A Ghost Dog, Evil Cat & Lost Puppy Audiobook into a Podcast...

Mookie Spitz, unable to STFU, isn’t content with simply talking. In this episode, he does something rare: he resurrects Rusty the Puppy—an original screenplay he co-wrote in 2009 with Rusty Yunusoff—and performs it aloud. Screenplays aren’t meant to be read this way; they’re blueprints for films, terse stage directions mixed with dialogue. But what happens when you strip away the camera, the studio, the actors, and repurpose the script as a piece of audio storytelling? That’s the experiment, and the result is something between a radio play, an audiobook, and a confessional memoir.

The story itself is deceptively simple: Rex, a loyal family dog, dies tragically and returns as a ghost—only to find his place in the household taken by a new puppy named Rusty. But what unfolds from this premise is layered and emotionally charged. Love, which should be straightforward, is shown to be messy and easily misread; intentions, even the purest, are twisted and misunderstood; jealousy creeps in as the most tempting and destructive of forces. The war between dogs and cats becomes more than comic rivalry, and becomes a metaphor for devotion versus manipulation, loyalty versus sabotage, love versus power. Through Rusty’s odyssey across suburban meadows, city streets, gang-cat theaters, and even heaven and hell themselves, the screenplay uses animals as mirrors for human struggle: our longing to belong, our fear of being replaced, and our desperate need to hold onto love even after it slips away.

Mookie frames the performance with his own creative backstory. He recalls early morning “spitz-balling” sessions with Rusty—trading riffs before their workdays began, shaping raw sparks into full story arcs. He tells of the thrill of finishing the script, the futility of shopping it around Hollywood as outsiders, and the surreal moment when The Secret Life of Pets trailers surfaced years later, echoing characters and ideas from Rusty the Puppy. Rather than bitterness, though, Mookie finds energy in repurposing the work: posting it on Medium, now reading it into a microphone while insisting that creative efforts don’t die just because they’re ignored. They can live again in new forms, with new audiences.

The episode is many things at once: a dramatic reading of a screenplay never filmed; an experiment in bending format, turning visual cues into an intimate audio experience; and a meditation on why we keep telling stories even when they go unheard. It’s also deeply personal. Beneath the animal fable are questions that haunt anyone who’s ever loved and lost: Can devotion survive change? Is jealousy a form of love or its death sentence? Can intent ever be trusted, or is it always warped by how others perceive it? And most importantly: is love ever truly replaceable, or does it linger, like a ghost dog, long after we’re gone?

If you’ve ever had a pet, a partner, or a friend you couldn’t let go of… if you’ve ever felt overlooked by the world yet compelled to create anyway… if you’ve ever been haunted by jealousy, tempted by bitterness, yet still believed in the redemptive power of loyalty, then this episode will speak to you.

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