Headsmack: Conversations with Misfits

Dr. Charles M. Russo has spent decades inside the U.S. Intelligence Community learning how to think clearly when the stakes are high—and certainty is impossible. From Desert Storm to post-9/11 intelligence work, Russo has lived inside environments where bad thinking costs lives. In this conversation, he breaks down what critical thinking actually means, why truth is often confused with perspective, how bias distorts decision-making, and why AI makes disciplined reasoning more important—not le...

Mark MacDonald brings 40 years of ministry, marketing, and communication experience to this powerful conversation about church branding and effective communication. Most churches today aren't known for anything meaningful in their communities. They're speaking a language their audience doesn't understand, building websites that confuse rather than clarify, and creating content that sounds like everyone else. Mark MacDonald, founder of BeKnownForSomething.com and bestselling author, has spent ...

Bob Hamp is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, author, and founder of Think Differently Academy, and in this episode he delivers one of the most paradigm-shifting conversations ever featured on Headsmack. Blending neuroscience, change theory, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and kingdom theology, Bob explains why most personal growth fails, why religion often produces shallow solutions, and how true life change happens at the level of thought process, paradigms, and the heart—not willpow...

Marty Neumeier is the internationally recognized author who literally wrote the book on brand strategy. His work The Brand Gap has been read by 25 million people, and Zag was named one of the top 100 business books of all time. After decades helping giants like Apple, Google, and Adobe build legendary brands, he's now disrupting the publishing industry itself with a bold new approach to bringing stories to market. In this episode, Marty dismantles the myth that companies own their brands. The...

In a world where everyone’s shouting, silence equals irrelevance. Bill Harper knows this better than anyone. With over 36 years in the brand and marketing trenches — and more than $2.5B in client revenue to prove it — Bill has cracked the code for challenger brands to dominate markets already flooded with competition. In this episode, Bill shares the power of positioning, why no one buys the best product, and how to win by saying what no one else dares to. From Geico’s edutainment to Liquid D...