In this 53rd episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with Shannon Watson — founder and Chief Executive of Majority in the Middle, an organization fighting to make bipartisanship more than a talking point. Together, they dissect the machinery of American polarization, from the “campaign industrial complex” to the dopamine-fed chaos of social media that rewards outrage over nuance. Watson, a former political strategist turned bridge-builder, explains how Minnesota has become a laborat...

Fifty-two Bald Ambition podcasts and counting, Mookie Spitz turns the mic on himself for a no-bullshit autopsy of his own brand. Drawing on 20 years in marketing, a lifetime of overthinking, and a library’s worth of blogs, books, and podcasts, he finally asks the question every creator avoids: Why the hell isn’t any of this exploding? With a cocktail of cynicism, humor, and self-awareness, Mookie describes the paradox of today’s creator economy — an attention-addicted world bored by its own c...

The 51st episode of Bald Ambition features Mookie Spitz sitting down with David Mondgock, founder of Catalyst IQ, to discuss how AI is reshaping pharmaceutical marketing and patient engagement from the ground up. They share a deep dive into how data, content, and automation collide to form a new marketing reality for healthcare. Key Insights From Personalization to Prediction: Why “customer journeys” in pharma have been insufficient—and how Catalyst IQ’s AI-driven signal mapping and content t...

In this 50th episode of Bald Ambition, three indie science fiction authors — Mookie Spitz, Ingrid Moon, and Greg Sorber — break down the mayhem, lessons, and human magic of LA Comic Con 2025, held at the LA Coliseum. Over three exhausting, exhilarating days, they shared tables, stories, and caffeine, surrounded by 120,000 fans, stormtroopers, holograms, and hopeful artists trying to make their mark in a city built on imagination. The trio came away with a shared revelation: the real power of ...

What does it really take to jump off the cliff without a parachute and call it entrepreneurship? In this episode of Bald Ambition, host Mookie Spitz sits down with Kelvin Abrams—a zero-BS, get-it-done, grassroots entrepreneur and author of Get Uncomfortable or Change Course—to break down the often brutal, always compelling truth about building something real. Kelvin isn’t pitching apps or chasing investors. He’s the guy who builds businesses that last—local ventures grounded in community, del...

What if life insurance actually gave you life? In the 48th episode of Bald Ambition, host Mookie Spitz sits down with Craig Du Bruyn, serial entrepreneur and founder of Kaleido Life, a company re-engineering the very foundations of the 150-year-old life insurance industry. Craig shares his personal and professional journey from early battles convincing architects to abandon drafting tables for CAD systems, to the heartbreaking loss of a business partner that sparked his deep dive into how lif...

In the 47th episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie sits down with Robert Grzesik, CEO of LumiWealth and the mind behind BotSpot—a cutting-edge AI platform that lets you “vibe-code” your own trading strategies. Forget the clunky Bloomberg terminals and line-by-line coding. BotSpot is positioning itself as the Lovable of trading: a conversational, AI-powered assistant that builds, backtests, and deploys strategies directly to your broker through secure APIs. Robert walks us through his journey from t...

In this 46th episode of Bald Ambition, host Mookie Spitz sits down with Roger Washington, MD, and Scarlet Nickhol, MPP of the Sleep To Live Well Foundation (STLW), to uncover why sleep isn’t just rest—it’s the vital work of human health and resilience. From the science of how insufficient sleep corrodes immune systems and accelerates disease, to the cultural myths that glamorize sleepless productivity, this conversation dives deep into the epidemic of sleep deprivation. Dr. Washington shares...

In this 45th episode of Bald Ambition, host Mookie Spitz sits down with attorney–pharmacist Darshan Kulkarni to dissect the fast-growing world of Direct-to-Patient (DTP) marketing and clinical trial models. He unpacks how DTP has evolved, why it appeals to pharmaceutical companies, and—most importantly—the hidden complexities that come with it. From state law inconsistencies to privacy, advertising, malpractice, and consent concerns, Darshan shows how what looks like a simple shift to “...

On this 44th episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down again with Dale Cooke, president of Philly Cooke Consulting and FDA Ad Law, to unpack the latest shockwave in pharma marketing: the Make America Healthy Again report and the FDA’s sudden announcement of intensified DTC enforcement. Topline takeaways for pharma DTC marketers: The foundational rules haven’t changed — yet.The government has explicitly said they will change, but no timeline or specifics are confirmed.Enforcement is alr...

The 43rd episode of Bald Ambition with Mookie Spitz welcomes Matthew Stern, CEO of MyStart Health, for a deep dive into how technology and entrepreneurship are reshaping healthcare. We live in an age of disruption—culture, politics, wellness—all shifting under our feet. But while the headlines scream collapse, Stern argues the opposite: technology and medicine are colliding to extend lives, cut costs, and democratize access to care. Matt shares his journey from 20 years in digital marketing t...

The 42nd episode of Bald Ambition doesn't provide the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, but does highlight the hypocrisy baked into influencer marketing, media, and public relations. Mookie Spitz sits down with Adam Swart, the outspoken founder and CEO of Crowds On Demand. Known for his provocative media appearances and unapologetic takes on modern influence, Swart pulls back the curtain on how public opinion is shaped—not just in boardrooms and newsrooms, but on the streets...

Host Mookie Spitz sits down again with Dale Cooke, president of Philly Cooke Consulting and FDA Ad Law, known affectionately as the “Yoda of Compliance.” Together, they unpack the chaos rippling through healthcare communications in the wake of CDC restructuring, FDA shake-ups, and a political climate that has turned vaccines—once celebrated as humanity’s greatest public health achievement—into a weaponized political wedge issue. Cooke reassures listeners that, for now, “the train is still on ...

Healthcare and pharma agencies face a tough reality: talent is their lifeblood, but also their greatest liability. On this Labor Day 40th edition of Bald Ambition, host Mookie Spitz sits down with Sameer Duhmale and Andre de Luz, co-founders of Talus, to explore why hiring in healthcare marketing is uniquely difficult, and how their platform offers a way forward. The Challenges Niche Expertise Regulatory Burden Global Fragmentation Time Pressure The Solution Speed — find v...

Marketing savvy, political chaos, and raw philosophy collide here as Mookie Spitz—a bald, blunt veteran of advertising and PR—cuts through the confusion to expose how persuasion really works, and why institutions keep screwing it up. In this episode, Mookie takes on the CDC, the vaccine wars, and the larger collapse of trust in American public health. He starts with a simple truth he learned in the trenches: you can’t make people do what they don’t want to do. That lesson applies just as much...

Former California legislator Mike Gatto sits with host Mookie Spitz for an unflinching look at the collapse of bipartisanship, the failures of political messaging, and the growing civil war inside the Democratic Party. Gatto reflects on his years in the California Assembly and contrasts that era of rough but workable compromise with today’s toxic climate, where bipartisanship is treated as a relic. He explains why authenticity, not policy papers, drives voter trust—and how Democrats’ overeduc...

In today's podcast, Mookie unpacks the parallels between consultative selling and political persuasion. With a marketer’s eye and a content creator’s grind — including his own experiment building 15K+ followers on TikTok — Mookie reveals how narratives spread, how attention is captured, and how messaging succeeds or collapses. Politics is branding. Campaigns are marketing. And in today’s attention economy, the leaders who master perception win, while those who rely on facts alone lose. Mookie...

In the 36th episode of Bald Ambition, host Mookie Spitz digs into the heart of education with Michelle Waugh—a doctorate-trained scientist who left academia to devote herself to personal tutoring. What makes her story remarkable isn’t just her credentials, but her conviction that personalized learning—built on empathy, patience, and human connection—can succeed where our system repeatedly fails. Michelle shares how a severely autistic fifth-grader, written off by the public school system as “...

Mookie sits down with John von Seggern—jazz bassist turned EDM pioneer, educator, and tech innovator—to explore the fault lines opening in the music industry as AI floods the gates. From synthetic Spotify hit-makers like Velvet Sundown to LLMs capable of pumping out a thousand generic tracks a day, AI is rewriting the rules of artistry, authorship, and authenticity. But John’s not panicking—he’s building a blueprint. As the founder of Futureproof Music School, he’s developing a new kind of mu...

Mookie Spitz flips the script on digital fame and asks: how do you become famous not with humans, but with the machines that shape our world? As a marketing strategist turned content creator, Mookie blends insider PR knowledge with his hands-on experience as a micro-influencer to expose the weird new rules of visibility in the age of AI. He shares how ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) are quietly scraping, dissecting, and reassembling every piece of content you put online—turning...