Within the first few minutes, host Al Horner asks Koepp about his approach to character. "I would love to be one of those writers I hear, on shows very much like this, who say, 'It all begins with character," Koepp replies. "It must begin with character.' I'm just not. And I'm not sure I believe them. I think you have an idea about something. You don't... well, maybe you do, I don't know. I think, I have an idea. And then I think, I do exactly as you said, I think, 'Who is either the best or the worst person possible for this to happen to.' In the case of KIMI, I thought, who is the worst possible person for this to happen to. The idea was, you know, that we overhear... there are people whose job it is to listen to all those little recordings that Siri and Alexa make in our homes, and to flag irregularities and try to correct the algorithm for where it misinterpreted things. And I read an article that talked about the people who listen to those. And I thought, ooh, that's interesting. I like that person. And what if they heard something terrible. Then I thought, who's the worst person that could happen to, and it would be someone who doesn't like to leave their house. That's why they have this job, and they must go out in order to effect change in the world. So, in that case, it was the worst. In Mission: Impossible, that kind of spy thing, you want to think, who is the best person for this to happen to. And that of course is the indestructible Tom Cruise."

CBR's Leon Miller posted an article three days ago with quotes of Koepp, from the podcast, about why they decided to kill off the first team in the film:

Mission: Impossible co-writer David Koepp recently explained why Ethan Hunt's first team had to die in the 1996 espionage blockbuster.

Koepp revealed that director Brian De Palma decided to kill off the original Impossible Missions Force line-up to keep the movie's focus on Tom Cruise as Hunt, in an episode of Script Apart. "There's a fundamental flaw in Mission: Impossible as a movie with Tom Cruise, as a concept," he said, "It's an idea that should not work. It appears it has [laughs], but it is essentially an ensemble, that is its very nature. It's a team movie if it's based on the [original 1960s Mission: Impossible] television show."

"So, for this ensemble movie, the one piece of casting is the biggest movie star in the world with an incredibly dominant personality," Koepp continued. "So, it's just not going to work, so Brian's idea was 'We have to kill everybody.' And it's a good point. That's his approach on a number of films, but in this one in particular, it really worked. He's like 'Look, it's an ensemble, so we have to start it like an ensemble, kill everybody, so we've only got one left, and he's the star, and let him put together another team. But we'll always orient it around him,' which was a brilliant idea."

"Brian [De Palma] had shown an early cut of the movie to some filmmaker friends. And George Lucas saw it and said, 'You're missing the spaghetti scene.' ... Brian said, 'What's the spaghetti scene?' And he said, 'You know, where they all sit around and eat spaghetti and they get the mission. You don't know who these people are. You start in the middle of a mission.' Brian said, 'Well, it's exciting to start in the middle of a mission.' And George said, 'It's not exciting unless you know who they are.'"