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Craft and Chaos

Craft and Chaos

By: TruStory FM
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About this listen

 A Weird Show for Weirdos Who Make Things How do you make art when the world feels like it’s on fire? Welcome to Craft and Chaos, the podcast for creative minds trying to thrive in the madness. Whether you write, paint, build, perform, or daydream ideas that keep you up at night, this show is your companion through the wild ride of making something out of nothing. Join Misty, Pete, Kyle, and Ryan — a ragtag team of creative types — as they dive into the joy, frustration, and beautiful mess of the artistic process. From the spark of inspiration to the reality of “I actually made this,” they’ll share honest stories, epic wins, total flops, and the weird, wonderful chaos that comes with being possessed by a new idea. This isn’t just about craft. It’s about surviving the noise, embracing your weird, and making cool stuff anyway. Wherever the strangest podcasts are found.©TruStory FM Art Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Brooksie Skittles and the Great Granite Glow-up

    Brooksie Skittles and the Great Granite Glow-up
    Aug 20 2025

    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!
    • (00:54) - What's In a Name?
    • (18:38) - "Sponsor:" Sitting in the Dark — A Horror Podcast
    • (20:04) - Your Rushmore
    • (55:36) - "Sponsor:" Problem Attic!
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • You Are A Most Important Tool

    You Are A Most Important Tool
    Aug 6 2025
    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 IIShure SM7B MicrophoneKeychron Q1 Pro Mechanical KeyboardInsta360 Link CameraHue Smart LightsCommand StripsDJI Osmo Mobile GimbalSoftware & Services:ObsidianPlottrPagesReaper Audio EditorAuphonicAudacityDaVinci ResolveCodaTrelby Screenwriting SoftwareFade InScrivener (not recommended by most of us)Honorable Mentions:Kaotica Eyeball (no, seriously)Remarkable TabletKindle ScribeHighland 2 (formerly loved, now subscription)Celtx (ditto) (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos(01:14) - A Heartwarming Story of Disappointment(12:36) - "Sponsor:" That Song(14:13) - The Craft of Craft(55:30) - "Sponsor:" Wall(56:52) - Worst... then best advice
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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • Dressage for the Creative Soul

    Dressage for the Creative Soul
    Jul 23 2025

    This week on Craft and Chaos, we asked a simple question: how do you keep making things when the world feels like it’s melting into a fine mist of hopelessness, bad headlines, and that one guy in your group chat who just did that one thing with that one person and now won’t shut up about it? Misty takes the hosting reins and invites Pete, Kyle, and Ryan to explore what it means to create during a time when existential dread has gone from a background hum to a full-blown dubstep remix.

    We begin with a trip to Phoenix Fan Fusion, where Ryan’s book sold out, Kyle got to unleash his inner Marvel nerd, and apparently Hayden Christensen is still drawing a crowd. Then we dive straight into the emotional lava pit: Pete confesses to skipping the premiere of the short film that got him his first job (because self-doubt is a sneaky bastard), Misty reads poetry that is wonderful surely didn’t come from the pen of someone who claims not to be a poet, and Kyle shares a fan fiction stage script that accidentally found a moment of grace in the middle of a ridiculous showdown involving electric pencil sharpeners. Yes, that sentence was real. Finally, Ryan brings a punk rock script for public reading and it goes about as punk rock as you can imagine it would with... you know... us.

    Also: haunted British girls endorse self-help podcasts. There’s a tangent about dressage that spirals out of control. And we all admit that five-star reviews are less about algorithmic reach and more about soothing our delicate, trembling egos.

    So if you’re out there wondering whether any of this creative nonsense actually matters—whether your fanfic, your sketchbook, your unfinished novel or weird little voice memo has value—the answer is yes. Because it matters to you. And maybe, just maybe, it will matter to someone else too. Even if it takes them ten years and a random internet stumble to find it.

    Go ahead. Make something weird. And for the love of God, review the podcast.

    • (00:00) - Welcome to Craft and Chaos
    • (03:52) - The Phoenix Fan Fusion Report
    • (15:15) - "Sponsor" The Other Orange
    • (16:50) - How DO You Make Art When The World is On Fire?
    • (39:42) - "Sponsor" Go Help Yourself Podcast!
    • (41:49) - The Proudnesses
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 23 mins
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