When I guested on Justin Gary’s Think Like a Game Designer podcast, we chatted about Transmedia Storytelling. A cross-platform approach to narrative I hadn't thought about in a while. I’ve seen how it can transform a TV show from a passive viewing experience into an immersive, participatory story-verse for those inclined to engage.

Every writers room I've sat in was shaped by the showrunner - their battle scars, their gut feelings, bad marriages, previous projects, blind spots, and what they think making "good TV" looks like. You can't fix a show's culture with a pep talk or a whiteboard session. It's dictated by the alpha in the pack.

Playing D&D taught me a lot about power dynamics. When a new Dungeon Master takes over a campaign, they usually nuke whatever the old DM built - even if the players were having a blast. It's not about the game being bad; it's about the new dog marking their territory.

Here's a weird comparison that hit me this AM: Bitcoin vs. content creation. Both are based on imagination and the power of story-telling to generate IRL revenue for those who partake. But they are absolutely not aligned when it comes to scarcity. Uh-oh.

I was flipping through the latest issue of Monocle when a story about the Moomin brand caught my eye. They described their vibe as providing a "roadmap to happiness" for customers.

List of LLMs as of 02/21/25

From the writer's room of iconic TV shows to the uncharted frontier of next-gen gaming, change is the only constant in the entertainment racket.

I read Simon Pulman’s analysis of the TV biz on LinkedIn this AM. It inspired me to send the various AI LLMs down a rabbit hole of research and reporting. This is what ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and DeepSeek came up with. How many hallucinations can you identify? How many brutal truths?

I ran some self-assessments of the big LLMs like Gemini, Claude Opus, ChatGPT, Deep Seek, and Perplexity to evaluate their strengths and stretches re creativity and wordsmithing.

After years of working in writers' rooms on TV shows, I've had an epiphany about effectively collaborating with Large Language Models (LLMs): the dynamic mirrors that of a showrunner working with a room of specialized scribblers.

Too many scripts sag under the weight of pointless scenes, overexplaining dialogue, and characters that don't pull their weight. If Marie Kondo can transform our closets, why can’t we apply that magic to our screenplays?

There's a secret weapon in the war for eyeballs and attention - the core fantasy. That ineffable desire that pulls people in and keeps them coming back for more.

Negotiation is a skill you can master even quicker than saving the cat. We’re going to class with three heavyweights of the winning trade - Donald Trump (The Art of the Deal), Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference), and Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power).

When you spend years creating villainous organizations—shadowy spy networks, rogue agencies, secret societies—you start to notice something. The most outlandish ideas, the ones that feel like pure sci-fi or paranoid conspiracy, often have real-world precedents.

Great stories don’t just appear out of thin air. They’re designed and built. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed when crafting your screenplay, you’re not alone. Thankfully, some of the greatest minds in storytelling have mapped out frameworks to guide us. 

The squeeze is coming for mid-level scribblers - the workhorse scribes of TV shows who churn out solid, reliable scripts on time and within the budget. In 2025 AI is getting scarily good at matching tone, working within the canon constraints of show bibles, and incorporating creative notes from above. Uh-oh.

The myth of the lone creative genius has always been how we market films, books, and video games: one name, one vision. But are AI tools pushing this marketing myth into an authentic attribution?

When Michael B. Jordan stepped into the director’s chair for Creed 3, he brought more than just his talent as an actor and filmmaker, he brought his lifelong love of anime.

Imagine a quiet evening, the glow of your screen pulling you into another world. You laugh, cry, and cheer for characters who aren’t just on a journey, they take you along for the ride. But have you ever wondered why anime characters feel so relatable, even when they’re battling titanic foes or navigating fantastical worlds?