MAXIMUMFUN

Hodgman: Yeah, it has to be real. There have been a couple times when I've wondered if the disputants had maybe pulled one over on us with a fake dispute just to get on a podcast. But I think for the most part, our listeners and the people who send in disputes understand that it’s a sincere show.

But what I'm looking for is this: Am I interested in it? Do I have something to say about it? Does it make me think about something? If I'm already starting to formulate questions for them in my head, about why they think this or that, then I know I want to be asking these questions in real life.

We do like to have a wide variety of kinds of disputes. Many come in between romantic partners, particularly those who share a house together and are getting on each other's nerves. So we do try to find some that are more between roommates or friends — or siblings are always great, or moms and daughters. And some of them are just obvious, like the daughter who wrote in saying, “My mom has a wish that when she dies, she'd like to be cremated and to have me flush her ashes down the toilet at Disney World.”

Thorn: She really did want that. Not fake.

Hodgman: I want to know more about that situation, so that one was obvious. Probably the only ones we have gone over and over and over again are dishwashing disputes. I understand why the dishwasher and/or the handwashing of dishes is a locus of dispute. That is a place where a lot of different styles and beliefs come into conflict in a relationship. But we've just heard them all at this point, so we probably don't need them anymore. They're in the archives.

You’ve been doing the show for 13 years now. How has it evolved since those early days?

Thorn: I was totally wrong about what the tone of the show should be. I thought it would be funnier the higher the stakes were. I thought you couldn't have funny without stakes. And I think we have found that you do indeed need stakes. It needs to matter to the people involved. But ultimately, we need to have conflict that is resolvable. It's not a show about watching a train wreck. It's a show about watching a relationship be repaired.

That's something I learned both from our audience who wanted that, and from the fact that I didn't anticipate how immediately and passionately John would pursue wisdom and sincerity in the content of the show. I was there ready to yell at people or whatever. Then John started offering these verdicts that were really insightful. It immediately became clear to me that this wasn't just like, “Who stole whose dog?” This was really about people's feelings.

Hodgman: I also came in very hot at the beginning, people will remind me. It is true that I was pretty judgmental in the early days. “Mad with power” is perhaps the phrase that comes to mind. But it's very interesting to hear you say that, Jesse, because I had not really known that.

I think I intuited pretty quickly that even though the dispute might be over something like, “Which of these two friends gets to hang on to a wind-up toy giraffe they bought together once they move across the country from one another?” — that is, in the grand scheme of things, a pretty low-stakes dispute. But it’s one that I, and I think Jesse, instantly understood to have very high stakes for them as their friendship was going through a transition. They were splitting up, and there isn't a lot of conversation in our culture around friend breakups, but they happen all the time. They're a different kind, but it's sad when your best friend leaves. They were pouring a lot of their feelings about that friend breakup into this wind-up toy giraffe.

I thought it was inappropriate and I told them to smash it, as they should smash all feelings. No — I told them to take turns sharing. I never cut the baby in half. Leave that to some other judges.

What can people expect from the upcoming performance in Denver?

Hodgman: We have one very special guest.

Thorn: Probably Colorado's funniest man, David Gborie — one of my favorite human beings on earth, and the voice of Comedy Central. The man who comes out of my Paramount Plus app unexpectedly on a regular basis. He's just an absolute legend of hilarity. But beyond that, what you'll see is regular folks from Colorado up on stage with real disputes, and us acting dumb for a while but then getting disarmingly sincere. John and I both sing in the show … and there's also a PowerPoint presentation that ends with a big local reference.

Hodgman: It'll be our signature mix of sincere and silly plus unexpected guests, or I guess now, expected guests. The surprise of live, in-the-moment dispute resolution, which is a kind of improv comedy all its own. Plus the incredible costuming. I have some very fancy judge's robes from Canada that I wear — and Jesse Thorn has a bailiff costume, or I should say uniform, that is really quite glorious to behold.