Tov! A Podcast About ”The Good Place” and Jewish Ideas

This episode is Jon Spira-Savett’s attempt to collect my thoughts about how The Good Place illustrates, riffs on, critiques and expands on the Jewish concept of teshuvah (personal change as “returning”), especially as taught in the writings of Rabbi Moses Maimonides. What have I learned so far, and has it affected me in my life? This episode is an exposition in one voice and not a conversation, and fo...

Yet another “insider” conversation with someone from the Good Place team! Pamela Hieronymi is a philosophy professor at UCLA with whom Michael Schur spoke early on in the show’s development. Pamela talks with Dan Ross and Jon Spira-Savett about some of the moral emotions, like envy, resentment, and blame; whether one can in fact try to be good and whether some people have limits on how good they can b...

Rebecca Rosenthal, Dan Ross, Sari Laufer and Jon Spira-Savett roam around our reflections after this Jewish rewatch of the entire series! We four have been the most frequent co-hosts of Tov! We’re joined by co-host Daniel Kirzane. Some of our topics include which main characters continue to resonate for us or strike us in new ways; aspects of the show that pleasantly surprised us “Jewishly”; things th...

Listen to or watch the recording of the live show here!

Rebecca Rosenthal, Dan Ross, Sari Laufer, and Jon Spira-Savett will be co-hosting a conversation with some of our reflections on rewatching The Good Place with a Jewish lens, and we’ll respond to your questions in the Zoom chat or the Facebook live feed, and we’re happy to have you talk with us live on Zoom too! We ...

On The Good Place, friends and family arrive, and everyone wrestles with what to do there and whether or when to choose a final, peaceful end. Tahani stays as an architect, Jason and Chidi leave, Michael exits into life as a human, and Eleanor’s sparks go into the universe and perhaps return to earth. On the podcast, Elliot Goldberg and Jon Spira-Savett invoke the Talmud’s heaven-earth straddlers. We ...

On The Good Place, our group finally gets to the actual Good Place, where they discover that an eternity of perfection has led to boredom and stagnation even for those who were moral giants on earth. So they propose a new option, that people can stay as long as they like and then choose when it’s time to bring their existence to a peaceful end. On the podcast, Dan Ross and Jon Spira-Savett discuss our...

On The Good Place, it’s time to pilot the new assessment system and and train its operators. Eleanor and Chidi are both afraid the other will have second thoughts about their relationship after reading their individual file, and Michael has trouble handing responsibility off to Vicky. On the podcast, Savannah Lipinski (new co-host!) and Jon Spira-Savett explore Jewi...

No, the title isn’t a question about your next laptop… On The Good Place, Janet brings everyone including the Judge and Timothy Olyphant into her void, where Chidi presents his concept for an updated afterlife based on multiple reboots and learning from one’s prior lives. On the podcast, Rebecca and Jon talk about how we access and use our imperfect memories, and how Judaism tries to h...

Both The Good Place and the podcast are pulling many threads together as the series moves toward its finish! On The Good Place, Chidi gets back all his memories from life and the afterlife, including the questions he has asked each friend, mentor, and partner along the way and how those conversations have informed his quests for truth and a soulmate. On the podcast, Dan Ross and Jon Spira-Savett talk ...

On The Good Place, the Judge weighs Michael’s arguments that the experiment has proved successful, and while they wait for the verdict, our humans and Janet hold a series of as-if funerals for each other. On the podcast, Sari Laufer and Jon Spira-Savett talk about their own experiences as rabbis who officiate at funerals, and entertain various intriguing variations suggested by the epi...

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 responsibi...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ta...

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...

On The Good Place, Eleanor tries to orchestrate Chidi’s growth behind the scenes by sending Jason to reveal that he is not a monk and to swear Chidi to secrecy. Yet it only leads Chidi to stomachaches. Tahani tries the same with John by bringing him to various VIP experiences so she can coax him to learn ethics, but eventually she has to figure out how to talk with him directly about his hurtful work ...

Our second “insider” conversation with someone who worked on The Good Place! Todd May is a philosopher to whom Michael Schur reached out early in the show because of Professor May’s book Death (The Art of Living). Todd talks and laughs with Jon Spira-Savett about a range of topics, including: motivation (of characters on the show, and of Jon); community and ethical growth; whether the show actually ha...

On The Good Place, it’s the start of a new and final season! Eleanor poses in Michael’s role as architect and tries various plans to reshape Brent. When she struggles, the group loses faith in her and so does Eleanor herself, until a pep talk from Michael leads her to change her perspective (and her outfit). On the podcast, it’s also the start of a new and final season, so Sari Laufer and Jon Spira-Sa...

On the final episode of Season 3 of The Good Place, Tahani encounters John the gossip columnist, and Eleanor leans on the group as Chidi decides he needs to erase his memories of her when Simone arrives in the new experiment. On the podcast, Elliot Goldberg and Jon Spira-Savett return to the theme of friendship – through their experiences as “architects” in schools and camp, and revisiting a Talmudic-...