Paw and Order

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, Paw and Order.

Martha brings the case against her boyfriend Chase.

She says Chase is set on taking their cats outside on leashes, but she thinks they should stay indoors.

Chase says the cats have expressed interest in the outdoors and would benefit from a safe and supervised adventure.

Who's right, who's wrong, only one man can decide.

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

Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and stumbles to bring it to you.

Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement.

And just as inferior people prefer the inferior animal, which scampers excitedly because someone else wants something, So do superior people respect the superior animal, which lives its own life and knows that the querile stick-throwings of alien bipeds are none of its business and beneath its notice.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear them in.

Please rise and raise your right hands.

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

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact fact that as a cat owner, his brain is infected with a dangerous virus that leads him to take unreasonable risks, like a mouse that doesn't care about cats eating it?

I do.

I do.

Very well.

Judge Hodgman.

Martha and Chase, you may be seated.

Jesse, I thought we were going to keep my toxoplasmosis out of this.

Your toxoplasmosis is central to your ability to decide this case.

I'm not even sure you shouldn't have recused yourself because of your almost certain toxoplasmosis.

I do not deserve discrimination as a toxoplasmotic American.

That's exactly the kind of immoderate thing that a person infected with toxoplasmosis, which is a thing that's inside of cats

leavings that infects the brains of mices and makes them easier to catch and eat and also infects the brains of human beings to unknowable effect.

Sorry, I lost track of that sentence.

Yeah, I know.

It causes us to speak in run-on sentences that go nowhere and to start podcasts.

Semicolon?

Martha, Chase.

For an immediate summary judgment in one of your toxoplasmodic adult brains' favors,

can you

name the person?

I was quoting.

I confess I don't know where this appeared,

that sentence, but it is a person who said it.

Who is the person who said it?

This is an easy one for you guys because you don't even have to name the piece of culture, just the person who said it.

Now, Chase, you have been brought into this courtroom accused of cat abuse.

So you have the right to guess first or make Martha guess first, thus gain information by her guess.

That could be an advantage to you.

It would be.

I will make her guess first.

Yeah, advantage Martha.

advantage martha would be you guess first yeah oh that's true go ahead go ahead then i'll guess i'll give you the advantage martha was it douglas adams

martha the guess is douglas adams

who do you think it is oh i

and i'll give you a hint it's a who it's a person it's a who yeah it's a person

it's a who um it's not for example that that computer that plays jeopardy

watson Of course, a guy who knows the name of the computer that plays Jeopardy has to interject the name of the computer that plays Jeopardy.

Beep boop.

Sorry.

Yeah.

That's your own Alan Turing test, Jesse.

For know-it-all dudes.

I'm just going to take a wild guess and say Winston Churchill.

I don't know why.

Oh.

Left hand.

Gosh.

I think that's a pretty good guess, given that it's a quotation.

He was famous for saying things.

Yeah, that's my reasoning

that other people then quoted.

Yeah, I would say not just saying things, but also for other people noting the things that he had said.

Yeah, well, yeah.

And he wrote a lot of things down, which people then read aloud.

True.

But in this case,

all guesses are wrong.

Oh.

The answer is,

and I was going to do a whole, I had a whole thing planned, you guys, that was going to be so weird.

And probably you might have guessed it.

And then I truly just did the laziest thing.

I always try to avoid this.

I just typed in quotes about cats.

Went to Ye Old Goodreads quotes page and discovered this quote, which, by the way, when you learn who it is, it will not surprise you.

to learn that the quote is actually much longer than

what I quoted.

The quote goes on and on and on to a completely unsatisfying and evasive ending.

And that quote is by H.P.

Lovecraft,

the famous author of horror and speculative fiction.

I think that's why I said alien bipeds.

That would have been the only clue.

But there's another way you could have figured this out.

And I'll tell you why.

Because H.P.

Lovecraft in here talks about how

superior people like cats and inferior humans like dogs.

And you're like,

which writer of speculative and horror fiction is a notorious racist?

Oh, that's right.

H.P.

Lovecraft.

You could have come around to it that way.

But no.

All guesses are wrong.

And

so we move on to the case here.

You know what?

I'll give you one more shot.

Can either of you name what H.P stands for?

Oh.

It's not Hewlett-Packard.

That's your guess?

Sure.

Yeah, that's my guess.

No, no, I'm telling you that's your guess.

All right.

That's my one guess.

I don't have to.

Martha?

I should know because I have nerded out on H.P.

Lovecraft before, but I can't think of it.

I should.

You know what it stands for?

No.

Harry Potter.

Is that true?

Yeah, that's true.

Wow.

Whoa.

It's not true.

It's not true.

Can we go back and just say it's true?

No.

Well, no.

I think it's Howard Phillips.

I don't want to look it up.

My understanding is that he doesn't actually, sort of like Harry S.

Truman, the S was just S.

The first two letters in his name are just HP, and he's named after the sauce.

Right.

His actual middle name is White Power.

All right, Martha and Chase, you guys are having a fight over a cat.

Martha, you bring the case against Chase.

What is Chase doing or planning to do that you cannot abide, such that you require my intervention?

It's actually two cats that he has decided he wants to take on adventures outside

on leashes, but I maintain that they have a perfectly nice life in our apartment and we have a large patio space for them that is actually pretty luxurious for a cat that they don't need the added dangers of being outside.

It has been optimized for cats?

Oh, yeah.

More so than probably is reasonable.

How so?

We have two cat trees for them.

They have multiple things to climb, to sit on, tons of toys.

All out on the patio.

Yeah, well, we have one cat tree on the patio, one is inside, but we keep the doors open most of the time, so they run in and out.

Where do you live?

Los Gatos, California.

Oh, okay.

You can probably leave an upholstered cat tree outside for a long time without worrying of rain.

I mean, the good news is that you don't live in Los Peros, California.

All right.

End of podcast.

Well done, guys.

That's all we needed.

Thank you.

I don't care who wins.

Goodbye.

Thank you for catching that, Jesse.

I can't believe I missed that one.

That's why I need a bailiff like you, pal.

Thanks, friend.

I'm glad to be here to ruin your show.

I need another set of eyes

or ears, as the case may be, on the possible puns that I'm missing.

Los Gatas, California.

And so you have kitted out, so to speak.

Oh, sound of me self-murdering.

You have kitted out the patio so these cats can go outside at all times.

Yes.

That's about right.

It's a catio, so to speak.

Yeah.

Oh, catio?

Yes.

Yeah.

I deserve that.

Please don't get catty with us.

You guys, you obviously, would you say that who is the architect of the catio?

You, Martha, or Chase?

I'm the

prime architect.

We worked on it together, but it was at my insistence.

Martha is the prime architect.

I am the carpenter.

You both have brain-controlling toxoplasmosis then.

Oh, for sure.

But

doesn't it work in women's favor?

The symptoms?

To the degree.

So for those of you who don't follow what we were talking about earlier.

And have never heard our show before.

Very briefly, there is a weird microorganism called toxoplasmosis that has a very strange life cycle.

It wants to be inside cats.

Once it is inside cats, it reproduces by putting itself into the cat's feces,

which then somehow attract mice, which get it into the mouse, which make the mouse more reckless, which allow it to be caught by cats, and thus it gets back into the cat.

And it can infect human brains, but with no effect that is scientifically proven upon the human brain, except with one major and meaningful exception, which is the development of the human fetus.

That's why pregnant women tell me that they're not allowed to change the cat box.

And yet, there are some people who do believe that there are some symptoms.

There's some great proportion of humans who are infected with toxoplasmosis, and there are some suggestions, but

I don't think the evidence is anything but anecdotal so far.

That, for example,

it makes women more flirtatious and also more likely to

hoard cats.

And then men, I don't know what it does for them other than maybe want to put cats on leashes.

Isn't that right, Chase?

Yep.

I didn't want to do this until I got a cat, so it correlates.

Yeah, right.

You received some emanations from the universe saying, you know what would be good?

Let's take these incredibly prim, smug,

and beautiful animals and make them look dumb by putting them on a leash.

Is there any more reason for doing it than that?

I mean,

I appreciate the desire to humiliate cats.

It's something that I generally rule in favor of, but is there more to it than just that, Chase?

Well, yeah.

I think, one, it's a fun bonding thing for

humans and their pets to just be together.

Did you say bonding or bondage?

Bonding.

Bondage would need two leashes.

But I think it's kind of an enriching thing for them to get outside and get stimulated by seeing other things besides their little fenced-in catio.

Based on what evidence do you believe this will be enriching and in fact that they need further enrichment, are they writing you letters?

Well, maybe not that they need because they don't, they express their needs by meowing a lot and pointing at whatever they want.

Is this that breed of cat that has human fingers?

The human-fingered Manx?

They point with their little faces, their little triangle faces.

So

yeah, they seem to want to go outside and see things, and they've escaped on occasion and then gotten stuck on the fence trying to come back in.

So, it seems like it's in their alley for what they want to do.

So, just try to facilitate that without them having to break out of the enclosure.

So,

they're mounting escape attempts, as it is?

Oh, yes, yes.

How many times have they escaped the catio?

Oh, multiple times, at least

six or seven that I can can recall.

Over what period of time?

This is about, we've been in this apartment for about a year, so it's been over a year.

Would you describe your area as a dense urban area or

a suburb, a desert suburb, or what?

Mountain suburb.

How about that?

Mountain suburb?

All right.

So we do have an expert witness here today because while I am a cat behavior hobbyist, I am not a veterinarian or expert in this field, but I do know a veterinarian.

Indeed, she was our veterinarian for our cat Petey, who is no longer alive.

I don't blame her for it.

I think she's terrific.

She's also the co-author of a book called Rabid, A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus, and she's on the line with us now.

Monica Murphy, can you hear me?

Hello.

How are you?

I'm good.

How are you?

Do you remember treating my cat Petey?

Of course I do.

Yeah.

He lived a long time thanks to your care.

And then the time came came for me to have him professionally poisoned.

As it does to us all.

That's right.

But thank you very much for your service.

And you've heard, you've been listening along so far.

Yes.

And do you have any thoughts right off the bat before I start asking you questions and directing the conversation?

Well,

right off the bat, I'm...

hearing about the escape attempts of these two cats whose names I don't think I've heard yet, by the way.

No, cats don't deserve names.

All right.

What are they?

All right.

All right.

I'll indulge this.

What are your cats' names?

Mako and Logan.

Mako and Logan.

And are they both?

What gender do they identify as?

Mako's a little girl and Logan's a boy.

Okay.

And is Logan named after the Wolverine?

Yes.

Yeah.

I figured.

And we lived in Logan Square in Chicago, so that's outside of it.

Yeah.

And

Mako is named for.

The shark.

I'm a fan of sharks.

Are you a sharkologist?

Sure, yeah.

Okay, great.

So, there you go, Monica.

I apologize.

You've heard of Mako and Logan making escape attempts.

Mako and Logan sound very fortunate indeed with their catio,

but I was sorry to hear about the escape attempts that have already occurred, since to me the main downside of any type of exposure to the outdoors is in terms of the kitty's health, is that they do seem more likely to make escape attempts with increased access to the outdoors.

And it's those unsupervised times outdoors where cats are most likely to run into actual dangers to their health and well-being.

And the dangers out there in Los Gatos would include cars and maybe coyotes?

I would expect there were some coyotes, maybe even cougars.

Martha?

Yeah.

Yeah,

that's why it's named Los Gatos is the mountain lions.

And we have herd coyotes too.

So the large wildlife, even medium-sized wildlife like raccoons can do real damage to cats and are common in suburban areas.

And then the stray cats also.

While usually the damage a stray cat can do to your, you know, tender house kitty is

limited, you know, sort of below the threshold of life threatening, it can cause big problems, abscesses, infections.

And, you know, in general, we want to avoid those risks for our kitties.

The risks of attacks by other animals, along with risks of vehicles and infectious diseases, will shorten the calf's lifespan so that the cats who have access to the outdoors tend to live only about a third as long as the cats who are indoor exclusive.

Even if it's a catio that has been...

Oh, no.

No, the catio seems to offer the ideal solution to the cat's needs for outdoor type stimulation while still in the safe confines of the owner-controlled space.

It's the unsupervised outdoor trips, which apparently the catio has

on some level given rise to by sort of whetting the appetite of these kitties.

Now, here in New York City, I seem to recall being cautioned many times

by vets and other pet professionals that we shouldn't let our cat, cats should live indoors their entire lives.

Is that advice that you have heard given?

Absolutely.

And if we want our cats to live healthy and live long,

there's really

no

question they should live indoors.

And yet, isn't that not cruel to a cat to confine it to an indoor life?

Does it not go against its hunter-territory marking nature?

All animals need stimulation.

I do think that

New York pet owners, especially, seem to be very good at providing stimulation to the pets who are confined to often very tiny apartments.

Sure, I mean, I know a lot of pet owners who give their pets their own Netflix account.

That's right.

That's right.

There's a lot of creativity sort of coming up in these small spaces that we live in here in New York.

What cat age would it be appropriate for me to get my cat its own iPhone?

I think here in Brooklyn, it's, you know, only around seven or eight.

Younger and younger, I think.

Yeah.

Okay, I interrupted you there for a pretty lame joke, and I apologize, Dr.

Murphy.

You were going to say in Los Gatos?

In Los Gatos,

the opportunities sound even better for stimulating your cat without exposing it to all the risks of being outdoors.

That catio is something New Yorkers only dream about for the most part.

It sounds pretty great.

And with the safety of a catio around your cat, a coyote becomes just another piece of stimulation, right?

And another

piece of enrichment rather than an actual risk to his health or well-being.

Wait, you're talking about capturing a coyote and keeping it in a cage?

Oh, no, I am not.

Your cat?

On the contrary.

Our cats are in a cage.

Oh, I see.

And the wildlife sort of drift by, you know, making our cats' lives exciting without actually endangering our cats and los gatos.

Martha, do you give the cats access to the catio overnight?

We have.

I've been kind of advocating more and more to bring them in.

They kind of fight us on that.

We'll wake up in the morning to them trying to pry open the bedroom window.

They're trying to pry open the window?

Yeah.

Because a coyote got in there with them and it's trying to kill them.

Oh, no, I mean, they're from the inside.

They're trying to get back out.

Oh, they're trying to get back out.

Yeah, yeah.

They really want to be outside.

Yeah, they spend most of their time out there.

Why do they have access to a pry bar?

Yeah, I know, right?

Chase just lets them get away with anything.

Came out with the cats.

Do you dispute, Martha, the number of escape attempts the chase has estimated at six or seven?

No, but I think for each attempt we've made, we've fortified the cat.

We're always, we try to be one step ahead of them, but then they make progress and

they dig a little hole and then we block it.

And I think we've been getting better.

We just recently, last week,

had them rebuild part of the wall on the side of our fence because they had actually been pushing open

the wooden bars and using it like a doggy door.

It's almost as if they are sentient creatures that don't wish to be enslaved.

Well, here's my other point on that.

Every time they escape, they immediately are crying outside and scared and they've been attacked by other cats outside immediately.

They've gotten caught up on our neighbor's

porch roof thing crying and we've had to go rescue them.

So it's not, they usually don't have fun.

Yeah, no, cats want to get out every minute of the day until they're out there and they remember, oh, wait a minute, I forgot.

I am a physical and emotional parasite that requires these humans to survive.

Right.

Chase,

I appreciate that you've established the danger of the catio.

And here,

I just noticed as I go through my docket here, entered into evidence is an image of the catio itself.

And I see here a beautiful beast.

This must be Logan.

Yes.

Yes.

He looks like a cat that is the best at what he does, but what he does isn't very pretty.

Comic book reference.

Lounging atop his carpeted cat tree

in the very beautifully trellised catio that is his domain.

And you can go to maximumfun.org to the Judge John Hodgman page and see this for yourself, everyone.

But I do see many, many...

options for egress.

This is not, a cat could climb out of this fairly easily if he or she wanted to.

So now that you've established the danger of the catio,

how do you suspect or how do you propose, Chase, that cat leash is going to solve the problem?

Well, that's the thing.

I don't actually know if it's going to solve the problem, but I'm willing to give it a try.

What I'm hoping, and I'm not a cat behaviorologist, so maybe Monican can chime in and say I'm wrong.

But what I'm kind of hypothesizing is that maybe if we give them some other other options besides either chewing their way out or climbing out and pushing aside the

chicken wire, then maybe they would, you know, just come to us and we could just take them out of like little jaunts and then bring them back in and they would be satisfied.

That's the hope.

Dr.

Monica Murphy, what do you think about, on a gut level, about cats on leashes?

Do people bring them in to the veterinarian office?

Have you much experience with people waltzing their cats in on a leash?

Every once in a while, a cat will come into the office on a leash, but usually they haven't succeeded in walking the cat to the office.

Walking a cat,

when it even sort of functions as walking,

you know, as opposed to dragging or

just standing still with your cat in front of you on a leash, when the cats walk, you follow the cat where the cat wants to go.

I've never to date had the cat want to go to the veterinary office and arrive with the owner, you know, behind it in any sort of, you know, what you might describe as walking the way the dogs do.

And don't you think it is embarrassing to the cat?

Many of us have seen, like, have caught a cat on a leash somewhere out, you know,

in our travels.

We've seen someone at one of the moments when the cat is actually upright on his feet and, you know, submitting to the harness, the owner holding the leash, you know, and

it looks amazing.

I mean, it looks like, that's so fun.

That cat's out on a leash, but

it's best as sort of a still picture because

the cat doesn't walk.

And

yeah, it perhaps compromises the dignity of the cat, but maybe particularly the owner.

It compromises the dignity of the owner.

Yes.

Because they're perverting nature.

Indeed.

Because they're aspiring to something that will never happen.

They're fooling themselves.

That this cat, which is a stealthy, silent, and solitary predator, primarily nocturnal, is all of a sudden going to be trotting along

next to its alpha, the thing it confuses for its pack leader, like a dum-dum, which is what a dog does.

Right.

It's a common fantasy, though.

And

there's this other kind of pet you can get that walks great on a leash.

It's called an iguana.

Are you sure, Chase, that this entire thing isn't just a complicated scheme to get your girlfriend to let you buy a parrot to carry everywhere on your shoulder?

So it can tell me I'm right.

Chase, what is your main motivation here?

Is it to please yourself by mastering a cat?

and getting it to do something that it does not want to do?

Is it to keep your cats safe by providing them extra stimulation?

Or is it to just prove that you can do something that bothers Martha?

Ding, ding, ding.

It's a little bit of all of the above, but mostly I think it's actually.

I kind of want to, one, want to see what happens because I'm curious about this.

I don't have any fantasies that this cat is going to walk with me like a dog.

I know that's not going to happen.

I'm just going to wind up following it around the courtyard, following around the apartment complex.

But really, it's just, I just want to see what happens.

I want to see if this cat would actually be okay out on a leash.

And by this cat, is there one particular cat that you feel is understimulated or you want to take them both out?

So there's the one little one that has bonded with me, and that's Mako.

Yeah.

So she seems to chew her way out more frequently than Logan, mostly because she's smaller and she can slip through smaller holes, I think.

Chase, have you considered maybe putting them both on a leash at the same time and then seeing if they'll pull you in a chariot of your own design?

That seems like a nightmare just waiting to happen.

What if you kept them in like a Carmen Miranda style hat?

Oh, a cat hat?

Yeah.

I mean, you could put some fruit in there too, but.

Well, if there's anything cats love more than being on a leash, it's fresh fruit.

You also want to take the cats to your office?

No.

No.

I mean, you can dream about things, but I just don't think that that's possible.

It says here, Chase has repeatedly bought various harnesses and leashes and now is threatening to bring one of our cats to work and on errands.

Is that a lie?

That's in Martha's affidavit.

Is that a lie?

He has threatened these things.

It's something that I have threatened, but only in good fun.

Just because, you know, when you're walking out the door, the cat runs up to you and looks at you with those big manipulative eyes and they just say, you know, take me with you.

But I just know that that can't be true.

I can't take them.

to the store.

I can't take them to work.

They don't want that.

They don't want to go there.

Can I say something?

You may, please.

I think the taking the cats on the leash and him now saying, oh, I just want to do it in the courtyard, I think for him in his mind, if he can get me to say yes to the courtyard, it's like first courtyard, then the world, you know, like, because he's talked about going on adventures.

He sends me links to articles like woman quits job and goes on round the world boat ride with her cat, you know, that kind of stuff.

So I think once he gets the courtyard, the doors open.

What is your job?

Oh, I'm a software quality control engineer.

So your job involves sitting at a desk, at a computer, or standing at a standing desk.

Yeah.

Do you enjoy it?

I do very much.

Do you fantasize about quitting your job and going around the world with your cat?

No, and I think actually that's my main argument against doing all that is because that sounds like a lot of work.

I really don't want to overburden myself with having to take this cat everywhere because it seems like just a really stressful hassle.

Well, why are you sending these articles to Martha?

Because they got cats in them.

I take it you guys don't have children.

No, no,

the cats are our children.

I'm glad, Chase, that you're sending Martha these articles because it can be very difficult to find articles about cats on the internet.

I know.

I know.

She would be totally lost without you.

She might not have found that one.

Monica, what do you think about the safety, comparative safety of walking, bringing a cat into the courtyard or into the outside world on a harness to a place where it normally would never be compared to, say, a fairly well-secured catio.

Have you treated any cats that have been injured while wearing a harness?

I have not.

I have not.

And

both seem like safe options unless they

sort of give the cat an opportunity to escape.

And that's something I think that Chase and Martha will have to suss out themselves.

The catio sounds like it needs some shoring up.

And I have seen pets in harnesses that don't fit well and create a risk for escape.

What kind of harness would you recommend?

One made specifically for cats.

Right,

not just a dog collar.

Or one of those backpacks that toddlers wear in airports.

Yeah.

None of those would be correct.

Could you put a cat into a baby Bjorn?

Would that be okay?

No.

Not okay.

What about a cat in a stroller?

Yeah, that's a good idea.

They make strollers for cats.

They do?

Yes.

In your experience, because I know whenever I had to take Pete

to the veterinarian, you or another one of your colleagues, or anywhere, and I would put him into the equivalent of a stroller for cats, a cat box.

The cat did not like it at all.

To what degree is putting a harness or even putting your cat in its own self-specially designed cat stroller simply terrifying for the cat?

I think that has to be judged on a cat-by-cat basis.

Cat-by-cat basis.

Yeah.

Couldn't be more fair than that.

Well, Dr.

Monica Murphy, I know that you need to go, so I will allow you to escape our cat baby Bjorn and go on your way.

Thank you very much for joining us.

Oh, thank you.

This has been fun.

And once again, you are the co-author with your husband, Bill Wasick, of the book Rabid.

And tell me about that book for one second.

Rabid is a book that goes back to ancient times, looking at how rabies and animals and people have all sort of been in the mix together and the way rabies has affected our relationship with animals and sort of given rise to a lot of our best scary stories.

And are you going to write write a follow-up book on toxoplasmosis?

Toxoplasmosis would be a natural follow-up to rabies, actually.

But right now I'm interested in snakes.

All right.

I will leave it on that remarkable tease.

Thank you very much for joining us.

And now I'm going to dig right back into the case.

Thank you.

So has anything that our expert witness said, Martha, changed your opinion about Chase's plan?

Actually, no.

Has it made you less concerned, or are your concerns the same?

I think my concerns are the same because I've read up on it, and I've just, I feel like it's unnecessary to bring that extra risk.

Maybe if the cats didn't have the catio, I'd understand that they need some more stimulation, but I feel like they have plenty more than most indoor cats.

And I just feel like it's an extra risk.

And what are you specifically afraid of?

That Chase will be going on an adventure in the courtyard, and a coyote is just going to run through there and grab that cat and move on.

Well,

that would be horrible, yes.

I mean, the other stray cats, I could see them getting scared and running up a tree, and then we can't get them down.

And we have, you know, redwoods in our courtyard, so that wouldn't be good.

You have thousand-year-old massive redwood trees?

Yeah, there's the small transplant ones, but yeah, I mean, they're redwoods, so yeah.

So if your cat went right up that thing, it would have to live there forever.

I know, right?

Yeah.

But that's the point of having the leash, right?

That's why you hang on to the thing.

Do you think Chase is a butterfinger when it comes to hanging on to a cat harness?

It could happen.

I could see the cats getting away from him.

You also send along some evidence, Martha.

It was an article in the New York Times by a woman who trained her cat to go out on a harness.

I think here in Brooklyn, I think in Prospect Park.

And she was so trained,

or she consulted her own expert witness, whom I chose not to have on this program, because I didn't hear about him until a few minutes ago.

A animal planet personality cat whisperer called Jackson Galaxy.

Yeah, Jackson.

And we'll have a link at maximumfund.org on the Judge John Hodgman page to this video

which recounts the author, Stephanie Clifford, trying to teach her cat to walk on a harness and being counseled by Jackson Galaxy.

Suffice to say so far that Jackson Galaxy looks like the guy Fieri of Cat Whisperers and says things like, I am very into the concept of the raw cat.

And Jackson Galaxy believes that cats really want to do get out there and explore, but it takes a long time, based on this video that I watched that you sent, Martha, it takes a long time to train cats.

to feel comfortable on a harness and not just sit down and panic outside and freak out.

Yeah, so I agree if it were to happen, it would be many months of training.

Do you think that Chase is capable of that sort of long, disciplined training?

Because Stephanie Clifford's cat, whose name I don't recall, but we'll just say that his name is Toxoplasmosi.

She recounted months of short training sessions.

with very careful

positive rewards and treats and not pushing too hard hard before toxoplasmosi would go outside at all and feel comfortable even for just a few minutes.

Do you think, Chase, that you are capable of engaging in that kind of disciplined training behavior?

I believe if I make a hobby out of it, yes.

So why do you want to make your hobby terrifying your cat?

Well, it's not that I want to terrify the cat.

It's just that I want to give her the opportunity.

It's just one of those things.

If it really seems super, super terrifying and she's really, really not into it, then I'll give up.

It just sounds like Mako is the only one you're concerned about.

You don't care about Logan at all.

No, I really don't.

No.

I care about him.

I love him.

But he's not the one who follows me around and meows at me all day.

Gotcha.

That's terrible.

I agree.

And I also feel like I've heard enough in order to make my decision.

So

I'm going to climb to the top of this carpeted judge tree I have in my chambers and curl up for a little while and give this some thought.

And then I will return with my decision in a moment.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Chase, how would you feel if you were outside walking down the beautiful wooded streets of Los Gatos, California and you had a cat on a leash?

How would I feel?

Yeah, like let's say you saw a friend or a cool kid from school.

So I'm 14 again.

All right.

I would feel fine.

I mean, it's we entrap these animals and, you know, put leashes on them.

I don't really see the difference between cats and dogs that much.

Martha, how would you feel if your live-in boyfriend with whom your social status is deeply intertwined

were walking down the streets of the small town in which you live with a cat on a leash and was known to all of the children of Los Gatos Gatos as the cat leash guy.

Yeah.

It's not my main concern.

More it's their safety.

But yeah, it's.

Oh, I thought you meant that you just had other bigger concerns about James.

Well, I was going to say, I was, it's not the, like,

it's, it would be one of his many quirks.

It's up there with the toe shoes.

Oh, geez.

Okay.

I'm done.

I'm done.

No, no, no.

I'm done.

Throw that evidence evidence out, please.

That was deeply prejudicial.

Well, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say about all of this when we come back in just a second.

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

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom.

You may be seated.

Now, of course,

during my deliberations,

I require absolute solitude, and that is why my chambers are completely soundproof.

I hear nothing of what you discuss when I am outside of the courtroom

and certainly nothing that might prejudice me against one or the other litigants beyond what I've heard during the hearing itself.

But I did have one point of curiosity that I feel I should have followed up with before and I'm going to ask it now.

Do either one of you, Martha or Chase, wear

sneakers with toes in them ever?

You mean like do we have toes on our feet inside of our sneakers?

Because I think that's true for everyone, Judge.

Excuse me.

Martha, would you answer my question?

I do not wear shoes that have toes.

You know what I'm talking about, right?

Oh, I do.

Have you ever seen them?

All the time, yes.

Do you know anyone who owns them and wears them?

I do, sir.

And who would that be?

That would be Chase.

Oh, Chase, you wear toe shoes on your paws?

Yes, yes, I do.

What do you get out of that?

Comfort, Judge.

They're very, very comfortable.

And

you don't mind that you are embarrassing your beloved one every time you wear them?

Not in the least.

I know that there are people who love those things, but I think it speaks a little bit

to motive

and to what degree you are willing to entertain

loathsome eccentricity for your own comfort and amusement.

Toe shoes or walking through los gatos with a gatos on a leash.

It makes me wonder whether this cat leash endeavor is not indeed

the

act of ownerly altruism that you make it out to be and more an attention-getting personality affectation.

You will say no, but I will forever wonder.

Forever.

And will it affect my judgment?

You bet it will.

Because

you know that those cats don't belong on those leashes

or harnesses or whatever they are.

You know, on a basic level, it is not a one-to-one correspondence, as you say, Chase.

It is not, we put dogs on leashes, thus, we put cats on leashes.

You might as well put a goldfish on a leash.

By that logic, they're different creatures.

A dog is a beautiful, dum-dum, loyal pack animal that mistakes you for its leader and wants to run with you, wants to range over terrain with its friend who keeps him safe in numbers and gives him dried-up pig snouts as a snack.

A cat doesn't like you.

No matter how much Mako is meowing at you and pointing with her little nose,

tricking you.

I've read an article.

I don't remember where, and I'm not going to search it up now.

that essentially pointed out what we all know in our gut is true.

Cats are not loyal members of your pack.

They are smug parasites who have tricked you into taking them in and giving what they want.

And yes, it's transactional.

They'll give you a little nuzzle, but they're going to just as soon tear your eyes out with their claws and eat your sweet eye meat if they had to.

And I say that as a cat fancier.

No, I don't think cats would actually do that.

I think that cats do bond with their humans in a way that is not merely parasitic.

But it doesn't change the fact that behaviorally, it doesn't take a Jackson galaxy to remind you that cats are solitary hunters.

And the fact is that the behavior that you are trying to engender in them

is

unnatural,

completely unnatural, because you think that you might be giving them the opportunity to explore and stimulate through hunting behavior.

But imagine if you were a solitary hunter and there was some huge ape following you around all the time,

talking on his phone.

It would be like, Will you please get out of here?

I'm trying to eviscerate a bird up in here.

And what's more, I should point out that for all of Jackson Galaxy's advice on this video, and as assiduously as Ms.

Clifford, the journalist, followed it, after months of attempting to train the cat to walk around on the streets of New York,

ultimately the effort failed.

And the cat was simply too scared to do anything once it was not merely in an unfamiliar location surrounded by all sorts of extra stimulus that it had never seen before, but also it was tied up to something and could barely escape if it tried.

The solution that Mr.

Galaxy and Ms.

Clifford attempted to present as a happy ending to this experiment is that she discovered that if she took her cat in a cat carrier to a relatively secluded part of the park and put the cat on a snug-fitting special cat harness, that she could get maybe a good 15-20 minutes of outdoor time with the cat before a dog or jogger passed or a leaf fell and the cat was freaked out and wanted to go home.

And that, I have to say, ended up being an okay solution for even me.

Because the truth is, it is utterly unnatural to put a cat in a harness, but no more unnatural than to take a cat and imprison it in your home.

When we keep animals as companions, we are naturally breaking the order of nature.

And the truth is, it's just a measure of how far we are willing to push and pervert nature for our own pleasure and, one hopes, the pleasure and well-being of the animals that are in our care.

I think it sounds to me like you have two pretty happy cats

who are going through their natural rebellious phase of trying to sneak out and get out.

And I do believe them getting out of that catio is not a good thing because it will end up

in tragedy.

Meowing tragedy eventually.

And that while the catio itself in theory is terrific, you need to really, really, really escape proof it if you want to have any peace of mind with regard to leaving the cats out there as much as possible.

And nighttime, this isn't, I'm not talking about chase for the moment here, but for both of you.

Nighttime, sorry, those cats got to come in.

I live in Brooklyn, New York, and we have a little outdoor space with a sliding door on the ground floor of this apartment building we live in in a very urban dense area.

And I was playing Scrabble with my wife when the screen door was slid open by a raccoon.

And the raccoon walked into our living room, looked around, and walked out.

And then he poked his head back in and said in English, just so you know,

if those cats can get out, I bet you something can get in.

So bring them in at night.

But none of that has any bearing, ultimately, on Chase's desire

to

take Mako and travel the world with her as his new love

and leave you and Logan behind.

None of that has any bearing on his desire to take Mako outside on a leash or a harness.

That will not solve the problem of their safety within the catio.

That is a different issue that you have to resolve, and resolve it, you shall.

And the real question is whether he should be allowed to do this at all.

And my,

I have to say that while it was your evidence that led me to this Jackson Galaxy video, Martha, and as

hilarious as I found Mr.

Galaxy to be, and I maybe he's a listener to the podcast.

I just, the dude has an interesting facial hair array and a bunch of tattoos and wears a bandana over his head.

And it was not what I was thinking of when I thought of a cat behaviorist, but good for him.

He's living his dream.

He did manage to get this cat and this owner to a happy medium where they could

enjoy the outdoors together in a controlled environment with a very careful cat harness, and that worked for them.

And I think that it is worth exploring since all of this is unnatural anyway.

I think that just as the cats won't stop poking their head out of the catio until they learn that the outside is not someplace they want to be,

and they will eventually, I suspect, so Chase cannot be contained by

the mental catio that you are trying to keep him on.

The dude needs to put Mako in a harness and walk around the courtyard.

It just needs to happen.

He needs to get this out of his system.

Whether this is coming from a place of altruism for the cat, a desire to start a new life with this cat without you, or toxoplasmosis whispering to his very soul, I think that he needs to go through the experiment and should perhaps consult the video and the article that went along with it and do his very best.

to bring that cat out into the courtyard and the courtyard only, and then observe whether Mako truly wants to be with him all the time or is just an animal that goes by its own urgings that, once it's outside of its comfort zone, is going to freak out and scratch him.

And also,

I think that if he is going to do this, he deserves the full

weight of public opinion,

which is to say that while he is following this poor cat, this poor terrified cat as it tries to hunt,

Martha, you have to follow him and take many, many photographs

and document this.

Document this man walking a cat in your courtroom, wearing his toe shoes, and saying, this is who I love.

And we'll put that on our website and on all of our Sochmedes.

And I don't think you can ask for greater justice than that.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge Sean Hodgman rules, that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Chase, how do you feel about the case?

I feel like I won.

That's exactly what I was looking for.

I want to at least try the experiment to see what the cat wants.

You just want to do some experiments on your cats that you love?

Exploratory cat surgery.

Got it.

Martha, how do you feel?

I respect his decision, but my anxiety level is very high already.

But you're going to be there while he's doing this.

I know.

I know.

Well, maybe, you know what?

This is good.

You're going to work through something.

Yeah, maybe.

You know,

if you're scared of it, maybe you need to do it.

What happens if this goes too far?

What if he wants to take the cat out of the courtyard

and go on these adventures?

He's going to have to petition me.

Okay.

Okay.

So we don't have an allowance for courtyard experimentation.

Yeah, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

All right.

And I can see to that.

That makes sense.

Let's be honest.

One way or another, he's getting an iguana.

Hey, Ben there.

I'm done.

No more iguanas for me.

Very wise you were to withhold that information, even when Jesse was prompting you with it until after the verdict had been laid down.

Martha Chase, thank you for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

You know, we've been doing my brother, My Brother, Me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no.

No, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news, we still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Well, Judge Hodgman, it's time for our brand new all-grammar and language segment, which is called Jesse and Me Talk Good.

Exactly.

And I'm thrilled, Jesse, to report that me and you are joined by the Judge John Hodgman official lexographer and editorial staff member at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and frequent guest on the Judge John Hodgman show, Emily Brewster from Western Western Massachusetts.

Hello, Emily.

Hello.

Now, did I get all of your qualifications correct, or how badly have I gone wrong so far?

Well, I'm technically a lexicographer.

What did I say?

Lexographer, I think.

It's okay.

It's not a common word.

Judge Hodgman, a lexographer is someone who studies early 90s lexuses as they appear in hip-hop lyrics.

Oh, well, that would be you then, Jesse.

I was referring to Jesse, Emily.

But we also have the great lexicographer, Emily Brewster, and that is someone who studies words and writes about them using words, right?

I write dictionary definitions.

And Emily,

it's been a little while since you've been on the podcast.

So just to remind, you are my friend and neighbor out in my part-time hometown region of Western Massachusetts.

We met

via our first rendezvous at the Rendezvous Bar and Grill in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, right around the corner from where we're performing at the Shea.

We perform at the Shea Theater this fall at Judge John Hodgman Live Justice.

We're coming out to Western Mass.

Will you be there, Emily?

I will be there.

I'm very excited.

Me too.

Every time I say me now, I get nervous.

Because Emily knows all about words.

And in fact,

my very favorite claim to fame of almost anyone I've ever met is Emily's in that she discovered a word that was not in the dictionary and put it in the dictionary.

And that word was slash is

a the letter and word a correct Emily well I put in a new sense of the word that's right the word itself had been in in many dictionaries for many many years but there was a missing sense of the word and that missing sense was

the definition is used as a function word before a proper noun to distinguish a referent from a former usual or hypothetical condition as in a triumphant Ms.

Jones greeted her supporters so the ah there tells you that she's not always triumphant, that there was a change of state

status.

And a triumph for you.

And let me just say now, though, a betrayed and furious Judge John Hodgman now faces his former friend, Emily Brewster.

Now,

this revolves around the big announcement that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary made over Social Meads over the Memorial Day weekend to say a hot dog is the dictionary definition of a sandwich, or the dictionary definition of a sandwich should include a hot dog.

I don't know how to put it, but you understand what I'm saying, right, Emily?

You said a hot dog is a sandwich.

Yes, indeed, we did.

And you talked about this already with summertime guest bailiff Monty Belmonte on his show, Monty in the Morning on WRSI The River, there in Northampton, Massachusetts.

I have not listened to that segment.

I'm

Jesse Thorne.

Yes.

You're my only friend.

That's true.

Because Emily and the Merriam-Webster dictionary betrayed me and went against settled law.

And then Monty scooped this podcast and talked to Emily before I did.

What a monster.

But I love you both, and I'm willing to hear why you,

aside from personal vendetta, which I think must be obvious.

What is the reasoning behind this subversion of Judge John Hodgman's settled law?

Well, I have to say that when I first considered whether a hot dog was a sandwich, my gut instinct was the same as yours, that a hot dog is not, in fact, a sandwich.

But as I examined what a sandwich truly is.

That's all we need.

We got our quote.

Thank you very much.

Good.

Thank you very much.

Okay, good.

Thanks, Emily.

Shut your bye hole.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

But when I examined the evidence and looked at how the word sandwich is defined and looked also at early uses of the word hot dog, it became just completely clear to me that a hot dog does indeed qualify as a kind of sandwich.

And let's look at the Merriam-Webster definition of sandwich, shall we?

I mean, this is what this is.

I mean, look, you and I both agree that there is something

puzzling about this question, that it at least causes pause among right-thinking people before they leap to what I consider to be an incorrect conclusion that a hot dog is a sandwich.

So, but you're only going from, you're starting starting with the premises that are given to you and specifically working within the context of the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

That is right.

Now, Emily, did you write this article listing 10 sandwiches?

I did.

Boy.

I didn't know it was going to be that bad.

You single-handedly did this.

Oh, boy.

So in the article, you cite, obviously, the Merriam-Webster definition of sandwich, which I have found using the internet at merriam-webster.com.

Was someone squatting on meriamwebster.com?

You had to put in that dash in there?

For hyphen?

Would that be a hyphen or a dash?

That would be a hyphen.

That would be a hyphen.

I'm wrong again.

Two pieces of bread with something such as meat, peanut butter, etc., between them.

Obviously, that's not a hot dog.

Two or more cookies, crackers, or slices of cake

with something between them.

I had never heard of that.

Well, you've heard of a sandwich cookie.

Yeah, no, I gotcha.

Like an Oreo.

Yes.

I mean,

that's a brand name we have to use because it's descriptive.

So an Oreo is a sandwich.

A sandwich cookie.

It really qualifies as a sandwich.

Well, according to your definition, it does.

We have to conclude.

Because a simple definition of sandwich, two or more cookies,

crackers or slices of cake with something between them.

Yes, and sometimes things are, the word sandwich is used to refer to such items, and that is why that definition is there.

Right.

Okay.

So full definition of sandwich.

This is the operable one: two or more slices of bread, or a split roll having a filling in between,

or one slice of bread covered with food.

That would be an open-faced sandwich.

Correct.

So, Emily, do you understand why I came to the conclusion in my Judge John Hodgman column net in the New York Times magazine and here on this podcast as to why a hot dog is a singular foodstuff deserving of its own sweet generous definition outside of the bounds of sandwich?

I believe that your reasoning has to do with whether a hot dog can be appropriately, and kind of in a standard sense, cut in half and be eaten that way.

That's basically, that was to me the test.

And it was essentially, A, it's plain on its face that the hot dog, which is a hot dog, whether or not it's inbred, and you acknowledge this, that the hot dog

has a culinarily distinct history from the sandwich as derived from the Earl of Sandwich, that inveterate gambler and hand eater,

eater with hands.

And that two, that there is something strange about a hot dog that makes everyone wonder what it is.

Now, if you decide that a hot dog is a sandwich, then you can essentially say, what does it share with the concept of sandwichedness and what does it not share?

And the thing that it does not share to me is that

anything that we call a sandwich may be reasonably cut in half and shared.

That is part of an essential sandwich-ness.

And a hot dog, if you cut it in half, you look like a weirdo.

That's what it comes down to for me.

Well, I do see that point.

I do not see it as an essential quality of a sandwich.

I see it as a feature of many sandwiches, but not as an essential characteristic.

I think of also a hot dog and a sloppy Joe as also being kinds of sandwiches, and you certainly cannot cut a sloppy joe in half.

Yeah, I don't see, you know, but by my own logic, I would have to say that a sloppy Joe

is not a sandwich.

You can't cut a sloppy Joe in half?

I think you could.

Yeah, you can.

You totally can.

I've cut many sloppy Joe's in half.

You make them on toast.

And how did that go?

Well, I mean, it's sloppy.

Yeah.

And you have to change your name to Joe.

Yeah.

But

I had already changed my name to Joe to chew my favorite brand of bubblegum, bazooka, so it was not a problem.

But you have to have known, Emily, that, and maybe this is part of your design, your weird design, that this was going to get a lot of attention and rile up a lot of people, including your friend.

I didn't realize that it was going to be such a

provocative piece.

Really?

No.

This has been a big part of my life for a while, but set aside my reaction to it, have you been getting a lot of response?

I believe that we have been getting a lot of responses.

I've honestly have been staying kind of outside of it, just going back to writing my usual definitions and keeping my nose in my books and in the evidence that I see.

Emily, hold on.

What other major cultural matters of contention have you weighed in on in the dictionary and then claimed you didn't know were controversial?

Like, does Merriam-Webster have a position on Yankees versus Red Sox, for example, that we should know about?

Well,

we are in Western Massachusetts, so I'll just leave it at that.

When you look up Han shot first in the dictionary,

do you see a picture of Greedo shooting first?

Just to confuse people?

I don't even know what that means.

I know.

I know.

I feel so bad for even saying that.

Good for you, Emily.

Good for you.

You know what?

You know, if you, the fact that you looked at the evidence that you had before you in your own dictionary, which is our dictionary of reference here on the Judge John Hodgman podcast, and came to your own conclusion, put it out there, and then walked away.

I really admire you just walking away from that explosion in slow motion without looking back.

Yeah, just dropped a full-on truth bomb, just popow.

And what and what did you talk about with Monty?

Did you guys just have a long laugh at my expense?

No, certainly not.

He's on your side.

He's completely on your side.

But I have to say that

I actually came into the office today and did a little bit more research and looked at the historical evidence in our files and became even more certain of the position that I had taken.

And that evidence is

in the form of a number of examples from 1901 into the 1950s of the phrase hot dog sandwich being used.

You and Dan Pashman of the Sportful Podcast should go to Rutz Hut together and laugh at my expense.

I've heard that before.

I'm just going to have to,

I know that you're dedicated to your work, and I know that you do your work good, which is the way I say you do it well.

So I'm just going to say

you live in a law-free zone up there where you can make your own rules, I guess.

But I still appreciate you coming in and explaining this to me.

Well, and I appreciate your passion, and I respect your passion for the distinction between a hot dog and a sandwich.

And that is a distinction that you are perfectly welcome to continue to make.

Thank you.

Emily, I respect your dispassion.

Why, thank you.

It truly is the stupidest and meaningless thing to fight about in the world.

And so I often get embarrassed when I start talking about it.

But as you are the lexicographer of note, and I trust you will be coming back to talk to us more about words and grammar in fuchs,

that's my breve for future.

And as Merriam-Webster is so great, I will now just dedicate my life to giving you the logical and historical evidence that might make you reconsider.

Someday, perhaps we'll see eye to eye on this.

By the way, is a taco a sandwich?

No, a taco is not a sandwich.

Oh, really?

Because the Merriam-Webster definition of a taco is a Mexican food that consists of folded and usually fried piece of thin bread called a tortilla that is filled with meat, cheese, lettuce, et cetera.

Seems to be more or less identical to your split-roll theory of sandwich.

Judge Hodgman, are you building toward a world in which tacos and tortas are the exact same thing?

I'm just saying that if you're going to call a hot dog a sandwich, you also have to define taco as sandwich.

Don't you agree, Emily?

I do not agree.

I do not agree because it doesn't have the two or more slices of bread or the split roll.

There's usually two tortillas in a taco.

Really?

Yeah, they're just stacked on top of each other with the meat on top of the two tortillas.

Jesse's from San Francisco.

We don't make tacos that way out here.

We're from Massachusetts where a taco is simply an old El Paso 500-year-old corn shell

filled with weird meat.

That's right, evocative of cardboard more than anything else.

But I'm telling you, Emily, take a look at your definition of taco and tell me, maybe not this time, but maybe next time, tell me how it differentiates meaningfully from your definition of sandwich because you say taco, a food that consists of a folded and usually fried piece of thin bread.

Bread, folded.

How is that different from split?

It's food wrapped in bread, according to you.

Yes, that definition is taken from our learner's dictionary, which is for non-native English speakers.

If you go to the full definition underneath that definition, you will see something that is more

appropriate for native speakers of English.

Well, we can take this up next time you're on the show, Emily.

Thank you for joining us.

Well, thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Oh, I can tell you're taking great pleasure in my

distress.

Thank you, Emily.

Looking forward to talking to you and seeing you soon at the Shea Theater this fall at the Judge John Hodgman Live Justice Performance in Turner's Falls, Massachusetts.

See all those dates, of course, at johnhodgman.com slash tour or on the maximumfund.org live events page.

Oh, ah, come on.

What's wrong, Judge Hodgman?

Jesse, I'm trying to catch this point of red laser light that's moving around my floor.

I can't seem to get it.

You've really grown reckless lately, Judge Hodgman.

I can't quite put my finger on why that might be.

Well,

what happened?

What are we talking about now?

We were talking about how we're going on tour, and everyone should get their tickets and come see.

Can I just say how much I enjoy the way you pronounce the word tour?

Really?

Do I pronounce it in an unusual way?

It just sounds good.

It's elegant.

It's radiolicious.

Oh, thank you.

But it's true.

We are going on tour.

Jesse Thorne and I, plus lots of special surprise guests and live litigants from each of the places we're going to.

Places like Portland, Maine, Turner's Falls, Massachusetts, Boston, Massachusetts.

That's two places, and that's coast to coast of Massachusetts.

Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C.

We are going to be dispensing live justice live on stage, meeting and greeting afterward.

If you listen to this podcast and enjoy it, wouldn't it be fun to see what the weirdos behind it look like?

And besides that, we're coming to the United Kingdom.

A place where we more plausibly fit in.

Somewhat more plausibly.

We're going to be at the London Podcast Festival with Judge John Hodgman, Bullseye with Jesse Thorne, my interview show, and of course, our comedy game show, International Waters.

You can find information for all of our dates, including how to buy your tickets at maximumfun.org or johnhodgman.com/slash tour.

And if you live in one of those places and you have a case, submit it to us.

Go to maximumfund.org/slash jjho and tell us about it.

No case too big or small, and do let us know if you live in one of those places because we are always looking for exciting cases in the places that we visit.

This week's case was named by Kimberly Mayhall.

Our thanks to Kimberly.

Thanks, Kimberly.

If you want to name a future case, follow us on social media at Hodgman at Jesse Thorne on Twitter.

Like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, and join the maximumfund.org Facebook group.

There's always fun talk about every week's Judge John Hodgman in the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfun.reddit.com.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

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

Court is out session.

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