Judge John Hodgman - TEASER: Members Only Mailbag June 2024

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

June is ending but the Member Mailbag is still going! Judge Hodgman, Bailiff Jesse, and Producer Jennifer discuss a fantasy novel series that has caused a letter writer to go "feral."  Will Judge Hodgman let this feral letter-writer spoil the ending of the latest installment for her husband?For the full episode, check your members only bonus content feed! Not yet a member? It’s easy to become one! Go to maximumfun.org/join and become a member at $5 a month or higher.Don’t know how to access your bonus content? Click here for instructions! Judge John Hodgman: Road Court! Tickets are on sale NOW! For dates and more information, go to maximumfun.org/events.

Hi there, it's Judge John Hodgman and I'm producer Jennifer Marmor. You don't normally hear me in this area, but you might know that Judge Hodgman, Bailiff Jesse and I are working on clearing the mailbag over in the Members Only feed. Every month we're releasing Members Only mailbag episodes or as we like to call them, Membo mailbags. So, here's a clip from the newest episode. Here we are learning about a new literary subgenre within fantasy, and we also hear about a fantasy series

that has caused a woman to quote, go feral, unquote. So if you wanna hear what made her go feral, and if you also wanna hear more from the J-Squad, you can check your members only bonus feed right now. If you aren't a member and you want to get in on this, good news, it's just $5 a month to join. Go to maximumfund.org slash join and you can listen to all of our Membo mail bags

along with every other bonus episode we've ever done. So it's a lot of stuff for you to listen to. I'm really excited for you. You're going to have so much fun. Anyway, enjoy this little taste of this month's bonus episode. And again, if you wanna hear the rest, go over to that bonus feed

or join us at maximumfun.org slash join. Thanks so much. And you'll hear from me again next month. spoiler alert. We have another letter about spoilers. This one from Amy in Alexandria, Virginia, home of the Birchmere Music Hall. Please quote, please allow me to spoil the ending of a fantasy novel. I went feral reading the fourth wing books last December. My husband Reed agreed to listen to the audio books and catch up with me.

But he ran out of steam in the middle of book two, Iron Flame. No spoilers, but the end of Iron Flame is so juicy. I was unwell when I hit that last page and I am dying to talk about it with Reed, but he won't listen for more than 15 minutes at a time. He says he enjoys it that way. minutes at a time. He says he enjoys it that way. Please order Reed to listen to the last five hours of Iron Flame within three days. Or else I get to spoil the ending for him.

Okay. I now understand. I want to be clear. I now understand he won't listen to the audio book for more than 15 minutes at a time, not he won't listen to Amy for more than 15 minutes at a time. Not he won't listen to Amy for more than 15 minutes. I'm talking about the part of this book that he hasn't read. Sorry, that was, yes.

I now understand that. Yes, that may have been more clear in the version of the letter before I edited it. But yes, for length, for length only. Yes, he won't listen to the audio book for more than 15 minutes in time. He says he enjoys it that way for I got to give Amy some credit for these adjectives. I never heard I've never gone feral reading a book, but I get it. I understand I went feral reading

middlemarch. And it's true, I was unwell when I hit the final final sentence, which is one of the best sentences in English fiction, as far as I'm concerned, I was unwell and it was juicy. And I'd love to talk about it with you, but I don't want to spoil it. But can we compel read to read the rest of the book in five hours within three days so that they can talk about it? What do you say, Warren and company? I say Reed is meeting his obligation.

He didn't say he was going to listen to it all within three days. He said he was going to listen to it all. He's doing it 15 minutes at a time. That's, that's his way. Yeah. That's how I listened to various Bill Bryson books on my audio book app. Yeah. That's how you do your various triple B's.

Yeah. There is an inconsistency in this letter though, because at first, Amy is saying he started listening to the audiobook of Iron Flame, but then lost steam during the middle. But that's contradictory to him continuing to listen for 15 minutes at a time. Like either he stopped reading or he's still reading just too slowly for his feral wife, who is clearly unwell. You know what? Do you know what fourth wing is all about? You two only made it through the third wing. Fourth wing is the first book in what is currently a two book series, although I'm sure there will be more because the two have done extremely well.

And it is a fantasy book series written by Rebecca Yaros about people in a fantasy world. A young woman is drafted to become a dragon rider and ride some dragons and gets into some scuffles and gets into a lot of, apparently a lot of, it's a lot of crushy romance too. And that sounded very derogatory, but I don't mean it that way. I think it gets sexy among the humans, not necessarily the dragons, but maybe the dragons do. People are feral for this series of books

and they fall apparently into this genre that I've begun hearing about, which is called dark academia. You familiar with the dark academia aesthetic movement? No, I've never heard of it. Now that you say it, I can kind of like, I get it. I'm like, I didn't realize there was a name for that, but of course.

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