Jonathan Spira-Savett Jonathan Spira-Savett

Chapter 46: What We Owe Our “Enemy”

On The Good Place, Michael’s last-minute attempt to salvage the experiment and win some extra points for the new humans puts Brent alone in a sinkhole. Simone and John decide to leave him there, but Chidi gets in with Brent and ends up face-to-face with him for the final seconds of the year. On the podcast, Rebecca Rosenthal and Jon Spira-Savett discuss who might be our “enemies” and what we responsibilities we have to them, in a moment of need or as long as our lives are connected.

Read More
Jonathan Spira-Savett Jonathan Spira-Savett

Special Episode: Kirston Mann, Costume Designer on “The Good Place” (Just in Time for Purim!)

To coincide with Purim, the festival with masks and costumes, we talk with Kirston Mann, costume designer on “The Good Place”! Sari Laufer, Ilana Schachter, and Jon Spira-Savett talk with Kirston about what her work entails and hear her insights into how costume serves storytelling on television. We delve into the characters of Eleanor, Tahani, Janet and Jason in particular, and what she, the script, and actors all brought to the costume design process. We reflect all together on how what we wear can conceal, reveal, get in the way, help us do our job or help us change and grow. We zero in on some moments in the series where changes in dress are particularly significant. Kirston turns the tables and asks the rabbis some ethical questions about the story of Esther in the Bible. And of course much more!

Read More
Jonathan Spira-Savett Jonathan Spira-Savett

Chapter 45: Human Nature, or Just a Bad Week?

On The Good Place, Michael tells Bad Janet about a week halfway through the experiment that made things worse because of Brent, yet despite the setback the team regroups. On the podcast, Leora Kling Perkins and Jon Spira-Savett mull over the Talmud-era debates on whether humans should have been created in the first place. Does addressing questions like that even matter for our actual moral lives? How can truth, about the big picture or another human being, coexist with hope?

Read More
Jonathan Spira-Savett Jonathan Spira-Savett

Chapter 44: Be(come) Yourself — A View From College

On The Good Place, Tahani worries that her entertaining skills aren’t a valuable contribution to the experiment, Michael goes up against Vicky wearing a Michael suit at Demon-Con, and Derek tries to fill in for Janet while Michael and Jason are off trying to rescue her from the Bad Place. On the podcast, Jon Spira-Savett talks with two college students, Sadie Meltzer and Lela Spira-Savett! First we talk generally about how they relate to The Good Place, and where they think Judaism fits into their ideas about personal ethical growth. Then we get Lela’s and Sadie’s perspective on this episode and dive into Reb Zusya of Hanipol’s teaching that on arrival at World to Come, he expects to be asked not “Why were you not Moses?” but “Why were you not Zusya?”

Read More
Jonathan Spira-Savett Jonathan Spira-Savett

Chapter 43: Ethics Without God, Judging Without Evidence

On The Good Place, Eleanor and the others have to assess Glenn’s claim that Michael is actually demon Vicky in a Michael suite -- and they have to help keep the neighborhood going in the meantime without Michael and it turns out without Janet, who has been kidnapped by the Bad Place). On the podcast, Elliot Goldberg and Jon Spira-Savett mull over ethics without God and critique King Solomon’s approach to judging others when the most important evidence you’d rely on is ambiguous or just isn’t accessible.

Read More