Almost Plausible

Ep. 46

Shipping Pallet

28 March 2023

Runtime: 00:51:06

A group of kids on summer break hit the jackpot when they discover a huge pile of shipping pallets, which they use to build forts in the woods. A water balloon war breaks out, and soon bases are being captured and absorbed, until just two large forts remain. What follows for the children is a tense weekend full of escalating weapons, imaginations, and the greatest water balloon battle of their lives.

References

Corrections

In the episode said the world’s tallest bonfire was in Norway, and at one point that was true, but that record was set back in 2010. On March 16, 2019, the record was broken by a group in Austria, who holds the current record, but in July of 2022, a group in Ireland built a taller one. They have submitted their application to Guinness, which as of this writing has yet to be confirmed.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
“What are you going to do when the school year starts, Timmy?”

[Shep]
Right. “You think we’re going to make it till the school year starts? You’re dreaming.”

[Emily]
“I’m going to find Marissa and I’m going to tell her, ‘I like you.’ I’m going to give her a Ring Pop.”

[Shep]
“Marissa’s got cooties.”

[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 with me today are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard-

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
If you’ve spent even a couple of minutes on Pinterest, you’ve likely seen more than a few craft projects that make use of an old shipping pallet. Emily, you’re the craftiest of all of us. Have you ever created something with a shipping pallet?

[Emily]
Yeah, I have. I’ve taken one apart and made a couple of picture frame type things. They didn’t come out very well.

[Thomas]
Because you weren’t great at what you were doing or because the wood was terrible or the instructions were bad or-

[Emily]
I don’t use instructions very often, so it was a little bit of designer error and poor wood.

[Thomas]
So it was a learning experience.

[Emily]
And I do have a Pinterest page called “Pallets? Pallets!”

[Thomas]
Is that a “Giraffes? Giraffes!” reference?

[Emily]
It is 100% a “Giraffes? Giraffes!” reference.

[Thomas]
Excellent. Shep, have you ever done any shipping pallet projects?

[Shep]
No. Well, I live out here next to the industrial park, and they have a company that just leaves their shipping pallets out with a sign, like, “Hey, here are the instructions on what rules to follow to come and get some.” And so I ended up with a bunch of shipping pallets at my house, and the person who originally brought them over, didn’t take them, and so I just broke them up and used them for firewood.

[Thomas]
I mean, wood’s wood.

[Shep]
Wood’s wood. Although this wood has nails in it.

[Thomas]
And might be chemically treated.

[Shep]
Well, it was an outdoor fire, so it was probably fine.

[Thomas]
Well, there you go. I have not created any shipping pallet projects, although I have seen some that I’m definitely, like, 50/50 on where sometimes I see them and I’m like, “Okay, what are we doing here?” And then there are others where I’m like, “That’s pretty clever, actually. I like that.” I think one of my favorite shipping pallet projects, maybe you’d call it, is in Norway, they have the world’s tallest bonfire, and it’s made mostly out of shipping pallets.

[Emily]
Yeah, I just saw that recently.

[Thomas]
Yeah, very cool. Weirdly, dangerous looking, both from the construction and burning of it. But.

[Shep]
Yeah, if it’s tallest.

[Emily]
It’s like Jenga would be to an ant, like, that tall.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s huge.

[Shep]
Right. But I imagine it’s got to collapse as it burns.

[Thomas]
It does.

[Emily]
Yep. There’s quite some entertaining videos of it. You’re not allowed to be within a certain amount. It’s like the man at Burning Man, and you’re not allowed to be super close to it while it’s on fire.

[Thomas]
And I think it’s actually on a little island, which is still pretty close to shore, but it’s separated. But there are boats in the water nearby.

[Emily]
I’d be down. I like fire.

[Thomas]
Well, on today’s episode, we’ll do our best to craft a movie from the idea of a Shipping Pallet. We’ll start with a pitch session where we each share some basic story ideas we’ve come up with. Together, we’ll pick one of the ideas and then develop it into a movie plot that we hope is at least Almost Plausible. Shep, why don’t you get us started with your pitches for a shipping pallet?

[Shep]
Well, it’s difficult for me not to turn this into another container and just have it be about whatever’s on the pallet.

[Thomas]
Yeah, true.

[Shep]
So how about this? A cruise ship sinks or a yacht or whatever, and the cheap and faulty lifeboats make their way to a nearby island and also near the island, poking out of the water is a sunken shipping vessel still with shipping containers on it. And some of the survivors risk their lives to explore that sunken ship, hoping to find something to help them. But everything is useless. Like, imagine you open up the shipping container, and it’s pallet after pallet of bowling balls, so that’s no good. But the shipping pallets themselves are made of wood. So now there’s a divide among the survivors between people that want to burn the pallets for warmth as the nights are getting colder and colder and help has yet to arrive, and maybe to send signal fire, a bonfire, and those that think they can build a seaworthy boat out of them. That’s it for me.

[Thomas]
Well, I have two ideas. My first is that a company is trying to get rid of all their old shipping pallets, and a kid sees them and wants them because free shipping pallets. How cool is that? But his parents say no.

[Shep]
Yeah. Is this the kid that lives at my house and wants to bring a bunch of shipping pallets over and then leave them here? Because I’ve seen this movie.

[Thomas]
So this kid’s parents say no, but he convinces his friends to drag all the pallets into the woods, and they use them to build forts. But then they start battling each other and tearing each other’s forts apart. They use the wood to expand their own forts, and eventually, there are only two giant forts left. There’s a huge final battle that culminates in one group lighting the other’s fort on fire, which causes a forest fire and destroys both forts.

[Shep]
And it’s an allegory for nuclear war.

[Thomas]
Yeah, maybe. It works. My other idea is a pair of magically linked pallets. So whatever you place on one simultaneously exists on both and can be removed from the other, making teleportation possible.

[Shep]
Now, I’m immediately reminded of Primer, where it starts with a very simple premise and then explores that. So what happens to a person if they step onto the pallet? Are they in both places? And if they are, what do they see?

[Thomas]
Ooh. ‘What do they see?’ is a really good question.

[Shep]
How do they get off the pallet? If they exist in both places? When they step off, where do they go?

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s a great question. Something for us to figure out if we decide to go down that path. Those are my two. Emily, what do you have for us?

[Emily]
I have a similar one to your kids building a fort, but mine takes a dark turn.

[Thomas]
What?

[Emily]
Surprisingly.

[Shep]
I’m shocked.

[Thomas]
Your story takes a dark turn?

[Emily]
What? I know, kids build a fort out of shipping pallets in the woods outside their neighborhood. They spend the endless summer playing and adventuring. And then one day, a stranger approaches and holds them hostage for several days, and their families become concerned when they don’t return home after a couple of days. Takes them a couple of days to really worry about them because they’re the cool parents. They’re like, “Yeah, they’re just spending the night in their fort.” And then they discover the situation and work with law enforcement to free their kids from this precarious situation. Then I have a fun rom-com, possibly. No, it’s not really a rom-com, just a fun comedy.

[Thomas]
Don’t worry, we’ll find a way to turn it into a rom-com.

[Emily]
Oh, we can 100% turn into a rom-com. The Shipping Pallet Princess is a social media queen of shipping pallet-based projects. She’s a wealthy and popular Internet influencer who has the world on a string, except she’s a total fraud. The real genius behind all of her ideas is her mousey cousin, who has decided she’s had enough of being in the background and giving away her best ideas. She quits working for the Shipping Pallet Princess and starts her own social media campaign and is immediately sued. She has to fight to prove she’s the brains behind the operation and tried to defend her burgeoning DIY empire. All right, so my third and final one, I think, is my favorite, just because it’s funny. A coffin made out of shipping pallets mysteriously appears in a small town. People are confused and worried about what they find inside. Turns out to be a down on his luck vampire looking for a new beginning in a small-town America. He teaches the town that just because he’s a monster doesn’t mean they need to be afraid.

[Shep]
I have many questions.

[Emily]
Think Hallmark movie. But with vampires.

[Shep]
Isn’t this now a container? It’s a coffin.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Also, what makes a coffin a ‘shipping pallet coffin’? Unless it were shipping pallets stacked up in a coffin shape, but then there would be massive holes through them.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And if it’s a vampire, that’s bad. That doesn’t keep sun out. It doesn’t make any sense.

[Emily]
I didn’t think that far ahead about, I was thinking you could see that pieces of the pallets were taken off and arranged in a way so there were no gaps in it, but it was clearly built out of shipping pallets. Maybe also laying on shipping pallets, but you’re right. It is a container.

[Thomas]
Well, we won’t pick that one then-

[Emily]
But it’s cute.

[Thomas]
You’re not wrong. It’s just not about the shipping pallets. Unfortunately.

[Emily]
I will save it for a different one.

[Shep]
Shipping Pallet Princess reminds me of… I can’t remember the name of the movie, but it’s Sherlock Holmes, where Watson actually is the detective and solves all the mysteries, but Sherlock gets all the credit, and then he quits and tries to go his own way. But the police don’t trust him because he’s not Sherlock, he’s the other guy, and so the police don’t listen to him, and so he has to get back together with Sherlock.

(It was Without a Clue)

[Thomas]
It reminds me of Big Eyes.

[Shep]
What’s Big Eyes?

[Emily]
I don’t know if I’m familiar with that one.

[Shep]
You talked about this before.

[Thomas]
Yeah. The painter who draws the paintings of people with big eyes was this guy who was, like, super famous.

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Turns out his wife was the one who actually did all the paintings, and he took all the credit.

[Emily]
Almost like a Cyrano de Bergerac style story, but instead of words, it’s shipping pallets and-

[Shep]
“Instead of words, it’s shipping pallets.” That’s our tagline. It’s The Truth About Cats and Dogs.

[Emily and Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Anything we like?

[Shep]
It’s tough because I thought that these would all be terrible because mine was terrible, but you guys came up with some really good ones. I really like the forts in the woods. I could see it as being played straight and being super dramatic, except it’s little kids playing in the woods, but they start living soldiery like, taking on the persona.

[Emily]
Like Lord of-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Shep and Emily]
Lord of the Flies.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I’m also curious about the magically linked pallets, because-

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s a good one.

[Shep]
Is it only these specific two? Could you entangle pallets? Is that how it’s manufactured? Like, what happens if you put one of these pallets on top of another one of these pallets? What happens if you put the pair of this pallet on the other in that pair? Does it appear on itself? But then what’s on top of that? It’s another pallet. It’s pallets all the way up. This is how you make the tallest tower of pallets. To get the biggest bonfire, you only need two. But they have to be entangled-

[Thomas]
If they’re the right two.

[Shep]
The right two, yes.

[Thomas]
My thinking was that they were crafted from wood, from, like, Hexxus-style tree, so that the wood itself is imbued with magical property. Therefore, only a certain number of these pallets exist.

[Shep]
I see.

[Thomas]
Two makes it really easy.

[Shep]
That’s also very limited.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I mean, yes, you can teleport to the other side of the planet, but only from one location and only to one location.

[Thomas]
I had thought about a scientific explanation, and quantum entanglement was kind of along the lines that I was thinking, so yeah, perhaps there’s a method.

[Shep]
“Scientific-“

[Thomas]
Right. Well, yes.

[Shep]
“Explanation.”

[Thomas]
In air quotes, definitely-

[Shep]
Hollywood science.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Movie science.

[Emily]
Science I can understand. So the kids fighting in the woods and the shipping pallet fort just because I originally had a very similar thought, and then that’s why I turned it into the person kidnapping him. It reminded me of The War with Elijah Wood and Kevin Costner, and it has a very similar feel. They build a fort in the woods, and then some, like, bullies or something come and fight him. But it also has, like, a big allegory to Vietnam, and it deals with PTSD and things.

[Thomas]
All right, which story are we picking?

[Emily]
Yeah. Pick one. You two pick.

[Shep]
So are we not doing the fort fight because it’s too similar to other movies?

[Emily]
No, we can still do it. I just brought it up.

[Shep]
But the teleporter one is too similar to Primer?

[Emily]
I think we’ve established long ago that all movies have already been made.

[Thomas]
Yeah. What is the story for the fort one?

[Shep]
Wasn’t that your job?

[Emily]
You made the pitch.

[Thomas]
Well, beyond what I have there, is there anything else? Like, do they all start out as friends and then there’s slowly this division that happens as they get absorbed into other forts?

[Shep]
Yeah, I could see that.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It starts sort of innocently. Each little group is building their own little fort, and one of them had a bigger plan, like, “We could do it like this.” And they designed it. But they are missing one shipping pallet. They have everything but one. They miscounted just a little bit. He’s off by one, and he’s like, “Okay, let’s just go take one of theirs.” And that’s how it starts. Not going to take the whole fort. We’re just going to take one pallet. And they do, but then one pallet is missing. So they go, “Oh, that’s not okay.” And they go and they like, take three pallets until one of those two forts is completely consumed by the other. And the losers go off to one of the other forts and go, “Oh, so and so is attacking forts. Let’s band together.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Let’s disassemble two of these forts and put them together into one big fort.”

[Emily]
Is the feel light hearted and funny, or we making it start out light hearted and funny and then kind of get serious, and it’s like-

[Shep]
I mean, for me, it would be funny how serious the kids are taking it and how serious it’s presented.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Except it’s not serious at all. Again, they’re just children.

[Emily]
Because they’re kids. Yeah.

[Shep]
I don’t really like the forest fire ending, because then that’s very serious. That’s Lord of the Flies, that’s Piggy dying, where it’s like, oh, it’s not a game. This is too far. Unless that’s the allegory.

[Thomas]
It’s an allegory for politics in America.

[Shep]
Yeah. Anywhere.

[Thomas]
Well.

[Emily]
But America right now.

[Thomas]
So one of the forts’ colors is red, and one of the forts’ colors is blue.

[Shep]
Not at first. Not at first.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They do that later to differentiate themselves. Then they start wearing armbands.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Where are the parents during all of this? Is this just, like, in the course of a day, a couple of days? Do they go home at night? Are their parents at all concerned about them?

[Shep]
I mean, I’m picturing because to me, it’s a comedy that once the forts get big enough, there’s like a bunk area, and all the soldiers are bunking down for the night, and one of them is playing harmonica, and they have a little fire going because they’re making beans or whatever.

[Emily]
“What are you going to do when the school year starts, Timmy?”

[Shep]
Right. “You think we’re going to make it till the school year starts? You’re dreaming.”

[Emily]
“I’m going to find Marissa and I’m going to tell her, ‘I like you.’ I’m going to give her a Ring Pop.”

[Shep]
“Marissa’s got cooties.”

[Thomas]
They definitely have to go home at one point. Like, everybody goes home. And when they all come back, one of the forts has been absorbed, and they realize, “Oh, we can’t go home anymore.” Maybe it’s the last one. Okay. There’s three forts, and then one of them gets absorbed into the other one. And everyone’s like, “Uh oh.”

[Shep]
Maybe they were always going home at the end of every day.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Except for one time, a couple of kids stay from the biggest.

[Thomas]
Or they come back after dinner or something. And I could see this happening during the summer so that they have nothing to do all day and good weather.

[Shep]
Right. And it’s pre-cell phones.

[Thomas]
Right. Oh, yeah. This is totally like the 70s or 80s.

[Shep]
The golden years.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Back when kids were allowed to run wild and build dangerous buildings out of rickety wood they found behind a grocery store.

[Shep]
And wage wars all summer long, as was tradition at the time.

[Thomas]
So when they’re waging war, are they throwing rocks and stuff at each other? What does war look like?

[Shep]
I don’t want to do something where someone in real life could actually be harmed.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Water balloons. They start with water balloons.

[Thomas]
What’s that line from Sleepaway Camp? “You can take somebody’s eye out with those things.”

[Shep]
So water balloons is a great suggestion because it’s summer and it could have started as that innocent sort of water balloon fight. I don’t think it escalates to rocks. I think it stays water balloons the whole time until someone has, like, a water weenie or something they could aim and spray.

[Emily]
Yeah. If it starts out with a bunch of different forts, they could start out as, “This will be a great water balloon war. We’ll all build our own forts and capture the flag-style.” Right?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And then do they eventually switch to mud or something?

[Shep]
No, I don’t think that it escalates. I think that they just take it very seriously. It’s all water all the time.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
That’s why it’s limited to the woods, because close to the border, there are houses with hoses. You can’t make it through the hoses. “No one’s going to make it through the hoses.”

[Emily]
There should be a little stream. Literally a little stream. And they’re kind of fighting for that territory.

[Thomas and Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It goes right down the middle.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s what ends up being the dividing line, just because that’s how it works.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
What does the winning look like? Is there a winner? Do they just call truce? Do they just go back to school if not going to do, like, the whole escalating to a forest fire thing?

[Thomas]
Yeah. What is the resolution?

[Shep]
So about the teleporter ones.

[Thomas]
One of the things that could be creating difficulty or tension is running low on ammo. So eventually they run out of water balloons.

[Emily]
Yeah. You’d only have a finite amount of water balloons without having to return to the houses, but you can’t make it through the hoses to get back to the houses, and if you leave, they’re going to steal your pallets.

[Shep]
Right. You send the smallest kids to sneak out to try and buy more water balloons, but eventually the store is going to run out as well, or you’re going to run out of allowance money.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
They’re not doing any chores at this point.

[Shep]
Right. What kind of climax do you want?

[Thomas]
What happens to the forts at the end?

[Shep]
Their moms turn them into arts and crafts.

[Emily]
Okay. It’s the 70s. This is the era of urban sprawl. They’re going to have a big battle a couple of weeks before school starts, and they’re bunking in and they’re standing, and then maybe even before one side wins or the other, like, some developers come back and are like, “Hey, kids, got to clear this shit out of here. We’re going to start plowing trees,” because they’re going to start a new subdivision back there.

[Thomas]
Shep you’re making a face.

[Shep]
I’m making a face because I want a big triumphant ending. And also, I also wanted them to take it seriously all the way to the end, like, as if it were a war. So it’s a war movie where it’s just kids, but they’re acting like adults.

[Thomas]
So we get that Platoon scene where the kid drops to his knees and he’s crying to the sky and he’s just being pummeled with water balloons.

[Shep]
Yes. Now Emily is making a face.

[Emily]
I’m just trying to picture the ending of, like, whose side are we on, as the audience? We have to pick a side. One side has to be good then, if we’re going to have a-

[Thomas]
Oh. Maybe the mid-second act turning point is the older kids find out about it and they come and take over one of the forts. So now it’s a battle between the older kids and the formerly two antagonistic teams of the younger kids.

[Shep]
See, I don’t know, because then it’s no longer just the kids taking it seriously. To me, that’s the humor of it, is small children acting like adults. If you have older kids taking over, then that breaks that joke for me. Now, if the younger kids hired an older kid or two to work for them as, like, their super soldiers, it’s keeping in the theme of ‘This is a war. These are normal soldiers, except that’s why they’re a head taller than the other soldiers.’ We know it’s because they’re two years older. But in the universe, in these kids’ imagination, these are the German Super soldiers.

[Thomas]
Is there one group that creates like, a super water balloon slingshot thing?

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
I like that. Yeah.

[Shep]
There’s a constant escalation of weapons technology as the summer progresses.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So I imagine, like, a group of kids going on patrol through the woods, and then you just hear that whistling of something flying through the air. Then one of them gets taken out and they’re like, “Where did that come from?” This is where you have that platoon scene where he’s like “Ahh!”and then you have a scout reporting to the general, “Sir, there’s news from one of the patrols. The enemy has this long-range weapon.”

[Emily]
“How are we going to combat that? The boys in Development have-“

[Shep]
Right. And they have, here’s a crayon drawing of a-

[Thomas]
But I think Emily’s point still stands of, like, who are we rooting for? What is that actual ending? Because the implication then is that one of these teams is going to win.

[Shep]
Right. You’re right. We need a good guys and a bad guys. So who do we want to make the good guys and who do we want to make the bad guys? Like, the first guy that steals the pallet, he’s the bad guy. It starts with just taking one shipping pallet, but then when he gets retaliated against and they take three of his then he takes their whole fort, and then he’s just the villain. So he’s the villain. His guys are his henchmen.

[Thomas]
How do they agree on water balloons in the first place? Or was that always the plan? “Hey, we can each build forts and we can have water balloons.” Maybe it starts off where there’s- I imagine there being a narrator. I may be strongly influenced by The Wonder Years.

[Shep]
Or a Ken Burns documentary.

[Emily]
I was thinking at the very end, you see them slow motion pummeling each other, and “They fought valiantly that day, but-“

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Get that Glory ending.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So he talks about how during the winter, they would build their own mini forts and have these epic snowball fights, but they never had anything like that during the summer because in the winter, there’s snow. You can just build a fort out of snow. It’s everywhere in the summer, what do you do? Except for that one summer that we found all those shipping pallets. How old are these kids, by the way?

[Shep]
Real small.

[Emily]
Eight.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
Eight or younger. Some of the smaller kids are really good scouts, and they’re like, four years old.

[Emily]
They send one and they’re like, “Did you see their plans?” “I can’t read.”

[Thomas]
The mean kid, the bad guy. Is he older? Because he’s, like, failed a grade? He’s held back a year.

[Shep]
Is he older? I thought he was the same age as the main good guy.

[Emily]
Can we just establish he’s always been sort of a bully?

[Shep]
See, in my mind, it was a descent into evil.

[Emily]
They were friends first.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
They were friends first, and he wasn’t always a bully, and he wasn’t always a bad guy, and he didn’t intend for it to become a war. He just wanted one more pallet. That’s it. Just one more. But they wouldn’t let me have it. I had this plan. We were all supposed to get ten pallets, and I only got nine, so I was owed one more pallet.

[Thomas]
That feels quasi-justifiable.

[Shep]
Well, at the beginning, but again, he escalates and escalates and escalates until he’s the villain and the other guy is the good guy. What was the movie that’s little kids as gangsters? Bugsy Malone. That’s what I was picturing for this. Little kids as adults. Not at first, but as it goes on.

[Thomas]
I think that can be funny. But then I don’t believe that they can build forts.

[Shep]
Right. That’s the joke. They can’t. They’re little kids. So their first forts are very primitive. They’re just, like, leaned together. They’re not really assembled. And then past the midpoint when it’s like a fully built fort and everyone’s wearing uniforms, and it’s like, what?

[Emily]
Where did all of this come from?

[Shep]
How much of it is real and how much of it is just the kids descending into their imagination as the summer goes on? So at the end, after the big final battle, the two guys face off, and then one wins as the camera stops being all shaky cam, because it was a battle and it’s very primitive forts again, and they dust themselves off and, like “Good battle,” shake hands.

[Thomas]
So I think this does take place over the course of one day.

[Shep]
Well, you got to have a night in there. You got to have someone writing a letter by candlelight or something. “Dear Susie…”

[Thomas]
That’s good. Let’s all take a moment to write home to our loved ones. And when we come back, we’ll finish our shipping pallet movie.

[Break]

[Thomas]
We’re back, and I want to try to get a handle on the story beats and timeline for our movie.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, it takes place over one weekend, Friday, Saturday, resolution on Sunday.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
This gives us our three acts in the three act play. So each night, that’s when you have that shift to increasing realism. When the sun comes up again, the forts are more elaborate, more advanced, and the kids are taking the war more seriously until that final battle on Sunday evening.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So Friday night or Friday day, they build the forts. One of the kids steals a pallet, the other kids steal three back. And then maybe this is when they go home for dinner, and one of the kids runs up to the good guy general and says, “Boss, so and so’s fort disappeared.” And then they go back out. Or maybe that’s not that day. That’s the next morning.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. So and so’s fort disappeared. They go out and they discover this fort is completely gone. And the bad guy general’s fort, is twice as big. He not only came back for the three pallets that were stolen, but all the pallets in that fort. But why would the good guy… no, the good guy wouldn’t attack any other forts, at least not on his side of the stream. They would have to decide to join forces.

[Emily]
So we start out with four forts, and-

[Shep]
Only four? How many kids are there?

[Emily]
I don’t know, that seems like a lot of kids if there’s more than four forts. And they have ten pallets each, that’s 40 pallets. Say there’s eight kids on each. 16 kids. 16 to 20 kids.

[Shep]
Yeah, but some of them are going to get picked off.

[Thomas]
We also don’t need to know all the kids.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah. Okay.

[Thomas]
There could be the eight main kids and then a couple dozen background kids.

[Emily]
So there’s the stream.

[Shep]
Okay. Yes.

[Emily]
And there’s two on one side, three on the other. The guy thinks that-

[Shep]
Let’s not do north and south. Let’s do east and west.

[Emily]
Yeah. So on the east side, the bad guys in the west.

[Shep]
The cowboys, the cowboys in the west-

[Emily]
Yeah. In the west, there’s two forts there. He’s short of a pallet, and he goes and steals from him the one that he thinks has the extra one on the other side of the-

[Thomas]
East side.

[Emily]
On the east side. And they go and take the three.

[Shep]
So on the east side, they’re not the ones that lose their fort first.

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
Well, yes, but involuntarily the two on the west side voluntarily merge.

[Emily]
Right. They voluntarily merge together. They form an axis.

[Shep]
Okay, but that’s, the first fort that goes away is one of the western forts.

[Thomas and Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yes, yes.

[Shep]
So immediately, there’s only one fort on the west, and then the allies on the east have three forts.

[Emily]
Yeah. And then when they go home for the night and come back, maybe they do something in the interim to that big fort or something. And so that when they go home for the night and they come back the next morning. One of the three on the east side has been-

[Shep]
Okay. But why would they do something to the big fort on the west that hasn’t done anything to them?

[Emily]
This is true.

[Thomas]
Does all of this fort merging over complicate the story?

[Emily]
It might.

[Thomas]
Is this just something where we want to say they built two forts to have a water balloon fight?

[Shep]
No, I think that it’s fine. I think you need that first act before they’re all united. I think, in fact, if the forts on the east, the good guy general is like, “Hey, we should join forces. Their fort is bigger than any of our forts, but combined, we would have more.” And one of the other forts agrees, and one of them disagrees and remains independent, and that’s the one that gets attacked first and loses because it’s the smallest.

[Emily]
Okay, that works for me.

[Shep]
So now you have two forts.

[Thomas]
So this fort that gets attacked, they lose their supplies, but the manpower goes to the good guy fort because they came and they’re like, “You were right, we were wrong. We should have merged with you, but we’re here now to help with the battle.”

[Shep]
Well, I think they don’t just show up. I think that you have your first battle here. You have one of the scouts from that fort run to the United Fort and say, “We’re under attack.”

[Emily]
“We’ve changed our mind.”

[Shep]
“Please come and help us.” Yeah. And so they rush to defend the fort, but when they get there, it’s already collapsed and-

[Thomas]
Half the supplies are being dragged away.

[Shep]
Half the supplies are being dragged away, but they can recover the other half.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So now you have two big forts that are the same size.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
And this is the end of the second day?

[Emily]
Yes. That would be the end of the second day, where you now have the two in a standoff.

[Thomas]
Well, I think that would be the middle of the second day.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
So they’re now two big things, and they’re in a stalemate at that time? Or are they going into the woods to get more supplies? And that’s when they start realizing that the one side has more for advanced weaponry.

[Shep]
I don’t think they’re going in to get more supplies. I think they’re just patrolling around to make sure that they’re not going to be attacked.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
And then they are attacked, but it’s long range and the enemy has more advanced weaponry. I guess this is still the day, the second day.

[Emily]
Still second day. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Because I think that’s intensifying it so that overnight there can be that quiet time.

[Thomas]
Oh, what if that- okay, so the first big battle that we were just talking about, it doesn’t happen in the middle or end of the second day. It happens the morning of the second day. And-

[Shep]
Yeah, because that was the original plan, is that one of the forts would be dismantled and gone when they came back.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It doesn’t have to be dismantled and gone while they’re away. It could be during a battle.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So now we’ve got the two big forts, and that stalemate has already begun by, like, mid to late morning. And so it’s not people who are patrolling the forest. It’s people who’ve gone to go get lunch and bring it back.

[Shep]
It’s a supply train.

[Thomas]
It’s the supply-

[Shep]
It’s a supply run.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. And so they come back, and now you have that mid second act turning point that escalation that “Oh, my gosh. Their weapons are advanced.” And so they have to develop something of their own, and it gives them somewhere to go. Do they develop their own advanced weapon system?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’ve got to have some… something some stationary defense.

[Thomas]
Right. Maybe they build, like, a janky seesaw type of thing and make it into a catapult? I mean, we can use that little kid movie magic. Right? Jump on one end and the balloons go flying.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. Hook.

[Thomas]
Yes, exactly.

[Emily]
Yeah. And they land perfectly on-

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Shep]
Perfectly spread out.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
The difference between the two weapons. So the one weapon is a slingshot, and it has distance and precision, but theirs is a scatter shot, so they can put in a bunch of water balloons, and it spreads out over an area so it’s less accurate but more coverage.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Which plays to their strength because they have three teams worth of people, so they have three sets of water balloons, whereas the other side only has two sets. They have fewer resources. That’s why they’re using theirs with precision.

[Thomas]
There’s got to be a scene where one of them is about to trip a trip wire.

[Emily]
And like a bucket is going to fall over.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. Yes.

[Thomas]
That’s great.

[Shep]
You could have this during the afternoon patrol. So the first one wasn’t a patrol. That was just a supply run. This is an afternoon patrol, and one of the guys on patrol is a veteran.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
A veteran from earlier. And he’s the one that spots the tripwire. Maybe one of the kids is joining. He missed yesterday, and he wants to take part.

[Thomas]
Word has spread, the sizes of the teams-

[Shep]
Right! They’re recruiting. Yes.

[Thomas]
Yes. Right.

[Shep]
This is why you don’t have to keep track of how many kids there are, because there’s replacement.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Just like war.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Just like war. This works out great. “‘This works out great,’ Shep says about War.”

[Thomas]
Put it on a T-shirt.

[Shep]
Put it on a t-shirt. All right.

[Thomas]
Too soon?

[Shep]
So, yeah. You have that veteran that spots the trip wire to an obvious trap. Like, the bucket was clearly visible, but because of, the camera’s too close. Then they pan out. Is it a bucket of water or a bucket of water balloons?

[Thomas]
Well, I guess that we should figure out, is the weapon water or is the weapon water balloons only?

[Shep]
Got to be water. That gives you more-

[Emily]
Yeah. I think it should be water, because then you can have the bucket and it’s just a different form of that weapon.

[Thomas]
Right. I know we had talked about the late 70s, early 80s, but what about the early 90s? Because then we can get Super Soakers involved. In fact, if we made it the very early 90s, there could be this fabled new weapon.

[Shep]
That’s the escalation for day three?

[Thomas]
Right. Some kid shows up with his brand-new Super Soaker. No one has seen a water gun like this before.

[Shep]
Oh, it’s an arms dealer.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s under a tarp or whatever.

[Thomas]
So do the Super Soakers show up early on day three?

[Shep]
Yes, that’s the escalation on day three.

[Thomas]
Is this a surprise? Like, do we see an arms dealer or Steve just shows up with his new water gun? Like, there’s a rumor that the other team has some huge weapon. Like, “No, that’s just what they want us to think.” “It’s a water gun that shoots over 25ft.” Like, “25ft? Come on, get out of here. No water gun can do that.” “No, I heard about it. Someone at a different school has one.”

[Shep]
Do these kids have regular water pistols?

[Thomas]
They must. Yeah.

[Emily]
They would at this point, they have water balloons, water pistols. We’re just going to use water as a weapon then. Yeah. They have all the various-

[Thomas]
They’ve got that thing where you suck up the water into the tube, and then it’s like a cannon.

[Shep]
Water weenie.

[Thomas]
Is that what it’s called?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
Oh, no, the water weenie, you inflate it from, like, a hose, pressurized water.

[Thomas]
Well, it’s a similar premise, though. It’s like a giant syringe.

[Emily]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Shep]
Because those are, like, single shot, so if they got a patrol near the stream so they can reload, do they say “Reloading! Cover me,”?

[Emily]
Why not?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I definitely love the idea of a shot, like, real low on the ground, and there’s this kid all in fatigues, and he comes, like, tumbling down on the ground, and he’s getting real low, and he’s got a water gun in his hand, and he’s aiming over a log, and he’s like, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt. It’s like this tiny little stream of water. It’s going, like 3ft maybe.

[Shep]
That’s your Glory ending. That’s the kid from Glory.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The other guys that he’s going up against, they’re the ones with Super Soakers So. Yeah, I think you’re right. The Super Soakers show up on the bad guy’s team, and then you have the arms dealer to get Super Soakers on the good guy’s team because they’ve got to maintain.

[Emily]
So do we see kids leaving because they’ve scraped their knee or hurt their elbow or something? Like they’ve injured themselves. They’ve lost an arm, lost a foot, that kind of thing.

[Shep]
No, they leave when they get wet because they’re dead.

[Emily]
Okay. Do we have it to where it’s the last two generals are the last two men standing, or do they just interact while the war continues around them at the end?

[Shep]
Well, is it capture the flag or not?

[Thomas]
I assumed it was deathmatch.

[Shep]
Okay, so there isn’t a separate goal in the forts?

[Thomas]
There could be. I mean, we’ve never established it, but.

[Emily]
I think it might have started out that way. I think that was the original intent of it, and then it developed into this last man standing chaos.

[Shep]
So that could be the resolution where one of them gets the I guess that would be a bad guy winning, then, because they’re attacking the good guy fort, he gets the flags.

[Thomas]
So if the good guys do a big Glory push and attack the bad guy fort, the general the good guy general can get his hand on the flag, but he’s totally hit in the back with a water balloon by the bad guy general. So he’s dead. He’s out. It doesn’t matter that you’ve got your hand on the flag. You still have to get it back to your side, and everyone on your team is dead. You lose.

[Emily]
We could have the bad guy win. I mean, they are just kids, and it’s just pretend, and there is no real bad guy. That way we don’t really have to-

[Thomas]
Yeah. Do we make the bad guy not so bad at the end? He justifies his actions in a way that the audience is like, “Yeah.”

[Shep]
You got to have a monologue at the end when he faces off against the good guy general while the battle is raging off screen.

[Emily]
He’s got the flag in his hand and he’s trying to get out of the room, and the bad guy has caught him and has the balloon or the gun on him, and he’s like, “You know I can’t let you go.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that. “You know I can’t let you leave.” Yeah. So he has a Super Soaker and the flag, and the bad guy general has a water balloon.

[Shep]
The good guy general is the one with the Super Soaker?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Because they bought it off the arms dealer.

[Shep]
Right. Why doesn’t the bad guy general also have a Super Soaker?

[Thomas]
I don’t know. That’s the way we’ve arranged it. Let the writers figure that out.

[Shep]
Okay. Or he did, but it’s out of ammo.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
It’s empty and he can’t get to the stream.

[Thomas]
Okay. So the scene starts where the general, the good guy general grabs the flag, turns around, bad guy general’s in the doorway with the Super Soaker. He’s like, “I can’t let you leave.” Pulls the trigger, and a tiny little stream comes out. Good guy general is like, “Oh, it looks like you’re out of ammo.” Bad guy general holds up a water balloon. “Not so fast.”

[Emily]
And the good guy hasn’t pumped up his Super Soaker yet, so he can’t just immediately fire.

[Thomas]
Yeah. They try to squirt each other, but then he’s in trouble, too.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Like, if they’re in a room.

[Emily]
Yeah. That’s why it’s like “You have the Super Soaker but you got to pump it. Can you pump it before this water balloon hits you?”

[Shep]
Why wouldn’t he just throw it immediately then?

[Emily]
Because he’s got a monologue it. Are they both out and they both have water balloons?

[Thomas]
Oh, they’re fighting by the stream. They’re trying to push each other down into the water.

[Shep]
Because if you fall into the water, you’re dead, because water is the water is death.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Water is death. Yeah.

[Shep]
So one of them gets pushed, but there’s, like, a little rock in the middle, so he steps on the rock, and-

[Thomas]
He uses the end of the flagpole to push himself back up out of the- Essentially, regardless of how it happens. That’s the ending, though, right? Like, that the bad guy general monologues to the good guy general, and then does the good guy general die, or do they do all the good guys get wiped out? Do they all get called home for dinner, and that just sort of ends the war, which feels incredibly unsatisfying.

[Shep]
Yes, that would be-

[Emily]
What if the good guy general dies, but the battle is still going on and he still hasn’t you know, they still have to I don’t know. I think if there’s some way that they could both end up dead-

[Shep]
Or the good guy loses, the good guy dies, but the good team wins.

[Emily]
Wins. Yeah. Because they have more numbers,

[Shep]
So how could he fake having the flags,

[Emily]
Handkerchiefs that are the same color?

[Shep]
But then how would they not be the flag? So that’s the thing. The good guy knew the bad general would come after him specifically, so he gave the actual flags to his little brother, who’s four, who’s then running back to the east fort, and the good guy general leads the bad guy general to the stream, where they can monologue at each other.

[Emily]
Could it be as simple as he’s got a t-shirt in his back pocket that looks like the flag, is like the same color as the flag, and that’s what, he’s the diversion.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I was thinking maybe it’s not even a solid color, but it could be that their team is the Seattle Seahawks team, and so they have a Seattle Seahawks flag. And so he just has a jersey, like you said, in his pocket. And the bad guy general sees something that he thinks is the flag. It looks like the flag, but no.

[Emily]
So as the good guy is slowly dying, he points to his fort and they’re raising the flag.

[Thomas]
Yeah. The bad guy general slowly comes over to lord it over him, and the good guy general pulls it out of his pocket, holds it up, and the bad guy general realizes, “Wait, this isn’t the flag.” And the good guy general just has a big smile on his face as he, quote unquote, “dies”. Then we look over and see the flag heading back into the good guy base. Can they see each other from the two forts?

[Shep]
I don’t think so. I think it’d be far enough away, because if you could see the other fort, then you can see everything that they’re doing and whoever’s leaving, and that makes it too easy. It’s got to be far enough away that you can’t know where the enemy is. Although that could be an aspect of their imagination as it goes on.

[Thomas]
Right. That’s what I was just going to say. In reality, they can see each other.

[Shep]
In reality, they’re really close.

[Emily]
And the stream is literally like a trickle.

[Shep and Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
A creek, not a river. Is that a satisfying ending?

[Thomas]
Yeah. What’s the interpersonal resolution between all the kids?

[Shep]
They weren’t really fighting fighting. They’re not mad at each other. They’re falling into their roles. So as soon as one team wins and the game is over, that’s got to be it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They go back to being friends because they were never really not friends.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I mean, the good general and the bad general have to shake hands at the end because that was a great game of water balloons.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Maybe the bad guy general can say something like, “Wow, that’s the best game of water balloons we’ve ever had.” And the good guy general is like, “Yeah, I agree.”

[Shep]
I mean, were they playing water balloons frequently? I thought this was a one off. I thought this wasn’t a thing that they had done before. I thought they were doing this because of their snowball fights, so they got to talk about maybe. “Okay, but come winter…”

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good. So maybe he says, “That’s the best battle we’ve ever had.” And he’s like, “Oh, I’m going to get you in the winter.” And this is the last weekend of the summer, so it’s not like there is a next weekend.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
They have to go back to school.

[Thomas]
So then does the film end with their parents calling them home for dinner?

[Emily]
Sure.

[Shep]
I mean, it could be they’re heading home anyway. The battle is over.

[Thomas]
All right. Should we review our story and make sure we have a real story or a complete story?

[Emily]
I think we have a complete story.

[Shep]
Okay, so it opens with them talking about how they wish they could have their snowball fights that they like to do in winter, but they can’t because it’s summer and they’re bored. It’s the end of summer.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’ve done all the fun things they can do, and they’re out of ideas. They don’t want to play baseball again. They don’t want to go fishing again. What they want to do is have a snowball fight. And lo and behold, the store or whatever has a sale on water balloons or something. Something is like, “Hey, why don’t we just have a water balloon fight?” How do they get the shipping pallets? Where did that-

[Thomas]
Well, the original idea is that the main kid, who I imagine being the Good Guy General, he sees them. Perhaps there’s a new building has been built, and so there’s just a bunch of leftover shipping pallets as part of the debris from the construction process.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And so there’s a sign, Free Shipping Pallets.

[Shep]
So that’s the spark. Free Shipping Pallets. “There’s enough here for us to build forts. We’ll break up into teams. Every team grab a bunch of shipping pallets.” Maybe this is why they don’t have an even amount, because they count them, but then each team is responsible for taking them from the pile. That’s why who turns out to be the Bad Guy General goes back to the pile to get his last shipping pallet and there isn’t any left.

[Thomas]
Right. Just some other person, some dad in the neighborhood.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
I like that. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Some crafty mom.

[Emily]
Crafty mom.

[Shep]
Right. So he steals one from a nearby fort, and do they steal it back?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I forgot how this part changed.

[Emily]
They steal from a nearby fort, and then the kids come and steal three from them, but they steal three from the other fort, not the original.

[Shep]
Why would they steal it from- that’s the part I don’t understand. Because the other fort, if they’re stealing from the other side of the river, the other fort’s got to be further away than the one that actually stole from them.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
I mean, they could have stolen from just both of the forts on the other side of the river, the stream.

[Emily]
Let’s do that.

[Shep]
So let’s say this is the fort that stays independent, because at that point, they have the largest fort on the east side. So they’re just like “We’re going to be- we’re going to be our own thing. If we can’t be in charge, then we’ll be in charge of ourselves.” That’s the end of the first day. Yes?

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Okay. The beginning of Saturday, the bad guys have joined their forts together.

[Thomas]
Right. The two west side forts have joined together into one large fort, right?

[Shep]
Yes. Because they both were stolen from.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
So now they’re united against the east forts.

[Thomas]
So first, the east side forts see this and realize they need to join forces. So Good Guy General convinces one of the forts to join and goes to convince the one that was robbed from, and they refuse because they say, “No, we’re fine.”

[Shep]
Yeah. “We’re stronger than ever.”

[Thomas]
Right. So that happens. And then either while they’re merging the two east side forts, or shortly after they’ve done that, a runner from the independent fort comes to the east fort and is like, “Hey, I need your help. We’re under attack.” So they go and by the time they get back, it’s what, just a massacre?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
The fort’s already half disassembled, so they’re just like, “Grab what you can, bring it back.” And so now we have two big forts. An east fort where the good guys are and a west fort where the bad guys are. And that’s the beginning of the second act. That’s early on Saturday.

[Shep]
So at lunch on Saturday, you have the supply run guys, and they are the ones that are attacked from the long range weapons.

[Thomas]
By the west side fort.

[Shep]
By the west side fort. So that’s the escalation in warfare technology.

[Thomas]
And in response, the east side fort builds a catapult. It is less accurate, but has greater spread, more ammo being put down range.

[Shep]
Right. This prevents the west side soldiers from just running over and attacking them.

[Thomas]
Right. Meanwhile, more kids are showing up because word has spread.

[Shep]
Right. And so a later patrol on the same day has a veteran kid leading some of the newbie kids who points out that the newbie kid was about to run into a tripwire that led to a bucket.

[Thomas]
I love that gag.

[Emily]
So funny.

[Thomas]
And we’re seeing progressively more realistic depictions of war. It’s all still water balloons, but like you said, they’re all in uniform. Their forts now can’t see each other anymore. They’re built up.

[Emily]
They have multiple rooms.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Are they in uniforms yet, or are they all just wearing the same color?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Like, “Hey, let’s all wear green or brown or whatever.”

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. No, I think that’s good.

[Emily]
That works.

[Shep]
And then on the third day, they’re in actual uniforms.

[Thomas]
Right. In like, full on forts, like military bases.

[Shep]
So when does the Super Soaker come in? Does that come in at the beginning of Sunday or the end of Saturday?

[Emily]
Beginning of Sunday.

[Shep]
Okay. Oh, this was where the kid was crawling on the ground and keeping really low, but he’s got just a water pistol and doesn’t squirt very hard, and he’s the one that gets taken out by the Super Soaker.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And this is, again, another escalation. So then you have the scene with the good guys buying Super Soaker from the arms dealer.

[Thomas]
And then eventually it results in an all-out war. Now, were we going to have capture the flag element to all of this? Oh, maybe early on, once the two big forts are created, there’s a parlay at the stream, and they agree to each get a flag and raise it.

[Shep]
Now, I’d say that you start with capture the flag at the beginning so that you have time for the audience to forget that that’s a thing. And that’s why at the end, when he’s trying to win by capture the flag, it’s like, “Oh, that’s right, I forgot that’s what this game was.”

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Shep]
Because it’s been a war for 60 minutes.

[Thomas]
Okay. So they do an all-out assault the east side guys assault the west side fort.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
The generals have their stand off because the good guy general tricks the bad guy general.

[Shep]
Right. He appears to have the flag. The good guy general is killed, but it is revealed that he didn’t have the flag, and he had, in fact, given it to one of his soldiers, who has taken it back to his base. And the east fort wins.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And the war ends, and everyone goes home for dinner.

[Thomas]
The end.

[Shep]
The end.

[Thomas]
All right. Well, I think we have it all.

[Shep]
I think it works as a proof that we could make a story out of anything, including a lump of wood.

[Thomas]
Yeah, seriously.

[Emily]
That’s the point of the show.

[Shep]
That’s the point of the show.

[Emily]
We can make a story out of anything.

[Thomas]
Well, it may not be the best movie ever created, but it’s a movie about a shipping pallet, and that’s something, right?

[Emily]
I think twelve-year-old me would have thought it was a lot of fun and would have greatly enjoyed it.

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Do you ship yourself with the story, or should we just ship out? 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 We’re still pretty early into our second year of Almost Plausible, and we’re hoping to get some feedback from you. What can we do better? What would make the episodes more entertaining for you? There’s no time like the present for us to change for the better, so let us know what you think. Remember, you can always get in touch with us at AlmostPlausible.com

[Shep]
And if you have an idea for something that you could not possibly make a story out of, we appreciate a challenge. So leave us a suggestion.

[Thomas]
At AlmostPlausible.com

[Shep]
At AlmostPlausible.com

[Thomas]
Emily, Shep, and I talked it over earlier, and we all agree that we ship you with another episode of Almost Possible.

[Outro music]

[Shep]
He keeps doing ship. I’ll tell you where you can ship those puns.

[Thomas]
I know it’s two of the same. I don’t know.

[Emily]
You need a ‘pallet’ cleanser.

[Thomas]
Yay.

[Shep]
No, I’m outnumbered. You joined forces.

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