Judge John Hodgman - TEASER: Members Only Mailbag November 2025

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Do you play Mancala? How satisfying are those little stones! The J Squad talks about Mancala, amongst MANY other topics, this month in the Members Only Mailbag. If you want to hear the full episode, it's available now in the bonus content feed for MaxFun members. Not a member? NO PROBLEM. You can become a member today at maximumfun.org/join. Just $5 a month gets you immediate access to our full library of bonus content.Thank you to all of our members for keeping this show going! Judge John Hodgman is member-supported! Join at $5 a month at maximumfun.org/join!

It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne with me, Judge John Hodgman. If you're a member, check your bonus feed right now. There's a brand new episode of the members-only mailbag right there for you to listen to. If you're not a member and you don't know what the member's-only mailbag is, well, here's a little clip to give you an idea. Here is something from, I'm going to say, Graham. You think this is a Graham or a Graham?

G-R-A-E-M-E. Graham, graeme? Graham. I'm going to say this is a Graham. I called my my paternal grandmother Grammy and my paternal grandfather grandfather. This is probably a Grammy. Probably my, probably Grammy.

Do you think this might be a Nann-N-N-N? Could be a Nann. Could be a Nann-N-N-N-or. As I've mentioned before, my maternal grandmother was NAN and my maternal great-grandmother was Big NAN. Yeah, there you go. She was big.

In Edmonton, Alberta. My mother-in-law loves Christmas and gift-giving, but the truth is, I don't really want anything. One year, I sent a list of local charities and asked for donations in my name, but my mother-in-law would rather give me a gift I can open. When I remind her of my preference, she gives me the side eye and ignores me. Please order her to give to some good causes on my behalf. Well, with the holidays coming up, this is a timely letter from Gras. Rammy, or it would have been if we had read it last year when Graham sent it in. Sorry about that.

There's a little bit of a backlog in the mailbag. Yeah, it's a pretty full, pretty full mailbag. Keep them coming. Keep them coming, you know. But, you know, Graham had to give me a little nudge and say, oh, what about my letter of my mother-in-law? And wants to give me gifts and I don't want gifts. And so here we are, Graham.

Thanks for your patience up there in Edmonton, Alberta. Well, first of all, I mean, I feel pretty good when someone donates to a charity or cause in my name in lieu of gift for the most part because I've reached a point in my life, and I think Graham has too, where I do have plenty of stuff. You know, I don't necessarily need more stuff. And especially nowadays, there are so many, since so much, so many people are losing support from where they should be getting it, our government. It would be a great year to be donating in my or Jesse's or Jennifer's or Graham's name to your local food bank or community mutual support organization or just hand out gift cards to people who need them for food and shelter. clothing and so forth. But that's said, I also see where Grammy's mother-in-law is coming from. What do you think about this, Jennifer Marmer, in terms of, like, if someone said to you, I don't want your present, donate to a charity in my name. How would you feel about that?

I would feel fine about it, but. What if it were your kids? I feel great about it. Oh, you're asking me, you know, you don't want me to buy any more things for you. What are they, what's on the, what's on the, what's on the, what's on the, what's the holiday list for the marmalini's well my daughter who's uh two and a halfish she still hasn't doesn't have a concept of like asking for things but like my son who's six you know he wants i'm constantly i'm adding it to your list i'm adding it to your list i'm adding it to your list i'm Yeah. So he wants, and there are things that are pretty reasonable, like a specific book or the game Mancala or dinner. Dinner. Yes. No. I, oh, God, I would love it if he would ask for food.

Oh, yeah. You know. Jennifer and I are in the OT squad when it comes to our children's food. What does that mean? O.T. Occupational therapy. Oh, gotcha. But then he'll ask for certain things. Well, Mankala, my mom has it at her house. And, you know, we played it a lot as kids. So then one day we were over there and introduced it to him. Can you explain? Because I have not seen a Mankala set since I was maybe in seventh grade in Brooklyn, Massachusetts. Sure. It's all. I remember all the, you know, all the girls in the class were playing Mankala all the time. It's fun. No one invited little John Hodgman to play it. But it's like, they're little marbles or something or little tokens?

Yeah, it's like you have this wooden board with two like long dips, divvits, holes, whatever you want to call it, on either side of the board. And then smaller ones throughout, like I think four or maybe six small sized. And you have these little satisfying little glass tokens. because the marbles are fully, you know, spherical. Spirical. I was like, it's not cylindrical, but they're like kind of like the marble, but like flattened like you might see in like an aquarium store or something like that.

Yeah. Like a snow cap, maybe a pastel or yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's satisfying to hold. Yeah, and then you sit across from each other. It's a two-person game and you pick up, you know, one divit worth of those little tokens and deposit one in each hole as you go around. And then if you end it on your side of with the long thing,

then you get to keep all of the tokens that are there are no car. It's not like cribbage where you're moving tokens around based on card hands. That's cribbage is something that my grandfather and used to play, not my pop-pop, but my grandfather. No, this is one that goes clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank. If you want to hear the full episode, memberships at Maximum Fun start at just five bucks a month. Join us, Maximumfund.org slash join so you don't miss out. Maximum Fun.

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