Everything Is Not Fine
This is the FIRST EPISODE of This Is the Bad Place, a recap podcast of the NBC's Good Place TV show.
We’re covering the pilot episode, and talking about ethical conundrums, anxiety about the afterlife, religious trauma, and whether Ted Danson’s character is some form of Billy Graham.
DL mentions The Good Place: the Podcast.
They also mention How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur.
Also, Kesha’s song is actually just called Sleazy.
Leave a voicemail at (503) 912-4130 or send a voice memo to propheticimaginationstation@gmaill.com.
You can Join our patreon comamunity to support this podcast and gain access to two extra episodes each month, our facebook community, as well as the backlog of patreon-only episodes covering evangelical media, spiritual abuse, and more.
You can follow The Bad Place Podcast on Twitter and Instagram. You can follow Krispin on Instagram here and Danielle on Instagram here.
Head to our website for transcripts of the episodes.
TRANSCRIPT
Krispin_dialogue
[00:00:00]
DL: Welcome, everything is not fine. Welcome to The Bad Place: A Good Place recap podcast where a married couple talk about deconstructing from evangelical Christianity. We're gonna rewatch the good place, we're gonna get into what has caused us to leave Christianity and Evangelicalism over the past decade or so using the format of a recap podcast to do so, I'm DL Mayfield, and I am one half of the duo.
Krispin: And I am Krispin Mayfield. And yeah, we're gonna be talking about leaving evangelicalism. We're gonna talk about philosophy, we're gonna talk about ethics. We're gonna talk about trauma. We're gonna talk about psychology.
DL: And we're gonna talk about what was happening in the headlines and politically, [00:01:00] both when The Good Place First aired, which is was the fall of 2016 and, where we're at now.
Krispin: wait. What was going on in fall of 2016?
DL: I dunno. Was there something going on in the fall of 2016,
Krispin: of year. Perhaps I'm a therapist and you are…
DL: Oh no. Please tell me. What am I, Krispin?
Krispin: I think you are an overthinker, deep diver rabbit hole diver that is also trying to figure out like, is there good in the world?
DL: oh, I love that you kind of saved yourself, but I could tell you were very nervous as you started talking, as you should be.
I love how you get one word to describe yourself, and then people are like, okay, I get the vibes coming from that one. And then with me, they. The vibes are weird is what I will say. The vibes are all over the map [00:02:00] and that's accurate, but maybe we should take a second just to introduce ourselves a little bit more, so you wanna tell a little bit more about…
Krispin: Yeah, I'm a therapist. I wrote a book about attachment science and faith that came out about a little over a year ago. Since then, you have deconverted, like left Christianity. I don't know where I'm at. I grew up a missionary kid, but I'm still continuing to wrestle right now with like what my faith means to me.
DL: So I'm DL and I was somebody who was raised in evangelical Christianity. My parents were pastors. I was homeschooled, you know, very fundamentalist upbringing. I ended up becoming a missionary, sort of indoctrinated into, being a missionary and my life has had a lot of twists and turns. I met you at bible college, a fundamentalist bible college here in Portland, Oregon, and I've also been a writer and I've written four Christian spaces. Much of my writing I now think can be described as me trying to grapple with the ethical frameworks of evangelicalism because they're very confusing. Um, and then I just had my last. Book my third book, which was about a woman named Dorothy Day who actually will come up in the discussions of The Good Place and we'll get to that later. That book came out in November and right after it came out, I deconverted from Christianity, like fully deconverted, and went public with that. And so that's, you know, I'm coming into this discussion as an ex-Christian, ex-missionary, and a few other particulars that. Don't exactly matter, but they do is I was also diagnosed autistic in the past two years.
Neurodivergence is a part of our family culture and what we will be bringing into this discussion. So with that in mind, one of my special interests for much of my life has been [00:04:00] ethics. However, I never heard that word, nor did I ever study ethics in college. Remember, I was a fundamentalist. All I studied was what? Like what conservative white men from Texas thought about the Bible. So we're playing catch up here. You are also somebody who has had special interest in theology and ethics, but again, would you have said the ethics part?
Krispin: No. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it was, yeah, grappling with the teachings of Jesus. And like having that as an ethical framework, but then sort of asking like, how come White Evangelicalism in America like, looks nothing like these ethics of Jesus.
DL: Kind of like the polar opposite. So yeah, that's, so that's the framework. We're going into this and we'll be talking about that, but we're also just gonna be talking about the show and appreciating this show, the good place for what it is. So, do you wanna give any info before we dive in into the episode?
Krispin: Um, yeah, so this aired seven years [00:05:00] ago. If you watched it at the time, you know that there are some major spoilers. We have decided that we are going to take this episode by episode…
DL: we are gonna take it episode by episode in the world of that episode. However, we are going to be like paying careful attention to the show.
Therefore, some things that could be construed as spoilers. Might come up, we will have some, um, spoilersodes, where we do get to talk about some things that are later on in seasons and all of that that'll be for our Patreons and we'll have more information about that at the end of the show. I will say that The Good Place is kind of known at this point for having one of the biggest surprises at the end of season one in like television history at this point. So we we're gonna just take it episode by episode, so no worries in that regard. Okay. I think I said enough about [00:06:00] spoilers.
DL: Krispin, do you wanna read the little synopsis of episode one that I sent you? And the, and the title is “Everything is Fine.”
Krispin: yes. Now, who wrote this synopsis?
DL: It's from a variety of sources. Reddit, Wikipedia, and then me.
Krispin: Okay, I love it. You, you have your little touch
DL: Mm-hmm.
Krispin: Newly deceased, Eleanor Shellstrop is sent to the good place, but only by mistake. Michael is the head architect of the neighborhood. Eleanor finds herself in. She is determined to become a better person in her afterlife with help from Chidi and Janet.
Eleanor tries to prove to Chidi that she's worthy of his help. Will he, will he teach her how to be a good person so that she can stay in the good place and keep her secret from Michael?
DL: Okay, so this episode originally aired in September 19th, 2016. Again, that's a very interesting time for a show [00:07:00] about the ethics of morality to be airing, um, on primetime television. And, yeah, Krispin, you see I put in there, but how many people watch this first episode?
Krispin: Yeah, I would not have guessed 8 million.
DL: That's a lot of people.
I will say it drops off , after the second episode.
Krispin: I can see it.
DL: yeah. And so, but people were excited. I think part of the reason people were so excited is because this was a Mike shirt production. Mm-hmm. Um, what do you know about Mike Shur
Krispin: Um, he produced Parks and Rec and Brooklyn 99. Yeah, right.
DL: And one more show that ma basically. Completes a trifecta of like office types. Oh, I, oh, I spoiled it. You did Uhoh. Maybe I'm way worse at spoilers than I thought. I've already ruined one.
Krispin: The office, yes.
DL: Maybe I'm way worse at spoilers than I thought. I've already ruined one.
Krispin: I’m gonna have to edit out the accidental spoilers that you drop along the way. [00:08:00]
DL: Okay. So yeah, so Mike Shur is basically like, Comedy sitcom. You know, he's a veteran, right? He knows how to do this. And in all three of those shows, people tend to rewatch them over and over and over again as comfort shows, because not only are they funny, like there's real human connection, the characters are fascinating, well-developed, hilarious, you know, and you care about them and it, it evolves like community workplace.
Unlikely friendships, all, all those sorts of things. So
Krispin: I feel like this show is different. It feels different than those other
DL: Okay. Tell me, tell me why. Um,
Krispin: It feels more like an art project. There is still the heart there, but it is so wacky and it's so otherworldly,
DL: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That
Krispin: it doesn't feel the same as like The Office or like Parks and Rec, where it's like this is a mundane, [00:09:00] like familiar place and we're building something out of it.
It's like there's so much going on externally that you're also paying attention to that. I, I just think it feels very different and. Um, with those, with those other shows, it's like, oh, isn't this funny? And with this show, I feel like it's like throwing these ethical dilemmas in your face every single time that like shocks you in a way that Parks and Rec doesn't.
DL: way. Oh yeah. No, I think that's a great way of putting it and, and make Shur has said that sort of what, what they conceptualized as writers was that if this is the afterlife and anything can happen, then they need to make sure lots of weird stuff is happening. And that was sort of like, In the back of their minds for each episode, it was like, okay, we can literally do whatever we want here, so let's make sure we add some weird stuff.
And there's so much weird stuff, which is one of the reasons why this show is really fun to rewatch, because you probably miss stuff the first time around. If you're like me and you [00:10:00] maybe have something called Moral Scrupulosity or existential OCD, you kind of get fixated on the ethical dilemma being pres presented in each episode.
Um, but when you go back and rewatch, it's all this. Wacky stuff. Um, so I love that. And yeah, Mike Shur. I think what's really fascinating is he knew he wanted to do a show sort of around this ethics of how to be good and afterlife stuff, and he started researching religions and like religious frameworks of the afterlife.
He did that for like four months and then he was like, this, I can't, like I can't do this. And he switched to moral philosophy and ethics as a framework and he was like, this I can work with. And that's where he decided to kind of go with the direction of the show. And I'm glad
Krispin: And it is really different. Like just our upbringing was like, what is right and good is what the Bible says as interpreted by a religious leader. And ethics is like this, like open-ended question of like what is good? Like can we determine? And we were told like, you [00:11:00] cannot determine within yourself what is good.
So. I think that's why this was like really freeing to us in some ways is like asking that question.
DL: Before we move on to our next segment, is there anything you felt was missing from the little synopsis?
Krispin: What I think is most important about this is like Eleanor is our main character. She shows up to the good place and realizes like, I don't actually belong here. I'm not supposed to be here. And nobody else knows that except me, right? And so then terrible things start to happen in the good place, like some disasters happen, which seemed to be because she is breaking this system.
DL: Chidi who is her soulmate in the good place, you know, basically tells her it's your fault that this stuff is happening. I think one thing I left out was the fact that there's a lot of frozen yogurt. That's a really important part, you know, of this, of this show. So we wanted to do a little segment called Watch/Rewatch
Krispin: mm-hmm.[00:12:00]
DL: We watched the show when it first aired, and we had some feelings about it, and then we wanted to kind of talk about that in light of how we now feel watching the show in 2023, summer of 2023. So, Krispin, do you remember when you watched the pilot episode of The Good Place?
Krispin: I do, and I do remember having some anxiety
DL: Tell me about that.
Krispin: I distinctly remember that opening scene when Eleanor opens her eyes and you know, Michael tells her “Everything's fine. You're in the good place.” And just being like, what if what I was taught isn't true? This, you know, existential anxiety came up and I'm like, I know this is just a TV show.
I know that this is like, you know, but like that
DL: this is supposed to be a comedy. Yeah, exactly.
Krispin: The only thing that I really remember is like thinking like, this is an NPR version of heaven.
DL: Oh, NPR vibes.
You know, is that just Ted Danson or what?
Krispin: or what? No, like think about like Eleanor and Chidi, like they're all people that would be like that Terry Gross would interview, right?
DL: No. Or not
Krispin: Eleanor. Sorry, Tahani. Tahani, Chidi and like Eleanor, who she was supposed to be are all people that, like Terry Gross would interview or like, right, like these, like people that are like moral philosophers or have done, you know, these amazing things for hu Right. Exactly. Like Tahani I think is sort of the, the height of that and that she's like, you know, there cuz she's done so much good in the world, but she's also like a supermodel and super rich, right? And like, it just feels very like liberal, elite sort of heaven.
DL: Okay. Yeah. And so you remember thinking that mm-hmm. In 2016?
Krispin: And being like, yeah, this is interesting. Like, is this what society sort of like thinks of as heaven? You know? So that stood out to me. [00:14:00] Um, and the other thing too is like, Um, one of the things that happens is they explain this system, right?
If you're good in your life, then you go to the good place if you're bad, but like, if all your actions add up to these different points, and I think you'll talk about that in a minute, but I remember just being really struck by like, oh yeah, like this resonates on a deep level. At that time I was thinking like, This idea of like, yeah, if you're good, you deserve good.
If you're bad, you deserve bad. And then kind of wrestling with that, like, but that's not how the, the, like the upbringing that I had works, it's just like if you say the right prayer, then you go to the good place, you know? And so like wrestling with that a little bit.
DL: Yeah. I think that's exactly how I experienced it too, which is I, so I was. You know, like I said, very isolated, fundamentalist Christian upbringing. So kind of like from the time I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by my caregivers in the church and everybody being like, “you are in the good place. Evangelical Christianity is perfection on earth,” you know? And if you pray this prayer and get baptized at age six, like then you'll also go to the good place, which is heaven when you die. And I think it's just really uncomfortable if you've been raised in fundamentalism to be exposed to views that you know are different. And I think humor is such an incredible way that this can happen. And I felt that while watching this show, like in 2016, like this is uncomfortable for me because I've already begun to, and I've actually internally been grappling with the limits of the evangelical framework around the afterlife for multiple years.
But I'm not allowed to say that publicly. Right. I would lose friends, family, writing, you know? And so I think it was just like, is this a safe place for me to think about this? But I also feel [00:16:00] like I was triggered and I, my brain would loop a lot as I watched the show, thinking about the ethical questions, thinking about how that fits into an even evangelical framework and sort of starting to recognize.
The absurdity of certainty when it comes to the afterlife. And I think that is what the Good Place did for me back in 2016. And so I was like, this is kind of funny. Almost like how certain everybody in my life was I, and maybe I can tap into my inner Eleanor and Eleanor's a fascinating character, and I think if we're talking about how we feel watching it now, My brain is much less focused on like the specifics of the afterlife and how it works and all that. And I, and I spent a lot of time thinking about Eleanora and her character. But I'm curious for you, what feels different when you rewatched it this time around?
Krispin: I really was paying attention [00:17:00] to all the characters and their experience, I think in a similar way. Um, also I was like, oh, heaven is like a Main Street, Disneyland, which I did not think about the first time, but I was like, maybe I've just had Disneyland on my mind.
DL: Right? But we've seen the set [of The Good Place]. We went to Universal Studios and did it. So yeah, that was awesome.
Krispin: Uhhuh. Yeah. Um, so I think there's, there's that piece, but, um, rewatching it, it really makes made me ask this question of like, what is the point? And made me recognize, okay, this feels like intense. I'm just gonna say this. So much suffering in my life. I've told myself like, “it's okay that this isn't working out or this isn't fixed,” or “this is really hard because when I get to heaven it will be better.” And so like watching this this time, it really made me question like, what is the function of telling yourself you're gonna [00:18:00] get to this place where everything will be finding you won't ever be stressed again? And like, how has that impacted me? Rather than taking action on something that maybe I should take action on and say like, Hey, like maybe there's a healthier way I can take care of myself. I've gotten to this place and so it's really interesting to think about, like I've had this idea my whole life of like, I'm gonna get to this place where I won't have stress. And what's interesting about this episode is they have stress,
DL: Chidi cuz like, so yeah. So Chidi is a moral philosopher, right? Who spends his life helping people be good people. And then he gets to the good place and he has a stomachache, right?
Krispin: Because he's like, “do I tell on Eleanor or do I help her?” Right. And it gives him a stomach ache. Yeah.
DL: Yeah. So having a stomach ache in heaven, it's like when I watched this in 2016, I was like, yeah, I would be exactly like Chidi and I just expect suffering wherever I go because my brain, it loves to generate scenarios for [00:19:00] me, um, that creates suffering in my life.
How would heaven be any different, you know? And I Kind of struggled with Eleanor, which I think is fascinating. I listened to an interview with Mike Shur. And he was basically like, I knew we needed Kristen Bell to play Eleanor and Ted Danon to play Michael. So, because they're America's sweethearts, right.
And so we would get people on our side immediately and then like they reveal some things about Eleanor that you know, Make her quote unquote not a good person.
Krispin: What stands out to you?
DL: I mean, her job.
Krispin: Oh, right.
DL: So she sells fake medicine to sick seniors. Right. In Arizona. You know, I was like,
Krispin: I was thinking of like when she was like, did you ever do anything good in your life? And it flashes back to like someone saying like, Hey, you wanna help save the environment? And she throws her drink at him and says, eat my farts. Right.
DL: Which again, like that is so over the top like. Nobody would do, [00:20:00] but like the whole job, occupation thing, I was like, “uh oh,”
Krispin: That's me. You picked up on that so much because you are Chidi. No. Okay. You're not Chidi…
DL: but as horrified as Chidi felt and how that made him almost be like, I don't think I can help this per, like, that's as how strongly I react. Right.
Krispin: I mean, we, we'll, we'll talk about this throughout the season, but I do think that Chidi was an important character for you.
DL: we will get to that, right? Chidi helped me get diagnosed with some things Y'all like, I'm not kidding. I am not kidding.
Krispin: exactly.
DL: But I don't know if this is too spoiler spoilery. If we're talking about the difference, I really identified with Chidi in 2016. Now I am much more interested in the character of Eleanor because Eleanor.
Is the only person in this episode who's like, this system seems wrong if only a few people make it into the good place, [00:21:00] like, and you have to be this. Humanitarian who suffers and sacrifices their entire life in order to get in the good place like this is whack, right? And so Eleanor's the only character saying that, and I really resonate with that.
And it's kind of confusing for my sort of Chidi brain to ping pong back and forth between Eleanor being terrible. Eleanor's also the only one who seems to have a sense of like, This really isn't fair and this isn't okay. But we'll get more into that later. But to me those are like the things that are different for me watching this.
I wanted to ask if there's any favorite things you had about the episode, like favorite jokes or, you know, the good place is full of puns in all the signs and stuff. I don't know if you had any of that, are your fave?
Krispin: Dunno. Yeah, I mean, what, what stood out to me, this is like a different direction, but all the character, not all the characters, but like multiple characters had these vulnerable points. So like Chidi getting a stomach ache
DL: Mm-hmm.
Krispin: [00:22:00] like Eleanor at one point ask like, did anyone care that I died? And even Michael, who's the Angel who's the architect of this neighborhood, what we find out is this is his first neighborhood that he's ever built. And so he's really insecure and nervous, like, did I do it right? And like, which is just funny in this like perfect place, there are all these people that have these like insecurities or vulnerabilities, which I just really appreciated.
And I think that does help us like connect really quickly with those characters.
DL: So one of the things I wanted to talk about really quick is that when Michael does this presentation for everybody who's in the neighborhood at the good Place about like, you know, this is all based off of a point system, right?
If you do enough good things and you get into the good place, all that stuff, somebody took the time to like write out all the point systems that are on the screen that Michael's talking about, and I just wanna talk about a few of them. Okay? So let's start with like, The things a person can do that would give them a ton of points.
I guess the [00:23:00] most somebody could get is actually 814,000 points, and that's by ending slavery. Okay? You could host a refugee family that would be 282,000 points you could never discuss veganism. Without being first prompted. So many of these Remi make me think that a neurodivergent person in the writer's room wrote it cuz here's one self-monitored, potentially nauseating mouth sounds while chewing. Began to compose social media posts about David Bowie dying, then thought, hmm, the world doesn't need to hear. My thoughts on David Bowie dying.
Krispin: I just love that someone slowed it down and like read all these things cuz in the moment it's like 10 seconds where you, or less where you just see right.
DL: and we'll list, we'll list this thing so you can go look at all of them because they're really good.
Now here's some of the things you can do to lose points. Okay? You can use the term bro code [00:24:00] and you lose eight points every time you do that. Okay? You can overstate a personal connection to a tragedy that has nothing to do with you. Negative 40 points you can tell a woman to smile. Negative 53 points.
Okay? You can ruin an opera with boorish behavior, negative 90 points, okay? You can poison a river and for the, you know, most amount of negative points, you know, 433,000, you can commit genocide. There we go.
Krispin: I was wondering every, like, all the negatives were like very low points, but apparently there is like you can shoot the moon.
DL: I love that.
And now this, this will help us transition into a segment. We're gonna call, “This is The Bad Place” and this is where we get to talk about growing up in white evangelicalism in the United States in the eighties, nineties in the s and kind of talk about some of the [00:25:00] ethical frameworks. We ran up against, and I have a hunch that the ethical dilemma that this entire first episode is about, is about what are the ethics of a heaven, where only a select few perfect people, you know, get to experience joy.
And pleasure and the vast majority of humanity is sent to the bad place. Now the bad place is only mentioned like a tiny bit in this episode. What do you, what do you remember about them talking about the
Krispin: Yeah, Eleanor is worried about getting sent to the bad place since she doesn't belong in the good place. And she's like, it's probably not that bad. You know, the bad place probably isn't that bad. And then Janet, who will mention throughout this, who's sort of the AI robot assistant, is like, I'll play an audio clip from the bad place and is like, you know, the things that, like the scare tactic [00:26:00]plays we saw about heaven and
DL: I mean, it was a hell house audio, right?
Krispin: exactly. Screechies. screechies? Schreeches. Screeches.
DL: They got them screechies in there screaming. It sounds horrific, right? And basically Michael says, you know, just don't worry about it.
Mm-hmm. Like, don't worry about the people. In the bad place. You're the cream of the crop. You've been carefully selected. You deserve to be here. That's, you know, what he says over and over again. And, um, I just thought like, oh, there's something like kind of triggering here to have a calm, elderly white man telling someone over and over again like, Everything's fine.
Krispin: here's the thing is you talked about like opening your eyes in white Evangelical, right? Like being born into white evangelicalism. I'm like, is Ted dance in Billy [00:27:00] Graham?
DL: Oh
Krispin: Oh, right. Like just imagine Billy Graham being Ted Danson in the whole day. It's fine, it's great. Like this is great. Don't fright.
DL: And you deserve to be here. Right. And he, like, he, he was basically telling them, there's one line he says, you know, that feeling you get when you see a picture of two otters holding hands? Like that's how you're gonna feel all the time in the good place, right? Yeah.
And it's an incredibly selective process. That's what he says a lot. And you know, it's perfect and. If you're here, you were meant to be here. And that's absolutely what Billy Graham said. Now, Billy Graham, if, if people are not familiar with evangelical Christianity, he's basically like the father of modern evangelical Christianity thought. And he helped start this flagship publication called Christianity Today. He went to Wheaton College, did all these crusades. Yes, it's a very unfortunate word.
Krispin: Friends with all the presidents. Yeah.
DL: He has quite the political. Career, I mean, not career, but as an advisor to presidents and basically he's sort of a hallowed figure within white evangelicalism, but he also is probably the person who has done more than anyone to popularize the modern evangelical viewpoint of heaven and hell.
Afterlife and the importance of dedicating your life to Jesus Christ so that you will not go to hell but will instead spend eternity in heaven. So that was how we grew up. My parents took me to a Billy Graham crusade when I was young. Um, of course I've already saved by that point, you know, multiple times cuz how could you not when you had your parents telling you this stuff all the time and Yeah, I think, I think it's just a fascinating look at.
The ethical limitations of that framework and this, this one in particular, basically has impacted my life more than any other [00:29:00] theological viewpoint, I would say, and I'll unpack that in a minute, but I'm just curious to hear from you.
Krispin: I remember for us at the, towards the end of our Christianity, asking this question of like, why is it that I grew up in this particular country where I could put my faith in Jesus, therefore I get to go to heaven, you know, et cetera. But I think the bigger question is like, speak
DL: for yourself. That did not happen to me at the end. Okay. That was the question I had the whole time. Okay.
Krispin: But I think the question for me is like who deserves what? Like: and that is a huge question. Like, do we as humans deserve love and care even if we royally fork up?
DL: Ooh, that was good. That was good.
Krispin: You know who deserves if there is an afterlife and if there's a good place and a bad place. Who does deserve to go there?
And I think asking this question of like, this seems like a really messed up [00:30:00] system is really important. But then if I ask like, well, what goes in its place? Like it does, like I will be honest and just say like, I don't know, what replaces it? Like, does Hitler deserve a second chance? You know, like there are lots of….
DL: I don't care about any of that stuff. I really don't. I think I wanna camp out a little bit longer on just the variety of responses you can have to a framework that says only a few select people deserve eternal goodness.
And the vast majority of humanity does not deserve that. So what I was presented this reality as a small child over and over and over again. As I grew older, I, I think the enormity of that started to really. Impress itself upon me. And my thought was like, how, well then how can we get more people into heaven?
And that became the driving question of my life. And I [00:31:00] was told, well, first of all, since I was, you know, socialized as female, I couldn't be a pastor, right? Because that was just for men. But I could be a missionary. And to be a missionary in white evangelicalism is like this. Special hallowed role. You know, like you go off to a foreign country and you convert lost souls.
And of course you can be like a missionary in the workplace in America too, but like that was what I was told when I sort of came back with like, this seems awful. Like I need everyone to get into heaven, for me to feel okay about this. And they're like, “Great. Take that drive for justice, fairness, Equity, you know, like, and go try and convert people.” So I literally had no other thought in my head other than I have to do this. And I read so many missionary biographies as a child. I, um, never thought about [00:32:00] applying to college. I joined something called Youth with a Mission, which is like a, a mission school for evangelical tea, like, Not teens, but like a gap year thing, right?
Yeah. Instead of college, I did that, went to India, and it's really hard for me to talk about because of course, like most people in this pluralistic society are like, what? What did you do? You were a missionary. And I'm like, yeah, I was. And of course I wasn't thinking about colonization, imperial, white, supremacy, savior complex, all those things were.
My framework at the time was, people are going to hell. I'm not going to hell because I'm, I've, I'm literally doing everything evangelical says I should do. I'm not gonna hell, I, I knew I would be going to heaven and I was desperate that other people would get to go to. And so that really has shaped my life in so many ways.
This, this sort of like, [00:33:00] Not terror, I guess it did existential terror. I felt at what Billy Graham said, right? What all these evangelical leaders, including my parents said, which is like, we are somehow so special. And so, you know, they use the word predestined, right? To be God's favorites, to get into heaven.
And yes, we should try and get people to come with us. And so I took it very, very literally, which I now know is sort of, um, in part due to being autistic, where, where we do things. Can take things literally. So that's what I did, man. And I feel like this ethical dilemma more than anyone has shaped my life.
Krispin: Yeah. I
DL: don't know. What do you think? You've been married to me for a very long
Krispin: I think so, and it is interesting because like, I'll be honest and say like, it did not like tear at me the way that it has you. Right. I do think that like even pulling away from the ethics of it, like this idea, something that's been really impactful for me is to do a thought [00:34:00] experiment of like, If I, if one of our kid, you know, in this framework, if I go to heaven and one of our kids goes to hell because they don't put their faith in Jesus.
How, what does it mean for me that I can just be happy? Which I think is an ethical question. So kind of taking it from the general, like if I know that millions of people are suffering forever, like that is one question, right? Like how, how can I be happy? But like also in this like other level of just like whether there's just one other person that I dearly love that is suffering.
Like what kind of actual love is that? If I can just be joyous in heaven while they're
DL: Yeah. Yeah. And, and we'll also get into, as we talk through this season, we're gonna talk about sort of like humanitarian impulses, because I've done a lot of research into that.
What, what creates people to be, um, sort of like over and above and beyond of giving of themselves to help humanity? I've been very interested in [00:35:00] that question for a long time. I think Mike Shur has also been interested in that.
Krispin: I'll be having the role of what it's like to be married to someone like that.
DL: Somebody who is obsessed with being a good person.
Yeah, because at some point in my life it did shift a little bit from how do I convert everybody to be a Christian when it became clear like people don't convert to other religions. I sort of started to have all these other questions that came up and I, in order to still have like a good sense of myself, I became obsessed with being a good person and doing good things. That is part of my story.
Krispin: Which I think that really comes from your, you do have like deep care for people. So I'm just throwing that out there. That is not, it's not like neurotic, but it's also exhausting.
DL: It is exhausting. And I will say there's limitations to this. I wanna say one thing about this episode that really stood out to me while rewatching it, is that Chidi and Tanani, they don't [00:36:00] seem to have any qualms about them getting into the good place and other people not, they don't seem to worry about it, like there's these glaring gaps.
And it even maybe led to forming a thought process where they can be okay. Like I work so hard to get this, I deserve it, and I'm actually not gonna think about all the people in the bad place. And that seems to be what she tahan and Ginu all do, which is like ethically horrifying to me. So I'm like, I'm team Eleanor all the way.
Krispin: Here's the question: Does Eleanor only care because she would've gone to the bad place?
DL: I mean, There's a part of this episode that is where she says, I bet both of my parents went to the bad place cuz they were not good parents and not good people. And I think there's so much in that line, which is like Eleanor has seen some shit, like she has seen humans be [00:37:00] terrible to each other.
She has experienced a ton of trauma and that actually truly does get. kind of teased out and talked about in later episodes or later seasons of this show, which I love. And coming from someone who's experienced trauma and she's just much more open about that trauma. Right. And I think it does lead to her having this realization like, Most people do shitty things at some point in their life.
Does that mean we're all deserving to be thrown away? She also seems to have a great bullshit detector because in this episode I think it's kind of clear that Tahani, you know, the perfect humanitarian, gorgeous, tall, you know, like, um, is supposed to be Eleanor's like nemesis. And that's what Mike Shur said, like that's how setting it up.
And so she kind of can smell bullshit, which I love. I love that too. So funny. I'm Want Team Eleanor. I was so Team Chidi during my first watching of this show
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
DL: I'm like, I really, I'm gonna learn how to take it. Sleazy man. That's what I am on a journey of. Okay.
Krispin: It's cuz you've been listening to a lot of Kesha. And Kesha has a song called
DL: Why was, why was there an Arianna Grande song in this episode? I don't know when things started going wild. I didn't understand
Krispin: Because Eleanor had said something about Arianna Grande. Oh really?
DL: oh, really? Yeah, I guess I missed that. Okay, hold. There we go. That's
Krispin: the rewatch and re-watch are important.
DL: okay. Krispin you're so excited about this next segment.
Yes. I want you to introduce it.
Krispin: Okay, so this is gonna be a segment called “You Might have Religious Trauma If”
DL: Can you please try into it in a Jeff Foxworthy voice?
Krispin: I didn't even know that that's what I, I guess that's what I was pulling from, right? No, it was like hanging out in my, I did not, I did not grow up, um, with Jeff Foxworthy. [00:39:00] So, but I think it just has radiated in the ether, when I said that I did not know it was from Jeff Foxworthy. Right. That ruins it, that ruins the segment.
Okay. It's all right. Um, everything's fine. Um, So you might have religious trauma if, and basically what we're gonna do is we're just gonna notice, like obviously there are religious themes in this. And so for each episode we're just gonna come up with a phrase that resonated with us. Mine watching this was, you might have religious trauma.
If you resonated with Eleanor because you're afraid that you were gonna show up in heaven and not belong there and not be good enough, even though you were let in, which was totally my experience. Like I was told like Heaven is a place for perfect people all, also, you're really broken and there's so much wrong with you.
And like that dilemma of like, I'm gonna be in this place where I have to fake it, had a deep impact on me. Um, psychologically, and so that's some of the religious trauma I'm working through. I told you it was gonna be short. Great. To the point.
DL: Okay. You might have religious trauma if you feel jealous of Doug Forseth.
Krispin: oh, Uhh you wanna explain it.
DL: Doug Forseth is the one person who got the closest to accurately predicting the afterlife while high on mushrooms. I believe in Calgary, Canada and Doug Forseth from my perspective as an autistic person who took, religion very, very seriously, there's always been this hope.
That there is a way to get it right. There is a way to figure out how to be a perfect human, and there's a way to figure out what comes next in the [00:41:00] afterlife. And so I'm like, man, I wanna be like Doug. Which this is foreshadowing because me and Doug as a character are actually very similar. And, and again, he shows up in later seasons.
Krispin: I feel like I need a buzzer,
DL: oh, I spoiled it.
Krispin: a spoiler buzzer
DL: But it's, how is that spoiling? Doug Fort is an important part of this universe.
Krispin: Okay. He's not just a picture
DL: and I'm jealous of him, and I've never done mushrooms.
Krispin: Ah, wait. Is that what you're jealous of?
DL: Exactly. Exactly like I want to get it right and also I want to be the person that can live in Calgary, Canada and do mushrooms and also, When in 2016 when this first aired, I had never even done marijuana.
Krispin: uh huh.
DL: I mean, that's how Chidi I was. And again, I'm in my taking it sleazy phase. Marijuana is legalized now in Oregon, and I do partake, [00:42:00] and maybe that's why I'm also not a Christian anymore. Who knows?
Krispin: Slippery slope
DL: it happen, I mean, mushrooms are on their way to being legalized. I'm such a goody two shoes. I'm gonna wait until it is legalized and I will do it, legally through a clinic here.
So we'll take his sleazy until then and we'll see if I have a duck fort moment. Okay. Okay, there we go. Um, okay. My segment now, which is deals fun facts segment, which. True to my personality. I already told you most of them as we were talking. Okay. Um, I guess the one that maybe you wouldn't know about is like, you know how the show opens with Eleanor's eyes opening?
That is a call back to lost.
Krispin: Oh,
DL: And all the twists and all the things like Mike Shur’s friends with him. And so structure the show and I believe it just similar to the show loss, the [00:43:00] shows, you know, the series opens and ends with eyeballs opening and closing, stuff like
Krispin: oh. Remember when we had to stop watching lost because it gave you nightmares. Well,
DL: I'm what they call…
Krispin: autistic.
DL: Extremely sensitive. Okay. Lost, made me scream. I felt so creeped out. Do you remember this Uh huh? I do.
Krispin: I do.
DL: Yeah. And um, also what a disappointing show as far as like, me wanting to talk about existential things and the show never doing what I wanted it to do with those premises and the good place, you know, didn't let me down in the same way, which is why we're doing a podcast about The Good Place and not about Lost. Also, the Good Place is funny, which is something you and I weren't really allowed to be. You know, that you can't really be funny in fundamentalism.
Krispin: Yes. Well, I mean, you're right. You can be angry funny.
DL: Fundamentalism. Oh, you can be demeaning and condescending and patronizing. And call it humor.
Krispin: Mm-hmm.
DL: But it's you. You can't poke fun at the whole system or people get real, real upset.
So I think that's, I think that's all I have. I'll have more fun facts next time for sure. But Krispin, I feel overwhelmed. This is an amazing show. We wanna do right by it. But also, we're just having fun. We like hanging out with each other. We've experienced a lot of change. It's fun for me to watch this show.
Now, being an ex-Christian, um, I'm enjoying that. But we wanna hear from you, the listeners. Hopefully you're enjoying having an excuse to rewatch this amazing show to kind of get involved in all the ethical questions. I'm curious if anyone listening, if you do come from a religious background of any kind, um, Did you ever come up against the ethical dilemma sort of presented in this first episode, which is only a select few deserve to go to the good place.
We'd love to hear from you. [00:45:00] You can reach us in all sorts of ways, which Chris is gonna tell you about since I can never remember them.
Krispin: Right. So we have a phone number that you can leave and leave a voicemail. I'm going to put it in the show notes. So if you are on your phone and you have the show notes, you can just click that number and leave a voicemail. You can also do voice memos to propheticimaginationstation@gmail.com.
If you're like, I don't know how to do either of those. Reach out to us, um, you know, through like, you know, send me a DM on Twitter, like, whatever it is. Cuz we would love to hear from you, but we're trying to open up several avenues to hear from you all comments, questions, prayer requests. Just kidding.
DL: Oh, wow. You tr you were trying to get a rise outta me, weren't you? Should I just yell? No, didn't, here's yeah. No trauma dumping in the dms, please.
But we do wanna hear from you. We also wanna hear, um, if [00:46:00] you have any things that stood out to you, favorite parts about episode one. If you wanna talk spoilers, dms are the place to do it. Also, our email address…
Krispin: ImaginationStation@gmail.com.
DL: And again, all these things will be in every show note. And on our website, which is also called the Prophetic Imagination Station, we really wanna hear from you. If you record a voice memo.
I will honestly think you are one of the most brave people in the world, cuz like technology is hard for us and using our voices are hard. Just know that I, DL will be like, that person's really brave. So thank you for doing that. Send it to us. We'll, um, answer some questions or thoughts or talk about any conspiracies you have in our Patron Only Spoiler episode episodes.
So look out for those. Speaking of which you can join our Patreon. Um, and that's where the real fun happens. Right. [00:47:00] Krispin would tell, tell folks what they'll get.
Krispin: So if you join our Patreon, we're gonna have that extra spoiler episode. So we're gonna talk about the spoiler things that we noticed in the episode. Once a month. Um, also take listener questions, that sort of thing. Um, and we also are going to, do a monthly episode called, Books From The Bad Place.
We're gonna be talking about from our upbringing, what were some of the big books in the eighties and nineties, um, and talking through those and, and using this ethical framework, right? These ethical questions to look at, like how do these books stand up? So like Dr. Dobson's, dare to Discipline is what we've been looking at right now.
Those sorts of things. So, um, and especially if you've been a listener for a long time and. Still want to hear a bit about that evangelical upbringing stuff or if you're like, I did not grow up evangelical, but why the hell is all this happening in our country?
DL: Yeah, why are Christians, [00:48:00] turning into neo fascists who wanna take over, um, you know, the country and are literally doing so in places like Florida and Arizona, which fun fact make Shur.
Like specifically, he talks about Florida and Arizona a bunch and various characters in this series being connected to those two places. In episode one we get a lot of Eleanor Shel Sharp talking about being from Arizona. and Mike Shur. Basically was like, yeah, Arizona's a terrible place. Arizona is the Florida of the West Coast is what he said.
And he mean, he means that politically and back when Mike Shur was writing this and all that, you know, sheriff Joe ar. Pier in AEO or something like that was all in the news. Um, all that stuff. So I thought that was fascinating.
Krispin: I, yeah, I mean, personally, I think Texas is, hell, sorry to our Texas listeners, but that's what I tell you all the time.
DL: That is what you tell me all the time, and I'm like, I think Florida's in the running for that. Yeah. [00:49:00] Arizona's like, we don't, we can't even worry about Arizona right
Krispin: Well, I, I think that things have shifted a little bit politically in Arizona a little bit. There's been some organizing and stuff in ways that like are not happening in those other states.
So we won't keep, um, you know, offending all our listeners in different states.
DL: yeah, cuz like a bunch of people from Florida I do believe are listening to this as we speak. Um, but maybe there are, you never know. And we will be releasing episodes every other week. Sorry to say it, this is gonna be a slow rewatch and a slow recap, but that's because we are very busy people and not professional podcasters
Krispin: And we want the time to record those other episodes in between
DL: And now we wanna end it sort of stealing from the official Good Place Recap podcast, which I, I encourage everyone. To listen to. It's just called The Good Place, the podcast hosted by Mark Evan Jackson, who we both love [00:50:00] and who weirdly enough we have talked about before, since he has been involved in some evangelical artifacts, which we won't get into right now.
Um,
Krispin: and Odyssey.
DL: right? we wanna end with a segment we call. This is the Good Place. Okay. We just talked about a lot of intense stuff. Um, Now let's end it on a different note. Krispin, what is something that is giving you hope and humanity these days?
Krispin: So there is this, yoga teacher practitioner, um, who has a website called the Underbelly that you just discovered for our family.
DL: I've known about Justin for a long time.
Krispin: Okay, that you just introduced. our family to Jess and Stanley, who is this yoga teacher, she is, body positive, swears and curses a lot. Like, just makes you feel really comfortable in your own skin.
Um, and that has been really life giving to us. I will be honest. And I did a couple of [00:51:00] videos yesterday and like wept just cuz it just was like really beautiful and really lovely to connect, with my body and with our kids. Um, around it. And so that is what is giving me life right now.
DL: it's excellent. Justin and Stanley. Um, I wanna say that yarn is giving me hope for humanity. I went to Joanne's Fabrics yesterday and it was like a newly renovated one in our neighborhood and there was just like so much yarn there and so much color and I was just like, look at us just crafting our way.
Through the end of the world, like I love it. I bought some really bright yarn that is orange and pink and I'm like, I'm doing it. I'm making a baby blanket and you always make fun of me cuz I always do new projects and they always turn out terrible and I never get any better at crocheting.
Krispin: I think it is adorable,
DL: that the point of being a human? Right? Right. Like I don't have to get really good at crocheting. It makes me feel [00:52:00] calm. Looking at all the colors of yarn at joy and fabrics. I was like, I think we're gonna make it. And even if we don't make it like it's kind of cool that we choose to take our existential dread and, um, put it in the yarn and make it functional in some way.
Krispin: even if we don't make it, we'll have some, shoddily crossed, knitted
DL: Shod.
Krispin: I, I get, I think it's
DL: You think it's adorable How bad I am crochet.
Krispin: are so good at so many things in the world. So that's my thing is like if you are doing something to be like creative and.
DL: or
Krispin: Like if you're doing something to be really good at, there are a million other things that you could be doing cuz you're good at so many things.
So I love that you're like, I'm gonna do this thing with my hands, even if I'm not that good at
DL: Oh, thank you. You saved it. You saved yourself.
Krispin: That's genuinely what I think you are.
DL: are allowed to go to the good place now.
Krispin: Oh, so you're the judge.
DL: yeah. Of course. I [00:53:00] thought we all knew this. But anyways, thanks y'all for listening.
We're so happy to be doing this and we're having a lot of fun and we hope you're watching along with us.
Krispin: Thanks y'all. This has been an episode of This Is The Bad Place, a special season of the Prophetic Imagination Station podcast. You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram by searching Prophetic Imagination Station podcast. You can find us on the web@propheticimaginationstation.com. You can leave us a voicemail at 5 0 3 9 1 2 4 1 3 0 or record a voice memo and send it to Prophetic Imagination station@gmail.com.
Join our Patreon community to hear two extra episodes a month and join our Facebook group to discuss episodes and more, and we hope you'll join us next time in the bad place.[00:54:00]
