Stop Sign

References

• White Lady
• The Hunger Games
• Mystery Men
• Late Capitalism
• Streisand Effect
• Joker
• Crossing Guard
• Doctor Who
  • Weeping Angel
• Operation Plumbbob
• Independence Day
• Don’t Look Up
• Lampshade Hanging
• Hurricane Dorian–Alabama Controversy
• The Jetsons
• The Flintstones
• The Matrix
• Dark City
• Dead Internet Theory
• WALL·E
• Randall Munroe
• Star Trek
• Cold War
• Armageddon
• The Avengers
• Mikhail Gorbachev
• What would happen if the moon disappeared?
• Hundreds of Beavers
• Spy vs. Spy
• Sabotage
• Masters Tournament

Corrections

Emily made a comment that could be misinterpreted as “the Gulf of Mexico is the result of a meteor impact.” The Gulf of Mexico was formed as a result of plate tectonics. Emily was referring to the asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater, which is found on the Yucatán Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico. That asteroid impact is widely accepted to be cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (which is what people are talking about when they say an asteroid killed the dinosaurs).

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
I’m picturing everyone using a different type of sign, as Thomas had said.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And so the person with the men at work sign is a woman, and she’s adjusted the sign to be woman at work as she bashes fascists over the head with it.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Emily]
So like Mystery Men, but with signs.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Literally what I was just going to say. Well done.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. We do that by selecting some seemingly dull object, in this case, a Stop Sign, and then each of us comes up with ideas for what a movie based on a Stop Sign might be about. We pitch those ideas to each other, pick the one we like the most, and then develop it into a full movie plot that we hope is at least Almost Plausible. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and making these movies with me are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And with that intro out of the way, we have a green light to get started. Emily, let’s hear your pitch first.

[Emily]
All right. Matt is on his way home after his closing shift at a bar. He sees a young woman standing next to a stop sign. He’s tempted to ask her if she needs help, but she doesn’t appear to be in distress or disheveled. So he decides not to be creepy and just drives on.

[Thomas]
Good for you, Matt.

[Emily]
He sees her almost every night that he has a closing shift. He mentions it to his friend Ted, who tells him she’s probably waiting for a bus. But there isn’t a bus line on that road and it’s also like two in the morning and buses don’t run then. Ted determines that she must be a woman-in-white type ghost out to lure men to their death.

[Thomas]
Quite a leap, Ted.

[Shep]
That’s ghostest. Not all women-in-white ghosts are murderesses.

[Emily]
This is true. Matt laughs it off. That night it’s raining very hard and the woman is at the stop sign again. This time he decides to take the risk of being creepy and stops to ask if she’s okay. She tells him yes. He asks what she’s waiting for and she tells him it’s none of his business. She doesn’t know if he’s a serial killer or whatever.

[Thomas]
He’s like, “I’ve seen you here every night. No, wait, wait! That came out wrong.”

[Emily]
He counters with saying she might be a ghost out to kill men. She pulls out her phone and snaps a picture of him and sends it to a friend for safety. He has a little chuckle and says goodbye and drives on. He doesn’t stop again, though he sees her every time he drives through the intersection. Instead, he waves, even though she probably can’t see him. About three weeks after their conversation, Matt is working a closing shift at the bar and a woman walks up to order another drink. As he’s making it, she stares at him and says, “Hey, I know you.” And Matt is very confused because he has no idea who this woman is. Then she shows him a picture of himself on her phone. She’s the friend the stop sign woman sent the photo to. He laughs at the coincidence and she gets really serious and says that was the last thing her friend ever sent her and she’s been missing ever since. But he’s seen her. What was this woman talking about? How could that be? Would he be a suspect? The woman starts laughing and then the bus stop woman walks up laughing hysterically. She introduces herself as Claudia and orders a drink. This is their meet-cute. And the rest of it is a rom-com.

[Shep]
Well, we’re done here. We got it.

[Emily]
No, there’s the rom-com piece. This is just Act One.

[Thomas]
Is- Is the title of your rom-com Stop in the Name of Love?

[Shep]
(Pained groan)

[Emily]
Yes, it is now.

[Shep]
Physical pain. Physical pain.

[Emily]
Sorry that was so long, boys. Thomas, it’s your turn.

[Thomas]
Well, like you said, you got the whole first act for us already, so no problems.

[Emily]
Whole first act done.

[Thomas]
So we’re recording this episode in early December, and I feel like maybe my pitches reflect that a little bit.

[Shep]
Why? Did something happen in early December?

[Thomas]
I don’t know. Let’s see if our audience can connect the dots. My first pitch is that a leftist vigilante uses a stop sign as a shield, which becomes their icon. Their mission is to take down dirty cops, corrupt bankers, lazy officials, and anyone else holding back the working class. I imagine a very dark and gritty tone to the story, but again, might be a little too soon for this.

[Shep]
You said their mission and I immediately pluralized it instead of gender neutralizing it. So I was picturing a team of people all with stop sign shields.

[Thomas]
Could be. They have various signs. There’s like a yield sign and a men at work sign.

[Emily]
Well, he uses the stop sign originally and creates the shield. And then it becomes like the bird in Hunger Games.

[Shep]
See, I’m picturing everyone using a different type of sign, as Thomas had said.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And so the person with the men at work sign is a woman, and she’s adjusted the sign to be woman at work as she bashes fascists over the head with it.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Emily]
So like Mystery Men, but with signs.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Literally what I was just going to say. Well done.

[Shep]
Ha.

[Thomas]
All right. My second pitch is similar. A young street artist, sick of living under late stage capitalism, defaces a stop sign in their neighborhood, adding the words “exploiting workers” under the word “stop”. Someone posts a photo of the sign online, and it goes viral. A couple days later, the photo is followed up by a video of city workers replacing the sign, which also goes viral. And almost immediately, somebody adds the words “exploiting workers” back to the stop sign, prompting the city to replace it again. This triggers a Streisand effect and sparks an increasing number of acts of civil disobedience, with more and more stop signs around the country getting politically charged messages. The ubiquity of stop signs around the country allows the movement to grow quickly. Eventually, the original street artist’s identity is revealed and authorities arrest them. This makes them a symbolic martyr to the movement, further increasing solidarity among the disillusioned. Ultimately, the growing unrest foments real change.

[Shep]
Well, you lost me at real change, which, as we all know, is impossible.

[Thomas]
No no, this is escapist fantasy.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
So-

[Shep]
Oh, okay.

[Emily]
Because I was thinking wouldn’t the biggest charge they could have is defacing public property? And that’s like, what, a fine and community service?

[Shep]
Yeah, but he’s left out the part where they start a riot in the second act, Joker-style.

[Emily]
Oh, okay.

[Thomas]
So my third pitch is the one I like the best anyway, of mine. The world is somehow cursed to take stop signs literally. Looking at a stop sign causes people to freeze in place, unable to move or speak. Simply covering their eyes doesn’t help. Once they’ve seen a stop sign, any depiction of a stop sign, they’re stuck. Our main characters are unaffected by the signs and must race to break the curse before too many people die of dehydration and exposure. Now, I don’t know why our main characters are unaffected by the signs, and I don’t know how they break the curse or what caused it in the first place, but if we choose this, those are all things that we can figure out.

[Emily]
They’re clearly robots.

[Thomas]
Those are my pitches. Shep, what do you have?

[Shep]
Well, I have almost the same pitch. During an alien invasion, a lollipop man in the right place at the right time has to step up and save the Earth because it turns out that the aliens freeze whenever they see a stop sign. But in my pitch, it’s only while they can still see it. So it’s like the angels on Doctor Who, where if you can’t see them, they can move. So if the aliens can’t see the stop sign, they can move.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So they could be chasing you and the lollipop man can stop them by holding up a stop sign, but when he leaves the room or whatever, they can move again. So it’s not a permanent way to stop them.

[Emily]
What if you just make a giant circle of stop signs facing them and you get them all in there and they’re frozen and then drop a bomb on them.

[Shep]
Yeah, or just leave them there. The problem is solved.

[Emily]
Yeah. But somehow somebody’s gonna screw it up, so you gotta drop the bomb on ’em.

[Shep]
Here’s another pitch that has stop signs and bombs. So this is a reference to Operation Plumbbob. If you guys know Operation Plumbbob, it was referenced as, like, the fastest man-made moving object of all time.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It was an underground nuclear test that had what they call was a manhole cover, but was really an end cap. A thick metal end cap on top of the tube that went 500ft underground where the nuclear explosion was being tested, and they tried to measure how fast it went.

[Thomas]
The cover shot off during the explosion.

[Shep]
The cover would shoot off during the explosion. They did it twice. And so on the second one they used high speed cameras, but this was in 1957, so the fastest it could take photos was once every millisecond. And in that film, it’s partially in view for one frame. So the scientist doing the experiment calculated it was going 125,000 miles per hour. That’s what he said. There’s not a lot of evidence that this actually happened, and a lot of it is Internet folklore. The guy who said it he stands by the story. He’s like, “This really did happen.” But, like, it’s his word.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Anyway, here’s an alternate history version. So, in 1957, a specially made high strength stop sign was accidentally launched into space due to a mishap during an underground nuclear detonation test. So instead of going up the tube, there was like a crack in the wall and it went out slightly to the side. And they had a special stop sign that was supposed to withstand being that close to the test, and it launched that into space. It was never seen again until now. So it had escaped Earth’s gravity because it was going crazy fast, but not the sun’s. So in the intervening years since 1957, it has started falling back towards the sun. And in fact, long range telescopes have picked it up on an intercept course to Earth’s orbit. If NASA’s calculations are correct, the stop sign will impact directly on the White House at 125,000 miles per hour. The sign stops here.

[Thomas]
Shep, I like how you hate coincidences, but you’re like, “And then it hits the White House,” like, every movie ever.

[Shep]
Yes. Because it’s a movie.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s traditional.

[Shep]
Yep. Okay. My last pitch. On a long stretch of road in the middle of nowhere, there is suddenly a stop sign. But there is no crossroad. Why is the stop sign there? What happens if you stop there? What happens if you don’t?

[Emily]
If you stop there, a bunch of weird ass people are coming out of the desert to kidnap you, rape you, and make suits out of your skin.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Ah, see, I thought that the fae would take you because you agreed to the contract by stopping at the stop sign.

[Emily]
This is also a possibility. Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s the alien abduction point.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
You stop and your car just floats up. “Wait a minute.”

[Shep]
Yep. You try to go again, but it’s too late. There’s no friction. You’re already in the air.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Shep]
That’s it for me.

[Thomas]
All right, which of these do we like the best?

[Emily]
Don’t everyone jump at once.

[Thomas]
I mean, I like the visual of the stop sign in the middle of nowhere, but I feel like there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.

[Shep]
All right, cross that one out.

[Emily]
Now, I’m just gonna let you know that when I first read the lollipop man one, I thought it said he was in the right place at the right time and has to set up and save the earth. And I was like, “Why does he have to set up his shop at that place where he was?”

[Shep]
Oh, a lollipop man who sells lollipops, not a guy who holds up the stop sign to stop traffic.

[Emily]
Yep. Literal lollipop man.

[Shep]
I get it, I get it.

[Emily]
I was so confused for so long.

[Shep]
He’s painting little stop signs on his lollipops.

[Emily]
Yeah. That’s literally what I thought was gonna happen.

[Shep]
I kind of like your pitch. That’s…

[Thomas]
Meanwhile, the alien ship is barreling toward Earth, and he’s like, “Oh, gosh. Oh, gosh.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Reluctant hero.

[Shep]
Yep. He’s got some white nail polish, he’s whipping the stop signs together on the, I don’t know. Cherry red.

[Thomas]
Chipping the lollipop into the shape of an octagon.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
So for the Operation Plumbob one, do you imagine that being like a Independence Day-style big summer blockbuster tone?

[Shep]
I was thinking it’s more like Don’t Look up.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Not that that did very well.

[Thomas]
But tonally.

[Shep]
But tonally, it’s like a comedy because it’s absurdist.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because what are the odds that it’s coming down directly on the White House?

[Thomas]
Oh, they totally need to lampshade that in the film. Like, “What? Really? Are we sure?” The President’s there with a sharpie, making it miss the White House.

[Shep]
See, now that’s Don’t Look up again.

[Thomas]
I mean, it’s also real life, so.

[Shep]
(Nervous panic)

[Thomas]
I’d say the ones I like the best are my one about people having to take stop signs literally and the Operation Plumbbob one. I feel like that those are the ones that we could most likely develop into a full story.

[Emily]
Yeah, I like the Operation Plumbbob one, although I think mine is really good, but appears that you two just have problems with rom-coms right now.

[Shep]
You wrote too much. You took our job away.

[Emily]
I know. I tried so hard to make it shorter.

[Shep]
Yeah. Your first draft was like 30 pages.

[Emily]
It was so much longer.

[Shep]
This. It’s a treatment with dialogue and blocking.

[Thomas]
It’s cast and everything.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Oh, god. Yeah.

[Shep]
Filming has already started.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s gonna be on Netflix in a few months. Sounds like the Operation Plumbob one is the one that has the most votes.

[Shep]
I mean, the alien invasion one is kind of like your people freeze when they see stop signs one.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s similar.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Why do the aliens stop for our stop signs, though?

[Shep]
You have the same question in yours!

[Thomas]
Yeah, but humans recognize our human stop signs. Why would aliens recognize our human stop signs?

[Shep]
Maybe they’re robots. They’re robot aliens. Organic life doesn’t last.

[Thomas]
They were launched into space in 1957, and…

[Shep]
They’re not aliens at all!

[Thomas]
They’re human robots.

[Shep]
They’re human robots. What a twist.

[Thomas]
Everyone thinks they’re coming to attack the White House. And…

[Shep]
They’re just coming home. That’s how much technology we’ve lost since the 1950s.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It really was a golden age. Everyone had flying cars. It was The Jetsons, and now we’re The Flintstones.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
I kind of like that idea of, like, a Matrix-style, or a Dark City-style, memory reset where it’s like we had this incredible world and then they kind of reset things, whoever the “they” are, but they forgot about the ship that got launched out into space.

[Shep]
Ooh. Ooh.

[Thomas]
And so now that ship is coming back and we don’t remember it. We have these like weird memories of this like space age retro future that we don’t realize actually happened.

[Emily]
We just think it was the movies.

[Thomas]
Yeah, they’re sort of like ghosts of memories. I don’t know what that has to do with Stop Signs though.

[Shep]
Well, because if they were robots, they’re following directions. They see at the stop sign, so they stop. So that could be yours, where the people that are freezing, they are not people. They’re robots.

[Thomas]
Yeah, well, that was a thing we had said, so- Yeah.

[Shep]
Because people are being replaced by robots.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s the dead Internet theory come to life. You know, pollution got too bad and people were dying off.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Nobody leaves their home. Everybody gets their groceries delivered. Then nobody would notice that people are freezing at stop signs because they don’t leave their house. Okay, I’ve ruined it.

[Thomas]
Well, their groceries don’t show up and they’re like-

[Shep]
So why would they start freezing when they worked fine before? There was some software update.

[Thomas]
Ah, yeah.

[Shep]
Fucking Microsoft again.

[Thomas]
Somebody left out a semicolon. And it’s always something like that.

[Shep]
Right. They didn’t check their exit condition.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So it doesn’t pause at a stop sign. It stops at a stop sign.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
It takes it literally.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So are we doing sort of a mashup of both of our ideas plus WALL·E?

[Shep]
Well. Oh, no. Oh, no. It’s WALL·E! Damn it, Thomas, why would you mention WALL·E?

[Emily]
We didn’t talk about any fat people.

[Shep]
We were getting there.

[Thomas]
Yeah. It was on track to. Because like what is that story?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s that humans have to come out into the world again.

[Shep]
Right. They’re being taken care of by automation. And… And the.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They left Earth. Yeah, it’s. It’s. It’s all WALL·E.

[Emily]
It’s WALL·E.

[Shep]
It’s WALL·E all the way down. Okay. Operation Plumbbob. Okay, I don’t have anything more than that.

[Thomas]
Okay. Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s just the one that’s not WALL·E.

[Emily]
So a stop sign is traveling through space and it’s going to hit the White House.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Non science person here. How big of a crater are we talking? Is it just destroying the White House only? Is it like a good chunk of D.C.? Are we seeing like Gulf of Mexico-style crater?

[Shep]
I mean it- I guess it depends on how much mass the stop sign would have. It is a specially made heavy duty stop sign, but it is still just a stop sign. So even going 125,000 miles per hour, we need Randall Munroe to do the math on this because he would absolutely figure it out.

[Thomas]
Yeah. But also, don’t forget, this is a movie. None of us know.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s fair.

[Thomas]
Most people won’t know.

[Emily]
You could tell me it would just specifically hit the Oval Office and like destroy it and the rest of the White House would be fine and I’d be like, “Okay, cool.” Or you could tell me it would destroy all of D.C. and I’d be like, “Okay, cool.”

[Shep]
Yeah, whatever is more cinematic and serves the story better. So I imagine when they first detect it, they don’t know whether it’s going to hit Earth or not. And then after some time they realize, “Oh, it is going to hit Earth.” And the White House goes, “Well, don’t worry about it, because the odds of it hitting a populated area is very low.” Things fall out of the sky a lot. A lot more than we realize.

[Thomas]
“It’s just a stop sign. It’ll probably just burn up on re-entry.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
But then someone finds the report from 1957 that’s like, “Ah, it’s not just a normal stop sign though.”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And they find out what material it’s made out of and that it’s actually probably not going to burn up on re-entry. And now that we’ve had more time to calculate the angle, it’s going to hit the White House. But not like straight-up and down. It’s coming in at just enough of an angle that it’s going to really wipe out a whole lot.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And again, it’s this ultra strong material. It’s not going to be destroyed by hitting stuff. And at 125,000 miles an hour, it’ll probably embed into the earth quite deeply.

[Shep]
Is this just Don’t Look up again? Are there no new ideas?

[Thomas]
So there’s a rom-com one in here? I think?

[Emily]
Yes, there is, with a completed first act.

[Thomas]
Maybe, maybe. That’s an interesting idea to have a rom-com where the end of the first act is where the like meet cute. I guess their meet cute technically is like-

[Emily]
Is when he decides to be creepy and talk to her.

[Thomas]
When he stops and talks to her. Yeah.

[Shep]
What are we teaching people to do in this one?

[Thomas]
Well, he’s not being creepy. He’s been respectfully keeping his distance. And then a condition changes and he sees a human who may potentially be in need and he’s like, “Hey, it’s raining. You’re getting wet. Do you need a ride?”

[Shep]
Right. His car is warm and dry.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He’s a teacher, she’s a student.

[Emily]
His intention is not to like hit on her. He just is like curious at this point. It’s nothing romantic or-

[Thomas]
Well. And in fact, as you’ve established it, there’s never anything. There hasn’t been anything romantic. He has never expressed a romantic interest in her.

[Emily]
Yeah, there’s no mention of attractiveness. I don’t say she was an attractive young woman. He doesn’t mention it to his friend that she’s attractive. It’s just there’s this lady that waits at this stop sign at 2 in the morning. And it’s just really weird.

[Thomas]
He’s maybe concerned for her safety.

[Emily]
Yeah. Like, the first time when he wants to, he’s like, “Is she running from something? Did she get left behind?” So in the treatise that I had written before I cut it back-

[Thomas]
In your novella.

[Emily]
In my novella, he noticed she has different things with her every time.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Emily]
So that’s how he thinks he knows she’s not a ghost.

[Thomas]
Hmm. What if they’re all ghosts and they don’t know it?

[Shep]
Ah.

[Emily]
What if he’s the ghost?

[Shep]
How does he go to work? This just raises more questions.

[Emily]
In a ghost car? He goes to a ghost bar.

[Shep]
I would like to hear more about this ghost bar.

[Emily]
They sell spirits. Maybe this episode we just explore what’s wrong with all of our pitches.

[Thomas]
What’s wrong with all the pitches is there are no new ideas, apparently.

[Emily]
There aren’t. It’s so hard to come up with original plot ideas.

[Thomas]
Yeah, we may be doing ourselves a disservice by saying, like, “Oh, it’s just WALL·E,” or “It’s just Don’t Look up” or whatever, because maybe in going through our version of the story, we’ll come up with some other angle or some idea or some new thing that we wouldn’t have come up with had we not gone through it, obviously. All right, real quick. What is the elevator pitch of the story of the WALL·E one?

[Shep]
Which one is the WALL·E one?

[Thomas]
The world is being serviced by robots, and then there’s the bug in their programming, and they get stuck at stop signs.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
And then humans have to come out and interact with the real world again for the first time in quite a long time. But I don’t know where the story goes. Do they just try to fix their robots?

[Emily]
Obviously at first, because that would be the easiest solution.

[Thomas]
Sure, sure. So obviously that can’t work then, if that’s the first thing they try.

[Emily]
Yeah. So there’s something in the code, but there’s got to be a reason they can’t fix the hiccup.

[Shep]
In my mind. It’s also partly Emily’s pitch. So, like, the guy driving home from the bar sees a woman who has stopped at the stop sign. She stopped at the stop sign. She was walking along the sidewalk and she saw the sign and she stopped. And she’s frozen. And he keeps seeing her every day. And she’s still there and she hasn’t moved. Then after a while, there’s another person and then another person as people are stopping there. This is just people walking on the street, though.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Why is he driving if everybody’s basically inside? He has a real job? Are there still real jobs? Or there’s still some people out in the world?

[Shep]
Yeah. What if he doesn’t work at a bar? He works as a delivery guy.

[Emily]
I thought the robots were deliveries.

[Thomas]
Yeah. How does he compete financially?

[Shep]
It’s the future. Money doesn’t exist anymore. It’s Star Trek.

[Emily]
Then why does he do it?

[Shep]
It doesn’t make any sense why they do anything in Star Trek either. There’s no money.

[Emily]
True.

[Shep]
Just get a Replicator at your house. You have everything you could ever want.

[Emily]
I want Earl Gray, hot.

[Shep]
That’s the next Hallmark movie?

[Emily]
Earl Gray played by Patrick Stewart.

[Shep]
Played by a young Patrick Stewart.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. Have you seen young Patrick Stewart?

[Shep]
Yes, I have.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
All right, so in the Operation Plumbbob one, what happens?

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
My thought is that they find some way, like they shoot a nuke into space or something, and they affect the trajectory so that it bounces off the Earth’s atmosphere.

[Emily]
They build a giant stop sign, hold it in front of the Earth.

[Shep]
They fire another stop sign at the stop sign.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
So they cancel each other out.

[Thomas]
Actually, I do like that idea of shooting this, something made of the same material up so that they’ll ptwang off of each other and go shooting in two different directions.

[Shep]
So at first they don’t know if it’s going to hit the Earth. And they say, don’t worry about it, because the odds of it hitting the Earth is very, very small. And then it is going to hit the Earth. And they say, don’t worry about it. The odds of it hitting a populated area is very, very small.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And then it’s going to hit Washington D.C. and they’re like, okay, maybe we should worry a little bit. And then they find out it’s going to hit the White House specifically. And they’re like, okay, we need to evacuate at least the White House. Do they tell the residents of D.C. or do they keep it a secret? Anyway, they launch something at it to deflect it. And it does deflect, but now it’s going to hit the Kremlin. It doesn’t deflect it from the Earth. It just makes it not hit the White House. So the Kremlin launches something and now it’s reflected back to hit the White House. It’s the Cold War again. But now with a timer counting down as it gets closer and closer.

[Thomas]
When the Kremlin fires their thing, is it at the White House, or does it go to Manhattan? Because that would be like, quite a bit of destruction.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. Instead of Manhattan, let’s have it hit LA, where movies are made.

[Thomas]
Right. Yep, that makes sense. Although the thing about Manhattan is you got all those skyscrapers. It could go through all of those skyscrapers, you know?

[Shep]
Right. Like that scene in Armageddon.

[Emily]
In Armageddon.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Oh, and that scene in The Avengers.

[Shep]
Yes. Yeah. Let’s stop blowing up Manhattan in every movie.

[Emily]
So the stop sign is now headed to LA. Are we gonna let it crash there, or is the White House gonna ping-pong it to China?

[Thomas]
Maybe they’re like, “Fine, we’ll have it go in the ocean.” So they hit it further west, and it goes all the way over to China. “Why did you do that?” “Look, this isn’t an exact science.”

[Emily]
“Wait, you can figure out where it’s gonna hit, but you can’t figure out how to move it into an unpopulated spot?”

[Shep]
Most of the planet is not populated. So, like, the odds of it being another populated area is vanishing.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
This should be Impossible. We should all go buy lottery tickets because this is so unusual.

[Emily]
Do we want to do, like, that kind of chain reaction thing or-

[Shep]
I imagine if they try to hit it again, China’s afraid that it’ll go towards China, so they launch their own rockets to protect it so that it can’t be hit again.

[Thomas]
There needs to be a finite amount of this substance. Like, they have to use some of this substance to hit it, because that’s the only thing that’ll, that won’t be destroyed by hitting it. Everything else will just be destroyed.

[Shep]
Ah, because it’s that special material.

[Thomas]
Right. So they have to shoot stuff up that’s made out of this special material, but there’s only so much of it in the world.

[Emily]
Because it would take a decade to mine anymore.

[Thomas]
Or- Yeah, it’s like some sort of a super alloy that they haven’t produced in 50 years.

[Shep]
Right. Not since the Apollo program.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
NASA’s budget is so small they can’t do everything.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
So they shut down those refineries.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
How long does this movie take? Because it takes a couple months. Right?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So they find out and people know about the stop sign and it’s gonna hit on Christmas.

[Thomas]
Okay. Yeah.

[Shep]
Or New Year’s. It’s one of those two.

[Thomas]
Right. So obviously this movie starts in 1957 and we’re seeing the atomic testing happen.

[Emily]
You get the weird 50s scientists talking about it. We see the launch. They’re all excited.

[Thomas]
Right. They’re chuckling.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“Oh man, this thing is the fastest man made object ever created. But I’m sure we’ll never see it again.” And then you do some sort of like dissolve to modern day. And then how is it discovered? Is there a backyard scientist or is there something pops up on a NASA screen somewhere?

[Shep]
Right. It’s one of those long range telescope stations, you know, the radio telescope array.

[Thomas]
Right. There’s another blip and they’re like, “What is that?” It turns out it’s just our radio stuff reflected back at us or something.

[Shep]
Right. Because the stop sign’s lined up.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Oh, it’s not straight. Like a blade coming at us. It’s-

[Shep]
I mean, it could be whatever.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because it’s space. There isn’t any friction.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, then I like the idea that it’s just full on upright like a normal stop sign.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Just coming straight at you.

[Thomas]
It’s upright. Yeah. And then I do like the idea of, so we’ll just knock it out of the way. We have- They have to send something up and it just destroys whatever they send up.

[Shep]
Right. Because it’s very dense and it’s traveling very fast.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So it’s got a lot of energy.

[Thomas]
Or do they maybe do they run a simulation because they don’t have time because it’s going to take a while for each thing.

[Shep]
Ah, yes.

[Thomas]
So they run a simulation and they realize, “Ah, our plan, our initial plan, this isn’t going to work.” And they realize “We need more of that material.” So there’s some mothballed warehouse out in the desert somewhere.

[Shep]
Right. They had four of those stop signs because they were in four way stop.

[Thomas]
It was at an intersection.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Now they gave one to Russia in the 1970s as like a peace treaty thing. They were talking about nuclear disarmament.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And here’s a remnant of their underground nuclear testing. Or I guess it was the 80s when was- Who’s the Russian prime minister that-

[Emily]
Gorbachev.

[Shep]
Gorbachev was big on the peace treaties.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So the Russians have one of our sides, we have two others, and they have one.

[Thomas]
I like that. Three chances. That’s perfect.

[Shep]
Right. So we launch one and it alters the trajectory. Now it’s going to hit the Kremlin. They launch theirs and now it’s going to hit wherever we decide.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Some populated area.

[Thomas]
So we have one shot left.

[Shep]
Yes. Only one shot. How does this end? Where is this going? What-

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
What is the message of this movie?

[Emily]
Well, you’re Gen X and I’m an elder millennial, so I think we should just let it destroy us all.

[Thomas]
It’s been a while since we’ve had a Destroy the World movie, so-

[Shep]
I’m just picturing the Council of Elder Millennials on which you sit.

[Thomas]
Well, does it strike the Earth or not? Because if what we originally were saying is that it’s coming toward some populated place on the US and so that we send up another rocket and then that pings it off towards some other country, but then that would be it, it would hit that country.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So does it hit the Earth or does that third rocket deflect it?

[Emily]
What happens to the Earth if we don’t have a moon?

[Shep]
We lose the tides. We lose some species of moth that mate under full moons.

[Emily]
Is it survivable?

[Shep]
So the. So if you. The moon is stabilizing the planet.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
The reason that we don’t wobble on our axis like other planets is we have a stabilizing force which is the moon, which itself has a stable orbit.

[Emily]
Okay. The moon.

[Shep]
So we keep each other lined up.

[Emily]
So our gravitational poles with each other help kind of keep us still.

[Shep]
Yes, yes.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So our axises don’t rotate so much, which happens to other planets. They drift over time. And so it would be more difficult for life to develop or life to maintain itself, if any place humans lived could also be an ice cap. Right? Sometimes the earth will turn so much that it becomes an ice cap. That’s now the top of the axis. It would be devastating long term for all life on Earth, is what I’m saying.

[Emily]
Long term.

[Shep]
Yes, long term, over a period of millions of years.

[Emily]
Right. Long term. Okay.

[Shep]
It would end life if we didn’t have a moon.

[Emily]
So-

[Shep]
A large moon like our current moon, which is a quarter the size of the Earth.

[Emily]
Right. Yeah. So people in charge don’t care about the future.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s right.

[Emily]
So could we have it, rather than, you know, hit the Earth and destroy a population center or something, have it hit the moon?

[Thomas]
I love the idea of it, they send up the third one, they calculate the trajectory and they’re like, “It’s going to skip off of the atmosphere.” Everyone’s so excited, but no one thought about what happens after. They were just so focused on the Earth that they don’t realize it’s going to skip off the atmosphere and ptwang right into the moon. And then, yeah, the moon is not as big or stable as the Earth. And so yeah, it ends up destroying the Moon. And they’re like, “Ah.”

[Shep]
Oh. Since it keeps pointing to population centers for some reason, even though it’s statistically impossible, we have a moon base. And in fact, that’s where they first detected the stop sign originally.

[Thomas]
Yes, right, so this is like 50 or 100 years in the future then, which is good.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
That gives the stop sign more time to have made that humongous orbit.

[Shep]
Right. So they save the Earth, but it’s going to destroy the moon base. The American moon base.

[Thomas]
Oh, it should be the International Moon Base. The Russians and the Americans are together on the moon base and they’re like “(Sighs).” Because it was America and Russia that were being threatened by it from the first two.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So the third one gets both.

[Shep]
Ah, poetic.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Shep]
And it wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t say anything when they first saw it. If they just kept their mouth shut. That’s the message of the movie: Keep your mouth shut.

[Thomas]
So the message of the movie is “Don’t look up.” Is that what you’re saying?

[Shep]
Oh, no. God damn it!

[Emily]
Why fix problems today when you could put it off on someone else?

[Shep]
Yep, that’s the American way.

[Emily]
Yeah, so I’m saying that’s why I asked the question about the moon. So if it’s going to take time for it to really mess up humans. I mean, those poor moths, that’s devastating. But-

[Shep]
I mean, I think the lack of tides is going to mess up sea life.

[Emily]
Oh yeah, definitely you’re going to lose urchins and starfish for sure.

[Shep]
And then as more things in the sea die, that’s going to spread. And then.

[Thomas]
Well, there’ll be a huge carbon release.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’d be bad. So we can’t lose the moon. Also, the stop sign is very small.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
I don’t think it could affect the whole moon that much.

[Thomas]
So it just destroys the moon base.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Or maybe… Okay, all right. It doesn’t destroy the moon base, but for a moment it looks like it’s about to. Like, they’re not sure. They know it’s heading toward the moon and the moon base is right there. And they’re like, “Come on.” Like “This keeps happening. How does this keep happening? It’s so statistically unlikely.”

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And it ends up landing 20 yards from the moon base. There’s a big (puff) crater.

[Shep]
Okay, here’s the visual that my brain just played for me.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
It lands between the moon base and their launch area. It lands stick side down and just sticks in the ground on the road to the launchpad.

[Thomas]
Very good. Yep, I like that.

[Shep]
Doesn’t make any sense. This is such nonsense. Am I on drugs? Like what? Oh, it’s because I watched Hundreds of Beavers. It’s that absurdist comedy.

[Emily]
That is a brilliant movie and everyone should watch it. It’s life changing.

[Shep]
Yeah, this is Hundreds of Beavers in space. Except with stop signs.

[Emily]
Yeah. Three Stop signs or four stop signs. That’s the name of this movie. Four Stop Signs, Four-Way Stop.

[Shep and Thomas]
Four-Way Stop!

[Thomas]
Well, on that note, let’s take a break and when we come back, maybe we’ll work on this movie some more? I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back from the break.

[Shep]
Hundreds of Beavers but in space played in my head the whole time I was in the bathroom. And it’s like, oh, it’s low budget. It’s black and white. It’s, you know, a lot of virtual background sets. At the beginning, one of the scientists on the moon is walking between the launch pad and the base, and one of the other moon buggies zooms by really quick and he’s like, “Oh. (Anger!)” And that’s where the stop sign lands later.

[Thomas]
Yep, yep, yep.

[Shep]
At the end to like put it all together. And he’s the scientist that spots it on the, on the long range radar.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But it’s just Hundreds of Beavers. It’s- It’s that kind of absurdist-style. Nothing we said contradicts any of that.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
It’s so on the base.

[Thomas]
No, yeah.

[Shep]
It’s Americans and Russians and Chinese. It’s the three countries.

[Emily]
It all works for me. And I like that it’s absurdist because why not? These kind of movies are always so serious or always so-

[Shep]
Right. But it’s so silly that the stop sign directly hitting the White House is impossible unless it’s in an absurdist humorous movie.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So imagine the three. Maybe it’s only three scientists, but the three groups on the moon base when they discover, when they finally calculate that it’s going to hit the White House and so that the American is all depressed and the Russian and the Chinese guy are laughing at him and then they hit it and now it’s going to hit the Kremlin and the American and the Chinese are laughing at the Russian and he’s all depressed and it goes back and forth and maybe they get in a fist fight.

[Thomas]
Oh, right. And so of course, when the Russians shoot theirs up and it changes course, they’re recalculating. And the Chinese guys looking all nervous and then it’s coming at the moon.

[Emily]
And they’re all like “(Depressed)”.

[Shep]
It’s the Americans that hit it the third time to knock it towards the moon. Right? They had three stop signs.

[Emily]
Oh, that would make sense.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So then should the Russians hit it toward China, then?

[Shep]
Ah, see.

[Thomas]
I like the fake out.

[Shep]
I think that they think it’s- They’re going to hit it towards China because that would make logical sense.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
But of course, this is an absurdist farce.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So instead goes back to America.

[Thomas]
Back to America. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. So the Chinese guy is like biting his nails and the American’s like “Hahaha”.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
And the Russian’s like “Hahaha”. And then it lands in like LA again.

[Thomas]
Okay, so there’s like a big check mark for the countries or X’s or something like that. There’s some super obvious indicator to the audience.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so the Chinese guy’s really nervous and it’s like, ding. Like, check. It’s okay because it’s going back to the United States. And the United States has a big X over it. And the American guy’s like, “Ah.” Because it’s going back to there. And the Chinese guy’s like, “Ha, ha ha ha.” So then the Americans shoot theirs up, their second one.

[Shep]
Right. The last one.

[Thomas]
And the Chinese guy is looking nervous again. And then it’s ding. It’s okay. And he’s like, “Ha, ha ha.” And all three of them, ding, ding, ding. Check marks across all countries. And they’re shaking hands. They’re very good. And then there’s like a eh, eh, eh. And they look over and it’s like the moon has a big X over it. And they’re like, “Oh, no.” And they’re running around. Who are the Hundreds of Beavers guys? Let’s send them an email after this.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“Guys, we got an idea for you.” So what do we need to figure out in this story?

[Shep]
Well, we know the beginning and the end. What else can happen that would be funny to see?

[Thomas]
I mean, if we’re taking a page from the Hundreds of Beavers book, that’s just like the first act.

[Emily]
Oh god. Yeah. You think it’s over? You think the story is complete.

[Thomas]
Yeah, this is the first act because we just shot three more stop signs into space.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Thomas]
They’re coming back.

[Shep]
Yes, obviously, obviously. And of course they’re gonna also land on the moon.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And make a four way stop?

[Shep]
To make, yes.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So that’s the end. The real end is the four way stop. What else could happen?

[Shep]
So we have the moon base. Do we have like an International Space Station?

[Thomas]
Probably.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Probably.

[Emily]
Why not? Like a bus stop on the way to the moon.

[Shep]
So you’ve, you’ve painted a picture. They get to the International Space Station and it’s a bus stop. They have their tickets to get to the next shuttle. One guy missed his shuttle by five minutes, he’s got to wait, you know, two weeks.

[Shep]
Next shuttle, August 14th.

[Thomas]
So is there sort of like a spy versus spy feeling among the three astronauts? Or the astronaut, cosmonaut, and taikonaut?

[Shep]
Right. It’s all- The premise is friendship and cooperation.

[Thomas]
Right. But secretly, each of their governments is saying, “Find ways to undermine the other two, or spy on the other two.”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
“Send back what their stuff is.”

[Shep]
Right. “Sabotage their thing.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. And of course, the sabotages don’t quite work the way they expect them to.

[Emily]
At one point. Do they actually use shoes?

[Shep]
Use shoes?

[Emily]
For the sabotage?

[Shep]
Ah, sabot-age.

[Thomas]
One of the guys has to- There’s like some sort of an experiment that he’s running and he’s like- He can’t figure out what’s going on and stuff. And so somebody tries to sabotage it and that ends up, like, fixing whatever the problem is. Does he get a Nobel Prize in space as a result?

[Shep]
So all the people on the moon are competing with each other.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Who is our main character? Is it the American on the moon?

[Thomas]
Probably, since we’re American.

[Shep]
Right, that would make sense.

[Thomas]
The easiest.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So things keep happening and causing the other moon base residents to like, win awards for stuff, maybe even for things that the American did but doesn’t get any credit for.

[Thomas]
Right. But he’s, like, trying to sabotage the Russian guy and ends up helping him and…

[Shep]
Right. Or maybe he’s sabotaging them and it’s backfiring on him. Like, the reason that moon buggy keeps zooming by that intersection is he messed with the brakes and now they can’t slow down.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So it’s his own fault, but he doesn’t see it that way. He’s like, “Ah, they’re driving too fast.” It’s the same buggy, just keeps making a loop around the moon because they can’t stop.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
At one point, like, he almost gets hit by the buggy, but, you know, the Russian shoves him out of the way and like, the traffic camera shows the Russian. Maybe the Russian is trying to push him into the buggy, but it accidentally pushed him out of the way.

[Thomas]
Oh, right.

[Shep]
And so the Russian wins in a safety award.

[Thomas]
Right, right. Heroism.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
As the Russian’s trying to push him and he trips on a moon rock and ends up really shoving him, but then himself falling in front. And so it looks like he dove and pushed him out of the way and took the hit himself. I love the idea that the buggy is just driving the circumference of the moon without rocks or caverns or craters or anything disrupting it from its path.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
There definitely has to be some sort of a crater gag at some point. I don’t know what it is. Oh, and is the American out there golfing?

[Emily]
Yeah, I think that would be funny.

[Thomas]
He’s like driving golf balls and he sees an opportunity to try to hit one at. Oh, he sees the Taikonaut out there collecting rock samples or something. So he’s trying to hit golf balls at him or something.

[Shep]
Is he just golfing on his own?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
You don’t have to golf with other people.

[Thomas]
If you’re just driving. Yeah.

[Emily]
Plus, it’s the moon. Who else is he gonna have tee time with?

[Thomas]
I do like the idea that he has a tee time and he can’t start until it’s that time. He’s like- “(Frustrated noise)”

[Shep]
Yeah, because there’s a guy on the, not the green.

[Thomas]
On the course.

[Shep]
The course.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Downrange.

[Shep]
Oh, no. Like a guy monitoring. He’s like, “Oh, you can’t start yet.”

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
“Look at the time.”

[Thomas]
There’s just. Yeah, there’s a… There’s a literal monitor and there’s just a guy whose face is on the monitor.

[Emily]
Just every time he goes to swing, he just shakes his head. “No.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
If he’s just on a monitor, you could walk around him. I just imagine a guy in a spacesuit out there.

[Emily]
Just standing there.

[Shep]
Just standing there, stopping him.

[Emily]
He needs a stop sign.

[Shep]
The stop signs keep coming back to haunt him.

[Thomas]
I think he has one of those, like, you know, at the Masters, they’ve got the big sign that says quiet on it. He’s got one of those. It says, like, stop on one side and then quiet on the other. And…

[Shep]
Quiet. Because that’s so loud in space.

[Thomas]
Well, because it’s a traditional golf thing, you’ve got the little quiet sign, but yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
But also you have that double joke of it’s so quiet in space.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I like him having a stop sign. I like if we keep coming back to stop signs. Maybe there was a stop sign at the intersection originally and the American kicked it over for some reason. He’s angry about whatever.

[Emily]
They got mad and yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Kicked it and beat it up.

[Shep]
Or he was drunk.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Thomas]
He was driving recklessly, and maybe he hit a rock and that veered him off, and he hit the sign and knocked it over. And so he gets up to do something with the sign, but he hasn’t put the brake on, on the buggy.

[Shep]
Oh, the emergency brake.

[Thomas]
And so that’s why the buggy is going around and around.

[Shep]
It’s the unmanned buggy.

[Thomas]
Right. Because he got out.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And then what happened to that stop sign? Does he just get mad? He, like, hurls it.

[Shep]
Or maybe when he hit it, it knocked it off and it’s just like going off into space.

[Thomas]
Sure. Oh, it’s just slowly orbiting the moon, so every once in a while it comes by. There’s. There’s something we can do with that. He hits a golf ball and it flies up and it bounces off of the stop sign and comes back down and…

[Shep]
Right. Yep.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Hits something he didn’t want it to hit.

[Shep]
Right. If the stop sign from space landing on the moon is the end of the first act, then that’s the stop sign from the intersection that comes back. That’s the end. So it’s got to do something at the end.

[Thomas]
Oh, it comes back down and it crashes in the path of the buggy and finally stops the buggy.

[Shep]
Ah, it crashes down, and then the buggy hits it and launches off.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Gotta escalate. So where does the buggy land? It’s got to crash into his apartment.

[Thomas]
Oh, I was gonna say, I think it just flies off into space and the cosmonaut and the taikonaut just look at the astronaut, like, “Dude, we needed that.”

[Emily]
Now they have to hoof it.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. But if it’s our ending, what is the big-

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Okay, so then it could. It could launch it, like you said, in the air, at an angle.

[Shep]
Oh, it hits their ship.

[Thomas]
Yeah, exactly.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
It hits their return rocket.

[Emily]
They gotta wait for the next bus.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Shep]
Or maybe something keeps happening to their rockets. Just like we keep running out of stop signs.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They’re running out of rockets, and this is their last one.

[Shep]
They’re shutting down the moon base. It’s too dangerous. They’re headed towards the rocket at the end. The stop sign comes down, the buggy launches off of it and hits the rocket.

[Thomas]
Are the three of them in the rocket? Are they taking off? Right, they’re taking off. And as the rocket’s going up, the buggy hits the bottom, which points the nose away from Earth. And so now they’re hurtling off into space.

[Shep]
Oh, they go to Mars. That’s how it ends.

[Thomas]
They crash outside of the moon base on Mars. And the people on the moon base on Mars are like, “What the?” Is there anything else we want to add to this story? I mean, I know it’s basically just become a bunch of great gags for our Hundreds of Beavers in space story.

[Emily]
I think it’s fantastic.

[Shep]
I’m gonna add more stop signs every, everywhere I can think of. So he’s flirting with a scientist on Mars. They’re having a long distance relationship, but their time is limited.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So it’s so like, her supervisor keeps shutting off the transmissions, and so a big stop sign comes up on his monitor.

[Thomas]
Uh huh.

[Shep]
Just bring his stop signs back.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Shep]
And then they end up on Mars at the end.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And then there’s some reveal about something. I don’t know.

[Thomas]
Right. She’s a robot.

[Shep]
“No one’s perfect.”

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show about a Stop Sign. Is it a sign of the times, or should we just stop?

[Shep]
Ugh.

[Thomas]
Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com, where you’ll also find transcripts for every episode, links to the references we make, a bit of information about the three of us, and how you can support the show. And in case you were wondering, yes, this is your sign to join Emily, Shep, and I on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
Well, it’s kind of a shame that we came to this conclusion so late in our episode, because there’s a ton more great gags I think we could easily come up with for this, given enough time.

[Shep]
Yep. All right, Is this our next low budget idea? Let’s actually make this one.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think so.

[Shep]
We just need a green screen.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. This one we definitely need somebody who knows vfx. There are a number of things that would need to be done, but I don’t think any of it is particularly difficult, especially because it’s supposed to look pretty low rent.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
All right, is this it? Are we wrapping up?

[Shep]
I can’t think of anything else.

[Emily]
I can’t either.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
I mean, I can. I can think of many other things.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
We’re out of time.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
But we don’t need to spend another hour and a half discussing this.

[Thomas]
No.

[Shep]
I kind of want to. All right. Okay, fine.

[Thomas]
When we have our writing session for-

[Shep]
Right. Hundreds of Stop Signs.

[Thomas]
Hundreds of Stop Signs.