Ink vs Algorithm: The Writers' Pod
Creative writing in all forms has never been this exciting -- or frustrating. In a time when ChatGPT writes novels, TikTok “authors” go viral, and algorithms decide which stories live or die, Ink vs Algorithm is a podcast dedicated to writers who bleed ink and and publish their heart out. Hosted by writer, ranter, and raconteur Mookie Spitz, each episode features lively conversations with flesh and blood authors who love what they do -- and hate competing with prompt-jockeys and viral Bots. Along the way more stories will be told and laughs shared, living proof the living still matter. Whether you’re a novelist, journalist, pundit, poet, or just a cynic with a keyboard and an attitude, Ink vs Algorithm reminds us all why lived experience still matters — and how extracting and sharing it still takes relentless grit, determination, and a mountain of fought for and refined talent.
Episodes
Mary Rose never expected a cancer diagnosis to become the catalyst for some of her most inspired and important writing.
A former marketing executive, corporate storyteller, Mary Rose is a lifelong writer who joins Mookie to discuss her battle with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer that forced her to confront not only a life-threatening illness, but the childhood trauma she thought she'd left behind decades earlier.
Wha...
Acclaimed and prolific author William Bernhardt joins host Mookie Spitz for a wide-ranging conversation that starts with the tragic origin story behind Superman and spirals into something much bigger: the brutal collision between creativity, commerce, ego, exploitation, and survival. Drawing from his new nonfiction book The Superman Wars, Bill unpacks how teenage creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster built the first true superhero...
In this episode of Ink vs Algorithm, Mookie sits down with cartoonist and writer Jeff Krell, the creator of Jayson: a comic strip turned graphic novel universe that started as pure survival and evolved into a living, breathing archive of identity, humor, and cultural change.
Jeff didn’t break in through some polished pipeline. He got rejected, ignored, reshaped, and edited into existence. A local paper cut his work in half and ran i...
In this episode of Ink vs Algorithm: The Writer’s Pod, author Mookie Spitz breaks down the 2025 Indie Author Survey from Written Word Media: a rare, data-intensive look at how over 1,300 indie authors worldwide are actually publishing, earning, marketing, and growing their business. He also reviews his review from the Outstanding Creator Awards, and correlates the two to tie a bow around the benefits of following the rules — and th...
What do Cornish miners, the Mayflower, the American Constitution, World War II, and rock ’n’ roll have in common? Cornwall!
In this 7th episode of Ink vs Algorithm, Mookie Spitz has tea with Bert Biscoe—Cornish poet, songwriter, historian, former mayor of Truro, and cultural force of nature—for a sweeping, deeply human conversation about history, language, power, and poetry.
Biscoe dismantles the naive American understanding of Cornw...
What happens when a retired logistics expert decides to write a historical murder mystery set at the most politically unstable moment in late-medieval England?
In this episode of Ink vs. Algorithm, Mookie Spitz talks with British author and comics veteran Mark Oldroyd about The Chamberlain’s Gambit, a fast-paced historical novel set in 1484, the final full year of Richard III’s reign and the dying embers of the War of the Roses. The...
This episode of The Writers' Pod drops you right into the mix: ideology, apostasy, 9/11, the collapse of the New Atheist movement, and the cultural schizophrenia of post-Trump America — all through the lived experience of Ali A. Rizvi, author of The Atheist Muslim and one of the few writers who actually paid the personal price for blasphemy in the 2010s.
Over a sprawling, brutally candid and uproariously funny conversation, Ali...
In this episode of Ink vs Algorithm: The Writers' Pod, Mookie Spitz sits down with poet and healthcare strategist Hudson Plumb, whose new collection The Art of Undoing (Finishing Line Press) has already become a bestseller. Their conversation revolves around rediscovery: how creativity can go dormant for decades, only to reignite when life strips you down to what matters.
Plumb recounts his journey from promising young poet to ...
In this episode of Ink vs Algorithm: The Writers' Pod, Mookie sits down with TH Forest, the author of Twinkies and Beefcake, Descendants of the Gods, and the Matt & Ollie queer romance saga to explore the strange alchemy of fan fiction, grief, and desire that birthed her career as one of the most fearless indie voices in male/male romance.
Forest didn’t plan to write MM love stories. What started as Supernatural-inspired fi...
Welcome to Ink vs Algorithm: The Writers' Pod, a conversational laboratory where the creative mind and the digital machine collide. Hosted by Mookie Spitz, a novelist, podcaster, and manic ranter, this show dissects what it means to write, publish, and survive as an artist in the algorithmic age. Each episode showcases writers, thinkers, and creative bon vivants to explore the tension between raw human imagination and the cold...
Welcome to Ink vs Algorithm: The Writers' Pod, where flesh-and-blood writers face off against the machine age. Hosted by Mookie Spitz, himself a novelist, blogger, and ranter, this show dives headfirst into the creative chaos of 2025: an era where everyone’s consuming content, yet fewer seem to care who actually made it.
Each episode brings conversations with his fellow writers, journalists, novelists, publicists, creators, and...
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