Here's something nobody warns you about being a creative person: at some point, you will have to decide how much of your actual life you're willing to shove into your work and then show to the people you stole it from.

Mandy's writing a book for her teenage daughters and discovering that words, frustratingly, do not arrive pre-edited. Ryan's twelve thousand words into a thriller and has realized he is constitutionally incapable of writing a scene without at least one silly billy. And Kyle just got tracked down through Instagram by someone who wants to produce one of his plays — which is both a beautiful story about good work finding its audience and a cautionary tale about maybe putting your contact information on things. We're all works in progress. Some of us more literally than others.

This week we're talking about truth — where it shows up in creative work, how much of it you actually need, and whether "based on a true story" is a promise or a threat. Pete's deep in a film series about fraud and discovers that the best true stories are the ones about liars. Kyle argues — compellingly — that he doesn't want historical accuracy at all, he wants you to lie to him beautifully, and cites Better Man (the Robbie Williams movie where Robbie Williams is a CGI chimpanzee) as possibly the most emotionally honest biopic ever made. Mandy confesses she once showed her mom a deeply autobiographical short film and offered to never screen it publicly, which was, and she will admit this, an absolute lie.

The takeaway is something like: the facts don't have to be true as long as the feeling is in creative works. Which is either profound or the motto of every con artist in history.

We also dig into fake it till you make it — that specific flavor of creative terror where you say "yes" to something you cannot yet do and then sprint toward competence before anyone notices. Ryan's been calling himself a writer since he was a kid, years before he was actually doing it professionally, which turned out to be less of a lie and more of a very patient prophecy. Pete walked into rooms full of people asking "what is a podcast" and answered "I'll tell you tomorrow," which is apparently a viable business model. And Kyle talks about the moment Mandy told him he was actually good at interviewing — after he'd spent an entire podcast series convinced he was faking it. Turns out most of us are faking it. The ones who make it are just the ones who kept showing up anyway.

Plus: the crew breaks down what makes them laugh — from the Zucker Brothers hiding A-list jokes in the background of hospital scenes, to Rose Matafeo's Horndog, to a comedian named Kurt Braunohler doing five minutes on 120,000 bees that plays like Shakespeare wrote a set at The Comedy Store. And our beloved fake sponsors return: The Other Orange wants your gambling money (they might train owls), and The Last Apple would like to buy everything you own and rent it back to you at a reasonable, eternal monthly rate. 

We remain the only podcast either of them sponsors. Probably for good reason.

Films & Shows Discussed:

• Better Man (2024) — Robbie Williams biopic with CGI chimp, dir. Michael Gracey
• Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) — Lee Israel forgery story
• The Hoax (2006) — Richard Gere as fake Howard Hughes biographer
• Shattered Glass (2003) — Stephen Glass / New Republic fabrication scandal
• Quiz Show (1994) — Charles Van Doren quiz show scandal, dir. Robert Redford
• Big Eyes (2014) — Margaret Keane painting credit story, dir. Tim Burton
• Rocketman (2019) — Elton John biopic
• Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) — Queen / Freddie Mercury biopic
• Baby Reindeer (2024) — Netflix limited series (NOT Baby Driver)
• Baby Driver (2017) — Edgar Wright film (NOT Baby Reindeer)
• The Orville (2017–2022) — Seth MacFarlane sci-fi comedy series
• Shrinking — Apple TV+ comedy series (current season at time of recording)
• Will & Grace (1998–2006, 2017–2020) — NBC sitcom
• Saturday Night (2024) — SNL origin story film

The Theranos Movie:

• The Dropout (2022) — Elizabeth Holmes tries to be Steve Jobs and goes to jail.

Press Your Luck Documentary:

• The Luckiest Man in America (2024) — about Michael Larson breaking Press Your Luck (verify exact title)

Comedy Specials & Clips Referenced:

• Rose Matafeo: Horndog (2020) — stand-up special
• Kurt Braunohler — "120,000 Bees" bit
• Alex Edelman: Just for Us (2023) — HBO stand-up special
• Demi Adejuyigbe Is Going to Do One Backflip — Dropout special
• John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in L.A. (2024) — Netflix live talk show
• Bob Reese — "AI Videos Are Getting Too Good" YouTube parkour series
• The Naked Gun (1988) — Zucker Brothers; "Mrs. Nordberg" hospital joke
• Bo Burnham — Oh you know... just a pioneer of multimedia/tech-forward comedy specials

Comedians & Writers Mentioned:

• Patton Oswalt
• Sean Hayes
• Megan Mullally
• Max Mutchnick — Will & Grace creator/showrunner
• Mike Birbiglia — Referenced as storytelling comedy style influence
• Monty Python
• Jack Benny — Referenced as old-school one-shot comedy style

Books & Writing Projects Mentioned:

• You're Okay, Go Play — Mandy Fabian's book in progress (nonfiction, for her daughters)
• This Last Adventure — Ryan Dalton's previous novel featuring family stories and Alzheimer's themes
• Unapologetically ADHD — Pete Wrigh...

When your work gets traction, people don’t just consume it—they build a little civilization around it. In this episode, Pete Wright, Mandy Fabian, Kyle Olson, and Ryan Dalton talk about the first time strangers made their work feel real (and slightly terrifying), from festival reviews and elevator recognition to fan-made dioramas and grandparents reading novels aloud together.

They dig into what creators owe their communities, how to set boundaries without killing the joy, what “seeding” iconic objects really means, and what music helps them write without their brains wandering off to watch Star Wars in their head. Also: an unexpectedly sincere love letter to pencils, France’s finest export (ennui), and a rapid-fire fandom game that proves no one should be trusted with a t-shirt press.

Links & Notes

• Kyle's Twenty Twenty Mix Playlist

• (01:11) - The Moment You are the Center of the Fandom

Look. We're back. New year. New host. And we opened the show with Ryan reading the dictionary definition of the word "we," which is either a bit or a cry for help — the line is thin and we're not here to judge. The point is: Mandy Fabian is here now, Misty is off surviving life at full speed, and we're all still pretending we know what we're doing creatively. (We don't. That's the show.)

Here's the thing about creative work that nobody tells you until you've already panicked about it seventeen times: you don't actually have to know what happens next. The writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation — a show that ran for seven seasons and won actual awards — would literally write "tech the tech" in the script when they didn't have the specific quantum warp polaron nonsense figured out yet. Grey's Anatomy? "Medical, medical, medical." These are real strategies used by professionals who got paid. The details came later. The momentum mattered now. This is permission. Take it.

We also answer a listener question that hits painfully close to home: what happens when you suddenly have all the time in the world to be creative and your brain immediately responds by doing absolutely nothing? Turns out "I can do anything" metabolizes into "I can't do anything" faster than you'd think.

We talk egg timers, scheduled creativity, and why imposing fake limitations on yourself might be the only way to survive unlimited freedom. And then, because we are who we are, we spend the last chunk of the episode pitching wildly different plays based on the same prompt — a veterinarian's office, three actors, and the opening line "Do you want the honest version or the one that'll let you sleep tonight?" Somehow we ended up with alien kittens, a ketamine heist, and a sentient skin rash that makes people act out telenovelas. This is the show. We're so glad you're here.

Smart People Who Said Smart Things:

• Ronald D. Moore — The "tech the tech" guy
• Shonda Rhimes — The "medical, medical, medical" queen
• Madeleine L'Engle — "Inspiration more often comes during the work than before it." Correct.
• Don Roos — Screenwriter behind the one-hour egg timer method: commit to one focused hour, let it grow if it wants to
• Steven Pressfield — Author of The War of Art, originator of "the resistance" as a concept for that voice in your head that tells you you're garbage

Places That Let Creatives Do Weird Things on Deadlines:

• Muse Fest at Space 55 (Phoenix) — Nine muses, nine responses, one week, no stakes, maximum creativity
• Phoenix Theater's 24-Hour Theater Project — Kyle wrote a 15-page script overnight and it was about a sentient skin rash. We'll explain.
• Series Fest / Tribeca / Frameline — Festivals Mandy is submitting her pilot to

Projects You Should Know About:

• StorySprawl — Pete's invite-only collaborative writing project where you never write what comes next, someone else does, and it's apparently liberating as hell
• You Are Here — Mandy's indie TV pilot, shot micro-budget over three days. Coming soon?
• The Black Cape Saga — Ryan's upcoming words! Mark your Goodreads!
• Go Help Yourself — Misty's podcast. Still running. Go listen if you miss her. We do.

Tools for People Who Need Structure:

• Obsidian — Kyle is migrating his notes here from Zoho Notebook and found a file from eight years ago that just said "This is where the good ideas go." Still waiting.
• The One-Hour Egg Timer Method — One hour. No phone. No errands. If it turns into three hours, great. If not, you did the hour. That's the whole thing. Sean Carlin has a good write-up here.

Public Domain Watch (From the Fake Sponsor):

• Nancy Drew, Miss Marple, Sam Spade — All entered public domain January 2026. Do something interesting with them. Please. No more horror movies.

• (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos

In this Very Special Episode, it’s just Pete and Kyle pulling the curtain back on one of the show’s most reliably chaotic features: those “ads” that don’t so much sponsor the show as wander into it, sit down uninvited, and start making sustained eye contact. The spark is a listener question—who on earth is making these things?—and the answer turns into a funny, slightly unsettling tour of how Craft and Chaos builds its weird little universe without losing the thread of why it exists in the first place.

What follows is less “inside baseball” and more “inside the raccoon’s head,” as they talk about the creative logic behind a recurring bit: how surprise keeps reactions honest, why the show’s structure makes the interruptions land the way they do, and how the team balances absurdity with affection so the joke doesn’t curdle into cynicism. It’s a conversation about craft, yes—but also about restraint, collaboration, and the particular joy of making something that’s small, strange, and clearly made by people with fingerprints.

And if you’ve ever wondered why certain “sponsors” feel like returning characters, why others show up like weather, or why some interruptions feel suspiciously… polished… this episode gives you just enough context to appreciate the chaos more without robbing it of its best trick: catching you off-guard.

It all begins — as so many creative disasters do — in a tavern. Not a real tavern, because this is 2025 and nobody can afford to drink anywhere that isn't their own kitchen. No, this is a fictional tavern, conjured by Kyle Olson in an attempt to make Dungeons & Dragons seem exactly as sophisticated as it actually is. And there they are: Pete Wright, sage of sighs; Misty Stinnett, who claims the episode title in minute five like a boss; and Ryan Dalton, wizard of words and human embodiment of, “I’m fine, actually." They're here to discuss beginnings — that thing you agonize over for weeks before giving up and starting with someone waking up in a daze. Misty brings the skull-cracking horror of Verity and the pajama-clad Celine Dion catharsis of Bridget Jones's Diary, proving you can pivot from blood spatter to "All By Myself" without a map. Ryan obsesses over The Dark Knight's opening heist with fantasy-football-lineup energy, then reads from The Gone-Away World about the irony of fire. Pete shows up with Blade Runner because of course he does, and Kyle brings Clive Barker's story about sentient, revolutionary hands, because every D&D party needs someone who makes everyone else wonder ...what?

But this isn't just about great openings — it's about what happens when you hand your tender, unfinished creation to another human and they look you in the eye and say, "What if this took place in space?" Misty got that exact note on a script about Black backup singers in the 1960s civil rights movement. Space. Kyle once took script notes from a twelve-year-old. Pete has a "little red wagon of despair" full of projects he won't share because he's terrified of feedback. And Ryan — beautiful, unshakable Ryan — basically shrugs and says criticism can't hurt you... not like knives can. The takeaway? Feedback is brutal and necessary. Choose your readers carefully. Don't ask for notes from people who don't understand your medium. And for god's sake, don't take it personally when someone suggests your heartfelt drama should "maybe happen in space." They’re really saying that they want to be in space. It’s a them-problem.

And then, because all good stories must end, they talk about endings. Misty's still haunted by Inception's spinning top (every other day). Pete defends Whiplash's nine-minute drum solo with pizza-topping-argument passion. Ryan ugly-cries over "My friends, you bow to no one" in Return of the King despite having seen it a hundred times. And Kyle drops the mic with Kurosawa's Yojimbo — a samurai stands in a street full of corpses and says, "Town should be a lot quieter now. I'll see ya," then walks off into the credits. It may be the most perfect mic drop in cinema.

So here we are. The end of Season One. It started in a tavern and ends with the gang leveling up, earning a long rest, and reminding you to go make weird art. Start strong. Take your notes. Cry a little. Ignore the bad ones. Keep going. And when you reach the end, make it count. Now go. Make something strange. And whatever you do, don't let the hands win.

Works Mentioned

(In order of appearance, because we care about beginnings too)

• Verity by Colleen Hoover
• Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)
• The Dark Knight (2008)
• The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
• Blade Runner (1982)
• “The Body Politic” from The Inhuman Condition by Clive Barker
• Inception (2010)
• Whiplash (2014)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• Yojimbo (1961)

• (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos

This week on Craft and Chaos, Pete, Misty, Kyle, and Ryan take a running jump into the boiling cauldron of AI, authorship, and the existential dread of wondering if your book draft is secretly moonlighting as training data for Skynet’s moody younger cousin. Pete opens the show mourning the discovery that Google Docs is essentially that roommate who “borrows” your clothes without asking—except instead of your hoodie, it’s your creative soul. Kyle yanks all his writing off the internet faster than you can say “Blue Harvest.” Ryan insists on contractual AI abstinence clauses like he’s starring in the world’s least sexy prenup. And Misty? She just admits she’s given up—then immediately delivers a sermon on theft, cognitive diminishment, and the performative weirdness of social media that makes you wonder if Instagram is actually just a giant gaslighting experiment.

But this isn’t all doom and gloom! The crew pivots from paranoia to possibility, arguing that the one thing AI can’t replicate is weirdness. Distinct human mess. The sentences with too many M-dashes. The sketch about sperm redistribution. The Shakespearean play about late-night TV hosts fighting for the throne. The legendary giant squid of Lancashire. This is the content the robots can’t touch, and it’s glorious. Then, as if that weren’t enough chaos, they unleash The Working Titles Game—where Hollywood’s real, baffling project code names are guessed, mocked, and improved. “Starbeast” becomes Alien. “Rory’s First Kiss” turns out to be The Dark Knight. And everyone learns that “Group Hug” is somehow The Avengers.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re a “face” or a “hands,” if you’ve contemplated anonymity as artistic freedom, or if you just want to hear Pete suddenly turn a sketch character Jewish halfway through, this episode has everything. It’s part therapy session, part roast, part TED Talk on weirdness, and part game show fever dream. By the end, you’ll either feel inspired to go make something beautifully strange… or just jealous that you’re not the one writing a half-hour comedy called Sperm Robin Hood.

Links and Notes

People & Creators:

• John Scalzi
• Austin Kleon
• John August
• Ursula K. Le Guin Daily Writing Routine
• Miranda July - Author of All Fours
• White Hot Heist (2022) - the one where Bowen Yang does that thing with that stuff.

Articles & Resources:

• "So Your Kid Wants to be a Twitch Streamer" - Wired article discussing "faces vs. hands"
• "Downton Arby's"
• “Night of the Squid”

Creative Works & Projects:

• Welcome to Night Vale
• Swashbuckling Ladies Debate Society
• Go Help Yourself
• Headstone
• Marvel Movie Minute
• Archer Thorne superhero series

Tools & Platforms Mentioned:

• Wattpad - Early writing platform, later acquired and data concerns raised
• AutoPod/AutoCut - AI-powered podcast editing tools for multi-camera switching

Concepts Discussed:

• The Dark Side of Cognitive Diminishment
• The Dunbar number

• (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos

This week on Craft and Chaos, Misty wrangles the chaos as the team dives into the comfort of cozy mysteries, the horror of genre snobbery, and the existential unraveling that occurs when you go viral and absolutely nothing happens.

We kick off with a round of “what are you enjoying,” which—shockingly—turns into a love letter to Murderbot, Idris Elba, and Helen Mirren solving crimes while wearing cozy cardigans. Pete accidentally reboots his Apple TV algorithm. Ryan makes new famous friends. Kyle shares a Netflix recommendation so charming it may cause spontaneous Britishness. And Misty just got back from Edinburgh Fringe with a play that involved one tire and possibly a direct hotline to the gods of storytelling.

Then we take on a deceptively gentle listener question: “How do you find a supportive creative community when yours has turned toxic?” Cue the most emotionally validating roundtable since that time you cried in your car after improv class. The crew gets real about vibe checks, class-based writing groups, running far away from bad energy, and possibly forming a new community by declaring “you’re in my group now” to strangers in a bookstore café.

We have a rousing round of Craft Confessions this week and we unpack a brutally honest essay from Amy McNee, whose appearance on a massive podcast should have led to skyrocketing book sales. It didn’t. At all. And that leads us into a real conversation about what success actually looks like when the “big break” doesn’t break anything.

Finally, we ruin classic movies. Bet you’ll have Little Women: Too Little, Too Women. living rent free you-know-where when it’s over.

Links & Notes

Shows, Movies, and Books

• Hijack
• Only Murders in the Building
• High Potential
• Knives Out / Glass Onion / Wake Up Dead Man
• Thursday Murder Club (based on the books by Richard Osman)
• Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
• Murderbot Audiobooks via GraphicAudio
• Sandstorm by James Rollins
• A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God, Whoever Reads This First by Xhloe and Natasha

Writers & Creators Mentioned

• Amie McNee (Author of We Need Your Art)
• "I went on one of the biggest podcast in the world" by Amie McNee

Bonus D&D Reference

• Deborah Ann Woll explains D&D to Jon Bernthal

• (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos

Ryan opens with a philosophical gauntlet: if a podcast intro is just a throat-clearing, why does it somehow set the weather for everything that follows? Consider this episode a field test in micro-moods and momentum—the kind where vibes double as both a bit and a manifesto. From there, the conversation becomes a collage of modern creative survival: the strange dignity of being the “control group” in a gym commercial; the emotional origami of querying gatekeepers who want both your voice and your compliance; and the quietly radioactive question of whether the world owes artists anything besides indifference and, occasionally, a polite clap.

Creativity here is a set of rituals that smuggle you back to yourself: five-minute sprints, a piano you only half-remember how to love, a kitchen dance that resets your nervous system, a mantra that lets your brain slip past security. Regret shows up, as it always does, wearing the cologne of “what if,” and gets gently escorted to the door by the older, kinder realization that showing up late is still showing up. We even run a cultural Turing test—romance novel or death metal band?—and discover that genre is just marketing in a studded leather jacket.

There’s also a quiet benediction tucked inside the jokes: creativity keeps working in the back room even when you can’t get to the front. Life surges, rooms empty, kids drive themselves, and the noise floor drops. So you learn to build your own weather. Print your own book if you must. Bless your past self, absolve the cringe, and keep making weird things for the weirdos who will find them. That’s the show: not a lesson plan... a permission slip.

• (00:00) - This is a Craft and Chaos Intro

If you’ve ever thought “My life would be so much easier if I just changed my name to Wanda Milkshake,” then you already understand the energy of this episode. Kyle has an existential crisis about his last name, which, as it turns out, is basically a bureaucratic cover-up from Ellis Island. Misty makes an airtight case for Lucille Ball not just as a comedy legend, but as the secret godmother of Star Trek. Pete reveals that Steve Jobs personally ruined his ability to touch a Windows machine without crying, and Ryan teaches us why Spider-Man should never give a TED Talk while being punched in the face.

Along the way, we invent an entire pulp noir character—Brooksie Skittles—because apparently none of us can be trusted with free time. We also discover that your true adult-entertainment name is your grandmother’s first name plus the last dessert you ate, which is both hilarious and a devastating reminder that you’ve been eating Pop-Tarts for dinner.

But beneath the jokes, there’s a point here: inspiration is weird, inconsistent, and often arrives from places that make no sense at all. Whether it’s bittersweet sitcoms, Brené Brown’s radical vulnerability, or Prince literally existing as a one-man thunderstorm, these are the figures chiseling away at our creative DNA. And if that means our Mount Rushmore ends up looking less like granite and more like a fever dream carved out of pudding, well, at least it’s honest.

Mentioned in the Episode

• Scrubs (TV series)
• Mission Impossible 3 (film)
• The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway
• Spider-Man comics (assorted runs)
• John & Hank Green (Vlogbrothers, authors)
• Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
• Prince (musician, icon)
• Steve Jobs (Apple)
• Frances Marion (screenwriter)
• Lucille Ball (I Love Lucy)
• Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Killing Eve)
• Brené Brown (Daring Greatly, shame research)
• Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing)
• Dirk Maggs (audio drama producer)
• Peter David (comic/Star Trek novelist)
• Jane Espenson (Buffy, Battlestar Galactica)
• Dying for Sex (Hulu series & podcast)
• Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
• Adults (Hulu/Disney+)
• The Residence (Netflix)

• (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos!

Let’s be honest: most creative podcasts want to sell you the idea that if you just buy the right thing, you’ll magically become a creative genius. Which, to be clear, is absolute nonsense—because if that were true, this entire episode would have been recorded by a $700 Remarkable tablet and a foam ball named Chaotica, not four humans with questionable impulse control and deeply specific opinions about keyboards. But instead, it’s us: Misty, Kyle, Ryan, and Pete—offering an unfiltered digital show-and-tell of the actual tools we use to write novels and plays, make podcasts, and summon demons via cursed potatoes. Some of us love long walks, others rely on mechanical keyboards, and one of us edits audio like a gremlin in the night using software that no longer legally exists.

We kick things off with Kyle’s philosophical rant about the tyranny of software subscriptions and his never-ending quest for open-source purity. Misty shares her evolution from USB mic amateur to Rodecaster Pro sorceress, while Ryan maps out how a good chair, a great playlist, and noise-canceling headphones can turn a coffee shop into a cathedral of inspiration (as long as there’s no beer involved). Pete, naturally, has turned his studio into a voice-activated spaceship, powered by Hue lights, Obsidian, and a potato that literally shocks people. Also, somewhere in here, someone gets electrocuted and someone else quotes Clarissa Pinkola Estés, which pretty much sums us up.

We wrap with our “Worst Then Best Advice” roundtable, where each of us confesses the terrible guidance we’ve received (hello, “rewrite your script from memory”) and the wisdom we’ve clung to when the work gets hard. The truth is, no matter what tools you use—expensive or scrappy, analog or pixelated—the most powerful tool is you. Which, yes, sounds like a motivational poster from a dentist’s office, but in this context, it’s also deeply true.

Some of the Tools, Services & Shiny Things Mentioned:

Hardware:

• Rodecaster Pro II
• Shure SM7B Microphone
• Keychron Q1 Pro Mechanical Keyboard
• Insta360 Link Camera
• Hue Smart Lights
• Command Strips
• DJI Osmo Mobile Gimbal

Software & Services:

• Obsidian
• Plottr
• Pages
• Reaper Audio Editor
• Auphonic
• Audacity
• DaVinci Resolve
• Coda
• Trelby Screenwriting Software
• Fade In
• Scrivener (not recommended by most of us)

Honorable Mentions:

• Kaotica Eyeball (no, seriously)
• Remarkable Tablet
• Kindle Scribe
• Highland 2 (formerly loved, now subscription)
• Celtx (ditto)

• (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos