In this deeply uplifting episode of No Hair, All Heart, Mookie Spitz sits down with Chaplain Sy Alli, a man who has lived enough lives for ten people: Air Force veteran, pro wrestler, actor, private investigator, global security expert, and now, chaplain and youth mentor. His story, told with raw honesty and humility, is one of collapse, revelation, and rebirth.

Sy’s path was a carousel of careers and reinventions, from the “Chocolate Playboy” in the wrestling ring, a bodyguard in the dot-com era, a corporate security director in the early cannabis industry. But behind the high-octane résumé was a man drowning in depression and alcoholism, spiraling toward suicide. On April 18, 2015, sitting alone in a locked Denver office with a loaded Glock, Sy prepared to end his life. Then something impossible happened: the lights went out, the world froze, and two familiar presences — his late father and father-in-law — appeared beside him. What followed was a divine intervention that replayed the life he would destroy if he pulled the trigger.

That moment changed everything. Sy put down the gun and picked up a Bible. Five years later, he gave up drinking for good, entered seminary, and became a chaplain. His ministry wasn’t confined to pulpits — it found its home in homeless shelters, cancer wards, and public schools. From counseling suicidal veterans in Marina, California, to mentoring at-risk kids in Salinas through the Alevo program, Sy turned his pain into purpose. The same relentless drive that once fueled his career now fuels his mission: to serve, to heal, and to lift others up.

Together, Mookie and Sy trace a spiritual arc from ego to empathy, from chasing fame to chasing meaning. They talk about grace, gratitude, and God’s humor — how a man who once threw Hershey’s Kisses to adoring wrestling fans now spends his days mentoring children of farm workers and guiding veterans out of despair.

Sy’s journey is proof that salvation isn’t a sermon — it’s an act. His life embodies the idea that faith without compassion is empty, and that giving back is the purest expression of belief. This episode is a testament to second chances, divine timing, and the courage it takes to turn your life into a living ministry.

The Guest

Chaplain Sy Alli resides in Carmel California where he is a Site Success Manager with Elevo Learning, and ministers to several Personal Care Homes in Monterey and works with At-Risk Youths. He has a degree in Criminal Justice and is also degreed in Religious Studies and Chaplaincy, and is a father to three adult kids. 

Sy has led many lives: USAF European Powerlifting Champ, Actor, Professional Wrestler, University Lecturer and Dignitary Protection Specialist. His story is of interest to all suffering from mental health challenges. 

His Book

"Out of The Storm" is more than just a personal account, it's a call to action. Through Sy Alli's life story, readers will discover the resilience of the human spirit, the importance of faith, and the transformative power of compassion. This book aims to inspire, motivate, and offer a lifeline to those who may be navigating their own storms.

Get his book on Amazon

His Social Media

https://www.linkedin.com/in/syalli
https://x.com/syalli1
https://www.facebook.com/ChaplainSyAlli

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

In this powerful and deeply personal 93rd episode of No Hair, All Heart, Mookie Spitz sits down with Ely Winkler, the Director of Advancement at Eshel, an organization devoted to LGBTQ+ inclusion within the Orthodox Jewish community. Their heartfelt conversation cuts through theology, tradition, and identity with candid honesty and unexpected joy.

Ely shares his remarkable journey from being the rabbi’s son in a Modern Orthodox New Jersey synagogue, to coming out at Yeshiva University in 2009, to becoming one of the leading voices for inclusion and reform within a world that still struggles with acceptance. Mookie brings his trademark mix of empathy and wit as they dig into the biblical roots of exclusion, the interpretations of Leviticus, and how faith and tolerance can not only coexist but strengthen each other.

Together they explore...

• How Eshel builds bridges between LGBTQ+ Jews and Orthodox institutions through education, advocacy, and community-building.
• The tensions between tradition and modernity, and why arguing over God’s will is actually a very Jewish thing to do.
• The unique struggles of trans Jews navigating Orthodox spaces — and Eshel’s groundbreaking idea of the “tri-chitza,” a third prayer-space for non-binary and gender-nonconforming people.
• How the trauma of exclusion mirrors Jewish history itself — and why inclusion isn’t just moral, but existential for the survival of Judaism.
• The post–October 7th reality for Jews worldwide, and how unity and compassion have become not just ideals but survival mechanisms.

Their wide ranging and passionate conversation isn’t just a theological debate, but a human story about return, reconciliation, and resilience. Ely’s life becomes a metaphor for the broader Jewish diaspora: leaving home, finding oneself, and coming back not in shame, but in strength. As Ely puts it, “There’s no downside to inclusion — only a stronger, more fabulous community.”

Listeners will come away with a deeper understanding of how identity, faith, and belonging collide, and how organizations like Eshel are quietly reshaping one of the world’s oldest religions from the inside out.

The Guest

Ely Winkler is the Director of Advancement for Eshel, serving Orthodox+ LGBTQ+ Jews, their families, and communities. He is the proud son of a modern Orthodox Rabbi from New Jersey, and currently lives with his partner in Brooklyn, NY. Since coming out of the closet at Yeshiva University, Ely has been an advocate for strengthening the Jewish future through LGBTQ+ inclusion, first by working in Jewish day schools and yeshivot, and now by bringing awareness, developing resources, empowering allies, and expanding LGBTQ+ belonging within Orthodox Jewish communities through his work with Eshel.

The Organization

Eshel's mission is to build LGBTQ+ inclusive Orthodox Jewish communities. Eshel envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people and their families are full participants in the Orthodox community of their choice. We work towards this goal through four pillars: community building for LGBTQ+ people and their parents, advocacy to the broader community, supporting each other, and educating our Rabbis, institutional leaders, and friends. 

Learn more: www.eshelonline.org
Support Eshel's Work: www.eshelonline.org/support-our-work/
Orthodox LGBTQ+ Jewish Support: https://www.eshelonline.org/support/ 

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

Welcome to the ninety-second episode of No Hair, All Heart, the brutally honest, hilariously self-aware podcast from writer and ranter Mookie Spitz — here playinmg bald philosopher of modern absurdity. 

Today, Mookie delights in turning the small humiliations and generational echoes of life into raw, unfiltered narratives that swing between confession, comedy, and cultural critique by ripping into the shared awkwardness of adolescence — from his own clumsy teenage years fumbling through Chicago winters and premature panic to watching his son navigate love and morality in the age of smartphones, TikTok, and digital confusion. 

An intergenerational mirror of shame, humor, and empathy, the personal story is told with surgical precision and zero pretense. Seeing himself in his son, Mookie wonders what kind of agency he's ever had regarding his own fate, and whether or not he's had lasting impact on the lives of his children. At the very least, parenting has offered good stories to tell, and perhaps a few lessons to learn! 

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

Mookie Spitz focuses his 91st episode of No Hair, All Heart on the strange alchemy of being insulted online and learning to love it. From TikTok trolls calling him “rabbit teeth” to the philosophy of Zappa and Baudelaire, this episode explores how ridicule, rejection, and rage from strangers can become creative fuel.

Your bald host recounts the viral kitchen rant that earned him thousands of views and hundreds of hateful comments — and how that digital dogpile became his crucible for resilience, humor, and self-actualization. What begins as a story about a joke misunderstood and triggering thousands turns into a full-blown manifesto on the power dynamics of attention, the futility of online vitriol, and the strange freedom in not giving a damn.

What he's learned:

• Desensitization through exposure: When you’re insulted enough times, the sting fades. Criticism becomes background noise, freeing you from ego-dependence.
• Emotional callus-building: Like weight training for the psyche — each hit strengthens your creative armor.
• Proof of life: Hate means people are watching. The algorithm feeds on friction, and friction means traction.
• Power reversal: The one on stage — the “fool” with the mic — always holds the real power. The audience, even when hurling tomatoes, is reacting to you.
• Irony mirror: Seeing how dumb your critics sound teaches you restraint. You stop stooping to the same level.
• Catalyst for clarity: Every insult clarifies your lane — who you are, who you’re not, and what you stand for.
• Fuel for art: Anger metabolized becomes energy; abuse is just the universe’s way of handing you kindling.
• Antidote to avoidance: When you stop dodging discomfort, you start creating with fearlessness.
• Reconnection to reality: Pain keeps you honest. It keeps the art alive and unsterile.

The Triggering Instagram Post

https://www.instagram.com/p/DPoXoj2kaw8/

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

When everyone can make a movie of themselves doing anything in ten seconds, reality stops being real — and that’s when the real fun begins!

Leaping into the 90th episode of No Hair, All Heart, host Mookie Spitz dissects Sora 2, OpenAI’s generative video juggernaut that’s turning imagination into mass delusion. From AGI hype to existential dread, he lays out how we’re winning the tech race while losing our minds — and why that’s exactly what makes it interesting.

Diving headfirst into the surreal frontier of artificial intelligence, Mookie describes the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 to the rise of Sora 2, OpenAI’s generative video engine turning imagination into cinema. Through his trademark mix of awe, skepticism, and sardonic humor, Mookie dissects how AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) could either elevate civilization to its next quantum plateau — or sink it under the weight of its own delusion:

• AI as the Ultimate Mirror: Every advance in AI is less about the machine’s intelligence and more about our own reflection — our craving for speed, novelty, and digital omnipotence.
• Sora 2 as the Multiverse in Motion: With a typed prompt, anyone can conjure entire realities. It’s democratization of creativity at light speed — and the end of originality as we know it.
• Predictive vs. Reinforcement Learning:
  • Predictive models (like GPTs) simulate thought.
  • Reinforcement models live thought — learning by interacting with their environment.
  • True AGI, Mookie argues, will need both: the ability to learn from lived experience and reimagine from memory.
• AGI as Evolution, Not Invention: Intelligence evolved in humans through embodied experience — sensors, pain, curiosity. Without a body, an AGI can’t live, only calculate.
• The Emergent Problem:
  • We’re already creating systems no human fully understands.
  • Once true AGI “goes live,” no one will know exactly how or why it works — an evolutionary black box that thinks beyond its code.
• The New Species Theory: AI isn’t a tool anymore — it’s the first non-biological species, perceiving the universe through silicon and sensors instead of blood and nerves.
• The Economic Edge: Altman and OpenAI are either building the next phase of civilization or the next speculative bubble that implodes the global economy. Either way, we’re passengers on that Titanic.
• Cognitive Dissonance of Progress:
  • We’re getting smarter and dumber at the same time.
  • The creative floodgates are open, but discernment is evaporating.
• Ethical Blindspot: Guardrails are already being gamed. Jailbroken AIs can fabricate Disney parks, presidents, or dead relatives in seconds. “You can’t put limits on human creativity — or stupidity.”
• The Basement Reality: As AI fabricates infinite digital illusions, humanity will fetishize the analog — the feel of skin, the smell of bread, the grain of vinyl.
• The Paradox: The more artificial our world becomes, the more sacred the real will feel. Even the godlike AGIs we fear will envy us for one thing they can’t replicate: mortality.

Join the AI conversation! Sooner or later, the AI conversation will become us... 

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

Two years after the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attack, Mookie Spitz strips the conflict down to its brutal, geographical bones. No pundit spin, no partisan or tribal bias he hopes — just Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel refracted through the most combustible square mileage on Earth. Mookie dissects how Israel’s tiny, boundaryless topography, its interlocked demographics and religions, and its barren resources make perpetual conflict inevitable — not moral, not cultural, just inevitable.

From Yahya Sinwar’s cynical timing of “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” to Trump’s transactional foreign policy and Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition steering Israel toward full annexation, Mookie unpacks how history, geography, and human stubbornness form a feedback loop that swallows diplomacy whole.

Why Peace Remains an Illusion

• No Physical Separation: Israel and Palestine share a New Jersey-sized patch of land with no natural barriers — no mountain ranges or deserts to enforce distance, just overlapping towns and competing flags.
• Demographic Compression: Two highly concentrated, intermingled populations — Jews, Muslims, and Israeli Arabs — leave no room for psychological or political breathing space.
• Asymmetry of Power: Israel’s military dominance ensures that every skirmish ends with overwhelming force, breeding permanent resentment rather than resolution.
• Mutually Exclusive Aims: Hamas seeks Israel’s eradication from the river to the sea; the current Israeli government openly pursues total annexation of Gaza and the West Bank. Both positions make compromise structurally impossible.
• Religious Absolutism: Jerusalem isn’t just real estate — it’s divine territory claimed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ensuring that every concession feels like sacrilege.
• Geopolitical Incentives: Gulf states and Western powers treat the conflict as a chessboard — trading alliances, arms, and tech access — while Palestine’s fate remains negotiable collateral.
• Internal Political Traps: Netanyahu’s coalition is held hostage by ultra-right ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir, whose power depends on perpetual war. Hamas’s power likewise depends on never laying down arms.
• Cycle of Retaliation: Each Israeli bombing guarantees the birth of more militants; each militant attack guarantees harsher retaliation — an emotional and demographic perpetuum mobile.
• Collapse of the Two-State Myth: The so-called “solution” is a corpse politicians still prop up to look humane while both sides pursue total control.
• Foreign Mediation Farce: The Trump-brokered security deal and its “20-point peace plan” read like theater — too complex to succeed, designed to fail slowly enough to look like progress.
• Economic Futility: Gaza’s isolation and surveillance ensure that even reconstruction projects double as containment strategies; there’s no viable path to self-sufficiency.
• Psychological Entrenchment: Each side views the other not merely as an enemy but as the negation of its own survival — a zero-sum identity conflict immune to reason.

The end result is where empathy collides with cynicism, and Mookie Spitz dissects why “peace in the Middle East” is, sadly, less a goal than a comforting delusion.

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

What would you do if, over dinner, you discovered your girlfriend’s best friend was related to one of history’s greatest mass murderers? That’s not a setup—it happened, cracking open a bigger truth: most of what we think we’ve chosen—our opinions, our politics, even our loyalties—isn’t chosen at all. Our lives are largely scripted by history, family, and circumstance.

Host Mookie Spitz takes you from exactly such a steakhouse revelation about Adolf Eichmann’s bloodline to the stubborn patterns of tribalism and bias that still define us today. The paradox is inescapable: our judgments feel personal and spontaneous, yet they’re deterministic, and etched into us long before we know it.

The 88th episode of No Hair, All Heart doesn’t flinch from the uncomfortable, and revels in the wonder of connection across generations, the shock of history reappearing in the most ordinary settings, and the question of whether anyone can ever break free from their programming.

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

No Hair, All Heart isn’t about polish or pandering—the show is about raw rants, cultural collisions, and the messy grind behind so-called “overnight success.” Host Mookie Spitz drags you out of passive consumption and into the sweaty, chaotic arena of creation, fame, and failure.

From Beck shouting “I’m gonna be famous” in a North Hollywood taco joint, to Quentin Tarantino hustling scripts at a video store, to Anthony Bourdain stuck on fry duty before Kitchen Confidential blew the doors open, Mookie dissects the myth of the big break. The through-line is always the same: obsession, persistence, and the maddening contradiction that to truly love the work is to hate reshaping it for approval. 

That’s the paradox of chasing fame—if you’re driven by the craft itself, the very act of bending to what an algorithm or audience expects can feel like betrayal. Yet those who bend often break through first.

Mookie dives right into satire colliding with sincerity, and cynicism smashing with stubborn hope. Mookie folds in his own war stories—TikTok experiments, viral flukes, a thousand videos in ten months, and the algorithm’s fickle judgment. He knows the intoxicating rush of being noticed and the deeper satisfaction of being ignored, free to rant without compromise.

His rant is a gut-level manifesto against perfectionism and paralysis, and why you have to keep cranking content, stop polishing turds, and embrace the multiverse of possibility—even when the algorithm leaves you in the void. The only real break doesn’t come from catering to others, and instead comes from refusing to shut up, and refusing to quit.

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

Friendship is supposed to be one of life’s great treasures—essential like air, water, food, and sleep. But what if that’s a delusion we’ve been spoon-fed since childhood? In this 86th episode of Bald and Bloviating, Mookie Spitz 86's the myth of meaningful friendship, stripping it down to its transactional, shallow, often disappointing core.

From Henry Adams and Oscar Wilde to John Updike and Thoreau, Mookie draws on history, literature, and lived experience to interrogate what it means to connect with others. He recalls college years full of drinking buddies and business buddies, then contrasts them with middle-aged isolation, where men bury feelings at “Taco Tuesdays” while women dig into each other’s lives. He highlights cultural and religious communities that show up in tragedy, but asks the hard question: do they really care—or are they just performing support?

The rant goes deeper:

• Gender and Friendship: Why men are lonelier, unhealthier, and more isolated—trained to “suck it up” and never show vulnerability.
• Happy Families vs. Empty Friendships: A John Updike–like portrait of pleasant, functional families that conceal deeper voids.
• Romance as a Mirror: How even marriages and long-term partnerships tilt out of balance, with one person compromising more, while the other dictates the soundtrack of daily life.
• The Harsh Truth: Most friendships—and most relationships—are shallow bullshit. And maybe that’s not a tragedy, but freedom.

At the center is a paradox: the more we cling to fake friendships for validation, the emptier we feel. Yet once we call them out as hollow, we’re free. Free to stop wasting time on transactional pleasantries. Free to stop bending ourselves into compromise. Free to build a life on our own terms—even if that means choosing solitude over shallow company.

His rant isn’t a polite meditation. but a knife in the front. Mookie argues that facing the emptiness of most human connections is the first step to living honestly, reclaiming independence, and finding joy in uncompromised solitude.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your so-called friends really give a shit—or if you’ve been silently tallying your own dwindling connections—this episode will challenge you to stare in the mirror and ask: how can we truly attain the good life? 

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show

In this 85th episode of No Hair, All Heart, host Mookie Spitz dives into the chaos, contradictions, and comedy of the Jewish New Year—and what it means to carry a tradition you don’t believe in. 

The show opens with the strange math that declares this to be the year 5,787, a number that collapses once you pit it against science, fossils, and cosmology. From there, the rant spins through the peculiar mechanics of the lunar calendar, with its leap months and shifting holidays, before landing squarely in the personal: Mookie’s own childhood, Hebrew school, and a father who survived the Holocaust and demanded that tradition be passed along whether or not it made sense.

The core of his rant is the clash between scientific wonder and rigid religious dogma. Mookie recalls being the fat kid with glasses in the back row, raising his hand to ask how the universe could be a few thousand years old when fossils proved otherwise—only to be told, red-faced, that “God put them there!" That absurd answer, and the years of rote memorization that followed, turned Hebrew school into a prison sentence punctuated by moments of rebellion: green bagel fights in the synagogue basement, Playboy centerfolds plastered across the rabbi’s office, and the mad dash home to catch Star Trek.

But beneath the comedy is something heavier. The Holocaust looms in the background, shaping a father who insisted his son carry the faith as a matter of survival and continuity. The tension between skepticism and loyalty, myth and identity, runs through the episode until it finds its metaphor in an unlikely place: Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. The “gold watch” Butch risks everything to recover is meaningless on its own—a piece of metal—but freighted with history, pain, and tradition, it becomes the hinge on which destiny turns. For Mookie, Judaism often feels like that watch: irrational, absurd, sometimes laughable, but still inescapably powerful in the way it binds generations and gives shape to memory.

By the end, what emerges is not just a rant but a reflection on what it means to be Jew-ish: skeptical of theology yet bound by story, tradition, and identity. With irreverent humor, personal confession, and cultural critique, Mookie shows how myth and memory—even when they feel like nonsense—carry a strange kind of gold. The episode is equal parts catharsis, comedy, and cultural archaeology, offering listeners a brash but deeply human exploration of why we keep carrying the “watch,” even when we swear we’re done with it.

Send the host a text! Let him know what you think

Support the show