A Toast to Serra Angels

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

How are you, Judge Hodgman?

I don't know if I can match your high energy, Bailiff Jesse.

What's wrong?

Are you feeling phlegmy?

Well, all.

Plegmatic, perhaps?

Well, 100% always, as those of you who listen to the non-cough button version of the show know.

I'm constantly hitting mute so I can cough up phlegm, just a little behind-the-scenes humanizing detail of the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

And for some reason, we actually have a separate feed where

all the coughs are maintained in the cut.

A very small group of

mucus enthusiasts really like that.

That's the ultimate freemium offering.

Well, do you know, it's like those people

who go on the internet to find YouTubes of people whispering to them so that they can make their scalp tingle.

Are you familiar with that?

No.

This is a thing.

Oh, yeah, whispering, yeah, and they're folding towels.

Well,

wait a minute.

I think it's related to misophonia, which is a reaction of irritation to certain noises, often like repetitive chewing noises.

That's why I hate the sound of people chewing food.

But there is another reaction that people claim they have to certain kind of hissing

palms rubbing together noises that give them a pleasurable pleasurable tingling sensation.

And then there are websites and YouTube channels that are devoted to people just going like this all the time.

And people listen to it and they just get a tingling sensation in their scalp.

And

if you're feeling that now, and if you judge John Hodgman listeners, then

you know you have this interesting disorder.

Also, Judge Hodgman, I'm getting a tingling sensation, but it's not in my scalp.

Well, let me counteract that this way.

All right.

The point is.

I know this thing.

My friend Matt Belknap from the Smash Hit podcast, Never Not Funny, he has this thing.

Is it Belknap or Belknap?

I've never known for sure.

Belknap.

Okay.

Belknap.

He has it?

Yeah, he has it, and he loves it.

It's amazing.

When this became a famous thing,

you know, a year or two ago.

A couple of years ago.

I'm always a couple of years behind the times.

He went on to the subreddit for whatever and just clicked on one of the videos and and like he said absolutely clearly, super powerfully got tingles up and down his head like as though he was having some kind of cranial orgasm.

And he said it was wonderful and he had never, he had had some things like that happen to him before, but he had never been able to like pinpoint what was going on.

But it was vibrant, clear, and real.

And he's, you know, he's not a

he's not a fuzzy-headed man.

No.

Belknap is a sharp-headed fella.

That's what we've always said.

But so he felt it.

Well, I'm glad to have him as a listener to my new podcast, Whispering with John Hodgman.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, ASMR.

If you're interested more in that phenomenon, look it up.

If you'd like to hear what this podcast is all about, listen to me.

Clear my throat.

In any case, let's start clearing the document.

Yeah, we're going to go.

Yes, let's please.

I mean, the point is, I'm glad we got to talk about all of this because it's the doldrums of February, and

it's hard for me to get my energy up this time of year.

And now it's up.

Let's go.

Let's clear that docket.

Quick.

Here's something from Courtney.

This dispute is with my husband of 14 years, Josh.

Forget it.

I lost it.

Our toaster oven is slowly fading.

Oh, you got me back.

I want to hear about toaster ovens.

I really like them.

Okay, let's go.

I want to simply get a new toaster oven, but Josh wants a four-sliced toaster.

I'm okay with having both, but I refuse to relinquish my toaster oven.

Josh hates having lots of appliances on the counter, so he's not okay with replacing one item with two.

Judge, I would like you to rule that we replace our old toaster oven with a similar model, and that if Josh wants a toaster, he has to accept that it will take up additional counter space.

I have a feeling that Josh has wanted a four-sliced toaster for a long time.

They've been married for 14 years.

And he sees that he's finally got his shot to get this four-sliced toaster.

Because he's been living with this toaster oven for a long time.

Otherwise, why would he make an issue of it now?

The thing about toaster ovens, Jesse, is that they are incorrectly named.

They should just be called little ovens.

They're not, in my experience.

I think the real problem is they can't get the copyright to that because no limit rapper Lil Oven

got that copyright in the early 2000s.

I know.

Most of your small appliance companies simply aren't sufficiently bout it, bout it.

The reason that they should be called

legally or not Lil Ovens is that they're pretty good

countertop ovens, but not particularly good toasters in my experience.

Jesse, what do do you have in your home there, in your kitchen?

I have,

Judge Hodgman, I don't mean to buzz market or to brag,

but I have a Breville toaster oven, a top-of-the-line toaster oven.

It's something that I acquired maybe six months ago.

Yeah.

After the toaster that had been given to my wife and I as

not even a pre-wedding gift, a housewarming gift by a friend's mother,

who is a hoarder,

finally died on us.

It was a target model or whatever.

And we have no gas in our house because of where the gas line is located and various laws and regulations.

And so we have an electric oven, which probably takes half an hour to preheat.

And it's totally maddening for cooking anything in.

And so when our toaster died, I went on to one of my favorite websites, The Sweet Home.

I know, I know, I know, Jesse.

Keep going.

I'm really into this.

And I said, I'm getting such a tingling in my scalp just listening to you talk about this stuff.

What toaster oven do they recommend if price is no object?

And here's the thing: for me, in my life, price remains an object.

Sure.

However, I have found that as a homeowner and dad, I get so much pleasure pleasure out of having the right thing

that I have almost completely discarded price.

So

I'm not talking about buying the one with the most features or buying the most expensive one.

But

now that the internet will tell me exactly what the really good one is,

I am so glad to pay.

I mean, literally, this toaster oven maybe costs $300.

But I was like, you know,

there's things in my life that I can give up to,

you know, cover that extra $200.

Yes.

And now

I use this toaster oven all the time, like constantly.

Yes.

Because it is so much more, it is profoundly more convenient than using my oven oven.

Right.

And it's more energy efficient.

Your biggie oven.

Yeah.

And I, you know, the fact of the matter is, how many cookies do I really want to make at once?

Yes.

The fact is that I want to make one toaster oven's worth of cookies, and it actually fits a surprisingly large number of cookies in there.

How many chocolate chip cookies do you get out of a toaster oven?

Nine.

That's a great number.

Yeah.

It's really sizable.

You can roast a chicken in there.

I've done it.

So

I know,

I'm glad you went down this road, Jesse.

Deeply, deeply gratified.

As I said, my scalp's tingling because I know the oven of which you speak because I am also

visitor to the Sweet Home website, and it's a

sister brother website for technology gadgets and stuff, wire cutter.

And I hope that we will be getting some big, sweet stack of perfectly browned cash from either Breville, Sweet Home, or both.

But even if we don't, I can't help myself because I find that those two websites are terrific for making those decisions as a person who

is ambivalent by nature and has a hard time being decisive,

there are certain decisions that would send me down a deep spiral of procrastination, such as what kind of TV to buy.

I bought the TV they told me to buy, too.

Yeah, and I did too.

And

it's great.

Yeah, it's awesome.

I got no complaints.

But I'm the kind of guy who will be like,

what kind of HDMI cable is the very, very best as an only child?

You need to, I feel this obsession to be to like, I can't just do

a pretty good job.

I have to do the best job, and therefore I need to get the best, the best auxiliary cable to run the terrible compressed audio from my phone into the terrible speakers in my car.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I know.

That's the only way that you can ensure that you're avoiding all unnecessary conflict.

And so these websites do, in my opinion, a great and to date, reliable job of doing all the testing and giving all the reasons, but if you just need to know the one to get, this is the one to get.

And I was in a position myself, Courtney, not too long ago, where my family had to decide between getting a toaster or a toaster oven.

I've always been a toaster person because I like toast.

I like toast a lot.

And I've always found that toaster ovens

were

made very poor toast

and were basically a very versatile appliance for everything other than the toasting of toast and that that toast specific toasters always did a better job but i got to tell you jesse my head was turned by this oven that was recommended by the sweet home this breville brand toaster oven now did you get the big one or the smaller one

i think i got the larger one the smaller one is not that much smaller than the big one right if i remember correctly so you got the large little oven not the little little oven yeah exactly right okay and you're satisfied is what you're saying i'm I'm not just satisfied.

I'm absolutely delighted.

Like, every time I cook a steak at home, which I generally do on the stove top,

I can brown the steak on the stovetop,

put a temperature probe in there, and just stick it in my toaster oven, which is already heated easily, comfortably, and take it out when it goes boop, boop, boop, indicating that it's medium rare.

And

that just in and of itself would have been worth the money that I spent on this toaster oven.

Well, I'm glad to hear that endorsement, but I have to ask you a question, Jesse.

Do you ever make toast in it?

No, I don't.

I don't eat a lot of toast.

You don't eat a lot of toast.

Have you tried making toast in it?

My wife makes toast in it for our children.

I haven't heard any complaints.

That said.

They're four and two.

Yeah.

And I was about to say that they're not very discriminating, but in fact, they're profoundly discriminating in that they reject all foods other than toast.

If that's the primary part of their diet.

But within the subset toast, they are not very discriminating.

Gotcha.

That was the reason that I didn't end up buying that toaster oven because I felt we just needed something to make toast.

And we already, we, in our case, had a perfectly adequate oven that, and

a perfectly adequate smaller second oven already.

So we didn't really need this in our life.

And then we ended up going to a church auction and getting an old black and decker toaster for 35 cents.

And it was terrible.

So, sorry, black and decker.

Wait, you bid 35 cents on it?

It wasn't even increments of a dollar.

It was the Buy It Right Now price, I think.

Yeah.

And then we replaced it.

And in my case, I ended up getting a Breville two-slice toaster

because we like toast.

Breville was a highly recommended brand for the toaster oven.

And like Josh,

Counter Space is at a premium in our lives.

And this took up a very small, had a very small footprint and it's a terrific, terrific toaster.

You know what my favorite feature of it is?

What's that?

There's a button.

First of all, you don't, there's no lever that you're pushing down, right?

You put the toast in, you press a button, and the toaster grabs it and then slowly lowers it, like Hans Solo, into the carbonite freezing chamber, which is fantastic,

which is hypnotic to watch.

And then it doesn't shoot it out at you, but it slowly raises it.

And if you're looking at it and you go, you know what?

I need need that to be a little bit more toasted.

There's a button that says a bit more.

You press that, it takes it back down for a few seconds.

It's truly a connoisseur's toasting device.

And I find the toast to come out of it to be superlative.

So, Breville, think of this podcast

when you're considering your sponsorship plans for the new year.

Have you watched our friend David Reese's episode of his television show, which is called Going Deep with David Reese, that is specifically about toast.

Yes I have

so there's two concerns for the benefit of our audience that come up in this.

They are temperature and time.

And so if you make toast at a higher temperature

you get a drier outside with a moister inside whereas if you

make it over a longer period of time at a lower temperature, you get

a more well-cooked through and through slice of toast.

The benefit of the former, which is crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, is that it may be the best

tasting toast immediately, and it's the classic American toast.

The latter, which is a more classic British or European toast, has the advantage of still tasting good later because it

is of consistent and relatively dry texture.

And not consistent across the flat surface, but through the toast itself, from the one edge, from the one flat side to the other flat side, it's more consistently toasted as opposed to having a chewy center.

What's your preference, Judge Hodgman?

I don't care for the European crispy all-the-way through toast.

To my mind,

that's basically a biscuit.

It's basically a dry, crumbly biscuit.

Like a hard tech?

Like a hard tack, yeah.

Without the magazine wiefles.

And then you don't have the protein.

So what's the point of the hard tack?

Do you know what i mean exactly so yeah i mean the the the truth is are are you a discriminating

is josh a discriminating toast eater

or is josh simply someone who cares incredibly about counter space and controlling his wife and

And we will never know.

But because I refuse to talk to Josh, and we're clearing the docket.

So

since the wife is okay with having a toaster and a toaster oven, she's the more flexible of the two.

If Josh truly wants a toaster believing that it will make superlative toast, then he should have such a thing.

And if he's truly obsessed with counter space,

then he should take it into his room, into the bathroom by himself and make toast on his own alone.

Yeah, whenever he takes a bath, he can make it.

Exactly right.

Just toss it into the bath.

And that's how you keep your toast moist, by the way.

Make it underwater while you're in the bathtub.

So I don't want to deny Josh his perfect toast, but there is no reason that Courtney should have to go from a versatile, multi-use appliance that takes a certain amount of space on the counter.

to a single-use appliance and get rid of all the functionality that the toaster, that the oven part of the toaster oven confers.

That would be madness and tyranny, and I will not allow it.

So, either, Josh, you allow your own special toaster on the counter or let Courtney replace her toaster oven with whatever toaster oven she thinks is best.

I think it's clear

the ones that we think are best.

I definitely would recommend that you get a Brevel toaster oven and a Brevel two or four sliced toaster, and that Brevel give us money.

I think that would be the best outcome for your family.

That's ideal.

But if you have to choose one, I have to find in favor of Courtney.

She gets what she wants because she set the precedent and she's flexible, and you're not.

And that's bad.

Of course, our friends at Brevel right now are enjoying their free milk and wondering why they should buy our cow.

Oh, they're going to moxie us just like the moxies did.

Here's something from David.

My best friend Matt and I have enjoyed playing a popular collectible card game for many years.

The traditional way to obtain the cards is to buy them in sealed packs or trade with others for individual cards.

Matt has recently begun bolstering his collection by purchasing individual cards called singles through second-hand retailers

such as card shops.

I can abide the occasional purchase of a few singles, but his purchases have now upset the balance of our respective decks and diminished our mutual enjoyment of the game.

I naturally have fewer decks of lower quality since I've gone the traditional route to collect cards.

Judge Hodgman, I ask you to specify how many singles purchases each of us are allowed in a given period of time and encourage my friend to construct new decks in the traditional way rather than an internet search of available cards.

Now, Jesse, you used to be a card sharp.

Yeah,

I was a baseball card enthusiast, and I dabbled in Magic the Gathering in middle school, as well as Star Wars, the collectible card game, and

Marvel Comics cards, which had hologram cards in them.

That was what you wanted in the Marvel Comics cards.

But just now, I have to ask you, in the Marvel Comics card, you're just talking about pictures of your favorite superheroes, your Colossus, your Deadpools, your.

Yeah, although I did not care that much about the superheroes, to be honest, I liked Spider-Man pretty well.

Sure.

I had some comic books, don't get me wrong.

But I was not an enthusiast of most of the superheroes.

I just wanted to get those holograms.

You loved holograms.

I loved holograms.

They gave you a tingling in your scalp to see that.

They gave me an illusion of three-dimensionality.

It was the promise of the future that if this exists now, by the time I am an adult, I will be talking to the beautiful woman who will someday discover that I'm a great person and be my wife via a hologram.

You know what?

If they sold collectible cards that had an insert and the insert was Dip and Dots Ice Cream, I would have bought every pack they had.

Well,

I have to say, Jesse Thorne, that

those are trading cards, right?

That's what I mean to say about these Marvel cards.

They were not part of a game.

Right, but I did play Magic the Gathering, probably the most popular of these types of games,

when it first hit

Bay Area Nerd Middle Schools in 1992 or something.

And for those who don't know or didn't listen to

our recent case, which dealt a lot with playing magic and similar competitive card games, there are some cards that are very powerful.

And then there are some cards that are just,

they're garbage cards, right?

They're weeds.

They're rags.

Yeah, well,

there are cards that you need a lot of, which are common,

and

they're not worth, they don't have a large monetary value because they're so common.

You do need them to play, though.

Right.

And then there are special cards which come much more rarely in these random packs and can sometimes be very powerful.

And part of them.

Such as, I remember one called Sarah Angel.

It's the only one that I remember, but I had two of them, I think.

And that made me really really hot stuff in the seventh grade Afraid of Girls community.

Sarah Angel, S-E-R-R-A.

So, and what were the powers of the Sarah Angel magic card?

What was nice about the Sarah Angel card was most cards, when you use them to attack, you had to turn them sideways, which was called tapping them.

But the Sarah Angel, you did not have to tap.

And well, that's, I can see why you got so excited.

Why was that important?

I don't remember.

I don't remember.

And how did you get two Sarah Angels, Jesse?

I purchased them as singles from the baseball card store during the summer that I worked as an assistant to my stepmother's

ad hoc at-home preschool.

And I was getting paid $2 an hour.

And with a couple of days' pay, I think they cost $15 or $20 each, I bought those Sarah Angels.

You bought two of them?

Became king of the game.

You just, you, you, you, you rigged the game for yourself.

I mean, this is what the issue is, folks who don't know what we're talking about.

There are two ways to get cards.

You either buy them blindly in packs of 15 or 20 or whatever it is, and then hope you get a good one in there because seeded throughout the run are some of the really high-power cards like the Sarah Angel, or you just skip that whole step.

You skip the pleasure of the hunt.

And instead, go directly to your local card shop and basically buy a scalped Sarah Angel that someone has found.

They probably got him

off of a card hunting farm in China somewhere,

where they get a thousand Chinese teenagers to just buy and open packs and get out the good ones and then they send them over.

I don't know if that's how they would do it.

That's how they mine for virtual gold and virtual role-playing games, but that's another story.

And it really, you know,

on the one hand, it seems gross

to essentially sidestep the the pleasure of the hunt and the social aspect of buying the cards opening seeing seeing which ones you get maybe getting a sort of charlie bucket golden ticket card that makes you really excited having that finding it you know knowing that you only paid you know a few bucks for the pack then being able to trade it for all your friends cards and that sort of thing but really what it comes down to was that was a trick to get kids to buy as many packs of cards as possible, right?

And by the same token,

skipping that process and just going directly to the scalper had kind of a gross air to it because it was just the rich kids could get whatever they wanted.

And all of a sudden, someone like you, Jesse Thorne, could rig the game

and ruin friendships, is what happened here in this particular

case between David and Matt.

I don't know if their friendship is ruined, but it should be because

Matt has gone off and buying these individual cards that warps the gameplay because suddenly,

you know, he's got an arsenal of Sarah Angels and David's got nothing.

He's been left behind by his friend.

I will say that

the sort of gross, capitalistic, mercenary air of going to the card shop or now to the internet and just buying these things online is less gross when you consider it's equally as capitalistic as giving the money to the game creator to buy thousands of cards you don't need to get the one that you need.

But in this case, not only is the game creator getting whatever money they're getting, but also you're supporting your local card shop and small entrepreneurs.

So, all capitalism is disgusting.

I don't take the moral stand that one is necessarily better than the other.

At the end of the day, it's either the comic book store guy, a weirdo on the internet, or the card shop that is taking money from children.

But unless David and Matt are middle schoolers themselves,

then I think that Matt is doing a wrong thing here.

This is a friendly game between adult or young adult friends.

And this is not the mercenary, all-or-nothing,

back-stabbing world of the recess playground.

This is presumably two guys who like to get together and maintain and grow their friendship through a few games of collectible fantasy cards.

And I think for Matt to beef up his arsenal in this way and throw the game out of whack

is essentially leaving his friend behind.

And I think it's kind of an uncool thing to do.

And I would say that I think David's suggestion is quite right, that there should be a limit to how many singles purchases each are allowed in a given period of time.

So I would say, what do you think is a reasonable number of singles to purchase in a month, let's say, Jesse?

Well, I have a concern here, Judge Hodgman.

What is it?

I think your reasoning is sound.

However, there's a blind spot here.

It's one that I can speak to.

You mean Blind Spot, the hit television show on NBC starring Jamie Alexander and featuring John Hodgman in a two-episode arc that by the time of this airing has probably concluded?

Yeah.

Oh, no, it doesn't.

It hasn't concluded.

It doesn't start till the end of this month.

Check out Blind Spot on NBC.

I think it's February 29th.

No, what I refer to is, you know, one of the central facts of my own personal mythology is that I went to a rich kid school in middle school.

So while I was

while I was

my parents were divorced and each in their own economically tenuous places in their lives, and I was living in inner city San Francisco, I was attending school on the peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area with legit rich kids.

And the flaw in this limitation system is this.

Sure, you can prevent this guy from going onto eBay and buying himself four Sarah Angels.

Certainly so.

But you can't prevent this guy from buying a wax box of these cards, which is to say, the display box that typically holds 36 packs of cards

and opening box,

opening packs until he gets four Sarah Angels.

These are adult men with relative to the cost of collectible trading cards, almost unlimited budgets.

They're not getting paid $2 an hour as I was at the time.

And so, as an unlicensed

child care worker.

So, I think my worry here is that even if we limit them to something reasonable, I think even one a month would be perfectly reasonable.

What could happen is this guy could become resentful and he could decide to plow his singles money into buying packs.

He could just start buying boxes on eBay.

So let's premise this, that they are adults with incomes.

You're saying,

what?

That they should.

That

there's no way to prevent this guy from doing whatever he wants, realistically?

I think

that if we if we limit, this is like campaign finance reform that if we live limit this way of of influencing the game with money he'll just find another way he'll create to to create to create a super pack as it were yeah

here's what here's what here's the only uh the only thing that i can think of yeah

between the two of them they have two types of games

one type of game is

anything goes

so that's where they can buy as many of whatever the 2016 version of Sarah Angel is as they want.

They can spend all their money decking out their mana and their attack point guys.

Right.

Again, my memories of this game are relatively hazy.

Yeah.

Then they also have a continuing game or set of games

where they play with some specific strictures, which is to say they have to make their decks from each of them buys one box of cards, or each of them is allowed to spend $20 a month on that deck.

And they agree to that.

They stipulate to the same limits.

I feel like I'm

listening to Bernie Sanders here.

You've totally turned me around on this because I feel like there is no way to enact

realistic campaign finance reform because the people who want to game the system,

or in this case, system the game, are all, and they have the money to do it, they're always going to find a way.

They're always going to find a way to funnel the money

to support the candidates they want or to get the cards that they want.

And maybe they'll just funnel the money to lawyers such that it goes all the way to the Supreme Court, then it's Card Players United versus the United States, and suddenly it becomes an issue of buying cards being

an expression of free speech.

This guy, if he wants to buy, if he wants to buy,

I think ultimately

there's nothing to it but

to appreciate that this is all, that this game that binds these friendships is also ultimately a capitalistic enterprise behind it.

There should be a free market of cards.

We should let the cards fall where they may, as it were.

If Matt wants to go out there and buy whatever cards he's going to buy, that's his right.

And as Ayn Rand would say,

the market will correct itself because maybe David won't want to play with him anymore and say, I'm out of here because you're making it not fun.

And then Matt will be alone with his 3,000 Sarah Angel cards and no one to play with.

And that's an appropriate punishment by the market.

Now, what I would say, now that I take everything I said back, here's my ruling.

David, you're wrong.

There's no way to force Matt to play the way you want to play.

And if he's playing in a way that you don't want to play anymore, maybe you shouldn't be friends anymore.

And that's punishment for Matt.

But before that happens, just for fun, just to show that this game isn't just ruled by the rich kids, there's another way.

You can Bernie Sanders your campaign against Matt and his Koch brother cronies by crowdsourcing, by grassrooting this thing.

Start a Patreon.

Start a Patreon saying, my friend unfairly buys a bunch of powerful cards in this game that I'm playing.

I want to raise whatever you need to raise, let's say $5,000

to blow him out of the water and teach him how to play right.

And here are my reasons why.

If you start that Patreon,

I will personally plug that on all of my social medias and I will contribute to it because I want to take this guy down now.

I want to show him.

I want to show Matt this creep, this Koch brothers creep, that he can't buy the game.

There's still people out there who will rise up and

donate to a worthy cause like David.

I want you to destroy him, David.

He can have my Sarah Angels.

They're probably in my dad's basement somewhere.

If it's a Magic the Gathering thing, you can also, part of your appeal can be send me your cards, everybody.

Good.

And then we'll see what happens in the general election when it's Bernie Sanders versus the Koch brothers.

We'll decide more red-hot cases when we come back in just a second on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org slash join.

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I have a little carbon steel skillet.

that my mother-in-law loves to use because cast iron is too heavy for her, but she wants that non-stick.

And I know that she can, you know, she can heat that thing up hot if she wants to use it hot uh she can use it to braise if she wants to use it to braise um

it's an immensely useful piece of kitchen toolery and and it will last a long time and and whether it's uh griddles or pots and pans or knives or glassware or tableware i mean you know jesse i'm sad to be leaving maine soon but i am very very happy to be getting back to my beloved made-in entree bowls All of it is incredibly solid, beautiful, functional, and as you point out, a lot more affordable because they sell it directly to you.

If you want to take your cooking to the next level, remember what so many great dishes on menus all around the world have in common.

They're made in, made in.

For full details, visit madeincookware.com.

That's M-A-D-E-I-N Cookware.com.

Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

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

I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

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

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

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

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

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

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

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

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

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

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

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

Episode 64.

So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

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

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

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

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

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're in chambers, clearing the docket.

Here's something from Patrick.

I have a dispute with my fiancé, Rebecca.

We're moving in together soon, and we're both interested in getting two dogs, a German shepherd and a corgi, and a cat.

I would like to get both dogs and the cat at the same time so that they'll be able to grow up with each other and get along.

Rebecca says it will be too much work to raise two puppies and a kitten all at once, and she would like to space them out by a year or so.

When we get our first pet, she will be busy studying to take a nursing exam.

I will be working full-time.

Judge Hodgman, should we follow my timeline or Rebecca's?

Don't get two dogs and a cat, you weirds.

All at the same time.

Geez, Louise.

Why are we?

Is this just a plot summary of the movie We Bought a Farm?

We Bought a Zoo.

Yeah, there you go.

We Bought a Farm is

the sequel that's coming out soon.

why are you trying to create a domestic menagerie?

Well, look, no, I know exactly why you're trying to create it because you got a German shepherd, a corgi, and a cat.

You want to put all, you want to make a pile.

You want to put that corgi on top of that German shepherd.

You want to put that cat on top of that corgi, and you want them to walk around the house, and you want to film it, and you want them to become world-famous Instagram pets.

Like those pets, like those corgis.

I went to a party at SF Sketchfest.

Were you there that night after?

No, I don't think you had arrived in San Francisco.

There was a party

afterward

at a private home.

It was an official party, but it was at a private home.

And there are these corgis around.

And

I said to someone, whose corgis are they?

And they're like, we don't know.

And I'm like, what do you mean?

It's like, well, we don't know who the owners are.

I mean, the owners are here, but we don't know them.

My friend is a big fan of those Corgis on Instagram.

And so he invited the Corgis to the party as celebrities.

I'm still speechless.

Still speechless.

And I looked into it.

These corgis, Chompers and Linus,

they're, I think, father and son.

Chompers is much more popular than Linus for obvious reasons.

Have huge followings.

And I'm very proud to say they now follow both, both of them follow me on Instagram.

John Hodgman, by the way, is my Instagram account.

J-O-H-N-H-O-D-G-M-A-N.

So, yeah, if you're trying to create

a new media celebrity bonanza by tying these animals together in a cute pyramid for your Instagram or vines or your social meets of some kind, I'm 100% behind it.

I'm also 100% behind it because there's something very specific.

There's something very specific about German Shepherd Corgi and then cat, obviously, you don't care about.

Now, you know that the show recommends against getting pure breeds because there are so many great rescue animals that are ready for adoption and need good homes and would be terrific good homes, and also will have already been raised through puppyhood.

But since you are insisting going down a specific breed path to begin with, this is just like that dude with his toaster.

It might be just something you have to have in your life.

And if it's something that you have to have in your life, then you have to have the whole thing.

You have to just go and do it.

Because

your fiancé is studying for a nursing exam.

You work full-time.

The best thing for you guys to have is,

well, maybe a snake or nothing.

The snake, just because you could wear that walking down the street and make friends.

Totally.

Yeah,

it's the social entree of all social entrees.

The last thing you need in your life

are two hairy perpetual infants, which is what dogs are,

one of which has

very very short legs, and then a creature that hates you and

forces you to keep a box of its poop in your house.

You don't need that in your life,

but if you need it on some deep, deep, deep brain level, it's not going to get easier having one at a time, at a time.

You're just spreading out

the pain and trouble of raising small animals.

And I think it will be much easier if they know each other from birth or relative close to birth, because then they will be friends and then they'll ride around on top of each other and you guys will be gazillionaires and you won't have to work anymore.

Do you think these people even know what it means to have three?

This is my word.

No, they don't.

How do all these pets end up in shelters?

It's because people think that they should get three.

People with no pets think they should have three pets all at once when they have full-time jobs and nursing exams.

They have no idea what they're getting into, and that's why I want to punish them by giving them what they want.

But you're punishing the poor animals.

Oh, I hadn't thought about that.

No, they'll be fine.

Corgis are resilient.

Corgi's,

I feel fine about the corgi because I know the corgis always got a fallback career by just going on going on social media.

The point, what I'm saying, though, Jesse, is they're going to do it.

They're going to do it anyway.

So they've got to do it all at once.

i'm worried about these people yeah well

you think you think that they're you think that the corgi and the and the german shepherd and the cat are gonna team up against them

i just and take them down as like a reverse incredible journey they don't know if they can even deal with having a pet these people haven't even moved in together yet Right.

This is all part of their weird marriage fantasy.

Yeah, but that happens all the time.

Yeah, but that's how pets like one of my dogs was a family surrender because the family couldn't deal with her.

And she's a really sweet dog.

It wasn't because she was a bad dog.

Right.

It was because these people weren't prepared to actually have the pet that they adopted.

And I'm worried that these Yahoos with their complicated scheme,

their very specific scheme.

Yeah, their hyper-specific scheme,

they're just going to cause trouble for themselves.

But think of it this way, for the

precise same fantasy reasons,

they might instead have a child.

And they might be terrible parents.

And then what are they going to do

with all their pets?

That's what I'm saying.

Most young couples get pets in order to rehearse what it's like to have a child, and then they realize that they can keep a thing without killing it, and that thing loves them, and they love the sense of perpetual adoration, so they immediately then have a child and then ignore the dog or cat for the rest of its natural life.

You can't stop evil.

I don't trust these people past the evil.

You can't stop all evil in the world.

I don't trust these people past the end of my nose.

So, you're saying that I should say,

get

a cat

or a dog, get one of these animals first, and that way they'll learn their lesson and realize, oh, this is already too much.

I'm not going to get the other two.

Yeah.

And then you'll save,

it'll mitigate the harm.

Yeah.

But that's not as mean to them as I would like to be, Jesse, but you're right.

You're right.

Make them get one of those robots, get three of those robot dogs that Honda makes.

And then the poor animals aren't getting punished.

You know,

here's what you do.

Here's what you do.

They don't need to all grow up together.

If you are, as the show recommends, if you're getting rescue pups,

there's no rescue pup situation or cat situation that doesn't involve a trial period.

If they come into your house and they don't get along,

then you send them back where they came from.

All right.

You know what, Bailiff Jesse?

You've changed my mind on two of these so far.

Maybe this should be the Judge Jesse Thorne Show.

I wouldn't mind some bailiffing, but I think you're right.

The cat is the only thing where they didn't specify a breed because they don't, like most people, they don't give a feces about cats.

So go and rescue a cat, an adorable cat, from some cat cafe or a rescue organization, then and start with that, because that is the one that requires the least amount of attention, care, and walking.

Enjoy that cat for a period of time until you get through your nursing exam and you get married and you settle into a life and then revisit in a year and decide, do we want to open this up to one or more dogs at this point?

I do recommend that you not care so much about the breed of the dog and maybe go to a rescue place because, as Jesse says, the rescue place

will

vet you and the situation and will offer to take the animal back if the cat doesn't get along

with the new dog.

And the real benefit of this, of course, is that

after

the worst case scenario is that you just make a cat mad, which is the most fun thing in the world to do.

So,

all right, that's reasonable.

That's my judgment.

Let's move on.

Hi, John.

Big fan of yours in Korea.

All right.

North or South Unspecified.

I listened to one of your recent episodes in which a plaintiff tried to prohibit his wife from brushing her teeth in the shower.

I think you were initially more sympathetic to him, but ultimately ruled that his concern was not well-founded.

In Korea, we have something called gymjelbongs.

Basically, saunas combined with many washing stations where people sit, clean themselves, and brush their teeth.

In so doing, there could be some germs jumping onto toothbrushes.

However, I think that considering we use our hands to wash both our faces and our butts,

toothbrush use in

gym jobs is probably no dirtier than washing arrangements in our bathrooms.

I've never heard of a gym job.

I usually bathe in a bibbimbop.

I would be curious to inspect one of these communal bathing situations with my own eyes, Todd.

So next time I'm in South Korea, which will be the first time, please let me know which Jim Jilbong you like, and I will check it out

and see the famous jumping germs of South Korea.

I don't think that's how germs get around.

Have you ever visited a Korean spa?

No,

in New York City, there is Spa Castle, which is a famous multi-level, multi-world theme park of spas

with many different kinds of waters that you can bathe in and many different.

And in fact, I think it was featured or it was inspired something that was featured on one of the episodes of Bored to Death that I was not in, one of the many episodes of Bored to Death that I was not in.

But I've never been, I would like to go.

I would like to go now that I've become more comfortable with communal bathing of all kinds,

since I am

a grown man that no one is interested in and has grown comfortable

in my gross nudeness,

I would love to visit it.

You know, next time you're here in Los Angeles,

we are literally down the block from perhaps the most famous such institution

in the city of Los Angeles and one of the most famous outside of Korea, the We Spa.

Is podcasting allowed from inside the spa?

That's an interesting question.

While they brutalize you with loofah, are you allowed to have a microphone to your mouth?

I'm not sure.

Like, I would like to imagine, you know, one of those face-down massage tables that has a little donut around the sides of your face, but you're holding a microphone up into the middle of the doughnut so you can talk.

That would be uncomfortable to reach around

the massage table to hold the microphone.

Maybe we could get some tripods or something.

Yeah, or a microphone stand, maybe.

I think we could do it.

All right.

Well, let's do that.

In the meantime, David, remember to start your social media grassroots buy-me super dupe collectible card campaign so that I can plug it.

And also, everybody, remember to watch NBC's hit show Blind Spot, created by Martin Garrow, starring Jamie Alexander and many other fine actors on NBC, February 29th.

And in addition to those fine actors, maybe you'll see me.

Maybe.

If you have a case for Judge John Hodgman, go to to maximumfund.org slash JJ H O.

That's maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho to share your case with us, big or small.

We consider them all.

Our producer is Julia Smith.

Our editor is Mark McConville.

Hey, coming up soon, the Max Fun Drive.

Get ready for it.

We're going to be asking for your support to help make this show possible at maximumfund.org slash donate.

But there will also be tons of cool prizes that you will get in exchange for doing so.

So keep your eyes on the horizon for that.

And thanks for listening to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Jesse, do you know what my role on Blind Spot is?

What is it?

I'm just a guy carrying around a Breville toaster oven the whole time.

A toaster oven conveyor?

I'm like the log lady, but I'm carrying around a toaster oven.

And a very specific brand to boot.

See you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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