether to put the dishes outside of the sink or into the sink are there are merits to both sides.

I prefer to have them on the counter next to the sink anyway because it makes it easier to rinse them off and then put them into the dishwasher rather than have to dig them out of the sink.

But it is much more sightly to have them out of sight in the sink.

I think it's easy.

There's a reason either way, but there is one reason that does not exist, that germs are going to fall off your hands in hot soapy water and infect the dishes.

And what's more, if I had anyone to turn to to confirm that point of view, it would be an epidemiologist.

And luckily, Lily is one.

So the fact that her husband is germaphobic to the point that he doesn't believe his own wife an epidemiologist suggests that either he needs

serious behavioral therapy,

or he is a manipulative monster who is using germaphobia as an excuse to lazily shove his dishes wherever he wants and not care about it.

But without question, no one's getting sick off of these dishes that have their hands washed over them.

And for sure, just based on settled law and principle of the courtroom, she who does the dishes chooses the method.

And that's what's going to happen from now on in your home, Lelia, I find in your favor.

I'm having a great time imagining this guy getting the dishes to the side of of the sink without touching them, like he's got a set of dish tongs or something,

so that none of his hand germs rub off on them.

Let me just say that

I have known people who had that kind of

germaphobia, and it was a hindrance in their life and insofar as it was enabled by their life partner, a real drag for that person until that person got a little help and now they're okay.

Yeah, I know somebody that had some specific OCD challenges, somebody in my family, and

yeah, he got some CBT and

worked them out almost completely.

And he's a grown man, you know, like a middle-aged man, but really got some help and sorted it out

so quickly that he was surprised.

Yeah, that's been my experience too, thirdhand, that actually CBT cognitive behavioral therapy is effective for a lot of people.

And I am reminded of the story that was told to me my fresh person year at Yale University, an accredited four-year college that I attended,

about his friend who had OCD tendencies.

And his friend's thing was always

to go around the house

smelling appliances and whispering to himself, pure.

Wow.

Yeah.

And it was torturous to himself and his parents.

And

he sought help.

But one time,

let me actually roll that back.

I don't know if he sought any help at all because it sounded like it was a real problem.

And one time he and the friend who was telling me this said, yeah, and then we were going to go out to the movies this time.

And he said, I can't go out to the movies.

I'm grounded.

And I was like, why?

What happened?

He said, I got caught sniffing the VCR.

So it was really a sad situation.

I don't think that he got the help that he needed, but you can get help now.

Unless you're just lying about your germaphobia to to be lazy about the dishes, dude, in which case, don't be a monster.

Here's something from Esther.

I live with my parents over the summer when university is not in session, and I have an issue to take up with my mom, Rachel.

She always refers to our evening meal as supper, which I find disgusting.

Supper is my moist.

I think it sounds unpleasant, and to some extent, I lose my appetite when I hear it.

I vastly prefer the derm dinner or if I'm feeling whimsical, din din.

For 20 years, I've been explaining my revulsion to her, but I don't think she's fully internalized my sensitivity to that word.

I only ask that she use the less controversial terminology around me.

You've read about this controversy in Time magazine, right?

Absolutely.

Or at least give her a fair trigger warning.

The rest of the time, she's free to say supper.

Am I being insensitive and ungrateful, or is it within reason to ask her to respect my taste in phrasing?

What do you, when you grew up, the evening meal was called what, Jesse Thorne?

Dinner.

Dinner.

But also, also maybe supper sometimes.

I mean, I grew up in San Francisco where all regional accents are combined into one super accent.

Right.

And was this also a divorce thing?

One household said dinner, one household said supper, and if you said the wrong one, you would get in trouble.

You know, one time my dad screamed at me for talking like my mom, really.

that's a really sad story that i'm laughing at because i'm a happy adult now but man that was terrible yeah it's i i you know what divorce is divorce is hard on everyone yeah but there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it yeah my parents did a lot of experimentation yeah well you know we're all fallible and hurdling towards death i love my parents they're good parents i just want to throw that in there joel you grew up in maine or where did you grow up washington dc washington dc our nation's capital.

That's right.

And what did you call the evening meal?

Taxation without representation?

Dominoes.

Well done.

Well done, Joel.

Thank you.

Okay.

I was with Esther all the way because supper is a disgusting word.

Not as disgusting as moist, which is one of the words that I hate to hear.

Really?

You're one of those moist haters?

Whoa, stop.

Yeah, but you know what?

I can handle it.

You're not going to write the letters to podcasts that people are composing right now that are going to come to me and not you.

No, I get my share of those letters.

But I was with Esther until she said din din.

Like, no way.

Because that is something that people say when they're having long conversations with cats.

That's not for me.

I don't like that word at all.

I was a dinner person growing up, although there was a

certain branches of my family in Massachusetts who would say suppa.

And it's interesting.

I looked up the Harvard dialect survey, and a lot of people feel that using supper as the evening,

describing the evening meal as supper,

is a southern thing.

You hear that quite a bit, that it's more of a southern thing, and

the lunchtime meal might be dinner.

Joel, you're nodding along to that.

That makes sense to you in Washington, D.C., Gateway to the American South.

The farmers.

That's right.

Farmers, right?

Farmers.

Yeah.

And I think that, but according to the Harvard Dialect Survey, it's not particularly regionally tied, and it might be tied closer to

generational and

demographic and occupational that farmers would call it supper instead of dinner.

What was really interesting to me is that a full 4%

of

the people surveyed in the Harvard dialect study

did not describe the evening meal as supper or dinner.

And I don't know what they're calling that thing.

Maybe night munch?

Maybe

night moist munch?

Big chomp.

Oh, big, big chomp, late chomp.

Well, that was a thing, because like, was dinner, dinner was the big meal, and supper was the light meal.

It's hard to say.

And I don't know that there's a definitive answer to who and when and where people would use supper or if it even matters.

I'm guessing that

Esther is up in Canada because she referred to university instead of college or perhaps the UK.

Perhaps we'll never know.

But in any case, don't worry, Esther.

You are on the right side of history because what the Harvard dialect study

pointed out is that supper is definitely dying out.

And guess what?

So is your mom.

Slowly but surely, you'll never have to hear that again one day.

So I would say enjoy your mom while she lasts and eat her suppers, especially while she is feeding you at home, you deadbeat.

Her generosity in providing you your night moisties is more important than

your weird word preferences.

You can get over it.

You can learn to stop sniffing the VCR and rejoin society.

Munch, munch, munch.

So I want to take this opportunity to throw in a book recommendation.

Do you mind?

No, not at all.

So I think probably a lot of Judge John Hodgman listeners enjoy the work of Bill Bryson,

the charming and funny, often travel writer.

Sure.

Recently, he's been writing more about

history and stuff like that, but

made his name as

an American expatriate living in Britain.

And

Bill Bryson wrote a book called At Home.

It came out maybe five years ago that is a history of essentially domestic life.

I have not read this one.

And it is my absolute favorite of his.

I mean, it's just like right in my wheelhouse of books where it's about something and it's well written and fun,

but it's not an actual real history book.

And

there are these amazing discussions in there of how and when people ate through time.

And, you know, you don't even think of the way that you eat as being a social construct, but of course it is.

And there's this one chapter where he basically, I mean, this chapter amounts to functionally just a list of weird birds that people ate in the Middle Ages.

Yeah.

And it is just the greatest, like just hearing about like what a feast was in 1352 or whatever for a king.

And like mostly it was about the number of different animals you ate.

Yeah.

Like who could provide the greatest variety of animals?

And how and how many of them you could stuff into a single swan.

Yeah.

And you how many of them would still be alive when you cut the swan open.

And you real and you realize like how much of our eating habits are really just a function of the industrialization of food.

Like the fact that we think of meat as being chickens, pigs, and cows, essentially.

Right.

Is really just about the fact that like at some point in 1875, somebody was like, hey, if we made giant cow farms and put them on trains,

then everyone could just eat this one meat and it would be a lot easier.

Anyway,

you'd have to stuff this gopher into a quail.

Exactly, but it is a man, it is a really fun book.

Like, you've never read a more fun book where, like, one chapter is about what cutlery people used through

Western history.

I don't care what I eat as long as it's moist.

As long as my supper is moist, Esther.

Oh, by the way, I found in favor of your mom.

And by the way, Jesse, I'll read that book book after I finish the 9,000 or so pages of Stephen King's it I have left.

Some serious summer reading.

Here's something from Greg.

My beautiful wife and I have a three-year-old daughter.

We're trying for our second child, and the naming of this child is the point of contention.

My name is Greg Capital A, capital A, S U M, pronounced awesome.

Wait a minute.

Capital A, capital A?

Capital A, capital A, lowercase S U M.

Okay, and it's pronounced awesome?

Yeah, or Alcoholics Anonymous some.

You got a big laugh out of Joel on that one.

Maybe there's some sad story behind that, Joel.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, he's nodding.

Growing up, I received mostly positive attention from my name, but there were countless times that kids would say, so what's your middle name?

Isn't?

Get it?

Oh, I get it.

Yeah.

Isn't awesome.

Oh.

Yeah, I mean, this is the real problem for you not to be that awesome.

Anyway, my solution and lifelong dream is to name my child with the middle name Effen

or anything that closely resembles F apostrophe N.

For example, John Effen awesome.

Right.

My wife is having none of it.

I feel she doesn't know what it was like growing up with this name and therefore doesn't grasp this unique opportunity to shut down future mild emotional pain for our child.

Please find in my favor and order my wife to use Effen in the naming of our next child.

Wow, I cannot believe that this whole thing is.

This is what, this is

precedent-setting in its, I can't believe this could possibly be real, but it's so specific that it couldn't possibly not be real.

Well, here's the thing.

I've suddenly gone down an internet hole, which I arguably could have done before sitting down to record to figure out what

the origin of the name awesome is with two capital A's.

It does exist, so he's not lying there.

He might be very well related to the Awesome Dufour funeral home in Albany, Oregon.

Maybe that's a potential new sponsor for the show.

If you'd like, awesome Dufour, get in touch with the maximumfund.org home office and

we'll help you out.

Or maybe Sarah Awesome Holtberg, pastry chef based in Sweden.

It sounds Scandinavian, right, Jesse?

Yeah, I guess.

In any case, if anyone wants to enlighten us on the history and meaning of the name awesome

and can use the internet better than I can right now, I'd appreciate it.

What it sounds like is something that a guy who works at a board game store makes you call him.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's a good, it's a good D and D name, that's for sure.

Yeah.

But it was important, at least, for me to verify that Greg wasn't lying about his last name because everything else about his letter makes me think he's a creeping monster.

Let me say,

for the record, if I've not said it before, and I think I have,

your child is a human being.

Your child's name is not an opportunity to make a joke or a pun or a gimmick or a protest or design an accessory or a chance to make an obscure cultural reference.

Although, if you wanted to name your child Judge John Hodgman, that would be fine.

Judge John Hodgman, awesome.

That's

pretty much about right, actually, now that I think about it.

But don't do that.

And also don't use your child to, and the raising of your child to get over your old problems or fears, to express your taste or make yourself feel interesting.

This is a human being.

For a long time,

that human being, that baby and then toddler and then young person, will be

essentially an extension of yourself.

And you can pour all kinds of culture and ideas and

philosophies

into that child.

And that's a beautiful part of raising a child, but they're not there for you to work out some funny joke that you had in mind back when you were a teenager.

And the reason for this is suddenly that person will no longer be an extension of your life.

That person will grow to be 13 or 14 and utterly reject you in age-appropriate individuation and start to become his or her own person.

And you will realize then very swiftly that you are unnecessary and that only loneliness and death await you.

So my feeling about naming a child is you do whatever you like, but the job is basically to get in there and give your child the most respectable, reasonable

name that you can and get out of the way, right?

It's not your job to make your child interesting with an interesting name, it's your job to help your child learn to become interesting in and of him or herself.

I was recently told that a friend who I've not seen in a long time who had given his son a very unusual name

I said, well, how is unusual name, child?

And they said, oh, you mean Tom?

I'm like,

what happened?

The minute Tom learned to speak, he said, please don't call me that unusual name anymore.

And I just had this image of Tom being called unusual name, unusual name, and still not being able to speak and just suffering and in furious silence until Tom got his words and said, no, I want to be Tom.

Thank you.

My middle name is fine, Tom.

Like a guy in a coma who's like trying to blink.

Yeah.

Like a diving bell in the butterfly type of situation.

Like this kid is trying to arrange fruit that says Tom, but no one's picking up on the message.

Yeah.

Every tower he builds with his blocks is just in the shape of, please don't call me unusual name.

Yes, so, you know, look,

you're going to name your child what you want, but don't name your child as a joke.

Obviously, Greg, I'm finding in favor of your beautiful wife.

And I would say that if your joke is so effing great, why don't you change your own effing middle name to effing, Greg, effing awesome?

You know,

our mutual friend, Mr.

Jonathan Colton

of NPR's Ask Me Another, and, of course, recording fame, touring and recording musician fame.

And I had this conversation one time at his place in Brooklyn, shortly before my first first child was born, I think it was.

And I was talking to him, and I was whinging about how I felt it was like it was going to be so weird to raise my kid in Los Angeles, this place that was so culturally different from the cultural values of where I grew up.

And I was like, I don't know whether this guy's, this kid's going to like, you know, have a kid that like rides a skateboard.

What is that?

And I'm not morally opposed to it, just confused by it.

Right.

And Jonathan Colton said to me, and Jonathan Colton is a wonderful father himself and a kind and wise man,

he said to me, you know,

I sort of thought the same thing before I had kids.

And then at some point I realized, oh yeah, my kids are going to have a completely different childhood than me, no matter what.

And he just kind of left it at that.

And I was like, oh, yeah, right, okay.

All children, even if I grew, even if I raise my child on the farm that I grew up on, their childhood's going to be completely different than mine.

And me trying to

change things to match my childhood or not match my childhood aren't going to work because the context is different.

Yeah.

And I think this guy is trying to do something about when he was a kid to his kid, and it's just different.

And he just needs to accept that it's different.

I mean, that's sage advice from Jonathan Colton, obviously.

And that's why when

my younger child, who is a male human, said to me, father,

I have chosen a life for myself.

I would like to finish my childhood not living with you, but instead living in England with the multi-millionaire, incredibly successful Let's Play YouTuber Dan the Diamond Minecart, I said,

go for it.

And now he doesn't live with us anymore.

We just send him a care package of lalalas from time to time.

Hopefully green lalas, because the fresh lalalas, like the, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna ripen on their way across the Atlantic.

Yeah.

Do you know, I

a story for another time.

I have stood in the Victorian-era greenhouse in England where the first

edible banana that we would recognize as a banana, the Cavendish banana, was

cultivated.

That sounds like

a story from Bill Bryson's best-selling book, At Home.

I never realized this, but I was at Fresh Banana Ground Zero.

Joel, what's your middle name?

Thomas.

That's effing awesome.

Simple and believable.

I love it.

We've got more stuff on the docket, plus a listener's story, an amazing listener's story about a vape pen.

I'm not going to give you any spoilers, but it's really something coming up after the break.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

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

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welcome back to the judge john hodgman podcast i'm bailiff jesse thorne with me the good judge himself john hodgman we're clearing the docket here is a case from kelly my husband kevin and i both take fantasy football very seriously we play in three different leagues, one of which is just the two of us playing head to head.

Weekends in the fall involve very meticulous planning.

We spent a lot of time doing research and making player spreadsheets, which could be one of the only things in our marriage that we don't share.

Part of this research involves listening to fantasy football podcasts, which allow us to help formulate our strategy.

Kevin has only in the past few months started downloading and listening to podcasts.

One of these podcasts is My Fantasy Football Podcast.

There are dozens of fantasy football podcasts, but I've been listening to the same show for the past three years.

So I guess when she says hers, she means the one she listens to along with thousands of others.

That's right.

The one that is free to download to all humans.

Yes.

He finds it hilarious to have me catch him listening to my podcast, and he's only doing it because he knows it makes me crazy.

One of his favorite things to do is ask what I think about a specific player that was being highly touted on the podcast, knowing he would have the opportunity to add that player to his team before I would.

Just like any other game, it's detrimental to both of us if we're using the same strategy to try and win, especially when he's only doing this to push my buttons.

I request that you hand Kevin a cease and desist regarding listening to my podcast and order him to find and subscribe to a different fantasy football podcast.

Please help us with our marital strife.

So Kelly is asking me to prohibit her husband from listening to a podcast?

Yes, because she found it first.

A gag order, in effect.

Except it's his ears that get gagged.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah,

I'm censoring culture from his life.

I guess.

Let me back up for a second here.

What is fantasy football?

Do you really need an explanation of fantasy football, Judge Hodgman?

Okay, you pick.

Here are my guesses.

Okay.

Before you tell me, it's either LARPY football, where people play football but dressed up as fantasy characters, elves, orcs, sword maidens, and such,

or it's football fan fiction, where people write stories about their favorite football players and they ship them.

You know what I'm talking about?

That's a fan fiction term.

They ship.

They ship two players.

Yeah, it's like Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski involved in a romantic relationship.

Are you shipping them?

I'm going to say, in fact, I'm going to kick it up a notch and say involved in a sensual relationship.

You're shipping them in your head cannon?

Exactly.

Do you know what?

I have a Tumblr account.

That's why I know things.

But you were saying...

Fantasy football is a form of gambling.

In which it's like a community-oriented gambling, though.

You don't usually play against the house, although things have changed in the last few years.

It's basically a game of skill in which you draft in some way, either a rotation draft or an auction draft, players onto your team representing all of the various positions in football.

And then over the course of a season, as these players play, their actions earn you points.

So a touchdown earns you 10 points, a field goal earns you five points,

a yard rushed gains you a point, whatever.

There are just different systems.

And you can trade players throughout the season and sign and release players.

And especially in fantasy football where it happens only once a week, a big part of it is deciding which of your players you will have play that week based on that player's real-life circumstances that week.

So, you know, if you have two great quarterbacks, one of them might be facing a weak defense that week.

And so that's the kind of thing that she might be learning from her fantasy football podcast, that kind of tip.

Especially if she's playing head-to-head with only two teams.

They probably have half the NFL to choose from in some way.

And so,

you know, they're really looking for what players in the best, what, what's the best player in the best circumstances that week.

So it's like a dopey stock market?

Yeah, it's like a it's like a like you buy shares in a player and you you you choose when to play that player based on the likelihood that that player is going to do well and earn you points and or money and or bragging rights with your husband or wife.

Yeah, the fantasy here is that you have your own football team, and

so it's like being in charge of your own football team.

That's always been my fantasy.

Yes.

Well, you're talking to a guy who basically spent his entire college experience not studying, but instead playing a computer game called Baseball Mogul,

in which you own a baseball team and you set the hot dog prices

in addition to drafting and trading players.

So you know exactly what kind of nerd you're dealing with here.

I've never played fantasy football, though.

First of all, I would love to see the graphics on baseball mogul.

Oh, there were no graphics, Judge Hyde.

Oh, no.

No, sorry.

Was it text adventure?

Pure text adventure?

Yeah, I mean, there was menus.

This was the Windows era.

But yeah,

you're looking at a lot of basically slightly colorful spreadsheets.

Well, everyone likes what they like.

I would love to play a game where I just determine the hot dog prices prices at a baseball stadium and don't care about the sports at all.

But I understand now.

And there are podcasts about this.

So she is feeling...

See, my problem here with Kelly is that she's making two different arguments.

One,

which is this argument that both players suffer if their strategy is the same.

Which I've never...

Does that make, does that ring true to you as a sports follower?

Yeah, well, because it's sort of a zero-sum game.

So if one player has, if one team has one player, the other one doesn't.

So especially in a head-to-head league, if they've got the same information, neither of them is able to take advantage of that information.

But it sounds like her, at the same time, she's saying that her husband is using the podcast to get tips before she does and take advantage of them before she can, right?

It sounds like her husband is listening to this podcast specifically because it bothers her.

Sure.

but this is also part of sports right getting in your opponent's head of course yes and and even even if he is merely getting in her head he has found a competitive advantage that is that is clearly has put her on tilt as we say in the sedentary sports world of poker

and uh and that is a competitive advantage that i do not feel he should be robbed of because he figured out a way to really annoy her yeah which is every spouse's right to learn how to annoy their spouse.

So, unfortunately, no, not only on a simple,

no censorship grounds, but also on I'm rooting for this guy grounds.

You know, I'm sorry, Kelly, you got to find another podcast.

You got to listen harder.

You got to play faster.

Whatever the metaphor might be for an imaginary football game and podcast thereof.

This is why, see, there isn't, there is no, this is why metaphors are illegal.

But there you go.

Sorry about that.

Here's a gavel for you, Kevin.

Here's something from Brian.

My roommate and I live in a downtown Austin condo that only comes with one parking spot.

We've decided against buying another parking spot in the building because we can just barely afford rent and because we have free parking at our respective offices, which are about six blocks from our home.

We alternate the parking spot by week.

One week he has it, the next week I have it.

The person who does not have the spot in a given week must keep his car at work and walk to to and from the office.

The system has worked relatively well, but my roommate believes the person who has the parking spot has total rights to it for the week and does not have any obligation to accommodate the other person.

For example, he recently took a four-day work trip in a week during which he had the spot.

Instead of leaving his car at his office for those four days, he left it in our parking spot, depriving me of any use of the spot, even though he was out of town.

He also often chooses to walk to work, leaving his car in our parking spot, depriving me of the ability to run home to grab something in the middle of the day.

I believe that in situations such as these, the person who has the parking spot should be required to accommodate the other person, despite our system.

I would like the court to order my roommate to move his car to his office when he goes out of town, even if it's his turn to have our parking spot.

I would also like the court to order my roommate to drive to work on weeks in which he has the parking spot.

Did you follow all that, Joel?

No, Joel says no.

I think I get the gist.

The gist is this.

You know how there's a rule on this podcast that married or cohabitating couples who are romantically involved and sleep together in the same bed should always have a king-size bed?

Yeah.

So there's a new rule.

Everyone should live alone.

Everyone should stop sharing things.

And also, everyone should live alone and sleep in a king-sized bed and just share nothing.

because it's just maybe you guys can't handle the sharing.

All right, you're sharing this parking spot.

You both have cars.

You live six blocks from work.

Why you're ever driving to work to begin with, I do not know.

And you're alternating dibs on the parking spot week by week.

And you're having trouble because your roommate sometimes uses the parking spot in a way that you don't like.

Yeah, that's what having a roommate is all about.

I'm sorry, but the point of establishing a rule about sharing, the point of having this system is designed to free up your mind space, to not have to worry about it, to give you the peace of mind that, say, a parking spot offers you.

When you have a parking spot in life, it's a great thing because you know that that's where your car is,

or that's where your car goes, and and no one can interfere with it.

And the reality, and what you have chosen to do is to alternate that peace of mind in your living relationship.

Therefore,

your roommate can do whatever he likes with that spot when it's his spot for that week.

He can leave his car there, he can go park somewhere else, he can park backwards or forwards in there,

he can sell his car and fill it up with crates of fresh lalalas.

As long as they're out of there by the time it's your turn to pull into that spot, then it's his business.

Because what you do not want to have in your life is this constant micro-negotiation about like, well, here's the 55 exceptions that I think are fair to the simple rule that we established.

Eventually,

I hope in life that you will

be in a position where you can have your own parking spot and your own house and your own apartment or whatever it is.

But seriously, if you guys can't figure out how to share stuff,

don't do it.

Go live in a go move to Maine.

You could probably find, you could probably live here pretty cheaply by yourself.

And I mean, 98% of the state is parking spots.

Isn't that right, Joel?

That's right, Judge.

Yeah.

What's the longest you ever looked for a parking spot in Maine?

I never have.

Yeah, you never have.

Never have, exactly.

That's right.

Never has.

So I find in favor of Brian's roommate.

What do you think, Jesse?

Was I right or wrong on that one?

Oh, you're dead right.

I mean, this is ridiculous.

Look, it's one thing to ask for an accommodation.

It's another thing to, no, it's not an accommodation if you're making a weird demand for it.

Yeah, and you can't ask.

You can't ask, dude.

You can't ask to use a parking spot when it's not your week.

Hey, do you mind?

Do you mind if I have the podcast when you're out of town?

Actually, I don't mind.

I could be swimming in uncomfortably cold water right now

if you had it.

But I would miss so much talking to you, my friend and bailiff Jesse Thorne, and getting a chance to see Joel here at WERU 89.9 in Blue Hill webcasting at www.weru.org.

True Community Freeform Radio, Joel?

Freeform?

Totally.

So you get in, you play whatever you want.

Well, you have a genre that you stick to, but you get to pick out what music you want to play.

We don't, no playlists, nothing.

What was that band you were playing that you were telling me about that I had never heard of?

Ultimate Spinach.

Ultimate Spinach.

Funky Freeform Ridge.

That's right.

Yeah.

So

if you ever have a chance on the internet there, go and you're not in Maine, go over to weru.org, take a listen, and obviously you can donate to this find station if you feel like it.

What else is going on in our podcast now, Jesse?

Oh, man,

I'm just geeking out on the spinach.

I'm a real spinach head, Joel.

Jesse, honestly, between you and me, have you ever heard of a band called Ultimate Spinach, or is Joel gaslighting me?

I'm pretty sure Joel's gaslighting you.

Either Joel's gaslighting you, or he's been following the spaghetti incident around on tour or whatever.

No, no, no, no, no.

No, it's a psychedelic band called Ultimate Spinach, and their hit was the Funky Freak Parade.

Their hit.

Yeah.

Sounds like a real smash.

I hear that one on the oldies station all the time.

That's a real classic golden oldie.

You know, I have the internet, Joel.

Here in Maine, I get the internet half an hour every day.

And when that comes around again, I'm going to look it up, look it up spinach, and I'm going to, and if I like it, maybe that'll be the new theme song.

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.

It 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.

Judge Hodgman, we've got a letter here about vape pens.

This is important stuff here.

You may remember episode 258 in Moto Parentis, in which a very sweet-tempered

but very teenagery teen was demanding that his mother obtain for him a vape pen.

Yeah, not only let him have one, but buy it for him.

Yeah, so here's something from Rebecca.

Rebecca says, I'm an experimental theater artist in Providence, Rhode Island, and I teach.

I will marry you.

What?

And I teach.

And I teach acting classes.

I'm surprised.

I would have thought that her experimental theater career in Providence would have been supporting her, but she's doing a little work on the side.

She says, I was starting a new intro to performance adult acting class last winter with 15 or so very kind adults who wanted to try out acting for the first time in a formal setting.

Sounds great.

We were sitting in a circle in chairs in a basement studio, and I was going through my standard first-day chat about expectations for the class.

After about 20 minutes of that, I I asked everyone to scoot their chairs back and stand up.

It was time to play a name game.

Judge Hodgman, have you ever studied acting formally?

I have taken some classes, yes.

It's basically theater training, and I did four years of it.

Theater training is basically a process by which you are broken down.

Yes.

Sort of like how they play metal songs really loud so prisoners can't sleep.

That's right.

But it's based on shame.

So they just make you do more and more embarrassing things over the course of time until you no longer have any shame or self-consciousness, and you can just go on stage and feel any feeling immediately.

My limited experience with acting instruction was terrifying and extremely productive for me as a performer and human being.

Yeah, I mean, basically, they say.

But it is hard.

It's very hard.

I mean, they really put you through the ringer.

You have to act like a tree until you you no longer have a sense of self or any

shame.

And then you can access everything about yourself immediately when called to in a performance context.

It's a remarkable and terrifying thing that I really like.

For me, tree acting just came naturally.

That's true.

I'm just playing myself, basically.

Well, you've always been very leafy.

Excuse me, did you say I've always been very leafy?

Yes, I did.

No, dude, I'm a conifer.

I am needly.

Oh, got it.

Okay, so everyone scooted their chairs back and stood up.

Then, out of nowhere, the young man to my left's pants caught on fire, exploded from the pocket, burst into flames.

Because of his acting?

He ran from the room.

We all followed.

He beat the fire out with his hand, and his pants were burnt off his leg.

I called 911, and the other students took care of the now-calmer burned victim student.

The rest of the story is pretty good and includes the power of theater games for community healing.

But the moral of the story is: the battery from a vape in his pocket exploded unprovoked.

Oh.

He ended up with third-degree burns on his thigh and hand.

That's very serious.

It is.

He couldn't take the rest of the acting class, and I think his family is suing the vape company.

So she says, no vapes and definitely no motorcycle vaping.

That's an amazing story.

And

we've got quite a few letters from people talking about, aside from whatever physical harm the vaping may or may not do to your lungs, and it's really not been shown or studied very closely yet.

You're basically inhaling some perfumed mystery substance.

Also,

we made the point on the podcast that

any coolness that accrues to you from owning and riding a motorcycle, which is considerable coolness, is immediately evaporated, so to speak, by having a vape pen in your life.

Sorry, vapors.

But also,

a lot of people wrote in saying, yeah, they explode.

And there's a lot of controversy about these things, reliability and causing of fires.

They're basically the hoverboard of nicotine replacement.

We got a lot of letters, but we only read the one from the experimental theater performer in Providence, Rhode Island.

because I accept her proposal of marriage, even though I am married.

We'll find a way to work it out because this sounds like, you sound like 17-year-old me's perfect woman, aside from my wife.

I feel like I want to acknowledge the other side of the vape letters that we received, and I certainly got more than a few tweets about this, which is as much as we mock vapes because they are completely and profoundly embarrassing, like the dorkiest, most embarrassing thing on earth, and also because their safety is untested and so on and so forth.

All of those things being true,

it does seem almost certain that they are healthier for you than smoking, and they're certainly less unpleasant to non-smokers than smoking, unpleasant though they are.

So a tip of the cap to everyone who is quitting smoking by vaping, we acknowledge you and

don't get burned.

Yeah, so try not to let that vape explode.

Thanks this week to our engineer, Joel Mann at WERU, our producer Jennifer Marmer.

Hey, Judge Hodgman, I want to mention before we go something really cool.

I want to hear about something really cool.

Well, you know our friend Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of numerous books, including the international mega bestseller, Eat Prey, Love.

Sternmen, what?

Which one did you mention?

I mentioned Sternman, her novel about Maine.

I will also mention her most recent book, which is fresh in paperback or about to appear in paperback, called Big Magic, which is about creativity, and it's like totally funny and inspirational and a joy to read.

And I really loved it.

She's a wonder and an inspiration.

Yeah, if you've got some weird idea about what Elizabeth Gilbert is because of Julia Roberts and the movie Eat, Prey, Love and the preview that you saw of that movie,

just know, like, Elizabeth Gilbert is just one of the coolest MFers that exists on the earth.

Anyway, her middle name is Effing Awesome.

Yeah, so Liz Gilbert has a brand new maximum fun podcast called Magic Lessons, and it is so great that I'm just like want to throw in a plug for it.

We're so proud to be associated with it.

Basically what she does is you know she has this huge community of

readers many of whom are creative people themselves and

she basically asked that community what are your creative challenges like what's keeping you from making stuff and whatever it is that you make and they responded to her and so on each episode of this podcast she talks to one of those people finds out about what their creative challenges are, then brings in like a heavy-hitter creative person.

We're talking about like Neil Gaiman.

You know, we're talking about, we're talking about serious people.

And then...

Name creatives.

Big name creatives.

Yeah, you want to know what Cheryl Strade thinks about it?

She'll tell you.

So those folks come in, talk about their challenges and how they recommend this person deal with their challenges.

And then Liz helps that person.

And we bring that person back and hear about how they address these things that were standing between them and being creative and it is so fun and funny and sweary and inspirational like I know that I said inspirational like four times but I am very rarely inspired by anything certainly by anything other than uh talking to George Saunders so like it is genuinely awesome show like it's so cool and I'm so proud that maximum fun is part of it there's 10 episodes from the first season season, and the second season is just coming out now.

So run out and grab it.

And if you happen to be listening to it the first season, here's a weird thing.

You have to unsubscribe, find it again, and resubscribe because the RSS feed changed.

But Big Magic with Elizabeth, excuse me, Magic Lessons with Elizabeth Gilbert is what the show is called.

Big Magic is the book, which I also loved.

So I just wanted to throw in that mention because that show's great.

You know, she is my hero, and you know what I hear about this podcast.

What's that?

It will really help your fantasy football game.

Yeah, absolutely.

If you're creatively blocked in thinking about what kicker you should play this week, holler at Elizabeth Gilbert.

She'll fix you up.

Okay, if you have a case for Judge Sean Hodgman, maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho.

We're especially, of course, looking for cases in the places where we will be performing live along the eastern seaboard and in London, England.

So make sure to mention where you are physically.

We're going to be getting people in who have great cases.

That is Brooklyn, Washington, D.C., Portland, Maine, Turner's Falls, Boston, and Philadelphia, plus London, England.

But of course, we are always taking your cases, big and small, from all over the world at maximumfund.org slash JJ H O.

Jesse, I just remembered something.

What's that?

Do you remember how on this podcast I told a story about Elizabeth Gilbert and how her dog chewed up my sunglasses 10 or 15 years ago?

And I was mad at her because she stole me 200 bucks.

Yeah, she was stricken about it.

She emailed me about it.

Well, it was a joke, right?

I mean, it was true, but it was a true story, but I didn't care.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I got a letter in the mail from Liz

and she said, Oh, I can't believe that I just found this cleaning out some 10 or 15-year-old files.

It's a letter that I meant to send to you.

I don't even remember what I wrote.

And inside was this purposefully aged, bogus old letter apologizing for her dog,

chewing up my sunglasses, and

including $200.

So, everybody, debt has been paid in the most hilarious way.

And maybe if I remember it next time, Joel, I'll bring it in with me to WRU and I'll read it on the air or the fake internet air, as it were.

Okay, we'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Joel, take us out on some ultimate spinach.

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