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Don't Encourage Us
Don't Encourage Us episodes
- Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning — Are Ethan Hunt and the AI the Same Character?
Join the Hunt and go rogue with our hosts as they disassemble Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1, discussing the impossible action, plot, and characters of the seven-quel.
Topics:
- The Ethan Hunt character problem: his behavior is a sociopath's, his dialogue is a hero's
- Hunt as a mirror of the Entity: both claim to save humanity while treating people as objects
- Dead Reckoning's exposition problem: two movies' worth crammed into 20 minutes, hidden by action
- The source code submarine plot: why none of the logistics make sense and whether that's intentional
- Paris switching sides: why one act of mercy doesn't undo years of sadism
- Gabriel's missing motivation: what does he actually want and why?
- The key, the submarine, and the misdirect theory
- Can Mission Impossible survive without Tom Cruise? TV series, app concept, franchise future
- The AR scavenger hunt app pitch: location-based impossible missions in real cities
- Barbie: a cult film with blockbuster production values that got marketed as something it isn't
- Megalopolis: Coppola's $120M self-funded film that distributors won't touch
- Running Man remake with Edgar Wright and Glenn Powell
- Columbus Day / Expeditionary Force: why audiobooks at 1.75x speed ruins voice acting
Explore space with an a**hole A.I. in the excellent Expeditionary Force novel series by Craig Alanson
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
1 hr 3 min - Is AI-Assisted Writing Still Writing? Where Ghostwriting Ends and Cheating Begins
The question isn't whether AI can write. It's whether AI-assisted creative work is still yours.
Topics:
- Mark Greaney's creative process: why the Grey Man author takes long walks instead of marathon desk sessions to keep action scenes fresh across 10+ novels
- Ghostwriting in fiction: Tom Clancy novels are still published under his name by other writers — how is that different from AI assistance?
- The spectrum from editor to ghostwriter to AI: where does assistance end and replacement begin?
- Physical labor was replaced by machines in the industrial revolution — now it's intellectual labor — what do humans value about themselves after that?
- Why the Hollywood strikes are partly about drawing this line before the culture moves past it
- The smartphone as existing cognitive enhancement: Elon Musk's argument that the only difference between your phone and Neuralink is interface speed
- "USDA Certified 80% Human" — a joke that accidentally explains a real branding solution
- Why law can't move fast enough but cultural acceptance can: if audiences reject fully AI-generated performances, the market follows
- The Mandalorian Season 3 as cautionary tale: a city that can't function without robots because nobody learned to do anything
- AI as assistant vs. AI as replacement: the case that the distinction matters and is enforceable through culture, not regulation
- The buddy comedy pitch: one human, one AI hologram sidekick giving terrible advice — Planes, Trains and Automobiles but your partner is a Creative Commons avatar
Timestamps:
- 0:00 — Mark Greaney's creative process and the Grey Man series
- 5:28 — Ghostwriting and AI: where's the line?
- 11:07 — Is all creativity assisted? The philosophical case
- 17:10 — AI and labor: the new industrial revolution
- 23:35 — Setting boundaries: assistant vs. replacement
- 30:55 — The buddy comedy pitch and cultural solutions
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
35 min - Story Break: The Return of Magic — Infinite Stories, Finite Exposition
Topics discussed:
- The pitch: magic slowly returning to modern Earth, tied to materials and geography
- The worldbuilding rule: supernatural creatures are determined by where the materials in their environment originate
- Why cities fall first: globalized supply chains create hybridized magical threats
- Alloy creatures: when materials from different regions combine, so do their mythologies
- The surprise apocalypse structure: starting intimate, revealing global scope gradually
- Character design: a mute, grieving Japanese girl who can't communicate with anyone around her
- The uncle as rigid thinker: scientific worldview that fails when reality's rules change
- The Lenape tribe connection: Central Park's Native American mythology as the local threat
- The raijū: a Japanese thunder dog that caused the train accident in the opening
- Theme: isolation vs. community — ancient cultures survived through shared knowledge
- Let the Right One In and The Omen as tonal references
- Format debate: low-budget art house horror vs. streaming series vs. graphic novel
- Silent film possibility: the girl never speaks, audio distortion on background dialogue
- Fast and Furious: a series of clips connected by barbecues
- Stargate franchise: Amazon's acquisition, the canceled relaunch, writer's strike casualties
- The Martian and Project Hail Mary: Andy Weir recommendations
- Silo (Apple TV): short story to novel series to TV adaptation pipeline
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
1 hr 14 min - Black Mirror S6: When Did 'Technology Is Dangerous' Become 'Everyone Sucks'?
Black Mirror Season 6 — episode-by-episode breakdown.
Topics discussed:
- The series drift: from technology commentary to misanthropy
- Joan Is Awful: a statement piece about AI image rights that actors signed onto because they care about the issue, not the script
- Why the ending follows characters we've never met and resolves nothing about the legal system it critiqued
- Loch Henry: a passive protagonist who never changes — is that corruption or just floating?
- The mother's suicide: why would a remorseless serial killer suddenly feel guilt?
- Beyond the Sea: consciousness transfer across light years but 1960s spacecraft — the technology mismatch problem
- No psychological screening, no family security, no explanation of the mission's importance
- Why one astronaut would murder the other's family and then be trapped with him forever
- Mazey Day: a werewolf episode with zero technology thesis — is this still Black Mirror?
- Demon 79: passive woman explodes into violence — the too-passive-until-too-aggressive pattern
- The budget paradox: higher production values and celebrity casting may have made the season worse
- Metacritic trends: Season 1 at 89, Season 6 at 68 — the downward trajectory
- Silo (Apple TV+): how a short story became a novel series became a TV show
- All You Need Is Kill / Edge of Tomorrow: novel vs. film adaptation differences
Timestamps:
- 0:00 — Introduction
- 6:52 — Joan Is Awful
- 20:28 — Loch Henry
- 27:24 — Beyond the Sea
- 43:10 — Mazey Day and Demon 79
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
1 hr 6 min - One Cut of the Dead: Why a $27K Zombie Film Has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes
Guest: Actor Matt Baughman
Spoiler warning: we spoil the entire film. Go watch it first — it's worth it.
One Cut of the Dead is available on Shudder (subscription) or to rent on Amazon.
Topics discussed:
- Why the first 37 minutes are intentionally unwatchable and why you can't skip them
- The dual-role acting challenge: playing a bad actor vs. playing the person playing the bad actor
- Matt Baughman's perspective on toggling between personas in the third act
- Six takes to get a 37-minute one-shot: the filming logistics
- Three-act structure as a play: horror film, backstory, then the making-of reveal
- The Ghost in the Box rights controversy and how it was resolved
- One Cut of the Dead: Mission Remote — the pandemic Zoom spinoff (free on YouTube)
- Fantasy casting an American remake: the Waiting for Guffman crew, the celebrity pet project angle
- The Room comparison: when a film is so bad it becomes essential viewing
- Reality show pitch: assembling the worst film crews and throwing obstacles at them
- Noises Off as structural reference: British farce meets zombie filmmaking
Links:
- Watch Matt Baughman in The Brother and as the hilarious Tim Pillsbury: Undercover Park Ranger.
- Follow the characters to One Cut of the Dead: Mission Remote.
- One Cut of the Dead
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
1 hr 1 min - We Have a Ghost: Why Muting Your Lead Actor Breaks the Movie
Topics discussed:
- Why muting David Harbour's ghost eliminates all character development
- The reunion scene problem: a father seeing his daughter for the last time, and neither seems to care
- The casting swap argument: Mackie as the ghost, Harbour as the dad
- Christopher Landon's stated goal (80s family film mashup) vs. what the film actually delivers
- The car chase that forgets it's a kids movie: flipped birds, stolen guns, near-decapitations
- Ghost physics: why the rules are optional and it matters
- Bear McCreary's score and his career from Battlestar Galactica to God of War
- Real estate disclosure laws: do sellers have to tell you someone was murdered in the house?
- Stigmatized property categories: criminal, death, public stigma, phenomena stigma
- diedinhouse.com and what it actually tells you (or doesn't)
- You Season 4 brief check-in: best season since the first?
- Venom 2: don't bother
Links:
- You and We Have a Ghost are both available on Netflix now.
- Swing by diedinhouse.com and check the history of your home.
- Read what Redfin has to say about disclosing deaths.
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
1 hr - Invincible: Why Omni-Man's Logic Is Harder to Argue With Than You Think
Topics discussed:
- Robert Kirkman's Invincible's premise: what if Superman was your dad and turned out to be the villain?
- How the show uses DC character analogs to build and then betray expectations
- Omni-Man's moral argument: why "humans are insects" follows logically from Viltrumite values
- The ultraviolence question: purposeful brutality vs. gratuitous shock
- Multi-threaded storytelling: why the show works more like a soap opera than a superhero series
- Robot's clone body: one of the most complicated character decisions in the genre
- Cecil as moral pragmatist: the best government handler character since Nick Fury
- The production pipeline: Sharon Tal Iguado's relationship with Kirkman across AMC, Cinemax, and Amazon
- Voice cast breakdown: JK Simmons, Sandra Oh, Steven Yeun, Walton Goggins, Mark Hamill, Seth Rogen, and more
- Cocaine Werewolf: the pitch, the implications, and the Cocaine Monster Cinematic Universe
Also discussed:
- Ant-Man: Quantumania
- Cocaine Bear
- Columbus Day / Expeditionary Force series preview
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
1 hr 2 min - Story Break: Hijacked — What If the Hero and the Villain Are the Same Person?
Set within the confined walls of a commercial airplane, tensions soar as a battle of wits unfolds between a resourceful passenger and a group of desperate hijackers. With each twist and turn, our hosts navigate the treacherous terrain of suspense, exploring the psychological depths of the characters. But first, listen in as one host pitches a controversial casting idea for the new Remo Williams series that everyone is sure to hate equally.
Topics discussed:
- The pitch: a hijack film where the hero may also be the villain
- The CIA bluff: post-9/11 policy to destroy hijacked planes and declare them accidents
- Hitchcockian identity tension: the audience never knows if he's lying until the final act
- Why the terrorists need to be calm professionals, not Hollywood cliché fanatics
- The technology problem: how do you prove a stealth fighter is shadowing you?
- Building passenger characters as audience surrogates — the boy band framework
- The twist ending: he blows the plane, covers his treason, gets promoted
- The counter-twist: a passenger uploaded video to YouTube before the explosion
- First class vs. coach as information asymmetry and class tension
- The planted terrorist: a passenger who's secretly on the other side
- Usual Suspects comparison: when the dead figure it out before the living
- Remo Williams Amazon reboot: the case for casting a Korean actor in whiteface as deliberate inversion
- RC Bray as the gold standard for audiobook narration
- Preview: Invincible Season 1 and Columbus Day / Expeditionary Force
Let R.C. Bray tell you a story sometime and check out his podcast here.
Take the Red Eye and check out Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy in one of his earlier films.
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
1 hr 4 min - Remo Williams The Destroyer: What a Pulp Franchise Reveals About Building IP
Topics discussed:
- The Destroyer pulp fiction series: 152 novels, multiple writers, decades of publication
- Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985): what went wrong with Dick Clark's franchise play
- Guy Hamilton directing: four Bond films to this — why his style didn't translate to 1985
- The score problem: music that fights the action instead of supporting it
- Training sequences vs. Karate Kid (1984): why one became iconic and the other didn't
- The "perfect accident" finale: the worst secret assassination in film history
- Novel vs. film: how the books give Remo a darker, more compelling origin
- The upcoming Amazon series: Breaking Bad producer, casting debates, genre classification
- Action fantasy vs. action sci-fi vs. grounded action: what genre should the reboot be?
- Joel Grey in yellowface: the casting choice that won't survive a modern adaptation
- ChatGPT fabricating a fake martial art
- AI misinformation: when confident nonsense is indistinguishable from research
- The Last of Us episode 5: structural repetition, FEDRA moral ambiguity, zombie calorie math
- Death Note as a Sherlock Holmes / Moriarty homage
- The Alienist: forensic science before forensic science existed
Links:
- Think Fast! And watch Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins on Tubi for free: https://tubitv.com/movies/306944/remo-williams-the-adventure-begins?start=true&tracking=google-feed&utm_source=google-feed
- Read the story of how Remo Williams really began here: https://welib.org/md5/18190b615187b9d52ac2d0e9086746c1
- Do you have burning questions about zombie nutrition? Watch episode 5 of The Last of Us and post your thoughts..
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
1 hr 29 min - Chrysalis: Should a Machine Avenge Humanity? The Ethics of AI Retribution
Spoiler warning: we spoil Chrysalis completely. Go listen to it first — it's worth it.
- Go listen to Chrysalis by SH Serrano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stt9eM22D2E
- Or read it on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/55v9e1/chrysalis/
Topics discussed:
- Chrysalis: AI wakes on dead Earth, builds a replicating army, and pursues vengeance across the galaxy
- Was the AI programmed for revenge or did trauma produce it?
- The massive tonal shift in Part 2 and why it works despite initially feeling like a different story
- Diplomacy as the actual hero: why empathy outperformed exponential replication
- Sins of the father: when is collective punishment for ancestral crimes justified?
- The Anakaks betrayal: survival pragmatism vs. loyalty to your species
- Why the AI had to die — and why his children hid him instead
- The ChatGPT challenge: we asked it to summarize Chrysalis and it confidently invented a completely different story
- AI deception, confidence without accuracy, and what that means for trust
- The Last of Us episodes 3 and 4: why the Bill and Frank episode was misplaced and episode 4 felt generic
Referenced:
- Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
- How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil
- White Lotus (HBO)
- Barry (HBO)
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://linktr.ee/dontencourageus
Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.
1 hr 33 min
About Don't Encourage Us
From the publisher's feed
Most people watch a movie. We use it to generate new ideas.
Don’t Encourage Us takes films and TV apart to uncover the creative decisions, strategic trade-offs, and unexpected connections that spark original thinking. From Alfred Hitchcock to Artificial Intelligence, we use stories as springboards for exploring business, human behavior, strategy, technology, and creativity in ways that reveal possibilities others might miss.
The point isn’t to review what’s been done. It’s to connect ideas that haven’t been connected, challenge familiar assumptions, and discover new ways of seeing problems and opportunities.
Watch a story. Discover new ideas.