Big Questions with Cal Fussman

For the first time, you can ask Cal what you want to know about asking better questions. About your next podcast. A business move. A personal situation. Cal will get back to you personally with the help of AI. AI Cal isn't trained on the internet. It's trained on Cal. On five decades of conversations with U.S. presidents, world leaders like Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, Seren...

The change in front of all of us right now may be the most radical humans have ever faced. Who do you want guiding you through it? Courtney Harrison would be an intriguing choice. She's a rare breed of HR leader — one who doesn't just advise organizations on change, but who puts people inside the experience of it and shows them they're capable of far more than they believed. She once strapped corp...

Every teacher struggling with AI use in the classroom needs to hear this episode. Jamie Metzl has a Ph. D. from Oxford, a law degree from Harvard, and has run 60 marathons. He spent nine years writing his first book. When he sat down to co-write The AI Ten Commandments with GPT-5 he didn't surrender his thinking, creativity or his soul. Jamie doubled down by documenting the process. It's the first...

Cal resumes his conversation with Dr. David Bach, the Harvard-trained neuroscientist who is about to give you an opportunity to upgrade your brain. Dr. Bach is the founder of Optios. His company's work is unlocking a door to a new kind of human potential. Cal learns how Optios will help him get in the zone to learn about the science he could never pay attention to when he was in junior high school...

Charles Gaudet has coached thousands of CEOs over the years. Yahoo Finance has called him "The CEO Whisperer." In this episode, Cal asks him to turn what he's learned toward a big question: What can everybody do to protect their jobs in the age of AI? Charles has some answers. The employees who thrive will be the ones who use AI to make themselves more valuable by leveling up their productivity. H...

Graduation stages across America erupted in boos this spring when AI came up. That anxiety isn't just for new grads. It's felt by anyone wondering whether they still have a place in a world being reshaped by technology. This episode of Big Questions: The Future of Work tackles that fear head-on. Cal brings in Jay Samit — former Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte Digital and bestselling author o...

In an age when AI has everyone asking  what's next for humans , Cal goes looking for answers. He finds them in some unexpected places. A five-year-old girl who walked through a Transylvanian forest to save her sister's life. A New York publicist who followed a hunch to Charlotte and built something nobody had ever seen before. And a guy with a borrowed bicycle who turned a single crazy idea into a...

Cal opens this deeply personal episode of Big Questions with a flood of remarkable medical breakthroughs. 3D-printed windpipes. A pancreatic cancer drug that doubles survival rates. Nanotechnology clearing toxic proteins from the body. And he explains why he's sharing them: to balance the grief of losing his friend Sally, a highly-ranked senior tennis player taken too soon by gallbladder cancer. O...

A professor at an elite university noticed something alarming: every student's work was flawless . . . and nearly identical. All of it generated by AI. So she did the unthinkable (for the students, anyway). She banned devices and allowed only pen and paper. What happened next surprised everyone, including her students. But going Old School isn't the overall point of this episode. Cal uses this sto...

Cal stumbles on a Chinese company offering to digitally resurrect the dead for three dollars. His first thought? Larry King would have loved this. In this episode, Cal sits down with Larry King Jr. to explore what it really means to preserve a life. The stories. The voice. The questions. From Larry Sr's relentless chase for immortality. To the Larry King Cardiac Foundation that literally saved hun...

What if AI didn't replace you — it made you a better you? Dr. David Bach, Harvard-trained neuroscientist and founder of Optios, is using artificial intelligence to help people think faster, learn better, retain more, and perform at their peak. He's stepping into what is his most consequential work yet while others his age are out on the golf course. From walking on fire to unlocking the science of...

Cal was 12 years old, bored out of his mind in junior high science class, waiting for the bell to ring. He had no idea his wandering brain was doing exactly what it was built to do – tell stories. We all carry the most extraordinary thing in the known universe around with us every day — and never really stop to look into it. This episode of Big Questions does just that. Cal sits with Claude — Anth...

What do Clint Eastwood, a Montana snowstorm, and a herd of cattle have to do with artificial intelligence? Cal starts with the romance of the old cattle drives and the sound of the old show Rawhide, remembers the pull of the open range and a freezing night that made him question whether he'd even make it to the ranch alive. Then he finds something on the internet that stops him cold. No cowboys. J...

Cal Fussman walks into a theater expecting to see a documentary about artificial intelligence. He walks out with a new understanding of the future of work. Through a surprising connection to Super Mario, a landlord named Mario Segale, and the power of human serendipity, he uncovers a simple truth: The people who adapt will thrive. The ones who don't may disappear. If you've ever wondered whether A...

After watching Project Hail Mary, Cal sees more than a sci-fi story about saving the stars—he sees a blueprint for how humans might survive the age of AI. That insight leads him to a real-life story even more extraordinary. When tech founder Sid Sijbrandij is diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer, the traditional medical system eventually runs out of answers. Most people would accept that outco...

The headlines keep leading us to believe that AI is coming for your job. But Cal Fussman poses a question no one else is asking. If humans stop earning… who's left to buy what AI and the machines produce? As companies race toward automation, Nvidia's Jensen Huang insists new human jobs will be created. Cal believes him. The catch? Many of those jobs may not exist just yet. This episode points to t...

Cal plans to go out to the theater to watch the actor save the universe in Project Hail Mary. Cal doesn't know exactly what's going to happen, but he sees the plot as the perfect metaphor for how humans must look at the work in the age of AI. Gosling plays a middle school science teacher who wakes up in a rocket and can't remember, only to use the skills he has to save the universe. We're all goin...

An electric razor is mistaken for a bomb. Security lines explode in Houston, New Orleans and Charlotte. TSA workers are on the job without pay. So Cal flips the script. Show up hours early and turn airport stress into productive work time that can create a bestseller and more. It's not whistling while you work. But in March 2026 . . . it works.

One future says the most human people win. The other says your job costs too much. Gary Vaynerchuk believes that as we become more "AI-ed out," the most human brands and people will dominate. Citrini Research predicts something far colder: Within two years, a Claude agent may do the work of a $180,000 product manager for $200 a month. And when that happens? The top 10% may control over half of all...

One of the richest men in the world quietly became the largest private owner of farmland in America. Why? Is Bill Gates retreating from technology? Or is he making the most important AI bet of all? In this episode, Cal reads from an article that reframes everything. Gates' farmland strategy isn't nostalgia. It's a blueprint for the next economy. AI will build the digital world for free. But every...

As the world worked on last week, something exploded online. An article about AI by Matt Shumer was posted on X. It has already been downloaded more than 80 million times. The title? Something Big Is Happening. The implications couldn't be more personal. Your job. Your family. Your future. Instead of summarizing it or debating it, Cal does something simple and Old School on Big Questions. He reads...

Fifteen of the 66 Super Bowl ads this year featured artificial intelligence. Then Mike Tyson appeared on screen. . .and ate an apple. No algorithms. No spectacle. Just a former heavyweight champion telling America to stop consuming what's destroying it. In a culture addicted to speed, processed food, and machine-enhanced everything, Tyson's message was about discipline. Bringing up a Big Question:...

What does it really take to reach your peak? The answer lies in the Netflix documentary Skyscraper Live, as climbing legend Alex Honnold scales Taipei 101, the tallest building in Taiwan, one move at a time. Watching him ascend the 1,667-foot glass and steel tower as if he were Spider-Man reveals a deceptively simple formula for mastery: Total focus on making your next best move.

Larry King used to tell me: "Nobody loves a hurricane like the weatherman." I learned exactly what he meant during the last winter storm — when the forecast was certain… and reality had other plans. It's why I've stopped trusting forecasts the way I trust people.

A brief encounter with Buddhist monks on their walk for peace from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C., leads Cal to wonder what Martin Luther King Jr. might have thought if he'd seen the large crowd of Americans gathered in gratitude for their journey.