Ernest Hemingway’s writing was characterized by what he called The Iceberg Theory. This means his narrative focused on the surface elements without explicitly stating the underlying themes, similar to how the majority of an iceberg is underwater. He left it up to his audience to discover what he was really writing about. This dynamic of the Judge John Hodgman Podcast is The Role-Reversed Iceberg Theory, where the guests only discuss the immediate elements of their story, and the host uses the limited amount of given information to deduce and synthesize the narrative and themes of the episode, on the fly.

Judge John Hodgman is the man to call to settle a dispute between friends, loved ones, or any two parties that care enough about each other to have a passionate opinion about an unremarkable conflict. The call-in guests only tell Hodgman the surface elements of the dispute and it’s the responsibility of the Judge to playfully and deceptively uncover the underlying themes behind their issue. When the litigants call in to the show, their goal is simply to win the case, but by opening up about their life to Judge John Hodgman, they’ve unknowingly started a process of self discovery.

A friend isn’t actually mad at his roommate for leaving parties early, he just desperately wants to hold on to his friends and his youth. A mom isn’t being malicious by not allowing her 17 year old son to buy a motorcycle, she’s just struggling come to terms with her child’s new found autonomy as a teenager. A husband isn’t trying to flood the house in TV’s, he’s just trying to bring back their old bonding ritual that having children took away. John Hodgman expertly finds the crux of the issue and uses it to teach the litigants a little about themselves.

For a show whose tagline is, “Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Only Judge John Hodgman can decide,” the Judge’s final ruling is never clear-cut. He chooses a winner, but his final verdict monologue empathizes with the desires of both parties. The show’s goals isn’t really to choose right and wrong, it’s to promote mutual understanding. With the rest of the internet being so obsessed with combativeness and correctness, Judge John Hodgman works to remind everyone that problems are never black and white.

Every week the show tricks the audience, because you initially listen to the program to laugh at two people bickering about an inane topic, but the show goes beyond that simple premise. The show’s guests work through their dispute, but the audience comes away with their own sense of closure as well. There are no direct moral lessons to be learned from the stories shared on the podcast, like you’d expect from other media. The show features real people and their simple stories, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any lessons to take away. By pointing a microscope at trivial disputes among loved ones, Judge John Hodgman not only reminds the litigants of their humanity, but everyone listening as well.

Article By Taylor Kalsey