Big Questions with Cal Fussman

Cal raced home from the hospital for a brief time while he was caring for his 90-year-old dad to have this conversation with the actor and author Matthew McConaughey, and he's sure glad he did. The two talked about their dads, and Matthew passed along a gift that Cal found very helpful after his dad passed away. Cal will always be grateful for this hour. It has something for everyone.

Cal asks the retired general of the U.S. Army why the U.S. can't seem to plan ahead in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan after 20 years and trillions of dollars of U.S. assistance. This conversation has so many sound bites it would be a treasure trove for any news outlet. But Cal instead finds inspiration and motivation in the general's thoughts as he sets off on a mission to re...

Cal talks with a primary care physician we all wished we could have, a man whose life was changed by a singular moment very early in his career. It's led him on a path to continually think about reinventing himself and his profession. Now, the chairman and founder of Private Medical, he wonders if we should reshape the very foundation of the way healthcare operates.

Cal talks with the author of Preventable: The Inside Story Of How Leadership Failures, Politics, And Selfishness Doomed The U.S. Coronavirus Response. Slavitt was the guy who came to the rescue of the Affordable Care Act when it got off to a rocky start in the Obama administration. Cal asks him to look ahead to show us how we can prevent the wrong things from happening over the next few years as 1...

Cal talks with the former Navy Seal Commander who had a severe case of survivor's guilt in Afghanistan and locked it away until it festered and led him to some dark places. But a   simple breathing exercise led him on a path toward meditation and mindfulness and back to good health. It comes in handy for Cal after watching the chaotic evacuation scenes from the airport in Kabul following the Talib...

Cal doesn't feel well after watching videos coming from Afghanistan – especially as he hears that America has left roughly 80,000 of its friends in the country behind when the Taliban took over. He offers President Joe Biden a plan on how to stand by those friends.

Ever since he was a kid, Marc Hodosh wondered why people had to get old and die. Now, as he prepares to co-host a healthcare conference called Life Itself with CNN's Sanjay Gupta, he looks into the possibilities we have of living longer and longer and ultimately forever. He cites the Immortal Jellyfish as an example of a creature on earth that can age, and then, when under an imminent threat, reve...

Cal goes into his archives to listen to a conversation he had with Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield about their early years as friends and business partners in Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. He remembers the conversation being filled with funny stories and the power of ice cream to bring people together, which seems at odds with the recent decision of the company and its parent to boycott the West Bank...

When Cal conducts an interviewing workshop, he is a reminded of The Dr. Dre question, the question that all employers might ask in interviews when looking for passionate employees. Cal goes into his archives to re-listen to his interview with Dre from 2012 for Esquire Magazine, where Dre told Cal he once worked 79 straight hours in the studio without sleep to produce something special. All this le...

As Cal takes time to reflect after his father's passing, he goes into his archives to listen to conversations he had with people who've done the extraordinary over the years. This talk with the British musician and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame goes back to 2009 and makes Cal smile, and ponder subjects like stress, parenting, death, tantric sex and hitting the High C in life. Cal hopes...

When Cal hears how Bitcoin is becoming a huge part of the economy in Nigeria, he remembers a conversation he had with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss about the cryptocurrency in 2013. Back then, a Bitcoin valued $140. Now, it's at about $33,000. And that's after a steep decline from earlier this year, when it got up to about $60,000. The way the twins spoke about Bitcoin is a huge reminder to Cal to...

As Cal creates a platform to improve healthcare, he goes into his archives to listen to a conversation he had about a decade ago with the man who wrote the famous Jack Nicholson line in A Few Good Men: "You can't handle the truth!" When a line like that sticks in the public conscience for decades, you know the story is good. This conversation centers around the power of memorable storytelling for...

As Cal reflects on how to improve healthcare, he goes into his archives and pulls out a conversation he had with the social media guru. It provides the perfect background on how to achieve. Gary Vee shows Cal how the early patterns of success in selling baseball cards and touting wine led to his communications company, VaynerX. Once you've figured out how to find and tell stories about the future,...

Cal goes into his archives to pluck out a story that he loves from the billionaire oil man and business mogul who loved to make money simply to give it away. Though Pickens passed on a couple of years ago, the story of how he turned $500 a week into billions will inspire anyone at a crossroads in life. Cal hopes to use the thinking behind it to impact as many people as possible as he tries to resh...

When Cal heard that Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski would be retiring at the end of the coming basketball season, he went back to re-listen to a conversation he had with the iconic coach ten years ago. Like a rare bottle of wine, age brought new depth to the talk for Cal -- especially when he reached the part where Coach K describes the last few months he spent with competitor and clos...

Cal goes to his personal archives to pull up some thoughts from the body builder, movie star and former governor of California. This includes an epiphany on how the line "I'll be back" came about in The Terminator. Arnold also talks about the self-improvement regimen than made him who he came to be. And Cal looks to shape these thoughts on his own journey to improve health care. Listeners can use...

Cal talks with his dad, Herbert Fussman, about their experience battling through Herb's case of COVID not long after he'd fractured his pelvis. The battle was fought at Herb's home. After one doctor started a sentence with the words: "Either you're going to be dead in four days or . . . " there were nights when Herb coughed for eight hours straight. With steady steps forward, though, some great ad...

Cal talks with Mirthell and Rita Onyx about how they overcame frustrations in their working life by following a desire to spend time with their four children, creating YouTube programming as a family that has now been seen by three billion people and made millions. Rita and Mirthell give Cal many ideas on how to take the platform he's designing to reshape healthcare to the masses, and they show ev...

While Cal has interviewed many of the icons of the last 75 years, there are a few people he always wanted to meet. One of them is the author of his favorite book, One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Colombian won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 and passed away in 2014. Cal was recently introduced to Marquez's son, Rodrigo Garcia, the award-winning filmmaker. Turned ou...

Cal gets some tips from the all-star coach, Roger Love, on how to get the most out of your voice. Roger got started with musical legends like The Jackson Five, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and Luther Vandross – and he still works with musicians. But over time, he branched out to assist folks like the motivational speaker Tony Robbins and the model and television star Tyra Banks. Roger shows how...

Cal finally catches up to The Mysterious Blonde almost 50 years after she appeared in the film American Graffiti. Suzanne Somers tells Cal about her complicated path to self-worth. It starts with standing up for herself in a contract dispute once she made it big on the sitcom Three's Company. Which leads to her being released from the show. Which results in her becoming a Vegas headliner. And then...

Cal hears the story of a man who leveraged 15 empty seconds on an automotive assembly line to create businesses that have made many, many, many millions. The formula that Joe Chura, CEO of Dealer Inspire, has developed can be applied by anybody, and Cal is going to use it on his quest to reshape healthcare. Listen up, and change your life.

With 1,200 election victories that arc from the House of Representatives to the Presidency of The United States, Phillip Stutts has seen how elections are won by both parties. He says the formula is always the same, and he defines it in his book: The Undefeated Marketing System: How to Grow Your Business and Build Your Audience Using the Secret Formula That Elects Presidents. It's also, Phillip sh...

As we begin to see the light at the end of the COVID tunnel, Cal converses with the legendary singer/songwriter of American Pie and Vincent about the blessings of freedom and connectivity. Along the way, as they talk about music, Don tells Cal about the feeling that goes through him when a great song gets off the ground.   "Most music you hear lays there. It's nothing. You don't want to hear it ag...

Ever since Cal began to look into healthcare, people have been e-mailing him and asking him to compare the system in the U.S. to that of other countries around the world. Cal talks with Israeli actress and producer Noa Tishby to get a comparison. Tishby is the author of the just released book, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country On Earth. This conversation explains why Pfizer...