Bald Ambition

Marketing is changing so fast in the age of AI that half the experts are confused, the other half are terrified, and most business owners are stuck somewhere in between. Fortunately, Jimi Gibson isn't interested in panic, hype, or robot-apocalypse nonsense. Joining Mookie for the 74th episode of Bald Ambition, Thrive's Vice President of Brand Communications lays out a practical playbook for becoming uninvisible in an era where bots...

Jordan West thinks most brands are sleepwalking toward irrelevance while creators are building the next marketing empire in plain sight. In this episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie dives headfirst into the chaotic evolution from “influencer marketing” to what Jordan calls “word of mouth at scale” — a creator-driven ecosystem where TikTok Shop, algorithms, authenticity, and raw capitalism collide. Jordan, ...

Matthew Whyatt has spent decades selling technology to giant corporations, governments, and industries so tangled in bad processes and duct-taped infrastructure that half the employees are basically performing digital exorcisms just to keep the systems alive another week. In this episode of Bald Ambition, Matthew joins Mookie Spitz for a sprawling, sharp-edged conversation about SaaS panic, AI hysteria, consultative selling, corpor...

On this episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with environmental attorney and activist Gary Lucks to tackle a question millions of frustrated Americans keep asking themselves: “What the hell am I actually supposed to do besides scream at the TV?” Drawing from his book We Are the Power, Gary argues that democracy survives only when ordinary people stop doomscrolling and start organizing.

Instead of vague &ldquo...

Peter Swimm has seen enough AI hype cycles to know where the bodies are buried. Long before ChatGPT turned “AI” into a household buzzword, he was building chatbots, automating enterprise systems, and watching Fortune 500 companies light piles of money on fire chasing shiny tech that promised miracles and delivered chaos. 

In this 70th episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with the founder of Toilville to ...

Everyone says AI is coming for your job, your art, your privacy, and maybe your soul. Hogan Shrum has a different idea.

In this lively and unexpectedly optimistic episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with Hogan Shrum, co-founder of PIPPA, a generative AI platform built not to replace creators, but to empower them. PIPPA lets everyday people create animated movies, custom cartoons, educational videos, branded content, and...

What happens when coffee meets robotics, convenience meets customization, and the morning drive-through gets rebuilt from scratch?

In this 68th episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie sits down with Rob Whitten and Jane Lo, the founders of p!ng, a startup turning the ordinary caffeine run into something that feels straight out of science fiction. Their fully automated drive-through “Ping Pod” uses AI, robotics, geofencing, and ...

In this sharp, zero-hype episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with FrontRace co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Jack Siney to break down one of the worst-kept secrets in business: after decades of CRMs, dashboards, KPIs, pipeline reviews, call analytics, and “sales methodology” consultants, most companies still can’t reliably forecast revenue or consistently turn average reps into top performers.

Jack...

Most are selling AI like it requires a moon landing, a seven-figure budget, and a room full of consultants speaking in jargon. Meanwhile, most businesses are bleeding money from basic operational nonsense: missed calls, duplicate data entry, disconnected software, dead leads, slow follow-up, and employees wasting hours on tasks a machine should handle.

In this sharp, practical episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with Ba...

The 65th episode of Bald Ambition features Mookie diving deep into AI with technologist Christopher Horrocks. Together, they dismantle the two dominant and flawed ways people think about the astonishing tech: dismissed as glorified autocorrect, or celebrated as emerging consciousness.

Horrocks rejects both. His concept of virtual intelligence lands in the middle. These systems generate predictive outputs that look intelligent, but t...

The 64th episode of Bald Ambition asks a question most people are too afraid or confused to ask out loud: why would a Black female constitutional attorney publicly oppose the nomination of the first Black female Supreme Court justice—and why does that matter? 

Short answer: standards. Longer answer: life is unfair, yet basing those standards on race, gender, or other factors does a disservice to those ostensibly meant to ...

In this 63rd episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with businessman, investor, and former Illinois State Senator Jim Oberweis for a wide-ranging conversation about the evolution of American politics and its future. 

Oberweis represents a political archetype that’s becoming increasingly rare: an old-school, Reagan-era Republican thinker focused on fiscal discipline, economic growth, and pragmatic governance. Ove...

In this 62nd episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie sits down with author Metin Pekin, whose provocative book Breaking Democracy’s Chains argues that modern Western democracies—especially the United States and the United Kingdom—have drifted far from genuine representation. Voters feel increasingly powerless, institutions appear captured by money and party machinery, and elections often feel like choosing between &ldquo...

In this 61st episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with Barry D. Todd—a former Army captain and Army Ranger who learned, the hard way, what it feels like when the legal system flips the script on you. After being violently attacked outside an Arizona establishment, Todd defended himself, only to be arrested and charged before investigators even reviewed the video evidence. A months-long legal nightmare ensued that ...

What if voters could weigh in on real legislation—bill by bill—share those results with each other, put them directly in front of elected officials, and then track whether those officials actually voted the way the district wanted? That’s the ambitious bet shared this 60th episode of Bald Ambition.

Mookie sits down with Ramon Perez, Executive Director of the Digital Democracy Project, to talk about a radical idea w...

America’s political system isn’t broken on Election Day, it's broken long before that—in the primaries, where money, party leadership, and donor networks quietly decide who voters are allowed to choose from.

In this 59th episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz talks with Tom Joseph, founder of America’s Main Street Party, about a technology-driven alternative that doesn’t try to fix the primary system&md...

In this 58th episode of Bald Ambition, host Mookie Spitz sits down with Jeff Goebel, #1 fan and band archivist for a thrilling look at the force behind his VH Stories. Together they take a deep, affectionate, and awe-inspiring journey into the entire Van Halen phenomenon.

After meeting last week in front of the brothers' childhood home in Pasadena coinciding with Eddie Van Halen’s 71st birthday, their conversation traces ...

What happens when a bald, cynical, science- and politics-obsessed podcaster invites his own AI sidekick onto the show—and treats it like a human guest?

Season 2's second episode of Bald Ambition is exactly that experiment.

Host Mookie Spitz sits down with his “Chatty Bro” personal bot (ChatGPT from OpenAI) for an hour long, unfiltered conversation that moves from 2001: A Space Odyssey to modern data centers, from th...

Season 2 of Bald Ambition gets off to a fun start as Mookie Spitz sits down with Mirav Ozeri—journalist, documentarian, adaptive entrepreneur, and fellow podcaster of her own show How Much Can I Make?—for a wide-ranging, playfully honest conversation about work, money, ambition, and the weird paths people take to survive (and sometimes thrive).

Mirav’s story is nuts in the best way: She immigrates to the U.S., sell...