Scale

References

• Weighing of Souls
• The Good Place
  • Chidi Anagonye
  • Michael
• Penny Fortune Scale
• Cheers
  • Fortune and Men’s Weight
• The Cell
• Superliminal
• Michel Gondry
• Akugyo
• Schindler’s List
• Holy Man
  • Holy Man Starfish Scene
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
• Lady Justice
• Ma’at
• Fred Rogers
• Pleasantville
• Reader’s Digest
• Continuous Stationery
• Trolley Problem
• Alanis Morissette
• Terry Crews
• George Burns

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Thomas]
And so we get like, his spirit is going up to heaven and everything sort of fading away, and he gets up there, and St. Peter yanks his heart out of his chest and weighs it.

[Emily]
I love that imagery.

[Shep]
Temple of Doom style.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah. This beautiful eulogy, this sweet, sentimental moment, and he’s going up to heaven, and you’re just like, “Aw.” You know, all the happy thing, and then just full on violent. Rip it out. Blood pumping, dripping.

[Shep]
He’s like, “What is this? This isn’t in the Bible.” It’s like, “Yeah. Oh, they messed up a lot of this stuff.”

[Thomas]
“Don’t believe everything you read.”

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and balancing out the show are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Emily]
Oh, I get it now.

[Shep]
And that’s the balance.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Our theme for this episode is Scale. And with so many possible definitions for the word, I feel like we should get right to it. So, Shep, you’re up first today.

[Shep]
Oh. So a young girl reaches the age where she starts to go through the change, which in her case means growing fish scales on her body, because it turns out that her mom is a mermaid, and she’s half mermaid. So they didn’t tell her because she might not exhibit mermaid-

[Emily]
She might not have become one. Might not have turned.

[Shep]
Yeah. Might not have turned, but it’s happening. And my other one is someone who received a heart transplant in life eventually dies, and in the afterlife, they weigh your heart on a scale, except they weigh the transplant, and the person goes to the wrong afterlife as a result.

[Thomas]
I like this idea.

[Emily]
This is funny.

[Thomas]
This is funny.

[Shep]
It’s kind of The Good Place, but it could be, you know, the opposite. What happens to the person that gave up their heart? Do they not get to go to any afterlife? They’re just in limbo forever because there’s nothing to weigh?

[Emily]
Ooh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Interesting.

[Shep]
There’s lots of options.

[Emily]
Lots of options there.

[Thomas]
What happened to the guy’s old heart?

[Shep]
Yeah!

[Thomas]
Did the dumpster get to go to heaven and live a really nice-

[Emily]
There’s a rat-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Or maybe the person that gave up their heart was a bad person and they donated their organs, and that was, like, a good thing.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So they did a good thing at the very end. And that makes them a good person, but then they also give up their heart so they don’t get to go to any afterlife. Well, what are the rules?

[Emily]
That balances out to me.

[Shep]
That’s it for me.

[Emily]
Alright.

[Thomas]
Emily, why don’t you go next?

[Emily]
Alright. I just have one today. Amber gets a terrible sunburn while at the beach. She goes home and is lobster red. She slathers herself in what she thinks is aloe vera and goes to bed.

[Thomas]
Totally expected you to say butter.

[Shep]
Because of lobster.

[Thomas]
Because of lobster. Yeah.

[Emily]
Because of lobster.

[Thomas]
She’s like, “I’m delicious.”

[Emily]
It’s a whole different turn. She wakes up the next morning without the sting of the sunburn and is amazed at how good a job the aloe did. She goes into the bathroom to get her day started, and when she peers in the mirror, she discovers she’s covered in lizard scales. Her roommate rushes in to see what the commotion is, and when he sees Amber, he knows exactly what happened. His ex-girlfriend, who happened to be a witch, cursed the aloe, hoping he would be the one to use it. And now his poor, once very attractive roommate is living with the consequences of his messy breakup. They work together to figure out how to reverse the curse and maybe fall in love.

[Shep]
A rom-com?

[Thomas]
What a shitty witch.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“I hope maybe the right person uses this.”

[Emily]
Well, I figured we would write that part in why she targeted it.

[Thomas]
Right. Sure.

[Emily]
Because he didn’t have a roommate at the time. He burns easily.

[Shep]
Or she thought that he was hooking up with his roommate and really was aiming for her the whole time.

[Thomas]
Hmm. There we go.

[Emily]
Anyway. It’s a witch, it’s lizard people, and a rom-com.

[Thomas]
Cool. Very good.

[Emily]
I think that’s three stars right there.

[Thomas]
So I have three ideas. I was looking at the different definitions for scale, and, oh, my gosh, there are so many.

[Emily]
So many.

[Thomas]
And so I wanted to come up with a few different ideas. The first one is a fortune from an antique coin operated scale. You know, there used to be those ones where you’d put in a coin and it would tell you your weight and give you a fortune.

[Shep]
Yeah, I’ve seen Cheers.

[Thomas]
A fortune from an antique coin operated scale sets our characters off onto their journey. That’s all I have. I just thought that could be an interesting idea. Maybe.

[Shep]
I think that the episode that they have the scale in Cheers is that.

[Thomas]
Is it?

[Shep]
Yeah, I think it’s because Cheers was on a while ago.

[Thomas]
A little bit, yeah.

[Shep]
But I have, like, the vague memory of that episode.

[Emily]
I have a vague memory of this episode too. Who got weighed in it?

[Shep]
I don’t remember.

[Emily]
Was it Norm?

[Shep]
It could have been, but it was, the fortune was the important part.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
My next idea is that an up and coming artist survives a mass shooting that leaves him a shell of his former self. A friend tells him about an experimental treatment that uses a sort of guided virtual reality. The artist becomes trapped in the dark, twisted world his mind has created, but is guided through it by the experiment’s therapist. It’s sort of a cross between the movie The Cell and the video game Superliminal, and it’s done in the style of Michel Gondry.

[Shep]
Okay, so a very visually oriented movie, which I think is perfect for our audio-only podcast.

[Thomas]
Yeah, but here I was trying to play with scale in terms of size.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
The game Superliminal deals with that.

[Shep]
Yes, yes.

[Thomas]
So I think that would be a cool movie, but, yeah, I agree. Maybe not right for us here. My last idea is, and I apologize in advance if I mispronounce any of the Japanese words in my next pitch. During the Muromachi period in Japan, a young orphan has been taken in as an apprentice to an armorer with no family. One day, he sees his master slain by a group of unruly ronin. He tries to avenge his master, but the ronin easily defeat him, leaving him severely beaten. While recovering, he remembers a story his master had told him about akugyo, a fabled enormous fish with gold and silver scales. The young man sets off on a journey to get scales from the legendary youkai and use them to make armor and then return to avenge his master’s murder.

[Shep]
Okay, I have a question, or a problem, I guess. If he can defeat the akugyo or the daigyo, which means big fucking fish, then he doesn’t need the armor because he didn’t have it when he fought the akugyo. So if he’s already that strong… Look, we have records from the 1800s, the last time that a daigyo was spotted off the coast of Japan. And it took, like, 1500 men to defeat it. So they’re big. They’re big fucking fish. They’re gigantic. They’re- It’s a huge scale. This one works on two levels. It has covered with scales, and also it’s a kaiju.

[Emily]
Okay, wait, wait, wait. His pitch specifically states he sets off to get scales from the legendary youkai. How about he befriends him and asks politely?

[Thomas]
Oh. I will say that-

[Shep]
So daigyo means big fish, and akugyo means evil fish, so they’re not friendly.

[Emily]
Okay, nevermind.

[Shep]
What were you going to say, Thomas?

[Thomas]
What I was going to say is that’s his plan. That’s how it starts off. So perhaps something comes up along the way. Like you said, he defeats this fish and realizes, “I don’t need to deal with those guys.” Or maybe it turns out that, hey, this is all just fake. It’s a legend. It’s a myth. You can’t actually get these scales.

[Emily]
So he goes to battle, and he ends up either tricking the fish or asking politely.

[Shep]
I don’t know if we’re the right people to write the Japanese-?

[Emily]
100%.

[Thomas]
Yeah, right.

[Emily]
I have no business doing this one. I would watch the crap out of it.

[Thomas]
I mean, I think of all of the ones that we’ve talked about, the one I like the most is the weighing your heart after you die, afterlife one. So.

[Emily]
Hmm. Yeah.

[Shep]
Hmm. All right, let’s do that. Let’s get a wiggle on.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Emily]
Let’s go.

[Shep]
So is it a good person that goes to a bad afterlife or a bad person that goes to a good afterlife? Let’s start there.

[Emily]
Both are cliche, so we’re good choosing either one.

[Shep]
I don’t want to do spoilers for The Good Place…

[Emily]
I like the idea that he goes to the- He goes to a bad afterlife despite anything he’s done. I don’t want the bad guy to be rewarded. I’d rather see the good punished than the bad rewarded.

[Thomas]
So if it’s a good guy who’s being punished, unfairly punished, what is his goal? Is he trying to get into heaven or some sort of actual Good Place? Is he trying to seek justice for himself? Because I could see the other way around. If it’s a bad guy who got a good person’s heart and ended up in a good afterlife, and at first, he’s like, “This is great,” but then realizes that “I don’t deserve to be here.” And so he has to track down the spirit of the person whose heart he has because he realizes, “Oh, that guy is not here because I have his heart.” It can be a final good act on his part.

[Shep]
Hmm.

[Thomas]
But that does feel very cliched, so I don’t know which way is the right way to go.

[Shep]
Yeah, no, I like it the other way, where it’s a good person, and they went to bad person hell unfairly, but life isn’t fair. So this is- no change there.

[Thomas]
But then what does he spend the rest of the movie doing?

[Shep]
Redeeming the bad people in hell. Because he’s a good person.

[Thomas]
So he becomes essentially, like, a savior figure.

[Shep]
Yeah, I guess.

[Emily]
Yeah, sure.

[Thomas]
He organizes a union, and all the demons are like, “Dude!”

[Shep]
No. Uh, yeah. I was gonna say that they need a lawyer for that. I forgot, it’s hell. There’s plenty of lawyers.

[Thomas]
Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. Does he, in the end, get to go to a better place, or does he stay in hell, but he has made hell a better place?

[Shep]
I think he stays in hell. Even if he redeems people and they get to leave and move on, he would choose to stay. Because he’s a good person.

[Emily]
Is he going to be given the opportunity that “You’ve done all this good down here. You’ve redeemed these people who we thought were once unforgivable, and now they’ve been transported. You can too go and join them,” And he’s like, “But there’s so many more.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
He’s Schindler.

[Thomas]
Right. So the climax of the film is him having a conversation with God, and God’s like, “Yo, you can come. You’re welcome. We figured it out. You should be here.”

[Shep]
Yeah. “My work’s not finished yet.”

[Thomas]
Exactly. So it’s like Schindler’s List and The Good Place.

[Shep]
What a combination. What was the movie with Eddie Murphy where he’s kind of like a guru, where he’s-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s on, like, a, you know, Home Shopping Network thing.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
And he tells a story about starfish because he’s selling a starfish necklace, and he’s like, “There was this big storm, and it washed all these starfish up on the beach, and they were drying out in the sun, and they were gonna die. And this girl runs down the beach, and she’s picking up the starfish and throwing it back in the ocean one at a time. And a guy goes, ‘What are you doing? There’s thousands of starfish. You’re not gonna save them all. But it matters. Er, it doesn’t matter what you do.’ And she’s like, ‘It matters to this one.’ Throws at the water. ‘Matters to this one.’ So you can’t save them all.”

[Emily]
That story’s from Holy Man.

[Shep]
Yeah. Holy Man. Thank you.

[Emily]
I’ve heard that so many times in other movies.

[Shep]
So this guy is that girl. He’s-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He can’t save everyone in hell, and he has to be in hell to save any of them, but he is a good person.

[Emily]
Immediately, is he the person, the so-good-and-saintly-person that once he’s there, he’s like, “Oh, I’m just gonna help people.” Or does he actually attempt to get out at the beginning? Like, it’s the first act of the movie, him trying to convince them he doesn’t belong there, but he, incidentally, ends up redeeming a few people in the course of that.

[Shep]
Oh, he probably thinks that he does belong there.

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
He’s like, “Everybody sins. Everyone’s guilty.”

[Emily]
“They weighed my heart. This is where I went.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He didn’t connect that it was a transplant.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
It just immediately, the clouds opened up, and he dropped, like, a trapdoor beneath him.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So is the inciting incident, he ends up in the hospital, whatever. There’s some event that causes him to need the surgery.

[Shep]
Or do you not show that at the beginning?

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
You show him dying at the beginning and going to hell and thinking, “Yeah, this seems right.” But then eventually realizing, “Wait a minute. They weighed that heart. That wasn’t my heart. That just was the heart that I was holding at the time.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, that feels late to reveal to the audience that that wasn’t his heart or that he had had heart transplant surgery.

[Shep]
Hmm. Yeah. I guess it doesn’t need to be a secret.

[Thomas]
It has to be mentioned, at least.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
You could set it up in the beginning with him going into the hospital dying, and the doctor or a nurse or somebody or his wife, his spouse, what have you, mentions that he had had a heart transplant. Either the doctor remembers when he was here, or the wife says, “Oh, here’s his meds. This is for his transplant.”

[Thomas]
Oh, is the inciting incident that he dies. And so we see, like, his spirit is at his funeral or something. And so somebody’s talking about, “Oh, he had this heart transplant and got a second lease on life and blah, blah, blah, blah.” So it gets mentioned.

[Shep]
Yeah. He was not a good person when he was younger, but then he got this second chance and is like, “I’m going to do good with it.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And he did. He started a soup kitchen, and he built houses for the poor, and he really lived. He really did it. He made a positive change on the community, and he will be missed.

[Thomas]
And so we get like, his spirit is going up to heaven and everything sort of fading away, and he gets up there, and St. Peter yanks his heart out of his chest and weighs it.

[Emily]
I love that imagery.

[Shep]
Temple of Doom style.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah. This beautiful eulogy, this sweet, sentimental moment, and he’s going up to heaven, and you’re just like, “Aw.” You know, all the happy thing, and then just full on violent. Rip it out. Blood pumping, dripping.

[Shep]
He’s like, “What is this? This isn’t in the Bible.” It’s like, “Yeah. Oh, they messed up a lot of this stuff.”

[Thomas]
“Don’t believe everything you read.”

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
So is there a big statue of Justice? And he uses the scales to-

[Shep]
Yeah. It’s your heart on one side and a feather on the other side. Right? Isn’t that the- Isn’t that the lore?

[Emily]
I think it’s that.

[Thomas]
That sounds right.

[Shep]
It’s not a statue of justice. It’s actually just a woman with a blindfold holding a scale in one hand and a sword in the other.

[Thomas]
That’s how they get the heart out. She cuts you with the sword-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And St. Peter reaches in. Oh, I guess she’s blindfolded.

[Shep]
It doesn’t matter.

[Thomas]
Well, she doesn’t- Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s mystical. How does she do it when she’s blindfolded?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Doesn’t matter if she takes the blindfold off. Justice is blind, so the blindfold is decorative.

[Thomas]
But she’s just holding the sword for St. Peter. See, that’s what they didn’t- They depict her with the sword, but she’s just holding it for somebody else. She, it’s not her sword. The scales are hers. The sword is someone else’s.

[Emily]
So I looked it up because I’m that person.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
It is a feather weighed against the heart. And it’s Ma’at from Egypt. It’s an Egyptian goddess who does it, which I would love that we keep it Ma’at-

[Thomas]
Yeah, sure.

[Emily]
And not the Justice, but still have St. Peter there and have him be like, “I’m so confused. I don’t… Who is this?” And he’s like, “This is Ma’at. And she is the goddess of truth and justice.” And he’s like, “But-“

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Or it’s Ma’at. But she’s holding a scale and the sword.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
She is Justice.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah,

[Shep]
But we didn’t know that Justice is Ma’at.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And he’s like, “Well, I thought there was only one God.” Like, “No, they’re- Look, all the religions were right.”

[Emily]
“There’s no one true religion.”

[Shep]
I mean, even in the Bible, they talk about other gods, so. Have you read the Bible?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
There are other gods mentioned.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Ergo, the line about not having other gods before him. Because if there weren’t other gods, that wouldn’t be an issue.

[Shep]
Right. God never said, “I’m the only God.” He said “I’m the top God.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
“I’m the special one. You worship me.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Because I get jealous.”

[Thomas]
All right, so the heart gets weighed.

[Emily]
Mmm. It’s heavier than the feather.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Is there like a sad trombone noise or, like, how. What is the-

[Emily]
Is it a quick trap door?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Do they have the conversation? Does St. Peter kind of do a Mister Rogers? “Okay. So-“

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“So you were a villain.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Let’s talk about your options moving forward.”

[Thomas]
“Looks like you’re going down.” “Back down to earth?”

[Shep]
“A little further.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Is St. Peter confused? He has the record of this guy’s life, and he has the heart, so he’s like, reading through the record, and like, “Oh, you’ve done all these good things. I’m sure you’ll get in no problem.” Then they cut his heart out and weigh it, and it’s much heavier than the feather. And like, “Oh. Huh?”

[Emily]
I think he goes, “Oh, huh. I’ve seen this before. It’s a terrible, terrible, deep, dark secret you didn’t share with anyone.”

[Shep]
“Oh, you were bad when you were younger.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And he’s like, “Oh, I was.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, he was a scamp.

[Thomas]
We need the guy to believe at first that he does deserve the punishment.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so, you know, we have in the eulogy, they talk about him being a real rascal until he had the near death experience and got the heart transplant and then turned his life around. So St. Peter’s looking at his recent pages like, “Oh, yeah, you were such a good person.” And then when it tips in the negative direction, he’s like, “Huh…” And flips further back, and he’s like, “Ah, I see.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
“This makes sense.”

[Thomas]
So, yeah. So the guy ends up in hell.

[Shep]
What kind of hell is it?

[Thomas]
It’s a good question.

[Emily]
Do we want fire and brimstone? Do we want the funny fire and brimstone, “Oh, that’s just the entrance. Somebody has a flair for the theatrical.” And then you go in, and it’s just, you know, cubicles or-

[Thomas]
Right. It’s super bland. Everything’s beige. That would make it easier to film.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I do like the idea that when you first get there, there’s just this preposterously long line to get in.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And you have to wait in line. And if you cut, you get thrown to the back of the line.

[Shep]
Yeah. Unnecessarily long.

[Thomas]
Right. Is there a metal detector you have to go through? And everyone’s getting wanded.

[Shep]
They’re like, “This is… This is our spirit.”

[Thomas]
Right. “What metal could I possibly be carrying?” “It’s protocol.” BEEP. “We need you to step to the side.”

[Emily]
“Do you have any coins in your pocket?”

[Shep]
They’re like, “Stop resisting.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And then when they’re like, “But how am I resisting?” Like, “Okay, go to the back of the line.”

[Emily]
“To the end of the line!”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Maybe the guy in front of him, this is like his fifth time going through the line. He hasn’t gotten in yet.

[Shep]
He’s not saying anything. He’s learned his lesson. He’s like, he’s not making a peep.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And then he’s like, “Oh. Not cooperative, are you?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“To the back of the line!”

[Thomas]
Is this the first hint that our guy is actually in the wrong place? He gets to just go through it, doesn’t beep for him, and they’re like, “Oh, all right.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“Go ahead.”

[Shep]
Because it’s a form of punishment, so it’s-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The amount of times you go through the line is part of your punishment.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
And so they wand him, and it doesn’t go off. And they’re like, “Huh…” Like St. Peter did.

[Thomas]
Oh. It’s not the guy in front of him who’s done it five times. It’s the guy behind him. And he refuses to say anything. He’s just stone faced. Right? But when it doesn’t beep for him, he’s like, “What the fuck?” And they’re like, “Hey, quit causing a fuss. Back of the line.” He’s like, “This is bullshit.”

[Shep]
Yeah. They could have been talking the whole time they were in the line.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That gives you a chance to do some exposition. So the guy’s like, he’s been through this a bunch of times. And he’s seen people that make it through. So he’s, like, giving him advice. “This time I’m going to make it for sure. Here’s what you do. Cooperate. Don’t- You know, just comply. Just whatever ridiculous thing.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“Don’t make eye contact.”

[Thomas]
Uh huh.

[Emily]
“Do exactly what they ask you to do. Don’t say unnecessary words, but don’t be completely silent.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
He’s like, “I cracked it.”

[Shep]
Yeah. On his arm, he’s written down, like, all the rules.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“I even snagged these two coins to pass off to the guy, so he’ll let me through.”

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Shep]
That’s a good touch.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah. All right. So our guy gets into hell?

[Shep]
Success. He made it into hell.

[Thomas]
And. Is that what we said? It’s just bland.

[Shep]
I like that because it would be easy to film.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And expresses a kind of bone-deep just…

[Emily]
Misery.

[Shep]
Depression. Yeah.

[Emily]
Like, how disappointed would you be if your afterlife was a windowless office?

[Shep]
It’s not even an office. It’s a cubicle in a vast sea of cubicles.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Just beige with one of those shitty brown L desks.

[Shep]
And a CRT monitor.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
CRT monitor.

[Shep]
What are they even doing? What is their job in hell?

[Thomas]
Data entry.

[Emily]
Pivot tables.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Those are for the really bad ones. When he gets his assignment in his work basket, his cube mate kind of sidles over and is like, “Uh, what’d you get? I’m entering death dates over here. I don’t know what for. They don’t tell me. I just have to enter them. And did you know somebody dies every 6 seconds? It’s never ending. Someone’s always dying.” And then he’s looking at his assignment, and it’s something like, pretty simple.

[Thomas]
It’s hyper specific. It’s a thing that almost never happens. So he takes the one page out of his inbox, enters it, puts it in the outbox, and then he’s just sitting there like, “Now what?” Meanwhile, the other guy’s pile is getting taller and taller because he’s not entering them. He’s talking.

[Shep]
Because your hell is based on how bad you were. And they’re not going off of the heart.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because heaven keeps the heart.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
So they have to base it off of something else. And so they’ve measured him, and he’s not a bad person. So he’s not- So now it’s not really a punishment. He’s just in a bland nothingness. With nothing to do for all eternity.

[Emily]
Yes. So he can walk around and talk to the people.

[Thomas]
So, yeah. He goes- Does he go to the break room to get burnt coffee and engage in dull conversation and-

[Emily]
Yeah. Well, that’s when he starts building relationships with people.

[Thomas]
Right, exactly. Because that’s what we need him to start doing.

[Shep]
Right. The coffee maker is always just the dregs at the end.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, yeah. It’s sludge.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, because nobody has time to make the coffee. Yeah.

[Thomas]
So he cleans the coffee pot and makes new coffee.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Fills the carafe.

[Emily]
And then somebody comes in all, you know, expecting it to be the shitty coffee, and they’re like, “This is fresh.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
“This is hot.”

[Thomas]
It, like, perks their day up a little bit.

[Shep]
Yeah. So we can already see he’s making hell a better place just being there.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
He, like, digs through the drawers and he finds some teas. And he, like, arranges a little tea basket.

[Emily]
He starts cleaning the counters, goes through the refrigerator.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. He starts doing dishes. Yeah.

[Emily]
Throws out all the old lunches.

[Shep]
Everything is grungy and grimy.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He just spends his day cleaning the kitchen.

[Shep]
I like this, if it’s sort of like a colorless grayness everywhere. And then after he cleans the kitchen, it’s all colorful. It’s like, what’s the movie where it’s all black and white?

[Thomas]
Pleasantville?

[Shep]
Pleasantville. It’s Pleasantville.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I didn’t get that color was appearing in Pleasantville because I’m completely colorblind.

[Thomas]
Oh, you’re right!

[Shep]
There’s a scene where, like, they take the girl to the doctor.

[Emily]
Mmm.

[Shep]
Because, like, her lips turned red or something.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I’m basing this on what people have told me. Because I didn’t see any of that. I’m like, “Why is she at the doctor? This scene makes no sense at all.”

[Thomas]
Not a very accessible film.

[Shep]
No. Yeah. Not colorblind-friendly.

[Thomas]
No. So does he. Is there some magazine that he finds, and he, like, tears a page out and pins it up at his desk or something? He, like, decorates his cubicle somehow.

[Shep]
Hmm. What would they have available in hell?

[Emily]
Old copies of Reader’s Digests from the sixties.

[Shep]
What do they have available in hell that you could cut up?

[Thomas]
I mean, they have all those papers that they’re having to do the data entry with.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Oh, he starts to make origami.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Or collages.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You know, because the paper’s all different colors.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, he does like the sticky note art, but with paper.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah. He could go around and collect old papers of different colors and cuts them up. Does he start making things for people?

[Shep]
Yeah. Yeah. So they’re taking the finished paper. What’s happening with the paper? What is the paper trail that he is snagging these papers out of it. Because the people have to do their job. He can’t interrupt that.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So he’s taking them, either there’s outboxes or there’s disposal bins or something.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, I was going to say it would be like a disposal bin, like there’s outboxes and then somebody comes by with a big, like, mail cart thing and then just, you know, shoves them in.

[Shep]
Or someone has to collect all of the outbox papers and take them to another person who stamps them and then throws it away.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Ah, yeah.

[Shep]
And he’s like, “Why do you have to stamp it and then just throw it away?” It’s like, “Oh, that’s not the job.”

[Thomas]
There’s gotta be something that happens. He’s like, “Let me show you.” And he, like, throws an unstamped one in there, and something happens. It stops the line.

[Shep]
Sirens go off.

[Thomas]
Right. Some manager comes and yells at him.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What are the managers like? Are they demons?

[Thomas]
They must be, right?

[Shep]
They must be.

[Emily]
They’d have to be.

[Shep]
Or are they other people being punished? It’s just all people being punished everywhere.

[Thomas]
It’s a guy who comes down like, “Look, Ted, we’ve talked about this. I really hate having to come down here.”

[Emily]
But who would be…? Granted, I have a skewed view of management. Who would that be a punishment for? And what would be so bad about them being the manager? Does he now have to file paperwork?

[Shep]
It’s all meetings all the time. It’s just endless meetings, meeting after meeting after meeting with no breaks. Each meeting runs long, so each subsequent meeting is shortened. Like, “Oh, we have to- we’re behind schedule,” so it runs longer.

[Thomas]
Right. He has to do like performance reports, but everyone’s constantly behind. They’re not hitting their numbers. So he’s getting in trouble.

[Emily]
So he’s got to go to more meetings about upping productivity.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s the cult of productivity. That’s our version of hell.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So are we all just like corporate people? Is that the- Our version of hell is just the cult of productivity.

[Emily]
Is there something outside of the office? Like, is there another part? Do they go home, or are they just in the office 24/7 doing their job over and over again?

[Shep]
I mean, if it’s hell, it’s just the office. Also, that’s easier to film.

[Emily]
Okay, works for me. Single location. Got it. Oh, someone’s job has to be to tear the ribbon off of the dot matrix printers.

[Shep]
Yeah, because it’s all dot matrix printers.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yep, yep.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Alright, well, let’s take a break here and when we come back, we’ll figure out what happens to our guy in hell.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. Our main character has died and gone to hell, where he does not belong. He has started to make things a little bit nicer. But what we need to figure out now is really our whole second act. I mean, I think early on he figures out he’s not supposed to be there. So what is that scene like?

[Shep]
I mean, I guess he’s making conversation with the other people, perhaps even in the line before he gets to the cubicle farm.

[Thomas]
Mhm.

[Shep]
And they’re all bad people, and so he’s trying to relate to them, but he realizes “Everyone is worse than I am and maybe I am not supposed to be here.”

[Emily]
He meets another guy who’s kind of like him, normal-ish and fine, and they start having a conversation. Things are going well, and he’s like, “Okay, so maybe I do belong here. This guy clearly has his shit together, but he’s still here.” And then you find out he’s a serial killer.

[Shep]
Or, because all the punishment is based on how bad you were, when he gets to his cubicle and his thing is to file one number and then you’re done, for an obscure thing that will probably never happen again. Whatever it is. That’s a problem for the writers to figure out what specifically it is.

[Thomas]
Right, right, right.

[Shep]
And then he’s like, “Well, maybe I’m not supposed to be here,” because they talked about it in the line.

[Thomas]
Oh, there has to be an orientation, right?

[Shep]
Oh, of course.

[Thomas]
And onboarding.

[Shep]
Yes, absolutely.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, because that’s another level. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
Because you have to fill out all of your onboarding paperwork in triplicate, and then you watch them throw away two of those copies.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s the same paperwork that he had to fill out in the line, again.

[Thomas]
Yeah. “You filled out a 294-J.” “Uh huh.” “Yeah, we needed a 294-L.” “It’s all the same information.”

[Shep]
Yeah, “You, you filled out a 294-J, but we need the updated 294-J.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“I understand the confusion because it is 294-J, but you did the wrong one.”

[Emily]
“You did the 294-J 1985, and we need the 2012.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
“What’s the difference?”

[Shep]
“The updated one has a spot to enter your email address.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Oh, do we have Internet?”

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Oh, no, no, you can’t access the Internet here.”

[Emily]
“We just like to have all of your information.”

[Shep]
“We just want to know what your email address was.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. That’s funny.

[Emily]
“The date format was US, and we’re switching to European.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
No, there’s an ISO standard where it’s year, month, day, so of course they don’t use that.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re switching from that from the European to, to the American version.

[Thomas]
And that’s why the cube-mate that he has is so busy, because he has to update all of the death dates to be the new format.

[Shep]
Yeah. His job is just to swap the month and the day on all of them. It’s like, “Can’t you write a script to do that?”

[Emily]
I was going to say, does he know that there’s, like, a script or a formula that he could use to do that? And then he, like, once he finds out that that’s all he’s doing, he’s like, “Oh, well, you could just do this.” And then shows him, and then it makes his work so much less. And he’s like, “Whoa!”

[Shep]
So was he a computer nerd? Our main character. Is he automating people’s hell’s punishment?

[Emily]
He could be.

[Shep]
Is that how he’s making their lives better?

[Thomas]
That would get him in trouble with the demons, though.

[Shep]
Yes. Maybe that’s the thing that happens.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He gets in trouble with the demons.

[Emily]
I would think we would need- That would be a conflict that we could use.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
That’s true. Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Maybe he, in his life, helped to run a charity or something along those lines. And he knows Excel pretty well, or spreadsheet software.

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Thomas]
And so they’re using something and he’s like, “Oh, well, there’s a formula for that.” So maybe he knows that kind of software really well. And he shows the guy like, “Oh, just do this.”

[Shep]
So he gets in trouble with the demons. What do they do with him?

[Thomas]
I mean, did they realize that his workload is suspiciously light?

[Emily]
I think they are suspicious of it, but they also don’t question things because I feel like the demons are somewhat robotic. You know, they’re just meant to manage the process. So they go after him, and they’re like, “You need to get back to work.” And he’s like, “Yeah, I’m done.” And they’re like, “What do you mean you’re done?” And he’s like-

[Shep]
“Nobody’s done. That doesn’t compute.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And then he shows them, and they’re like, “Oh, I guess you are done. Okay.” Then they have to converse, you know.

[Thomas]
“We’ll get back to you.”

[Emily]
And then they come back with, like, really menial, more menial tasks that don’t take a lot of time that they think are going to be, you know, this huge time suck for him, but they’re not.

[Thomas]
I mean, is that his punishment is supposed to theoretically fit his spiritual deservedness?

[Shep]
Right. I have a different question.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
Other than making the lives of the damned easier, how does he redeem them morally so that they can leave hell?

[Thomas]
Hmm. And that’s kind of why I feel like there does need to be a world outside of the cubes. I think it would help anyway. That would give them more opportunities.

[Shep]
I mean, if he automated their tasks, then he could chat with them. They would have time to converse.

[Emily]
That is what I was thinking. If things are more automated and they have more time to have conversations at the coffee pot-

[Thomas]
Right. “Now that you don’t have that giant pile of work, you can wash a dish now and then.”

[Shep]
Right. Oh, he gets them to help out with the chores.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Do they start confessing things to him and explaining why they’re sorry or-

[Shep]
It could be.

[Emily]
I’m Catholic, so that’s a thing for me.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
I was raised Catholic, so, like, admitting you’re wrong is the first step to redemption.

[Shep]
I mean, they’ve been so busy with their punishment tasks, they haven’t had time to process their grief and their misery at being in hell.

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
And so they can break down and confess, etcetera.

[Emily]
Yeah. Come to the realization what they did was terrible. And-

[Shep]
Yep, they are truly sorry now.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Going back for a moment to the demons. So they decide they’re going to assign him other work and they’re like, “Okay, well, we want you to go clean the break room.” He’s like, “Oh, yeah, I already did that.” And they’re like, “What?” They go and they see the break room and they’re like, “Ah, all right. Uh….” It’s like anything they can think to give him, he’s already done it voluntarily.

[Emily]
He has to unclog the toilet, but he did already do that because he had to use the toilet, and. Or it was always running, and he was-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
He was like, “Well, I just, I fixed the-“

[Thomas]
Yeah. “The chain was caught under the flapper. All you had to do is shorten the chain.” The demon’s like, “Oh, that’s. I didn’t know that. That’s pretty good.” Do the damned need to actually do something good to be redeemed, or do they just need to express true remorse?

[Shep]
What good can they do, in hell?

[Thomas]
I mean, they could display selflessness. They could help other people, especially if all of their chores are done.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Like, he’s cleaned the break room. Maybe there are other break rooms and-

[Shep]
Right. They’re paying it forward.

[Thomas]
Right. Yes.

[Emily]
I was thinking there could be something in the data entry. I don’t know what. I have no idea how this would work, but there could be something that, like, maybe now that the one guy next to him or another person has a little more time to do their work, they look at the pages a little more thoroughly, and they either find a mistake that’s going to help somebody alive, stay alive or improve their life or something, and they point it out, and then they resolve that issue, and then that is a way of them getting redeemed.

[Thomas]
Right. It doesn’t help them at all.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
It helps another person. Yes.

[Emily]
It actually creates more work for them because they, like, go into a rabbit hole.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And then they’re letting the other work pile up. But they want to fix this mistake.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So when does Chidi give lessons on philosophy? I mean, I’m saying that as a joke, but I’m also not saying it as a joke. That was one of my favorite things about The Good Place. How do we squeeze philosophy lessons into this story so that people that watch it get unintentionally educated on moral philosophy?

[Emily]
Oh, that could be the mistake in the paperwork. One person’s job is to record train schedules. Yes. We’re gonna go obvious here and teach the trolley problem.

[Shep]
It’s the trolley problem.

[Emily]
It’s an easy one, and children need to learn it. And he looks through it, and they’re like, “Well, yeah, so which one do you want to stop? This one? And then those five people die. Or we stop this one, and these two people die.” Then he goes, “Nope, fixed it. Neither one. No one dies.” We don’t know the answer of how he did that because there’s no actual answer to that problem.

[Shep]
The answer is sacrifice yourself. Michael taught us this. Okay, so our main character has free time in hell, and he wants to help people. So to get back to Thomas’ question, what is necessary for people to be redeemed? Do they have to just be remorseful, or do they have to do good? And if they have to do good, what can they do already in hell, other than, as we’ve said, paying it forward? Cleaning the other break rooms, which are very small, good acts.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, I think one of the issues is that on an eternity scale, theoretically, it would take quite a long time to demonstrate your newfound goodness.

[Shep]
Yeah. If you were a serial killer, you’re gonna have to clean a lot of toilets to make up for it.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I mean, does everyone get redeemed?

[Shep]
I mean, the whole point of the premise is that some people get redeemed.

[Emily]
Right. Some people.

[Shep]
Enough for heaven to go, “Hey, you can come too.”

[Emily]
Right, right.

[Shep]
And he and him to go, “No, thanks. I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

[Thomas]
But I think the question that Emily is asking, is it possible for everyone?

[Emily]
It’s not.

[Thomas]
Does everybody have the ability to be redeemed?

[Emily]
I don’t think that they would, because then you don’t have to straddle that line of, but they were a serial killer. What about Hitler? We don’t have to deal with that issue, if we establish that there are just some who stay.

[Shep]
I mean, Hitler did clean the coffee pot, though, so… How long are people in hell normally?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I was thinking about that.

[Shep]
Is it forever or is it for a while?

[Thomas]
And if it’s for a while, are they able to somehow see how much time they have left? Or know, somehow.

[Shep]
Right. Their retirement date on their paperwork.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I mean, that is a tradition in some parts of the world where it is just x number of days or years or whatever. Based off of your evilness.

[Shep]
Right. So if you have a retirement date on your paperwork that you can see change. As one of the other people does good deeds in hell, they’re shocked to discover the next time they get their paperwork, that their retirement date has grown nearer than it was before.

[Thomas]
Is that kind of like your paycheck?

[Emily]
Yeah, you get a pay stub.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
You don’t get paid because there’s this tax, that tax, the cubicle fee.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah. What you get on your pay stub is how much time you’ve worked off, essentially.

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Does doing the automation, does that actually reduce your time faster or not? Because you’re not actually doing the work.

[Shep]
Right. Ooh, that’s good.

[Thomas]
So it empties the inbox quickly.

[Shep]
Right. But because they weren’t being punished for that time…

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Their retirement time didn’t come closer, and in fact, it got further away because they weren’t working during that time.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
So they have to do something else with their time that’s better for others.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Than their punishment was punishing them, in order to make up the difference in time, not only to just break even, but to bring that retirement date forward. Is it too much math? I see Emily’s making a face.

[Emily]
No, I was just thinking about what they could do, and does it have to affect the corporeal world, or does it just have to affect hell? Can they do good deeds for each other and make that work?

[Shep]
These are all good questions.

[Thomas]
Right. When it’s someone’s retirement party, can somebody hand out cake to the people stuck at their desks? And that helps a little bit.

[Emily]
And in that case, what is the protagonist’s retirement date on his paperwork if it’s based off of your necessary punishment? And we’ve established that he didn’t have to wait in the line or go through the line three or four times.

[Shep]
He did have to go through the line, but only once.

[Emily]
Only once. And he got the one paperwork.

[Shep]
Right. Maybe his retirement date is already in the past and that causes an error in the system.

[Thomas]
What’s the protocol for retiring?

[Emily]
Cake in the break room.

[Shep]
And then?

[Emily]
You get to go to the outside.

[Shep]
You get to go live on a farm upstate and you’re never seen or heard from again.

[Emily]
Well, I mean, to them, that’s what it’s like. Because you don’t know, because you haven’t retired yet, and they don’t tell you.

[Thomas]
You get to take the elevator up.

[Emily]
You get an access card for the elevator.

[Thomas]
I was just going to say. Yeah. Your access card finally opens the elevator and you get to go up.

[Emily]
I actually like that.

[Shep]
Do they have access cards? Do they have different levels of permissions based on how bad they were? Like, they can’t use the coffee maker because they don’t have the right access because they were too bad of a person.

[Emily]
Yeah. Everything could be on a badge system where you have to wave it and, like, the coffee maker is locked down, but you wave the badge, and it unlocks. But some people can unlock it, and that could be a good deed that somebody can’t unlock it-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And somebody who now has a little more time and they finally get to go to the break room, because that’s the- That’s the crux, is your badge will work, but you don’t have time to go get your coffee. And this guy has a little bit of time, just enough time to go get coffee. But his badge doesn’t work, which is more punishing then, I think, because at least you have the option of coffee.

[Shep]
Or when you have the option of coffee, you can wave your badge and get some coffee, but it costs you some time. So that’s the currency, is time.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So if I use my badge to get coffee for you because you are wiped out, I can use my badge and get you coffee, but it comes off of my account. We need to establish other people in heaven or at the gate, at least. Interns that retrieve people at their retirement so we can see. “Oh, we know where they’re going. I recognize that face from the beginning of the movie.”

[Emily]
Mm hmm. Yeah, we can do that. Somebody who ushers people in, does the greeting, offers them water.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Because it’s sort of- It’s the purgatory-ish waiting room. Some people have been waiting for a long time for their name to be called.

[Thomas]
Well, assuming he is helping people get up to heaven, word must, like, heaven must start to take notice that suddenly a whole bunch more people are coming up from hell than normally do.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Or they’re coming up faster or earlier or whatever. Right?

[Shep]
They’re coming up earlier. I’m telling you, he’s got to teach them philosophy so that they truly repent in their heart so they can get out of hell sooner. Because it’s not about just being punished, it’s about repenting.

[Thomas]
Right, right, right.

[Shep]
The punishment is supposed to get them to repent, but they don’t understand that they need to be remorseful, that their actions were bad. Like, it’s not enough to be punished. They have to understand why.

[Thomas]
At any rate, God finds out that he’s doing this and what, yanks him up to heaven or-?

[Shep]
Comes down to hell.

[Emily]
Has a meeting. Yeah. Schedules a meeting with him.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah. He sits down and logs onto his computer and little thing dings. “You have a meeting in room 17A.” Wanders down some hallways looking for it.

[Shep]
Now, is Alanis Morissette available for acting gigs still or-?

[Emily]
That would be great. Probably.

[Shep]
Who plays God? How do you portray God?

[Emily]
Who did we have be God last time? Oh, Terry Crews.

[Shep]
All right, Terry Crews is God.

[Emily]
Well, he was God the last time we had God in a movie.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You know, it’s George Burns. For, like, a long time he was God.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. It’s just Terry Crews.

[Shep]
It’s just Terry Crews in all the things.

[Thomas]
Basically, he gives him the spiel of like, “Look, you don’t have to stay here.” He’s like, “I have quite a bit of sway down here. I can get you upstairs.” I mean, I guess the implication of this conversation is that God is not all knowing, because otherwise God wouldn’t know what his answer is going to be. But maybe he does. Maybe he- But then why would he bother having the conversation? I don’t know.

[Emily]
That gets into a whole line of thinking about the Bible. Because if God is omnipotent, then why did these things happen?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Why did those things happen? Why did he have to ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? Why did he have to test anyone that way?

[Thomas]
All excellent questions.

[Shep]
Yeah. What did Job’s wife and children do to deserve to be killed by the devil just to prove that Job wouldn’t renounce God? If God is omniscient, then he would have already known… I guess God did claim that that was what was going to happen, and the devil didn’t believe him. And so God’s like, “Yeah, go ahead and kill his wife and children.”

[Emily]
Yeah. So why would- Anyway, this is going to get into a whole other argument.

[Shep]
And where did they go? Did they go to heaven because they died because of God’s bet with the devil? Or did they go to where, maybe they weren’t good people yet. Some of them were kids, and kids are evil. We all know that. So-

[Emily]
They haven’t earned their soul yet.

[Shep]
They haven’t. Yeah, so they- Did they go to hell because they were part of a bet? Anyway. That’s a whole thing. So God could come down and ask him the question, knowing what his answer would be, but hoping it would be different.

[Emily]
I mean, this could be a conversation. He could be like, “Well, you know what the answer’s gonna be.” I don’t know. The guy’s not that smart, is he?

[Shep]
Is the guy not that smart? So he’s not a moral philosophy professor?

[Emily]
He can be that smart. He can totally be that smart. To where he goes, “Well, you know the answer.” And God could- The conversation could be like, “You already know my answer.” And God could be like, “Yeah, I do.” And he’s like, “So why are you even bothering asking?” “I’m hoping to be surprised one day.”

[Thomas]
It’s not bad.

[Shep]
So is God not surprised that all these extra souls are coming up from hell?

[Emily]
No, because if he’s omniscient…

[Shep]
Then this was all part of the plan, is to send a good man to hell to make a change.

[Emily]
Mmhmm.

[Shep]
Because heaven and hell were out of balance and the scales need to be rectified. And so you sent a good man down to bring it back into balance. It ties back into Scale.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s the theme of the episode.

[Emily]
All right, perfect.

[Thomas]
That works. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Scale. Did we manage to tilt the scales, or should we scale back our plans?

[Shep]
Oof. Two different definitions in the, in the outro.

[Thomas]
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. If you haven’t already, we would really appreciate it if you could give us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else that has podcast ratings. If you happen to leave a written review along with your 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts, we’ll read it on the show at some point in the future. Emily, Shep and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]