Calendar

References

• 12,023 Human Era Calendar
• Joe Versus the Volcano
• Songs of Innocence
• Cultivation Chat Group
• Harry Potter
• Sex and the City
• Calendar Man
• The Lego Batman Movie
• Stargate
• Maya Calendar
• Groundhog Day
• Fried Green Tomatoes
• Home Alone
• Practical Magic
• I Know What You Did Last Summer
• About Time
• Cats in the Cradle
• Ebenezer Scrooge
• Anne of Green Gables (Book)
• Anne of Green Gables (TV Mini Series)
• Gilmore Girls
• House of the Seven Gables
• Taylor Swift – Anti-Hero
• Almost Plausible: Fire Extinguisher
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
• The Silmarillion
• ABC ‘After These Messages’ Saturday morning bumpers

Corrections

Emily talked about the Anne of Green Gables movie, but technically it was a two episode TV mini series.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
And see that he was an asshole all along.

[Shep]
“It’s me. I’m the problem.”

[Thomas]
Shep actually, we’ve been wanting to talk to you about that for a while now. Wasn’t sure how to bring it up.

[Shep]
The whole reason this podcast started was, it’s an intervention!

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. On today’s episode, our ordinary object is a calendar. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and when I say our, I am referring, of course, to my two favorite dates. They are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And August 12th.

[Emily]
Ha.

[Thomas]
No, no, I’m kidding. It’s F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
In this digital day and age, do either of you use a physical calendar anymore?

[Shep]
I do.

[Emily]
Yes. I have several.

[Thomas]
I have one hanging up as well that I got as a gift. I wouldn’t probably buy one for myself, but.

[Shep]
I ordered one of the Kurzgesagt Human Era calendars because I like that idea of the human era calendar. Makes it easier to visualize mentally when events took place in the past. It’s harder to do that when you’re counting backwards in BC.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I will pitch first today. I have two pitches. The first is that Mark has led a dull, sheltered life. Despite always saying that he has everything he needs, something is definitely missing. He just can’t quite put his finger on it. After a routine health checkup, he receives devastating news. He is terminally ill. Despite feeling in perfect health, he will die sometime within the next year. As a result, Mark decides to quit his job and uses his considerable savings to travel the world, donating both money and, crucially, time to help others. On the trip, he experiences life in a way he never dreamed possible, but the feelings are bittersweet. He finally found what was missing from his life, but now he doesn’t have time to continue to enjoy it. At the end of the movie, he could either die peacefully or he could find out he was misdiagnosed and gets the opportunity to continue living his new, fulfilling lifestyle.

[Emily]
He has to die at the end.

[Shep]
Thomas….

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Have you seen the movie Joe Versus the Volcano?

[Emily]
Yeah. I was thinking this sounded familiar, but he doesn’t-

[Shep]
He was intentionally misdiagnosed.

[Emily]
That’s right.

[Shep]
He travels around. He has adventures.

[Thomas]
So the whole time I was writing this, I was like, “I swear this is a movie I’ve seen.” So it turns out it is. I just couldn’t remember which one. All right, pitch number two, then. Kim, a young woman who is trying to become an online celebrity, spends more time and money on this pursuit than her family can afford. One day, she receives a page-a-day calendar that gives her a daily fortune. At first, she becomes more famous, but then the dark side of being a celebrity becomes apparent. She eventually settles into a quieter life and uses the remnants of her celebrity status to promote the family business where she now works. And I realize that this pitch is thin on details. That’s because I have a much longer version that goes into a lot more details. If we like this, we can explore that.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
The fortunes, are they like Chinese cookie fortunes, or are they- what kind of fortune are they?

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s a great question. So I feel like they could range from incredibly specific. At one point, the calendar tells her not to attend a specific event, but other times they could be a little more generic.

[Shep]
I remember… I’m not going to remember the title, so we won’t be able to put it in the references on the website. But I remember a web comic where this guy got cryptic messages every day of like, do this task, and the tasks were bonkers. It’s like, ‘go to the park and scare a pigeon’, stuff like that. And he’s like, affecting the future or something. It was like building up to something that I don’t remember if I kept reading or if they even continued making it. But that’s the vibe that I’m getting from this, where it’s, ‘go to the park and scare a pigeon’. And she does and also records it and it becomes a viral episode for some reason.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I mean, it’s less about, like, her influencing the world and more about her trying to use those fortunes to change her own fortune.

[Shep]
See, you just title it Influencer, and then you leave it up to the audience to decide.

[Thomas]
That’s good, that’s good. Emily, what do you have for us?

[Emily]
Surprisingly, I thought this was going to be really hard, but I came up with three that I really liked.

[Thomas]
Oh, good.

[Emily]
So a new calendar shows up on a young woman’s phone app. She didn’t accept an invite or add it herself, so she’s very confused. The appointments on it don’t make sense, though. They’re clearly written in some code, and only the location and the time make sense. She ignores it at first as, like, a bug and removes it from her app. But it keeps showing up. It keeps coming back. One night, she gets an appointment reminder on her phone from the mysterious calendar. She just happens to be near that location, so she decides to go check it out. Location turns out to be this abandoned shopping center. She can see kind of a faint light inside and the shadows of several people. So she goes into the building and discovers a room full of magical creatures.

[Thomas]
Totally thought it was going to be a U2 concert.

[Emily]
That would be amazing.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Emily]
So she accidentally got added to a special Fae calendar, and the Fae can’t let her go and risk being revealed to the world and have their existence confirmed.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So she’s imprisoned and has to find a way out before they kill her.

[Shep]
It reminds me a bit. So there is this web novel…

[Thomas]
Listener, in case you haven’t noticed, there are no new ideas.

[Shep]
Well, this one’s different. This one’s different. So it’s about a guy who gets accidentally added to a chat group made by cultivators, people that build up spiritual energy and become immortal, that kind of thing. And they mistake his online handle for someone who is a fellow cultivator, and they accidentally add him to the group. And so he begins learning cultivation through the other group members. So this kind of reminds me of that. It’s an accident that this person got added to this thing. Is it just Fae or is it other magical creatures? Like, if it’s just Fae, she’s fucked. It’s game over. It’s going to be a horror movie.

[Emily]
I imagine that there were other magical creatures there. It’s just the Fae sort of, like, run the program. So there would be, like, unicorns or dwarves or gnomes or that kind of stuff.

[Shep]
Well, she needs to learn some witchcraft and fit in toot suite. It could be a kids movie if it’s, you know-

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
“Oh, I have to go on this magical adventure.” It’s Harry Potter all over again.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Was Harry Potter popular? I can’t remember.

[Emily]
Not sure.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
So my second pitch is a young, vivacious woman uses her day planner as a means of tracking her lovers. And it’s just a year-in-the-life tale of relationships and trying to find the right person in a sea of personalities.

[Shep]
Sex in the City. Sex in the Calendar.

[Emily]
Yes. Sex in the Calendar, basically. All right. And here’s probably my favorite one.

[Shep]
Oh, is it going to be a murderer? Let’s find out.

[Emily]
Let’s find out. Calendar pages from specific years with specific dates circled start showing up through a small-town newspaper’s mail. They’re ignored at first, but they continue to come one after another. Eventually, a young intern starts looking into the dates to see if there’s any significance to it. They’re bored. They got nothing to do. They’ve fetched all the coffee for the day. So the dates seem to correspond with missing persons reports throughout the county spanning over the last 20 years. But the missing persons have no discernible connections. There’s nothing other than they went missing on this date, they live in this county. She becomes convinced that the calendar pages are being sent by the person responsible for these people going missing. So she fights to connect the victims and convince the police that there’s a serial killer lurking in the county and maybe taunting them before he, she, or they can claim their next victim. I think that’s my most solid serial killer pitch.

[Shep]
Emily.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Are you familiar with the Batman villain Calendar Man?

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
Neither am I, other than his name. But he might be a serial killer. I don’t know. There’s no way to find out.

[Emily]
Is that one of the ones mentioned in Lego Batman?

[Shep]
Yes, but all of the crazy villains are.

[Emily]
Are real yeah.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
All right, Shep, I think it’s your turn. What do you have for us?

[Shep]
Okay, when I hear calendar, I think time travel. An archaeologist finds a big Mayan stone calendar thing that lets you spin some wheels and adjust them and open a portal Stargate-style into the past. Unfortunately, because it’s Mayan, you can only go to the year 2012 or earlier, and anyone in the past who travels to these ruins where this calendar is and activates the calendar can’t return to the modern day because it would be after 2012. So it’s a one-way trip to the past. Or here’s another time travel one, a paper calendar that lets you travel to a day in the current year, but each time only once. Then after that, the square is filled and it can’t be used again.

[Thomas]
Ooh.

[Emily]
I like that one.

[Thomas]
So how do you return from that?

[Shep]
Hey, shut up.

[Thomas]
(Laughs)

[Shep]
Or maybe you travel for a day.

[Emily]
The clock strikes midnight, and then you wake up in your bed.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
When you wake up-

[Shep]
Yes. Perfect.

[Thomas]
It’s okay. Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s Groundhog’s Day rules.

[Thomas]
I like the idea of the person going back and maybe fucking something up. So they go back to whatever day and they make some change, right? They do something big, they make a different decision. They kill somebody, whatever it is. Does that then have ripple effects or is it self contained?

[Shep]
Oh, no, I like the idea that it changes the present.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So every time they return to the present, they’re living in the new present. So, yeah, imagine that. You get a calendar, you go back. What if you go forward? The year is not over yet.

[Emily and Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Well, I imagine, like, the character starts goes back to a day, fucks some shit up, and then goes back to the day before to try to fix it, fuck some more shit up, and then goes forward to see, like, what are the real ramifications of this?

[Thomas]
So let’s say today I go forward a couple of days, and then when that day ends, I wake up and it’s tomorrow, because that’s how the time would work, right?

[Shep]
Right. You used up today a couple of days from now.

[Thomas]
Right. So when I get to that day that I have already used, then what?

[Shep]
Good question.

[Emily]
You skip to the next day.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Do I skip that day? Do I live through that day and I can’t travel? Does anything I do not matter.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. You observed the changes that you made and how it affects-

[Shep]
I like the idea of skipping that day because each day you are burning two real days, you’re burning the present day and the past or the future day.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Emily]
That’s good.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So every day that you spend out of the current day, you’re using up a day.

[Emily]
Oh. So that the main character would realize that they skip ahead two days, they go back, and then they skip to the next day instead of the day that they’re expecting, where they made all those changes. Because they go forward first.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Thomas]
Maybe they’re trying to set something up for themselves-

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Going, “When I live through this day, I’ll already know.”

[Emily]
Yeah. “I’ll know exactly where this is, and I can do that and I’ll be successful.” But then they skip that day.

[Shep]
Right. Because they already lived it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So they’re like, “Oh, shit, I’ve lost two days.” So then they start going in the back to the past.

[Thomas]
They look at the calendar and there’s more days blacked out than they thought there would be. And they’re like, “Uh oh.” So, okay, here’s a question. So today I travel to a different day. Is today burned on the calendar or because I have not traveled to today, is it still available?

[Shep]
It’s burned on the calendar.

[Thomas]
Wow.

[Emily]
What happens when they’re all blacked out?

[Shep]
You die! No. I don’t know. This is a one sentence pitch. I didn’t think this through.

[Thomas]
Let’s put a pin in it because I like this idea and it already feels like we’re headed in this direction.

[Emily]
Right. Yeah.

[Thomas]
But let’s hear the other ideas before we decide.

[Shep]
Okay. Another pitch I have is numbering. So I mentioned before that I like the Human Era calendar.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So let’s pretend that’s the world’s default. The world has always had the Human Era calendar. When they invented calendars, they estimated, “Okay, when did humans make the transition from hunter gatherer to growing crops?” And they’re like, “We’ll make that year one and we’ll count forward from then.” And in reality they’re off by, like, 300 years. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. So the current year is what is the human error calendar is? 12,023. But there’s a religious group and they want to change the year to match their savior’s birth. And so they go around the world and they’re, like, campaigning for this. They want the whole world to switch with them. And arguments ensue, because how absurd would it be? Imagine everyone’s on the Human Era calendar and one specific religious group says, “No, we should all make everyone’s year based on our religion.” It probably wouldn’t fly.

[Thomas]
That doesn’t seem like a thing that would happen.

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
So.

[Shep]
Okay, my final pitch, quirkiness. Let’s say a single mom, June, moves to a small town to get away from her abusive ex husband. She has trouble making friends until she meets a pair of locals, Jan and Julia. Oh, I just realized they all start with J. That was not intentional.

[Thomas]
I thought you’d done that on purpose.

[Shep]
No, I did not. You can tell when I rush my pitch. Anyway.

[Thomas]
Okay, they all have, their favorite color is blue. And they’re the Blue Jays. Go on.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Oh, no, they’re all sad. And they’re the Blue Jays. It’s a-

[Shep]
Ah, there you go.

[Thomas]
A Lonely Hearts club.

[Shep]
Anyway, she meets a pair of locals, Jan and Julia, that invite her to join their Calendar Club. Each member has a month themed name, but other than that, they’re as different as can be and each quirkier than the last. But what happens when June’s ex tracks her down?

[Emily]
They kill him and bury him in the backyard-

[Shep]
No, they barbecue him and-

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And sell him to the town. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That’s a good one.

[Shep]
So those are my pitches.

[Thomas]
So the paper calendar one. Emily, you agree?

[Emily]
Yeah. Paper calendar. Although I do like the quirky one because that would be fun.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Well, what does happen then, when he tracks her down?

[Shep]
I imagine that the Calendar Club comes together, Home Alone-style to fight him off.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s the end of Practical Magic. It’s the end of Practical Magic.

[Thomas]
Mmm.

[Emily]
You get all the ladies together to defeat the evil.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So paper calendar.

[Shep]
So paper calendar.

[Emily]
Paper calendar.

[Shep]
Where were we on that? So each time you travel, it burns two days.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You travel to the past, you fuck stuff up and it fucks up your present. You can travel to the future at any time, but when you do, it’s the future from the day you left.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So if you’ve fucked things up and you go to the future, they’re going to be more fucked up. If you’ve made things great and then go to the future, maybe they’ll be even greater.

[Thomas]
Be really crazy when you go to the future and then later go to the past. Oh, man. What you did that day, I guess that just would be overwritten.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. So it’s an inefficient use of your days to go to the future, because you’re going to lose those unless you need to go to the future to retrieve something to take with you back to the past.

[Thomas]
Or does our character figure out that’s a loophole that you can, when you travel to the future, you’ll learn about things you haven’t done yet, but will have done in the past.

[Emily]
Do you think he would panic, wondering what happens when they’re all blocked out? Like, do you think he thinks he doesn’t exist?

[Thomas]
It could be the kind of thing like if you get if somebody gives you a hammer and you use the hammer and then it breaks, you’re not dead because the hammer broke.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
So this could just be like the calendar could just be a tool. So he has this tool that he can use until it’s no good anymore.

[Emily]
And I was thinking that once the calendar is all blacked out, no matter what day he’s on, when the calendar blacksed out, you go to the new year.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So if you were saving January 1 for the last trip, and as soon as that’s blacked out, you’re at January 1 the next year.

[Shep]
That makes sense.

[Emily]
But there’s no new calendar. You just-

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
You’ve used it up.

[Emily]
Yes. It’s gone.

[Shep]
The magic is gone.

[Thomas]
And however, the world is at the end of that…

[Emily]
Yes. So you have to live with the consequences.

[Shep]
So I think you shouldn’t use the calendar right away at the beginning of the year-

[Emily]
I agree.

[Shep]
Because who uses physical calendars anymore? Besides, obviously, the three of us, as we mentioned at the top of the episode.

[Emily]
Well, I think he just throws it in a drawer somewhere and doesn’t think about it again.

[Shep]
Or puts it up on the wall and doesn’t think about it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Does the act of putting it up activate the calendar? Because, as we said, the days get crossed off. So if he lives through a day, that day would be crossed off. So he would look at the calendar and go, oh, weird, that day is crossed off already.

[Shep]
Will it be crossed off or will it only be crossed off if he travels to another day? If he doesn’t travel that day, he can save that day for later in the year.

[Thomas]
Mmm.

[Shep]
Otherwise he’s not going to have a lot of back to go back to.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Okay.

[Emily]
I like that. That makes sense.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So it’s always a choice, a conscious choice to burn a day or not.

[Thomas]
But if he does travel, today and the day he travels to are burned.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Got it.

[Shep]
So he puts it up but doesn’t think anything of it. And then maybe, oh, his- let’s line it up. His grandfather’s coming over. He’s going to put up the calendar that he hasn’t been using, and he wants to pretend that he has been using it to show his grandfather, “Oh, thank you for this wonderful gift.” Whatever. And so he tries to think, “Okay, what are things that I could put down? Oh, I remember my friend had a party on whatever day back in February” and goes to put that on the calendar as an event, and that’s what triggers it. And he goes back to that day and he relives that day, and he’s like, “Oh, this day was amazing.” And then he’s back in the present time and that day is blocked out. And yesterday was blocked out.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So he’ll probably have missed his grandfather coming over.

[Shep]
Did he put it off until the day before? I mean, I put stuff off until the day before. I was hoping that he could do it, so that he then asks his grandfather, like, “What the hell is going on?”

[Thomas]
Well, that’s what I was going to say. Does the grandfather know about the calendar? So when the grandfather shows up and the guy doesn’t answer his apartment door, he’s like, “Ah, I see what’s going on. He’s used the calendar for the first time,” and just goes home and waits for the call.

[Shep]
Or does he leave a note? He knows the guy’s going to find it when he comes back.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
I like him leaving a note.

[Shep]
On the calendar.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Uses the spare key.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good. I like that. All right, so the grandfather leaves a message for him on his calendar, and after these messages, we’ll be right back.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. As we recall, the main character- we should come up with a name for our main character. He has just used the calendar to travel through time accidentally, and when he returns to not the day he left, but the following day, he sees the note from his grandfather on his calendar, which says something to the effect of, “I know what’s going on, call me,” or something like that.

[Shep]
“I know what you did last summer.”

[Shep]
The main character is named Mark because you mark off days on the calendar.

[Thomas]
Mark.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Okay. All right.

[Emily]
I had Julian and Gregory.

[Shep]
The grandfather can be Gregory.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
So why is this happening? Or do we answer that?

[Emily]
Does the grandfather have a plan for him, or is he just, like, “Hey-” Is it like About Time where the father just has this ability and then he realizes the son has this ability and kind of trains him on how to use the ability? Or does the grandfather have a specific mission in mind for Mark?

[Shep]
I think he has a specific mission in mind. I think the grandfather is just magical because old people are magic.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And he made this calendar magical because he can just do that.

[Thomas]
Hmm. Okay.

[Shep]
And the lesson is when you realize you’re burning twice as many days, stop using the calendar because you’ll regret it later.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And so that’s the lesson that he’s having him learn, is live in the present. Don’t try to change the past. Don’t yearn for the future. Live in the now. That’s the whole lesson that he has to come to by the end of the movie.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
What is it about Mark’s life that has the grandfather thinking in these terms?

[Emily]
He…. No, never mind. All I’ve got is Cats in the Cradle and Scrooge. He’s just working his ass off for nothing because he’s not accomplishing anything outside of work.

[Thomas]
Right. He’s yelling at boys outside the window. “What day is it?”

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
“Buy me that goose in the window.”

[Emily]
I mean, that would be a great, like, Easter egg scene.

[Thomas]
“You there. What day is it?” “Get a calendar, asshole.”

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Nailed it.

[Emily]
Well, maybe instead of he’s too ambitious, maybe he’s not ambitious at all.

[Shep]
Yeah. He’s upset that he didn’t do something in the past, and he’s dwelling on that.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And then has, simultaneously, big plans to do something in the future that he doesn’t work toward.

[Emily]
Because he’s dwelling on the shit from the past.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. He’s never living in the now.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And that’s what the grandfather is trying to fix in him.

[Thomas]
What does Mark think he wants? What is his want? Not his need. We know what his need is, is to live in the day. What is his want?

[Shep]
He wants to have the perfect life.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
He thinks if he knew back then what he knows now, he would do things differently.

[Thomas]
So he wants control, and what he needs to do is give up control or just lean into whatever’s going to happen.

[Emily]
Just let it happen.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So, like you said, he has a plan. We just have to come up with what’s his future goal that he’s like, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to work towards this. If I hadn’t fucked this up, I would be here, here, and here by now. But I had to go and do this.” So I think we’d need to establish what his end goal is.

[Shep]
“If I had kept playing guitar as a teenager, I’d be really good at playing guitar now.” Yeah, you’ve been saying that for ten years. If you had started again ten years ago when you started complaining-

[Emily]
Okay. So what’s a good thing for him that’s a quick within a calendar year that you could accomplish that’s a goal that would bring happiness and joy to you.

[Shep]
Any New Year’s resolution.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Getting in shape, learning a language, learning an instrument, going back to school, starting a business, starting a podcast with your friends.

[Emily]
I kind of like the idea of starting a business, but then maybe at the end he has to go back to school and really make it work. But I can’t get the thought to glue together.

[Shep]
So whatever it is, he travels to the future at one point, thinking, “Okay, I’ll go to the future when I figured this out, figure out what I need to do, and then come back.” But when he goes to the future, he hasn’t made any progress toward it. He wasted a day, two days.

[Emily]
Yeah, okay.

[Shep]
Because he’s traveling from a time when he hasn’t started yet.

[Emily]
And he’s got no ambition.

[Shep]
Yeah. “I’m gonna. I’m gonna!” Which isn’t anything.

[Thomas]
So yeah. He travels forward, and there’s nothing to learn, nothing to- no progress has been made.

[Emily]
Do we need to know the important thing he wants to accomplish or are we just saying an important thing he wants to accomplish?

[Thomas]
I mean, we could say that for now and then move forward until it’s a thing we have to figure out. We may never need to figure that out today.

[Shep]
Okay, so it’s an important thing he has to accomplish. Next, what are the things that he has to do to accomplish that? Oh, no, we need to know what the important thing is. I think he just wants to not make a popular novel, but just write a novel.

[Emily]
Just write a novel.

[Shep]
That is an achievable thing that he always wanted to do and never gets around to doing. And that’s why he goes to the future.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s like, “Oh, let’s go to the future and then read what I wrote and then come back and write it.”

[Emily]
“And then I’ll know what to write.”

[Shep]
But it doesn’t work because he hasn’t written it. When he gets to the future, it’s not done yet.

[Emily]
What’s blocking him in the past from doing that?

[Shep]
Oh, maybe he was in a writer’s group and they talked about their ideas, and one of the other writers took his idea and like, “Oh, that’s really good, but here’s how I would do it.” And wrote a novel, and it became popular, and he’s like, “That was my idea.”

[Emily]
Oh, okay.

[Shep]
Like, it was your idea, but you didn’t write it.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Thomas]
I could also see a bunch of arbitrary roadblocks, him saying, “Oh, well, I can’t, because-” it’s like, “Well, you absolutely could. You’re just not.”

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
I can’t because Tears of the Kingdom just came out, and I need to play a lot of Zelda right now.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
No, it could be like stupid shit like that. For sure. “My computer isn’t great or I need this program or something.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. “I need a nice fancy laptop that I can take to the Starbucks.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“And I can’t afford it.” And then he goes back and does the lotto thing or bets on black or whatever.

[Thomas]
It could also be the case that when he does sit down to write, he’s just so paralyzed by choice, he could write about anything.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
“So what do I write about?”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
So I think the first is he goes to the future to find out what he’s even written about. So then he has the idea of what he’s supposed to write, but it’s not there because he doesn’t have the idea.

[Thomas]
So then does he go to the past to try to block the other person from stealing his idea?

[Emily]
Yeah, I think he should try that at some point.

[Shep]
I don’t think that he can do that because the year calendar, it’s too far in the past.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
It’s a past event that he’s obsessed about. But even with time travel, he can’t fix this.

[Emily]
So one of the things, at some point, the thing should be money so that he could get a laptop and the right writing program, because those are the things that are going to make it easier for him to write, and then the idea will come and it’ll be fine. So he goes back and wins something to get enough money to purchase the laptop and the writing program.

[Shep]
I don’t think that he can win the lottery.

[Emily]
No, I don’t think it should be the lottery.

[Shep]
I think that if he takes the winning numbers and goes back and buys the ticket, the numbers change, and it never works. And his grandfather’s like, “Oh, yeah, the lottery is a scam.”

[Thomas]
Ha-

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
“Don’t buy a ticket. They don’t work.” I think that he just buys a bunch of stuff on credit because you don’t need money. You just buy stuff on credit and then discovers that even with all the right quote unquote “right tools”, he still doesn’t write anything because it wasn’t the tools that was stopping him. It was every time he went to write, he thought of other things he would rather do.

[Thomas]
Does he actually want to write, or is this just an idea that he had for some reason.

[Shep]
He doesn’t want to write, he wants to have written like a lot of writers.

[Emily]
Yeah, right. He’s still ruminating.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Like, maybe that wasn’t his right path because he wasn’t writing that story anyway. So that person was like, “Oh, that’s a great idea, but I would twist-“

[Shep]
Right. Oh, that writer wanted to collaborate with him because they were bouncing ideas off each other, and it was going really well, but he wanted to write it himself, but he never got around to it.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And so the other guy eventually just wrote it for themselves because they came up with half the idea and nobody was writing it, and it was really good stuff. But maybe that person wants to collaborate with him more, and he’s like, “Oh, you stoled my idea.”

[Thomas]
Right. “You just want to steal another one of my ideas.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
“What, did you run out of ideas?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That sort of thing.

[Shep]
And maybe the resolution is that they collaborate again and make her a woman. Make this a rom-com.

[Emily]
All right.

[Shep]
You could do whatever.

[Emily]
I’m down for it being a rom-com.

[Shep]
Look. Hollywood. We’re flexible. However you want to cast it, we can do it.

[Thomas]
At the end of the film, does he start writing his story based off of, essentially he starts writing the movie we just watched.

[Shep]
I mean, that is a thing that’s also done a lot, that I’m like… hmmm

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
No one would believe it.

[Thomas]
But it’s meant to be a fictional story. He’s writing it as a novel.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Not as, “Here’s what happened to me.”

[Emily]
Yeah. He’s writing Anne of Green Gables in Anne of Green Gables. He’s writing The Gilmore Girls at the end of The Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

[Thomas]
If you say so.

[Emily]
Yeah. That happens in both of those things. At least the Anne of Green Gables movie, I will admit, I’ve never actually read all of the books.

[Thomas]
Unacceptable.

[Emily]
Really is because of how much I love the 1980s movies.

[Shep]
It was Anne of Green Gables that got me to look up what the word “gables” meant, but it was also the only time I’ve ever heard it, so it’s never come up. So I learned it for nothing.

[Emily]
There’s House of the Seven Gables.

[Shep]
Oh, you’re right.

[Emily]
I have a lit degree.

[Shep]
Yeah. You spent $120,000 to think of a second book that has the word “Gable” in the title.

[Thomas]
Money well spent.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
So where are we on this? Everyone stopped talking. I’m like, “I can’t remember what we were talking about. I’m just thinking of Anne of Green Gables now.”

[Emily]
I think he should collaborate with the person in the end because I think that sort of maybe also part of his problem is he’s very isolated. He isolates himself because he’s always worried about somebody screwing him over. A little paranoid about that.

[Shep]
Stealing his ideas again.

[Emily]
Right. Not only did that happen to him, but there was a failed relationship. People are just nothing but trouble. All he needs is his laptop and his grandpa.

[Shep]
Yeah, well, his last girlfriend left him because he kept complaining about the other person stealing his ideas for a book. I’d like it if the other person had a follow up book that was not as successful because they didn’t collaborate with anyone on it.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Because ideas are better when you bounce them off each other.

[Emily]
Like, maybe before, we can establish earlier on, before he starts the traveling, there’s a message on his machine or voicemail that’s like, “Hey, remember me? It’s Steve.”

[Shep]
“Oh, it’s Steve!” Delete.

[Emily]
Yeah. And the guy’s like, “I’m not talking to that douchebag.”

[Thomas]
Oh, man. Actually, that’s great. I like him deleting the voicemail without listening to it and then traveling back in time to actually listen to it.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
I just thought of something that’s silly, but would be also maybe a good idea? Maybe that message was they’ve optioned the book, and since he was the impetus for the idea, he’s going to give him producer credit on it and writing credit with him.

[Shep]
A story credit, for coming up with a story but not writing the book.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I would like it if he’s also thanked in the book. He’s still bitter. Like, that’s not enough.

[Thomas]
It would be kind of funny if he didn’t even know that.

[Emily]
I think it would be funny if Mark never even read it, so he doesn’t know.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
“Why would I pick up the book?”

[Emily]
I think that would be good.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And then that’s part of the idea of going like when he goes back back, he can actually discover that stuff and see that he was an asshole all along.

[Shep]
“It’s me. I’m the problem.”

[Thomas]
Shep actually, we’ve been wanting to talk to you about that for a while now. Wasn’t sure how to bring it up.

[Shep]
The whole reason this podcast started was, it’s an intervention! This is a long-con intervention.

[Emily]
Yet Thomas and I are sexy babies and you are a monster on the hill.

[Shep]
What?

[Thomas]
I don’t know. I haven’t read Anne of Green Gables, so I don’t-

[Shep]
(laughs). I love you both.

[Thomas]
We love you.

[Shep]
All right. I’m willing to go to rehab. Okay. I like what we have so far.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So he is obsessed with the past about this idea that got stolen from him. He wants to write his own novel and show up Steve, but he never sits down to write because there’s other things that he always keeps doing, and he never puts the time.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like, maybe he could do it. Maybe he would be good at it. He’s clearly good at the idea part of it, but he doesn’t put the hours in.

[Emily]
Right. Is it like a case of at first he’s like, “I don’t have enough time. I don’t have any vacation time. I’ve got to actually support myself. If I just had a week or two or a month off, I could do this.”

[Shep]
What does he do? He’s got to do something that’s got to have a lot of downtime. The night reception desk at a hotel.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
At the end, does he write a children’s story about a raccoon on the moon?

[Emily]
Oh, maybe he doesn’t like the process. Maybe that’s part of the lesson, too. Like he doesn’t want to- he wants to be able to do it in one sitting.

[Shep]
It’s like going to the gym and wanting to get fit in one day.

[Emily]
Right, right.

[Shep]
That’s not how this works at all.

[Emily]
Yeah. But he’s a little, you know, unrealistic in his thoughts, so he doesn’t want to do, like, an outline. He doesn’t want to-

[Thomas]
Could be like, as he’s writing, he hates everything he writes. He keeps deleting things. He doesn’t- it’s just like you just got to get it out and then edit it.

[Shep]
He’s editing while he’s writing.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s no good.

[Thomas]
Big mistake.

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
What’s our budget for this movie? Because he could be in the writer’s mode. He could be seeing scenes that he wants to add to his novel-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
When he goes to the coffee shop to stare at the cute burst of that he doesn’t ever talk to.

[Thomas]
I mean, infinity, right?

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
We’re not actually making it, so we can do whatever we want.

[Shep]
Then he has big, dramatic fantasy scenes where he visualizes scenes from the novel.

[Emily]
We’re just writing The (Secret) Life of Walter Mitty, but with time travel.

[Shep]
Oh, no. Damn it.

[Thomas]
Yeah, but not the new one. Yeah.

[Emily]
No, the Danny Kaye one, which is better because it’s got Danny Kaye in it.

[Shep]
It’s Danny Kaye.

[Emily]
So one of his things is he has to work so he doesn’t have time. Maybe he’s not a job with downtime. Maybe it’s like, know, insurance job or accounting job or something.

[Thomas]
Drives a forklift.

[Emily]
Something that takes time and energy. So he doesn’t have downtime during the working day, but he could do it in the evenings, but he doesn’t have the discipline to add that to his day, even though he has nothing else going on.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So one of his back trips is to quit his job.

[Shep]
Ooh. What’s his plan? He goes to the past to quit.

[Emily]
Yeah, he’s going to-

[Shep]
He’s gonna give up all his money. All the money he earned between then and now is gone.

[Emily]
Okay, so maybe he just quits that day and then goes back to the future to see if that helped. And still no novel. Like maybe he keeps going to the future to check, did this make it work?

[Shep]
Every trip to the future costs him two days, though.

[Emily]
Right!

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s going to rapidly fill up the- oh, that makes sense. It’s got to be filled up within the movie.

[Thomas]
And as he’s losing time, he’s starting to get more and more panicky, and so he wants to go back to try to either set things up better or stop himself from screwing things up.

[Emily]
So that creates that tension.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Can he go back to a day where he had the calendar and use the calendar back then?

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
I don’t think the calendar appears in the past or the future, because that will eliminate a lot of loopholes.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like, it’s just not there. That spot on the wall is empty. That only exists in the quote unquote “present day”, whatever day that may be.

[Thomas]
That’s good. Okay.

[Shep]
Because it’s magic.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
We don’t got to explain nothing.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And then this makes it more complicated and the days just disappear. You can’t earn new ones.

[Shep]
Yeah. Because you can’t earn new ones. The whole lesson of the movie is live in the now.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
If you want to do something, start now.

[Emily]
So I don’t think he ever figures out how to accomplish that goal in that calendar year, but he learns the lessons when it starts the new year.

[Shep]
Right. He sees his grandfather on New Year’s. He saw him previous New Year’s. That’s when he got the calendar.

[Thomas]
They have a tradition.

[Shep]
You’re right. And that’s when they have the heart-to-heart talk where he’s like, “I wasted it. I spent a year, and I just made things worse, and I can’t fix it. I used up all my days, whatever. I wish that I never used the calendar.”

[Thomas]
Is that the end of the second act, then? Is that the lowest low that he’s squandered an entire year? I mean, it does mean we have the entire third act to fill if we do that.

[Shep]
Hmm.

[Thomas]
I guess, how do we want the movie to end? Because he could use the third act to accomplish that goal while paying the price for all the screwy stuff he did the previous year, not having a job and buying a bunch of stuff he can’t afford on credit. So those are the mounting tensions. But what we see is him learning how to balance his life properly to achieve the goals that he has.

[Shep]
So is that the whole third act or, like, the second half of the third act? How much of this is montage?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I suppose what you could do is set up all of those problems that he creates for himself within the first two acts and then use the third act to resolve each of those things. I don’t know if there’s going to be enough set up to sustain a full third act.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
But I do like that lowest low being he’s run out of magic to use, and he’s really screwed everything up.

[Shep]
Oh. He wishes that he hadn’t used the calendar because it made things worse. And his grandfather gives him a new calendar because it’s a new year. Now he has the dilemma. He has the choice, do I use the new calendar or not? And maybe that’s the third act. Like, he knows he has this magical device if he needs it, but it’s probably better to put the work in, to put the days in and not use it. So the third act is that. Second year with the second calendar that he doesn’t use. That’s the lesson. He learned it at the lowest low.

[Emily]
So do we see him being tempted to do it?

[Thomas]
He has to be, right?

[Emily]
Like, maybe he actually starts writing pages, and then he’s like, “Oh, I should see, is this where I should be spending my energy?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
And then he’s like, “I’m just going to go with it instead of going to the future to see if this is the right path.”

[Thomas]
Is the calendar his grandfather gives him at the beginning of the third act, is it for the new year, or is it a second calendar for the previous year? He’s like-

[Shep]
No, it’s for the new year.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So at the beginning, it’s not worth anything because there’s no days to go back to.

[Emily]
Right. He can’t change what already happened.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
He could go forward to see if he’s getting on the right path as he’s fixing things.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
But he can’t live in the “Is this right? Am I making the right decision?” The anxiety of the future.

[Shep]
Right. And he knows that doesn’t really work well because he tried that already with the previous calendar.

[Emily]
Right. So we just see him plugging away at work, coming home, plugging away at his computer, talking to the barista.

[Shep]
Right. Or not talking to the barista. Maybe like, the barista comes up to strike up a conversation because they see him in the coffee shop every day tapping away on his laptop, and he doesn’t notice or has headphones on or something.

[Emily]
Does he answer Steve’s call, or call Steve?

[Thomas]
I mean, he should call Steve, right?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, I think he should call Steve.

[Shep]
When does that happen? He’s got to work towards that because he was so upset with Steve at the beginning.

[Emily]
Right. Well, that’s got to be closer to the end then.

[Shep]
I think he realizes through the act of writing his own novel that it was a huge pain in the ass, and the idea didn’t carry a lot of the weight, and it was a lot of just putting in the time and getting words on pages. And so he is not as mad at Steve afterward now that he has that perspective of having carried a novel himself.

[Thomas]
So he’s calling to apologize-

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
For being a jerk.

[Shep]
Right. Make amends. He now understands that Steve took their idea, but Steve put the hours in, and so he shouldn’t be like, “Half this success is mine.” It’s not half. The idea is not half of the worth.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
So is there a scene where in the third act, he decides to actually read Steve’s book and realizes, like, “Oh, there’s a lot here that I had nothing to do with?”

[Emily]
Yeah. He starts to enjoy it. He’s reading it, and he finds him really engrossed in it-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And he’s like, “Oh, I would never thought of that,” or, “Oh, that’s a smart way to go with it,” that kind of thing.

[Shep]
Or he’s reading it, and he’s, like, making he’s crossing out paragraphs like, “Oh, this is bullshit,” whatever. And then as he reads and gets more into it, he’s writing notes on sticky notes and putting them on the pages.

[Thomas]
That’s funny.

[Shep]
So what is Steve going to talk to him about, the sequel novel? Like, “Hey, I’d like to write another one together.”

[Thomas]
What if- oh, yeah, but we wanted Steve to reach out to him in the first place.

[Shep]
Right. Steve did call him in the first place, and he never listened to that message.

[Emily]
Maybe he calls to- since he’s finally read the book and he now appreciates the amount of effort and work that went into it. And so now he’s like, “Hey, I have a new idea. I should talk to Steve and see if we can collaborate on it, because between the two of us, we could come up with something even greater than what either of us came up with on our own.”

[Thomas]
So does he hit a writer’s block in the third act at some point? He’s kind of been working on his thing, but he gets stuck. Now he’s really tempted to use the calendar, but then he sees Steve’s book there whatever. Somehow gets the idea to instead of traveling through time, reading the book.

[Shep]
Right. He’s doing something other than writing, though, because he has writer’s block.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
He’s going to the bookstore where the coffee shop is and sees there’s going to be a signing and reading by Steve later that month.

[Thomas]
Actually, it would be kind of interesting if that happened. And one of the questions that somebody asks at the reading is, “Where did you get the idea for this?”

[Shep]
Oh, yes. That’s always a question.

[Emily]
It is.

[Thomas]
“Oh, it was a collaboration between me and this other guy that was in a writing group who I- it was a great idea. He actually came with the original idea, and that’s why I thank him in the front of the book.” And Mark is surprised to hear that, because, again, he’s never cracked the book, goes home and opens the book, and it’s like, it’s dedicated to him, or something along those lines. Thanks him or ‘original story idea by’ his name is there, and he’s like, “Oh.” You’d think, though, if his name was in the book, and here’s this author who’s suddenly very famous that people would have tracked him down.

[Emily]
No, because he just says, “Mark from writing group.”

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s good.

[Emily]
Because they haven’t been in contact for a while, and the lawyers are like, “We can’t use his name if we can’t find him.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But it’s also, like, not the only name that he thanked, because that’s not how ‘thanks’ works.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Emily]
Because it’s like in the Acknowledgments, there’s a long list.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Like “My book editor, my agent, Mark from the writing group, who came up with the idea.”

[Shep]
“Who came up with the inspiration-“

[Emily]
The inspiration. Yeah.

[Shep]
Or “Who inspired me.” Let’s make it real weasel words.

[Emily]
Right. Yeah. Well, I also think when they ask it for the reading where the idea came from, and he says, “There was a guy in my writing group back in college.” I just want him to kind of gush over his writing, his style and that kind of thing.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And just be like, “I just thought, I was amazed. I’m surprised he hasn’t done anything because he was fantastic”

[Thomas]
Surprised and disappointed he hasn’t done anything.

[Shep]
Ooh, just twist, twist, twist.

[Emily]
Yeah. So now Mark has both that “Okay, he didn’t just steal this idea. He was literally inspired by me, and I am not a hack.” And that’s part of that block that he had was the, “Could I even do it?”

[Thomas]
I mean, he could even say, like, “We were developing this idea together, and then he kind of disappeared, and so I-“

[Shep]
“I had to finish it myself.”

[Thomas]
“I had to take it in a different direction,” or something that shows that “All that stuff that we did together, I left a bunch of it behind and did my own thing with that core idea,” because, again, Mark wouldn’t know that he’s not read the story.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
He just assumes because the core idea is the one that they were working on together, that he used all the stuff that Mark came up with.

[Shep]
Right. I like that idea that Mark, in his mind, has this whole world of lore and stuff.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s like a walking Silmarillion. And so when Steve is writing, he’d ask him a question like, “What about this?” And Mark would always have an know, whatever. “Oh, it’s like this. Oh, it’s like know, in the past, in the ancient days, this country and this country, they fought, and then that’s why their languages are intermixed,” and all this stuff. But, like, not all that stuff made it into the book. It’s just stuff that is in the lore that has not yet been written. So Steve is like, “I really want to visit this-” You know, “Will- are you going to write a sequel to this?” And like, “I’d really like to. There’s so much more to explore in this world,” but he needs Mark for that.

[Emily]
So then Mark contacts him after reading the book.

[Shep]
Is Mark there for the reading? Does he hear all of that stuff in person?

[Emily]
I want him to.

[Shep]
But Steve can’t see him?

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
He’s hiding behind one of the pillars in the bookstore.

[Emily]
Yeah. He’s behind one of the shelves.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
He’s got a trench coat and glass- sunglasses and a fedora on.

[Shep]
Right. Looking real inconspicuous there.

[Thomas]
“Sir, in the back. Did you have a question?”

[Shep]
Right. He’s there to accuse Steve of stealing his work.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. That’s his initial big plan. He’s gonna, “If I can’t be successful…”

[Emily]
“Going to expose you for the fraud that you are.”

[Shep]
“Finally get the credit that I’m due.” Well, if he feels like that. Is that before the third act? I thought the third act was him learning that lesson and writing his own novel.

[Emily]
I think he has learned that lesson, because I was thinking that this point would be that he’s already written, like, a first draft of a novel on his own and realizes the amount of work, and, you know, dedication that it takes to do that. And it’s not just stealing a simple idea, you know, having a simple idea, and it writing itself. Right? So he wants to go and see Steve talks because he saw that he was going to be there, and that’s sort of it would give him the validation that he does belong in this world of writing, and he can do, maybe, you know, this first draft wasn’t great, but it’s just a first draft. That’s why I was thinking he would contact Steve maybe not just to write a collaboration of a follow up novel, but that he would be like, “Hey, I have a first draft. Do you want to take a look at it?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
And so that kind of resolves that relationship.

[Shep]
And then Steve takes it and crosses Mark’s name off and turns it into his publisher. “Steve!”

[Thomas]
Well, do we feel like Mark has learned his lesson?

[Emily]
I feel like he has.

[Shep]
I mean, there’s still, how much time do we have? There’s lots more.

[Thomas]
We’re basically there.

[Shep]
Okay, well, we have the bones of it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But there are definitely places that could be fleshed out more.

[Emily]
Steve will do that. It’s fine.

[Thomas]
They’ll work together.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Steve is willing to put in the hours, and we’re not.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Calendar. Did we save the date, or should we call it a day? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com Please take a moment to give Almost Plausible a five-star rating on Apple podcasts. You don’t have to write anything in order to rate the show, but if you do write a review with your five-star rating, we’ll read it on a future episode. Emily, Shep, and I are giving you our two weeks notices that we’ll be back for another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
You were so fast. We were trying to figure out how to throw to the break and never did. So if you have any ideas.

[Emily]
Nope.

[Thomas]
I’m all ears.

[Emily]
Oh. The grandfather leaves a message on the calendar, and after these messages, we’ll be right back.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s cheesy as hell, but I really like it.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
“So after these messages” and we all go-

[Emily and Thomas]
(singing) “We’ll be right back.”

[Shep]
Don’t count on me for singing anything.