Judge John Hodgman - Cease and Toxoplasmosist

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Should Eli continue to feed feral cats in her yard? Her partner, Becca, says, "NO!" Becca has pointed out that Eli is also keeping bird feeders in the yard. They think Eli has created a fertile hunting ground for these innocent birds. Eli says that she is making her yard even safer for the birds because she is keeping the feral cats fed! Who's right? Who's wrong?Thanks to our generous audience and followers, Jesse and Theresa’s fundraising goal for Al Otro Lado keeps going up! Visit alotrolado.org/letsdosomething to do something helpful for migrants at the US-Mexico border. And thank you to everyone who has donated so far!We are on TikTok and YouTube! Follow us on both @judgejohnhodgmanpod! Follow us on Instagram @judgejohnhodgman.Thanks to reddit user u/__magpie__ for naming this week’s case! To suggest a title for a future episode, keep an eye on the Maximum Fun subreddit at reddit.com/r/maximumfun! Help us reach our fundraising goal for Al Otro Lado, to help migrants trapped at the US-MX border. alotrolado.org/letsdosomething 

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm Bill of Jesse Thorne. This week, cease and toxoplasmosis. Becca brings the case against their girlfriend, Eli. Becca and Eli just moved in together. After the move, Becca discovered that Eli feeds feral cats in the yard. The problem is that Eli also keeps bird feeders. Becca says that Eli is luring cats

to a fertile hunting ground. But Eli says she's actually saving the birds by keeping those cats fed. Who's right, who's wrong? Only one can decide. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference. When I tell you I wanted to live in a trash can

when I was a kid, it's because of this cartoon. TC made it look so cool. I mean, look at him and his PJs going through his evening routine. I always imagined what it looked like inside that trash can. Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear the lit against him. Becca and Eli, 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. Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling despite the fact that he's locked in an eternal battle against Jonathan Franzen with John on Team Cat and Franzen on Team Bird? I do.

I do. Very well, Judge Hodgman, you may proceed. Yes, Jesse, you have precisely identified my one and only beef with Jonathan Franzen. He gets mad at cats for eating birds, whereas I am Team Cat. Will it bias me in this case? We'll find out.

Becca and Eli, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment in one of your favors. Can either of you name the piece of obscure culture, I would say, obscure popular culture that I referenced as I entered this courtroom. I'm going to guess something from a David Lynch film. Okay, that's Becca. Yes.

Jumping in and going first. Something from a David Lynch film. Rest in peace, David Lynch. Any particular David Lynch film? The most obscure one. The most obscure one. What would that be? Like, maybe Wild at Heart?

I think that that's the one that people don't talk about a lot. Inland Empire is the weirdest, I guess? Oh, I guess I'm going to have to say Inland Empire because I'm from there. Oh, there you go. Inland Empire by David Lynch. All right. And again, I will remind the listener and Eli now. The quote is, when I tell you I wanted to live in a trash can when I was a kid, it was

because of this cartoon. Eli, have you a guess? I was gonna say maybe an interview, a Jim Henson interview. Jim Henson interview, that's pretty good. Can either of you, when I say this cartoon, can either of you guess the cartoon that I'm referencing? No. Would you know it if I sang the theme song? No one should. The problem is we were both homeschooled in the sense of not getting exposure to popular culture.

Were you home on weekday afternoons in the 1980s and watching Channel 56 with me? Probably not Channel 56. We were only allowed to consume Christian content. So, yeah. Oh, if it's a Christian cartoon, is it VeggieTales? Here's how it goes. I will disguise the name of the character and the name of the show by singing meow meow instead of the words. Perfect. Meow meow. The most effectual meow meow.

most effectual meow meow whose intellectual close friends get to call them TC providing it's with dignity this is not as good a song as I remember it meow meow the indisputable leader of the gang he's the boss he's the pip he's the championship he's the most tip-top meow All right, can either of you say the words that meow meow is replacing there? No. Jesse, you can't, can you? You're too young too. Apparently not.

I was singing of, meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow. Jennifer knows what I'm talking about. Which one is that, Jennifer Marmer? Meow meow. Yeah, meow meow. It's freaking Heathcliff, John. Heathcliff?

Yeah, he lives in a garbage can and he pulls the bones of a fish out of his mouth when he puts a whole fish into his mouth. Becca, Eli, let me tell you something. Long, long ago, I was interviewed as a promotional opportunity for my first book, The Areas of My Expertise. The interviewer on the other side of the phone line,

a delightful and charmingly, malevolent voiced interviewer named Jesse Thorne. My first audio-phonic meeting with Jesse. And one of the things I noticed in our conversation was, this guy knows all the TV shows I know. He must be exactly the same age as me. Wrong. 10 years younger, but a old soul.

This is maybe the first time I have made a cultural reference that Jesse didn't immediately recognize. And also the first time Jesse has made a cultural reference that I refuse to recognize, that is Heathcliff. But I found that wonderful quote from a YouTuber who goes by the YouTube handle Melman. His full name is Melvin O'Chang Oetienno. He is a YouTuber from Nairobi and also a cartoonist and a writer

whose graphic novel is called Little Fugee. And I really enjoyed his video recounting why he loved Top Cat so much. He loved it even more than I did. The most effectual Top Cat is, and I'll tell you what, maybe the cartoon isn't the best, but that theme song will never leave your head once you listen to it. So enjoy it for the rest of your life.

Becca and Eli, let's get down to it though. Who seeks justice in my courtroom? I think technically I do. Technically Becca. Yeah. That's a pretty good handle for Reddit or something. Becca, let's not mess around here. I mean, you think that your girlfriend Eli

should stop feeding the feral cats in the home that you share, but more important, you have two indoor cats of your own. You must have sent in pictures, correct? We did, and we have three. Three indoor cats, excuse me. Yes. What are the names?

All right, here I'm looking at a picture of them now. They are perched on a cat condo. And this image is courses on all of our social media and our show page at MaximumFun.org. Jesse, can you see these three cats? Oh, yeah. Niles, Frazier and Fez. You know, as we record this,

Kelsey Grammer is coming into our office later this afternoon. That's Frasier from the television show Frasier. He should know because he's Frasier. That's a reference to a 30 Rock joke. Fez in this case is named, the full name is Fezik, right? Not named after the sitcom character Fez, but the Andre the Giant, Fezzik.

Yes, from Princess Bride. Yeah. Anybody want a peanut? Are Niles and Frazier the cats' siblings? Yeah, they're litter mates. Oh, and there they are in their cat condo and they're all looking out the window and it feels like to me they're preparing

to make this noise They're on our screened-in porch so that it's kind of their catio, but it's also our screened-in porch But you know that noise that cats make when they're looking at birds sometimes. Yeah, do they make that noise? They do they do I'm gonna do it again just for the YouTube channel so you can get a video of this You're locked in but also dead eyes really so bad. That's, that's what cats look like when they make that noise. And look, if you're already writing us letters, as I'm sure you are about the ethics of feeding feral cats, just, just pause for a moment and listen to the whole podcast.

Get it? Pause? That's exactly right. In that pause, if you happen to know what the prevailing theory of why cats make that noise, I always thought that's their imitation of birds, that they're trying to attract birds. Becca, Eli, do you have any thoughts on that? I don't. I always thought it was silly that they give away their position as they're hunting birds by making that noise.

So no, I don't know. I think that they're trying to talk to them being like, I'm like you. But I mean, birds don't make that sense. Who knows? Maybe they're mesmerizing them. Yeah. Before you finish your electronic mail full of frustration and anger and hate for me, see if you also have some information that you can glean, but you can share with me about why cats make that noise.

Anything to do with the case here that I need to know by looking at these photos? I mean, we'll talk about your cats more for sure, but... Yeah. No, I don't... Well, the boys that are outside when they're all in the condo, they are watching birds. So like, I guess that sort of relates to the case in that it's both cats and birds. But otherwise, I think the two photos are just character references. I love it. But these cats are not on trial.

They are not on trial. Nor are the feral cats that you are feeding outside, Eli. You are the one on trial. Correct. Who are the feral cats that you're feeding and what are their names? Right now, we're down to just one feral cat that I call Black Cat. Okay.

There had been Orange Cat, but I think maybe family scooped him up eventually. His owner passed away and he had been an outside mostly cat. Then she passed away and it seems like the family forgot about Orange Cat for a while, but they've since I think scooped him up. So Orange Cat was not a feral wild cat, a house cat that was living a free life for the first time in its life. Briefly.

But probably desired human companionship and we hope has it now. Yeah. Even when she was alive, he was outside all the time. But Black Cat, to the best of your knowledge, is genuinely a feral, born in the wild, living in the wild, out there in the wild, wilding it up. Yes, I believe so. And this is all going down in the state of Maryland, correct, where you two live together?

Yes. Is that right? Okay, so? Where you two live together. Yes. Is that right? Okay, so Becca, you recently moved in with Eli into her home, correct, in Maryland? Correct. And when did you realize that you were living in a feral cat paradise? I think it was, I don't know, maybe a month in.

How did you discover Eli sneaking out food to the black cat? I think I realized the frequency with which it was happening and also the location in which it was happening was very close to the bird feeders. The way I realized this is by going outside and seeing like the trays on the ground, empty trays that had once carried food that she brought out to leave for the cat. The empty trays that had once carried food were now empty at the bottom of, directly underneath the bird feeders? That sounds insidious.

They were, so there's like two bushes, the bird feeders were in one bush, there's a little gate, and then the other bush is where I first found the dishes. And I would say it's, I don't know, like six feet away from the bird feeder bush. Um, the big thing that I, but that made me bring this up in conversation with Eli initially was that, um, they were very close to there's like pans of water on the ground, like bird baths, but on the ground. And that is, I believe Eli told me was so that the cats could also get water. But if the birds want that water, they can have that water.

To me, I was like, oh, you're feeding them six feet away from the watering hole, and you're just like luring bird-cat encounters there. The more I hear about this, the more it sounds like one of those Temple Grandin abattoir situations. Put a weighted blanket on the birds and lead them into a funnel toward the rotating knives. Eli, is it true that your water pans bring all the birds to the yard? Yeah, they do. And I do, I had a bird bath that was properly, you know, elevated, but it broke. And so this is your primary problem here, Becca, right? That, that, uh, at this point, well, when you moved in, was,

was Eli feeding black cat and orange cat or just black cat? Black cat and orange cat have been fed. Um, I would say for the duration of our relationship, I knew about black cat cause I had seen black cat when I was staying over at Eli's house and because orange cat would run up and greet me when I got out of my car, because Eli started keeping food in her car to give, and because Orange Cat would run up and greet me when I got out of my car, because Eli started keeping food in her car to give to Orange Cat when he would run up and greet her when she parked.

So he was like, oh, you guys are the food people. You keep it in your car for me. Eli, so you're also training the cats to approach moving cars? This cat. Only Orange Cat gets the car food, right Eli? Because it's not just that you're trying to endanger all these creatures, but you're also playing

mind games with them? No, not intentionally. He just lived by where I parked, and so to make it easy, I just kept, yeah, some treats in the car. Becca, your primary concern is that basically, Eli is luring birds to eat in the yard so that they can be eaten by the cats. Eli has a very big heart and also animals love her. They sort of flock to her in a weird

way. So she has all these bird feeders near the screened-in porch, which is where the cats have their little catio, our indoor cats, and they love to go out there and watch the birds. So I don't even know how many bird feeders there are. There's like four or five. Yeah. What kind of bird feeders are we talking about? Like, what are the style?

So you've got a tray one hanging from a tree, you've got the suet little cage, you've got the one that the little like thistle seeds go in, and then what I would call just a standard bird feeder. That's one, two, three. Did I count four or five different bird feeders there? I think four. And what do you see like a bird once a year, but most of the time it's squirrels and raccoons

eating your food? No, no, it's mostly birds. What kind of birds are we talking about? Get the standard sparrows and cardinals, blue jays, crows, woodpeckers, nut hatches. Nut hatches. Titmouses. Titmice. Titmice. Yeah. So a range.

At one time there was a hawk. There was a hawk. That time I did feel like I'd set up a bird buffet because the hawk did catch a morning dove. Yeah. I was going to say, the hawk's not there for some suet. The hawk's there for some fresh meat. I mean, it was a bird feeder for the hawk. The hawk got the morning dove? Yeah.

I can't wait to tell this story to my cat. My cat. Well, the dumb dumb cat is completely uncurious about everything. Curiosity shall not kill this cat because she doesn't care about anything. Their primary hobby staring into the middle distance, and then sitting up underneath the coffee table and bumping her head because she's dumb. Maybe she has a vibrant internal life, John.

Can I tell you the truth? No, she doesn't. Yeah. No, she doesn't. So, aside from this morning dove though, Becca, have other birds perished due to the cats? So Eli has rejected my proposal of a webcam that is trained on the bird feeding slash cat buffet area, because I would love to get, you know, quantitative data rather than just that position. Lauren hearsay.

Yeah, I can't prove that the birds are being hunted by the cats, but just sort of like a logic dictates situation that by feeding the feral cats, it's encouraging black cat to stay in the yard and hang out in the yard. And then by feeding all the birds, it's giving him a fun diversion. And let me be very clear, there's only really one feral cat now. There used to be brown cat,

but we haven't seen the brown cat in several months. Becca, do you wanna say anything about the mysterious disappearance of brown cat? Well, they come and they go. And you know, that's the nature of feral cats and it's, it's sad and it's unfortunate, um, but I, I feel like maybe black cat has staked a claim to the yard and that's why other cats aren't coming. Um, I also deny you deny any role in the disappearance of brown cat.

I do deny any role. And I also deny any role in orange cat's disappearance. Eli, you said that orange cat was rescued by a family member, a human family member. That's your supposition in any case, right? That was. Now that I see Becca's face. Or is that just a story that your parents told you when orange cat disappeared suddenly? No, I know the lady who passed away, I know her family still kind of takes care of the

house, like mow the lawn, check the mail every now and then. So I just assumed at some point they captured Orange Cat. Is she entombed in this house? The old lady? What's going on in this house? Yeah. I don't think so. The neighbor that knows everybody's business told me that she went to hospice and passed away. But I am curious as to, you seem to rely on a lot of assumptions and gossip from the neighbors. Why reject a camera to actually take footage of the bird activity in your backyard?

I don't actually remember talking about the camera. I think what you said was you're already in debt. You don't need to spend money on a wildlife monitoring camera. That does sound like something I would. That is accurate. You live together, you cohabitate, you are not married as far as I know, correct? Correct.

You have separate finances? Yes. Becca, why don't you spring for the rail cam? Well, it's her house and if she doesn't want camera surveillance in the yard, Becca, why don't you spring for the trail cam? Well, it's her house and if she doesn't want a camera surveillance in the yard, I feel like I can't just overrule that. Also, she is right that I am in debt

and really shouldn't be spending money on. You both don't have a little extra trail cam money lying around. Not particularly. Okay. Because if it's a question of who's house you're going to put it in, put it in the old lady's house. She's dead in there. She's not doing anything.

She's gone, it's true. Nobody lives there yet. The only thing happening there is the lawn's getting mowed, I guess. Would you be averse to me living with you for three months and operating a drone? I think our indoor cats would be averse to that. They don't like new people. Come on, Niles Frazier. They freaking love drones.

Well, once again, my home invasion drone dreams are smashed. So let's go to first principles here. We consulted as everyone right now is listening is writing letters in their head, if not in their computers. We consulted with a veterinarian friend of the show. Not just a veterinarian friend of the show, but a veterinarian friend of the show who works a lot with feral cats, right? Yes. That is all of the identifying information that I'm allowed to give.

We'll call her Dr. Vinnie Boombots. Dr. Vinnie Boombots asked that their name not be mentioned. You know our veterinarian, Dr. Vinnie Boombots. Yeah, because this is a very controversial thing and people do a lot of different things, but this veterinarian friend of the show did point out that the American Veterinary Medicine Association has a position, and that position is don't feed feral cats

unless they're part of a quote-unquote properly managed feral cat colony which is to say a colony in which all the cats are spayed and neutered and vaccinated and from which adoptable cats are removed and the the theory is and the feeling is among the AVMA is that the more you feed feral cats the more feral cats there will be statistically. And the more feral cats there are, the increased risk to other wildlife including birds, Jonathan Franzen's favorite things, as well as increased vectors for zoonotic infectious diseases among cats and other species and including toxoplasmosis,

one of the favorite parasitic diseases of this very court, the Judge John Hodgman Court. You, how do you respond to that? So, couple thoughts. One is that I am on a waiting list to trap, neuter, release the cat. I've reached out to the local people who do this. So I do want to make sure, A, he's not microchipped,

he doesn't belong to anybody, and then B, get him neutered, get him vaccinated. Yeah, so I don't want to have, you know, 100 cats in my yard, but if he's gonna be there, I do want him to be neutered so that I don't end up with 17 kittens under the shed one day. And I do think he came from a colony down the street that was not super well managed. And that couple was a husband and wife. They got divorced. The wife is the one who cared about the cats. She moved out

and I guess the husband's kind of not staying on top of that. So the cats have now scattered into everybody else's yard. They've dispersed. Yes. You're saying that the local neighborhood gossip told you about another family down the road. A couple who are maintaining, the wife, in this case it sounds like,

was maintaining a feral cat colony by feeding them and that they divorced and he's no longer tossing the kibble out the way that they're used to and so they've now dispersed into your yard, including Black Cat. That's your theory. That is the theory, yes. A lot of gossip on this street. We haven't even gotten to the chicken neighbor. Go on.

Well, there was a chicken in the backyard one day, and it was very exciting because chickens aren't allowed in our neighborhood. Here we go. Like zoning wise. So, it's an illicit chicken. Is it like a city town ordinance or a homeowners association rule? Oh, it's like county level. Yeah.

No backyard birds. This is some county level stuff, Jessie. Here we go. I'm into this. So there was an illicit chicken in the yard and it kept hanging out there probably because Eli started feeding it. And at the same time, still feeding black cat, I might add.

But- What other animals are you stealing from your neighbors? There was also a deer one time and he ate a bunch of stuff from Eli's garden. Yeah, I didn't hand feed the deer, but I didn't scare it away either. But I did find the owners of Daisy the chicken and they brought me food so that we could try to keep it

in the yard long enough to catch her. She was uncatchable, so she is free ranging it up somewhere. Yeah, in a coyote's stomach. Yeah. She was there for like a week and a half. And then the only thing that we found was just a bunch of chicken feathers at the corner of the fence in a leaf pile. So either she got out from that corner of the fence

or something dastardly happened there. Yeah, no, I think it's pretty probable that Daisy the chicken is now living with the orange cat on in a beautiful mid-century modern home, five miles out of town, where they just sit together and watch the fire burn in the large almost walk-in hearth that I imagine is my dream home. But I think probably Daisy the chicken had bought the farm as it were. So you mentioned, Eli, that you're on the waitlist to get into a trap neuter and release program. Explain to the listener who might not know what that's all about.

So it's called TNR and people do that to feral colonies. So you put out this trap with food, they go into it. You then, once you've trapped the cat, take it to a vet and they tend to do some vaccines. They'll neuter the cat. They tend to tip the ear, cut a little notch in the ear, so you have a visible clue that this cat has already been taken care of. And then if they hate humans, you typically just put them right back outside. If they're friendly enough to be adopted or young enough to be adopted out. Yeah, they'll usually try to find a home. So it sounds like you're making, you're on your path to a more

ethical feral cat management policy. Becca, what do you want me to do? I would like to ask Eli to say when she sent the email to get on the waiting list. All right. I will allow it. Eli? I sent the first email sometime last year, I don't recall, and then I followed up again last week. I admit that was in preparation for this conversation. So I could say- Oh, just so you could say that you did it.

I pinged those people again to ask about getting a trap out here. Did they reply, are you sure that you're actually on the list? Or are you just sending emails to info at cattrap.org? I think she tied a little message to the foot of a titmouse and released it to the wild. Now that message is inside a black cat's stomach. No, it's a real organization that I got Frasier Niles from, so I know they're real. What is the name of the org? It's called a Cat's Life Rescue.

A Cat's Life Rescue in Maryland. So if people want to adopt a cat or want to urge them to do their paperwork more hastily, then contact them. I'm sure they can find their way. But you haven't answered my question though, Beko. So all right, this has been going on for a while. Eli said that she contacted the Cat's Life in order to become a TN, but that obviously was just, um, uh, uh, performative, uh, in order to have something to say on a podcast so far. Uh, what would you have me order though? I think she just has to choose either feed the feral cats in the yard or feed

the wild birds because I think it's unfair to the wild birds, um, to have a little food and water paradise for them that they don't know is also cat stocking, you know, yard. And I think she should stop feeding the cats because our indoor cats really like the birds. They like to go out to the catio and watch the birds as and they don't like the feral cats. So if I were to rule in your favor, Eli would stop feeding black cat. I mean, I. Black cat would starve to death and you would what order that its decaying corpse be kept on display as a warning to all? Ideally she would stop feeding the cats.

I would like. You keep saying the cats, Becca, but there's only one cat, right? I mean, this is kind of. Up until up until recently, there were two. That's why to keep saying- You keep saying the cats, Becca, but there's only one cat, right? I mean, this is kind of- Up until recently, there were two. That's why I keep saying. How recently was Orange Cat disappeared? He- I wanna say a couple months?

I saw him when I moved in at the end of October. And that was maybe the last time you saw him? Yeah. These cats keep disappearing, Eli. It's very suspicious, don't you agree? As soon as Becca moved in, brown cats gone, orange cats gone, Daisy the chickens gone. Who's next? I think we know who's next. Becca. I would just like to state for the record, I'm a vegetarian. No one's accusing you of eating the animals you murder. No, I know that you're not murdering animals,

but you are new in this home. This was Eli's home before you moved in, right? Right. Yes. Eli, what other ways is Becca telling you to live your life now that they have moved into your home? Oh, I wish I would have thought to look at the list before we came here. You should have thought to bring it in. I hope it's a parchment. No, it's a Google doc. No, it is not, is it? Yeah. Yeah. What?

What do you think they're going to make it in, John? Wordstar? 2025. Oh, all right. I'm I'm ordering a brief recess so you can collect your list, your serious offenses list, squeezed and pulled and hurt my neck. Kim, what do you remember off the top of the list? And why are you making a list? Well, I have memory problems.

So I do do better when things are written down for me. So I'm not upset that there is a list. A fair number of them were things, when you live in a house, you get used to like, well, this door just doesn't shut right and you carry on. Then someone else comes in and is like, what's happening in your home? Then you suddenly are like, oh yeah, this is a weird thing.

Some of it was just like fixing latches on doors or windows that didn't open right, things like that. These are, this is a to-do list of, of things to do around the house. Little fixes. It's a little fix it list, not a list of things Becca thinks is wrong around the house that I am forced to change in my own home. It's kind of both. We had to talk about it and we decided that the list was the best way to go about it so that I would stop just saying things randomly that you'd feel like randomly criticized about,

you know? What kind of things are on the list that you remember, Becca? Some things that have already happened. All right. A big one for me was putting in a cat door in our front door so that our indoor cats can let themselves out to the catio screened in porch and let themselves back in because But they're still completely enclosed in the catio. They're not roaming the neighborhood.

They can't get outside, no. But I work downstairs in the house and so I just could not deal with being the on-call door opener. They all want to go out at different times. They want to come in at different times. So Eli put in a cat door. That was a lot of work that she had to do. She had to research it and do that kind of thing.

The windows in my bedroom didn't stay open, so she fixed those. She thought my TV was hung too high, so we had to re-hang the TV, which required professionals. Then they hung it at the wrong height again, so then she made me have the professional move it again. So now there's like seven extra holes in the wall.

You didn't fix the holes? I have not yet fixed the holes. We're debating just putting some big artwork up so that you don't see the holes anymore. R slash TV too high. It would have been really highly rated on there. I'm telling you, it was very, very high. Is that an actual subreddit?

R slash TV too high. Yeah, it is. I'm a member. The top of the TV matched the top of the doorframe. Wow. Holy cow. Thank you. That's like a Sky TV.

Well, obviously, your team Becca and this one Bailiff Jessie, but how do you feel about sharing your home? How do you think it's going? I do think mostly it's going very well. We have pretty good communication skills with each other. Becca, when she does make suggestions, is really nice about being like, it's not that you did this wrong,

but I would prefer X-way instead of this way. And then we do also make sure tomorrow we have couples counseling scheduled in case this goes poorly today. I mean, we have couples counseling anyway, but we thought it was funny that it was slated for the day after this podcast. We're like, that's good.

I can work it out. That's, it's very thoughtful and considerate of each other that you both have, that you have regular couples counseling and it's really smart. And I'm glad it's tomorrow. It's perfect because our plan is to sow dissent between you like black cat. We're outside the window trying to start a fight between you. Just remind me for a second, the three existing cats, indoor cats, Niles, Fez, and Frazier, are you their original human companion, Eli?

Yes. Becca, you're bringing no pets to the table at this current time. No, just my allergies. Oh, dear. That's enough. She's made a lot of changes in the house for that too. I should give her that credit. That's very good. I'm glad to hear that. There used to be a lot of nut trees in there.

Just peanut butter smeared all over the banister. Did I interpret this correctly when you mentioned, Becca, that an adjustment needed to be made to the food, the food an adjustment needed to be made to the window in your bedroom? Is it the case that you are a romantic couple that has separate bedrooms? Please say yes. Please say yes. Well, yes, partly because I'm very allergic to cats and her three cats like to sleep on

her bed and that just wouldn't have been sort of torture for me, but also because we've both never lived with a partner before and we both are well into our adulthood and like our own space and. Yeah, I really respect that, that you have that self-knowledge and that you are acting upon it. The Judge John Huntsman podcast is very pro,

not couples not sleeping together, but normalizing couples not sleeping together if that's what they wish. You can always choose to sleep together, but you don't have to do it every night, especially if not draped with cats all night. Yeah, my room is the cat-free zone, so I have like an allergy haven in the house.

Also, if I've learned anything working on the Judge John Hodgman podcast these past 10 plus years, it's that people who don't live in Los Angeles or New York just have lots of rooms that they can't figure out what to do with. Why? Yeah, that's my cat grooming room. No, no, no. You're in the darning room. You want to be in the knitting room. Yeah, this is where I have my normal train set,

and this is where I have my specialty's train set. It doesn't go in a circle, it just goes in lines back and forth. I was thinking, Jesse, when Becca was describing the backyard situation. They've got bird feeders in one bush and then bird feeders in another bush and like two bushes. Must be nice. Quite a spread out there in Maryland and quite a semi-rural area. I mean, you've got a lot of wildlife roaming around. We do have a kind of a weird amount of wildlife considering we're pretty close to a major city.

Like the deer that showed up was odd. The hawk was weird. The hawk literally killed a dove. Yeah. And how long do you to imagine that you'll stay in this particular property for the foreseeable future or do you got plans to abandon this cat? There is a small chance we move abroad in five years, 10 years, something like that. Oh, okay. And, and by that point, black cat will probably be dead or what do you, what will happen to black cat if you were to leave?

Well, so I inherited the birds and Orange Cat from the previous owner. So perhaps I can just write him into the deed of the house. Were you saying that the previous owner fed these birds and so that's why the birds are so inclined to come visit? Yeah, it feels rude to have them used to getting food in this spot and then be like, no, sorry. And also I like birds. So yeah. Pete Slauson Yeah. Well, of course, wherever you choose to live, I hope that you find a place that

is peaceful and supports your human rights and dignity. Becca Snell Thank you. Pete Slauson Wherever that may be. And I hope that all the animals you want with you can be there with you too. But would you say that this dispute is the biggest dispute that you've had since Becca has moved in? Yeah. I mean, I think it's not super, super important. We're not going to break up over the result of today or anything, but yeah,

it is one that we haven't been able to, to reach our own solution. Becca wants you to stop feeding the cat cold turkey. I mean, literally nothing, but especially not cold turkey. How do you feel about that solution? And do you have an alternative solution? I don't love, yeah, that I would feel very guilty. As Becca's pointed out, I'm a big softy, really, really like the animals.

So I would feel bad for a black cat. He was used to a human taking care of him at least a little bit by feeding him and then that stopped. So divorce isn't his fault. But anyway, so the yard is fairly big. So I have listened to Becca a bit and taken his food and now he's used to eating at the very back end of the yard. Away from the bird feeders. Yes, away from where the birds are, away from the bird bath.

Becca, it sounds as though Eli's trying to make some accommodations here. Don, you can lead a bird to water, but you can't make the cat eat it. BOTH LAUGH I mean, Jesse Thorne raises an important point here, Becca, which is that so far, to your knowledge, no birds have been consumed by black cat. And if black cat were eating these birds,

don't you think the black cat might be leaving them to you or Eli as a little tribute? Well, that's a good point. But there is a ton of leaf coverage in the yard. He could be caching bird bodies really anywhere. He might be hiding them under the feathers of a dead chicken. He might be hiding them in the bone shed. That's where he lives now. He does live there.

Excuse me, bone shed? Yeah. So about- So we live on the set of a Saw movie. And- The bone shed is actually an adaptation Eli made at my request because when I moved in, there's like a clothesline on our screened-in patio and she said, don't look inside that

bag. And it was a bag hanging from the clothesline. So I didn't look inside the bag and I just forgot about it. And then eventually she confessed to me, I need to tell you what's inside the bag and what was inside the bag. This is too scary. But what was inside the bag was bones. And I said, human bones?

She said no. And I was like, okay, well, that's, we could work with that. And they are bones from her friend Christine's farm. And she is saving them to clean them and display them. Because she's a bone, a bone creator. She's a gentle animal lover. It makes perfect sense that you would have a bone bag on the clothes line. I said, can we not have the unbleached,

unsanitized bones hanging next to our dry clothes, even though they are inside a plastic bag? And she said, okay. And she moved them to the shed, which is also where she put the cat bed that she made for Black Cat. Can I just say that the beginning, the most incredible part of this entire story to me

is the part where she said, don't look in the bag on the clothesline and then you didn't look in the bag. That's unbelievable. It's her house. How many sessions with the couples counselor were just about the bag on the clothesline? You know, and I just kind of forgot about it.

I have ADHD and sometimes if something is not registering as relevant to me, I just sort of stop seeing it. So I had sort of forgotten about the bag by the time she confessed to me that it was bones. You're a very trusting partner, I must say. Good for you. And good for you for drawing your boundaries, which is I don't want a bag of bones On my clothesline John It's like when I was staying with you at your house and you told me not to look in the lie pit in your basement

Exactly if you hear scratching if you have scratching on the inside of this closet door don't open it And what's your plans with the bones? Rituals? No, Renaissance Faire. Go on. Of course. Then now it all makes sense. It's not pure madness now that you've said Renaissance Faire. She's going to decorate her outfit for the next season. I love it.

What is your Ren Fersona? I don't really have a good term for it, but like natural colors and then bones. So I made fish vertebrae. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I made fish vertebrae earrings. And then, yeah, when I find bones, I pick them up. It's just like in the Renaissance, John.

Do you? I think the bones might also decorate our house at some point, because there are some bones already decorating the house. Do you, let me ask this, you didn't know that the love of your life was a bone queer until you moved in? I knew that she had the bone earrings,

but I didn't realize the extent of the bone collection and that her plans were to, you know, like do the solution that you're supposed to soak the bones in and scrub them. Like that's an involved level of bone collecting. And there's like a subset of the queer community that love to do that with bones. Okay. You thought at most she was a cartilage queer. Yeah. And do you do the bone scrubbing

and other sanitizing stuff that Becca's talking about, Eli? So far I've researched it and I know what to buy, have not actually followed through to purchase the solution. So you just have a bag of bones from your friend's farm that are decaying naturally in your bone shed. Who hasn't given up on a craft project halfway through? I'm not just, I'm just trying to establish what's going on.

There's no judgment here. Even though I'm a judge, I'm just, just wanna know. Yeah, they are hanging up in Black Cat's pad. Black Cat's shed. In his shed. Jesse, if you wanna know, when you're visiting my Airbnb, the bone bag is in the black cat shed. Okay, thank you.

Would you be averse if the Judge John Hodgson podcast bought you a trail cam? No, so I would not be opposed to having a trail cam. I do have some anecdotal evidence though about cats killing birds that I could come back to if we wanna get please could come back to if we want to get back on track. Let's definitely try to get back on track a little bit. What is your anecdotal evidence? Okay.

So I've lived in the house for like six years. I've been feeding the birds the whole time. And before I started feeding any cats at all, every summer I would find the occasional dead bird in the yard. Usually just like one or two a summer, but like they were there. Since I've started feeding black cat and orange cat, I've not found any carcasses in the yard. Well, my thinking is that by making sure this cat's not starving, he doesn't have to hunt. I know cats will for fun, but he doesn't need to in order to survive and It seems to be working

And the birds that you found Did they display evidence of mauling? Like in other words were they killed by a cat or or maybe it was old age or ennui? I guess I'm not I'm not sure I'm not a veterinarian. You said that the previous owners fed these birds and that you, and then you felt the obligation to continue to feed them as a result. Yes, I like them as well, but yes, I do feel like birds, birds. Who are you?

Jonathan Franzen? But it's not a situation where it's like, you must feed the birds or else the curse will come. Not that I know of. Okay. How do you think you would feel, Eli, if I were to order you to stop feeding Black Cat? Thinking about it makes my chest hurt. I'm getting very, very tight in the chest. I feel a little silly saying that, but I do like him.

I appreciate your honesty. Okay. When Eli describes the physical sensation of distress, when just contemplating you winning this case, Becca, does that change how you feel or is she just being manipulative? Well, I think she should just stop feeding the birds then. Just cats. It's either cats or birds.

Cannot be both. Yeah. I feel it's anecdotal evidence like of you used to find dead birds that weren't mauled and now you don't. It really can't prove that there's not predation, no opportunities happening. And I don't know, I just think by feeding one feral cat, we're inviting the possibility to other feral cats that we might be recreating the feral cat colony in the neighborhood. And I don't want that to be our house.

That too many feral cats in the yard would be very stressful. Eli, Becca suggested that you get rid of the birds if you want to keep the cat. Does that make your chest hurt too? Is there a difference in feeling there? Uh, no, it also makes my heart hurt. Um, I think if I had to choose, which I hope I

don't, but if I had to choose, I think I'd have to keep the bird feeders since it's, you know, 40 birds to one cat. Pete do you think that black cat is potentially adoptable, Eli? Eli Right now, he's not super happy about, well, he's scared of humans. So I don't know. Sometimes cats surprise you and they come around. Sometimes they don't.

And Becca, what do you think about the trap neuter release plan that Eli is pursuing? Let's say for the sake of argument, she's pursuing it ingenuously and not disingenuously in order to get podcast clout. I think neutering him is our responsibility at this point because we fed him so much. He basically lives in the bone shed now,

which made him a little heated cat bed. So he's kind of accustomed to living in our yard. We're providing his food and shelter. We got to neuter him. That's just the responsible thing to do. Can Niles, Frazier, and Fez see the bone shed from their catio? And if they can, do you say to them, be good, or you're going out to the bone shed if I thought they'd understood me I might I don't they might

be able to see part of the shed they can see it from the laundry room window but they can't see it from the catio okay they can hear the screams though all right I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make a decision I'm going to go into my own personal bone shed. I'll think it over. I'll be back in a moment with my verdict. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom. Eli, how are you feeling about your chances right now? I think I feel kind of okay.

In listening to the show, I've always been kind of touched by how no one's really the bad guy when they come in here, and the judge does a good job being thoughtful. And... Even bone collectors. Yeah, even... Get a fair shake on our show. Even the bone queers should feel safe coming here.

No, I think my intent to be kind to animals has come through. Becca, how are you feeling? I think it's very possible I will lose and then I will have to accept the judgment. But in that case, I'm simply in the same situation I'm in now. So I think Eli has more to lose technically in this. And I don't want her heart to hurt. I don't want to make her feel physical or emotional pain. One of the things I love about her is how much she cares

about everyone and every creature. Her optimism is one of the things that drew me to her in the first place. We joke that she's like the sunshiny person and I'm like the goth clown of the relationship. I understand she's a lot more sympathetic in this case and that I might lose.

So tired of this couples therapy language. It's a bunch of jargon. Well, we'll see what Judge Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a moment. Judge Hodgman, can I tell you about what's happening in our fundraiser for services for migrants through alotrolado.org? Yes. Okay.

So, you know, I put up a $25,000 challenge, my wife and I did. I do know that, very generous of you. You know that we blew past that $25,000 almost my wife and I did. I do know that very generous of you. You know that we blew past that $25,000 almost immediate. It was astonishing. You know that someone else put up a further Someone else put up a third one. What? Blue past it. Another challenge met, another challenge blue past. Okay, that's $75,000 in matches and over $75,000 in gifts. Now, as we sit here,

we're recording this immediately before we hit the road. Yeah. We are at $125,000. Wow. We are at 1,350 supporters as we sit here. And this is before we go on the road. So 125 plus $75,000 in matching, we are up to $200,000 for a Lotto.

Now let me say this., yesterday John, what happened? I don't, well for me it was a Sunday, I slipped in. I got an email from another person who's offering a $25,000 match. Bingo, bango, bongo. Every gift during our tour up to $25,000 will be matched. That's amazing. And Alotra Lotto is doing some incredible stuff.

Yeah. For migrants who are some of our most vulnerable neighbors at the moment, correct? We're talking, the United States government has refugees in open air detention right now. Literally in cyclone fences with, you know, barbed wire on top out in the open in the desert in southern Texas and New Mexico. We have, we're separating families consistently,

both entering the United States and leaving the United States. And when that happens, they don't even tell you often where your family members are. You just have to try and figure it out. That's one of the things that Alottolato works on. We're talking about just giving people help when they are deported to Tijuana

through the southern border of the United States and just left in Tijuana, they might not even be, they're not only probably not from Tijuana, they might not even be, they're not only probably not from Tijuana, they might not even be Mexican. This is the kind of stuff that our government is doing and the kind of direct help that Al Oto Lado is offering. This is the last time we're gonna ask on the show.

And I am staring hungrily at a quarter million dollars. I am thinking that between the at a quarter million dollars. I am thinking that between the tour and this last ask, we can make it to a quarter million dollars because we have a hundred thousand dollars in matching and we're almost up to $150,000 in gifts. We hit 150, that's a quarter million dollars. So it's alotrolado.org slash let's do something. And to those 1350 people, like I absolutely I'm just like gobsmacked. I cannot believe it. I am so grateful to you and

so honored by your generosity. John, you're one of those people. Jordan is one of those people. Jennifer is one of those people. Stephen Ray Morris, the producer of Jordan, Jesse Goh is one of those people. I am so grateful to every single one of you. Like I have opened that webpage and started crying multiple times over the last six weeks. Yeah. So thank you so much to everybody.

And it's alotrolato.org slash let's do something. And I will say this, John, as we, as this episode is released, it'll be right around the same time as our very last tour stop in Los Angeles. I have contacted a print shop and I will be purchasing the largest novelty check available to present to Alotrolado at our Los Angeles show.

This check is going to be so huge, John, you're not even going to believe how huge this check is. It's going to be physically huge, but what we also want is that we want the amount to be huge. Indeed. I think that's going to happen if you go to alothrolado.org slash let's do something. We'll put that link in the show description as well in your podcast app.

So you can just pull it up and tap that link right now. And I mean, my gosh, thank you so much for this. I'm so grateful to all of you. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman reenters the courtroom and presents his verdict. So I have a couple of first of alls. First of all, I've always said that the pleasure of doing Judge John Hodgman for me is not telling people they're right or wrong. That's a pleasure gravy for me. The true pleasure, the main course pleasure is getting to meet people

from all over the country and the world and from all different kinds of places and backgrounds and walks of life and so forth. And this has just been a delight to talk to both of you, Warmheart and Goth Clown, and to discover things about other people and to have conversations that start with feeding feral cats and then go to, I have a bag of bones in a shed that I'm going to turn into a Renfair costume. Now I will say I'm also like Jesse, a little embarrassed that I didn't know. Uh, about the bone queer community, especially since I've been on probably 10 Jonathan Colton cruises.

You would think I would have learned about bone queerness there. Jesse, you're going on the cruise this year. Maybe you can let me know what I missed, another subculture I should know about. In any case, my other first of all is, first of all, thank you for also engaging in couples counseling. Um, and, uh, particularly, uh, encourage you to continue to resolve your problems and disputes through couples counseling rather than trusting an unaccredited podcaster to help, uh, this has been fun to talk to you, but I really do ask and encourage you to talk to your therapist or your counselor, whatever, tomorrow as you continue to process,

not only this dispute or others and whatever ruling I make, it comes second to your own good judgment and consultation with your therapist. And that goes for everyone who's ever been on the Judges on Hymen podcast. And my other first of all is this. First of all, I love birds. I know that Jesse Thorne tried to set up this dichotomy where I love cats and I hate birds. I love birds. Anyone who's listened to this podcast knows

how excited I get when I'm pretending to podcast, but I'm actually just staring into the middle distance out the window in the style of my cat. And I spy the cardinal couple that come around. I'm talking about birds, not the guys from Conclave. Like actual bird cardinal is a couple, a paired bond that come around every spring and I see them every year and they're just adorable and I love them so much.

I would hate to see them be eaten by a cat, even a cat that I love. Indeed, I love all animals as I wrote in my very first book, The Areas of My Expertise. I'm a friend to all animals, except when I'm eating or wearing them. I adore them all and I want them to thrive. But we aren't dealing with hard questions of nature, nature that we attempt to tame and nature that we cannot tame. Goth clown Becca has seen the harshness of the natural world when it comes to animals passing away and even human companion animals, not just wild animals. It's hard out there. You live in a human community, but even you notice that nature fights back. Nature is sending deer and invasive species into your yards.

Becca says, I don't want to try to cultivate an ecological experiment. What is an ecological experiment if not a garden? This is the push-pull as we inhabit and exploit nature and as nature takes its revenge upon us. It is harsh out there. And I would say particularly harsh for feral cats. There are a lot of them. There's a reason that the AVMA has a stated policy which is to reduce the number of feral cats primarily by trapping, neutering and releasing this,

removing from the cats their procreative qualities, and ultimately trying to keep those colonies at a smaller size or potentially eliminating them because it's not good for those cats. Those cats are not leading healthy or safe lives. They have a right to live. Obviously, that's why you trap, neuter, and then release. But the idea of mitigating the size of feral cat colonies is really important because they don't have a very high quality of life.

And indeed, my own daughter, who's a whole human being in her own right, had a frankly emotionally devastating and tragic interaction with an attempt to save a feral cat that did not go well. And it is really, you really have to, you really have to avail yourself of best emotional practices and ultimately I do come down on the side of the AVMA here, which is that unless you are actively and responsibly managing a feral cat colony according to best practices you shouldn't just be willy-nilly feeding them and same goes for birds too like bird feeders are all

over the place and yet they can be vectors for bird diseases if the bird feeders themselves are not clean and maintained properly. Best practice going back in time is probably to not do what your divorced neighbors did, which was feed a bunch of feral cats for fun. And that may be the reason that they're divorced now. And I don't want you to be divorced figuratively or literally in the future. So we have to find some common ground. I think that you've already gone pretty far towards that and indeed Eli as you consider the changes to your life that may be asked of you in my verdict,

Becca has come into your life with a cat allergy and has made real accommodations in order to share their life with you. And it is reasonable that you share, that you make accommodations as well. So again, I think that you have gone in the right direction. Here's what I would say. Black Cat belongs in the Moanshed. I will accept the letters of those who disagree with me, but I think that you have, as Becca has pointed out, you've made a de facto commitment to the livelihood, that is to say the life. I don't know how this cat is making money. But you are invested in black cat's life.

You have effectively created a symbiotic situation that you can't just pull the food rug out from under black cat at this point. But you're already halfway towards, I think, a good solution for this cat in particular, which is that the cat, while still afraid of humans and maybe not ultimately adoptable, it can live in that shed. It can live in that bone shed.

And you have already proven, Eli, that you know how to make a cat door. And I would suggest in consultation with your therapist and with the animal rescue organization that you deal with, A Cat's Life, that maybe you should install a cat door so that black cat can come in there and eat and stay away from the birds and stay away from your other cats. And then what you need to do is you need to call a cat's life and say, look, I know that I only emailed you for internet clout, but I really mean it. I want to trap this cat. I've already got a bone shed. How do I get started? And I need you to trap and neuter and then determine if black cat is adoptable or not. And if black cat is not adoptable, then the bone shed shall be black cat's domain away from your other cats, away from those birds until such time black cat ends its natural

life without procreating. That's I think the best, most responsible path that I can think of. But I do think that you should, by doing this, you will also, I hope, be isolating the situation to the bone shed so that you're not attracting other feral cats that might be living in the neighborhood. Of course, the minute you build that cat door, that shed is going to be full of all kinds of critters I realize now. So maybe that's not the best idea, but in any case feed black cat of the bone shed,

keep it separated, keep it isolated, get the training or the approval or whatever it is you need to really to, from the cat's life to become a, a, a trap, new to release expert and do it and continue to do it throughout the neighborhood. And then you'll know you're actually and effectively helping those cats lives, which lives by the way may end tragically anyway. You just never know when a hawk is gonna come down

and swoop on a dove or a cat or a coyote will come along. That's the hard part about dealing with pets that are not actual true companion animals. But I think that I think the proper thing to do is black cat gets food in the bone shed. Thus, no further. This is the sound of a gavel. Judge John Hodgman rules. That is all. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom. Becca, how are you feeling right now?

You know, I think it's a fair ruling. I think it's fair to Black Cat, as fair as we can be. And I think it's as fair to Eli as we can be. You got any stuff you want to put in the shed? I was thinking about this shed just as a sequestration zone for all kinds of crap. You know, maybe it can be turned into her bone cleaning shed. You know, just put a little counter and bins of solutions. I just don't want them to be cleaned in the house, really.

Eli, how are you feeling? I'm pretty happy, yeah. I have two sheds, actually, one for all the garden tools and one for miscellaneous. So yeah, I'm happy to devote one to the things that Becca does not enjoy. Becca, Eli, thanks for joining us. Thank you.

Another Judge John Hodgman case is in the books. We'll have swift justice in just a second. First, our thanks to redditor underscore underscore magpie underscore underscore for naming this week's episode, Cease and Toxoplasmosis. Join the conversation over at the Maximum Fun subreddit at reddit.com slash r slash maximum fun.

It rolls right off the tongue. Reddit.com slash r slash maximum fun. That's where we ask for our title suggestions, among other things. Evidence and photos from the show are, of course, on the show page at maximumfun.org. You can also find them on Instagram at instagram.com slash Judge John Hodgman.

You can also find us on TikTok and YouTube and liking and subscribing and sharing those videos makes a huge difference in this show, finding new audiences. So please do those things at Judge John Hodgman pod. Yes, at Judge John Hodgman pod is our handle on TikTok and YouTube. And for those of you who watch on YouTube, there's a very subtle difference in the background of my office from between this time and maybe the last time you checked in. It's like one of those, can you spot the difference

puzzles in the back of Highlights magazine? Can you spot the very subtle difference in the background of my office? Put your guess in the comments and I'll tell you what it is and why it is. We're also on blue sky now at Judge John Hodgman. So go check us out there as well. Blue sky at Judge John Hodgman. That seems like a nice fun place for now.

We'll see. In the meantime, thank you for all of your kind words wherever you put them out over the internet and to you Geo Glanz on Apple Podcasts for your very kind five star rating who Geo Glanz wrote on Apple Podcasts a million stars if it was possible it's simply the best podcast in the universe that's very kind of you to say hey if you're listening right now on Apple Podcasts want to take a moment to leave a little review and

five stars if you feel we've earned it. It really does help listeners find the program and you can do the same thing over on Pocket Casts. You can subscribe to us on YouTube. You can like and share our social media. You can leave a comment on our posts. All of these ratings, reviews, shares, comments, they do so much to help new listeners find the show

and we're very grateful to you for doing so. Can I just say thank you to the person who, I think just last week, left a really positive review of Judge John Hodgman in Apple Podcasts. We really appreciate it and I know that the only thing you don't like about our entire show is John calling his cat dumb. So sorry there was 10 minutes of that on this episode.

Look... It... Ha ha ha! You can't please them all, John! You know what? Maybe for Max Fun Drive, if we reach a certain threshold, I'll release a supercat of my cat staring into the middle distance,

and you can decide. Ha ha ha ha! You can decide. Judge John Hodgman was created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman. Our thanks to engineer Jordan Mercia at D28 Studio in Silver Spring, Maryland. Man, for a while I lived right next to Silver Spring, Maryland. I live in Tacoma Park, Maryland.

That's where Linda Holmes lives. Maryland's quite a state. Docs and Linda Holmes, that's our friend by her new book. Our social media manager is Dan Telfer. Welcome, Dan. Welcome aboard, Dan. Dan's putting up horns.

Thank you. Rock on, Dan. You may have misunderstood the tone of this program. The podcast is edited by A.J. McKeon. Our video editor is Daniel Spear. Our producer is Jennifer Marmer. Now, Swift Justice, where we answer small disputes with quick judgment. Golf is stupid on the maximum fun.

So I really support that. Golf is the worst. I mean, it's really great for people that love golf and I wish you all the best, but it really is the worst. Talk about an ecological disaster area. Talk about just who are these people that are just like, I'll be back in five hours. My friend thinks he met Willie Nelson,

but this guy was clearly not Willie Nelson. Is it okay that I will never ever tell him the truth? Man, one time I was in line at LAX and guess who was in front of me in line at the security gate? Willie Nelson? Yeah. Really? He's very old and very small and definitely Willie Nelson.

Definitely Willie Nelson. If you see Willie Nelson, you're like, there's no other person that could possibly be. Well, I mean, people who have followed the podcast for a while, particularly people who were at our Atlanta show in 2023, know that Willie Nelson loves antique coffee tables and has a guy who travels the country looking for antique coffee tables to buy for Willie Nelson. And Willie Nelson's coffee table guy looks a lot

like Willie Nelson. So it could be golf is stupid that your friend met Willie Nelson's table guy. That's a very deep cut for anyone who was in the audience that day for that joke that did not go very well. Yeah, I still love it to death. In any case, I think that it is not only okay that you never ever tell him the truth, it is essential. It is a blessing to ever meet Willie Nelson or to stand behind him in line.

If you have that opportunity, you have been touched by grace. No friend of mine or yours, Golf is Stupid, would feel happy to be told, no, you didn't experience what you experienced. Let him live in ignorance in at least this one happy way. All right, we are always asking for you, the listeners and viewers out there on YouTube, to send your disputes to me, where, maximumfund.org slash JJHO.

Of course, we have found that many of you are a little worried that your disputes are too low stakes for the show, to which I say wrong go. Correct Jesse? Wrong go? Wrong go. W-R-O-N-G-O probably is how that's spelled. The best cases are often the silliest cases.

And so I'm asking you, let's lower the stakes. There's nothing we need more in civilization at this moment than some good old fashioned stakes lowering. Let's take a breath, lower the stakes and get silly. What is your silliest dispute? What's something you're disputing about that you know is completely trivial? And are you and your friends still arguing about whether the dress is blue or black and white and gold or whatever it is? Do you think your girlfriend writes the letter X the wrong way? Do you know that Glinda was a witch but your brother thinks she's a princess because she wore a crown and came down in a bubble? Tell your brother to grow up and go see a movie,

but first send your case to me and Jesse and the whole team here at Judge John Hodgman at MaximumFun.org slash JJ HO. Even if your case is small and silly and we don't end up hearing it, I'm the one who reads them all and I always enjoy hearing from you. Maximumfund.org slash JJHO. Indeed, we will take cases, high stakes, low stakes, medium stakes, ribeye stakes.

Rare stakes. Yeah, whatever stakes you've got at maximumfund.org slash JJHO. And we will talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgeman podcast.