Big Questions with Cal Fussman

Mental health gets closer to home for Cal when a young acquaintance is brought to tears with harmful thoughts in front of Cal's house. This, after suicide and attempts shook a nearby college campus. It's clear that a huge number of people are dealing with mental health issues that are not being treated or acknowledged. Cal talks with Kevin Hines, who has devoted his life to suicide prevention afte...

Cal learns how we all can bring some happiness into our lives from a man who became a national and international whistling champion. Chris Ullman has whistled in the Oval Office, whistled on The Today Show and The Tonight Show, and whistled with a symphony orchestra in front of 60,000 people. His message boils down to this: It's hard to be unhappy when you're whistling a happy tune. Chris brings j...

Cal hears a story about a guy who got seriously ill on vacation, and how, after he survived, the experience ultimately changed his diet and made him determined to clean out the chemicals in his body. When you hear the story, it may make you think about the way you take care of your own body. We get haircuts and buy products to groom our skin. But what if we put that care into our insides?

Cal talks with a man who's devoted his life's work to the study of this scary disease, and Patrick Sullivan comes through with tips on how to keep it away. One important factor is making sure your hearing, and that of your parents, doesn't decline. Research shows that if hearing loss is not treated it can significantly increase the possibility of Alzheimer's and dementia. Cal brings in the CEO of...

Cal celebrates his birthday to find an unexpected gift. It's a book written by Marc Champagne called: Personal Socrates: Questions That Will Upgrade Your Life from Legends & World Class Performers. Cal opens the book and is surprised to find that the first chapter is about HIM. Other chapters are run through the prism of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, the writer Maya Angelou, the broadcaster L...

Cal gets a windfall when he listens to the strategy that takes Lisa Gable where she wants to go. And Lisa's gone to some incredible places. The author of Turnaround has served four presidents, raised about a half billion dollars and stitched together a coalition of food and beverage industry corporations with public health agencies that led to the reduction of 6.4 trillion calories from the collec...

As Duke's Mike Krzyzewski heads into his 47 th and final year of coaching college basketball, Cal goes to the archives to play a conversation with the Hall of Fame coach that he had ten years ago. It's filled with the ingredients of success, and touches on topics like time, money, support, mentorship, passion, love, friendship, preparation, fear, honor, failure, truth and family. This conversation...

As Cal becomes riveted with the Hulu series Dopesick about the drug company that created OxyContin and addicted a chunk of America, he speaks with a man in recovery from a decade of opioid addiction for insight. Ryan Hampton courageously opens up and explains how he became addicted, what it was like and how the bankruptcy of Purdue Pharma failed the victims of the opioid crisis that has killed hal...

When Cal wonders how much money Americans annually spend on Halloween, he's directed to the author of Salt Sugar Fat and Hooked: Food, Free Will, And How The Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions. Cal finds out that kids consume what amounts to 169 sugar cubes each Halloween, but Moss shocks him with a most unexpected thought. That Halloween is fine. It's the other 364 days in a year that we really h...

The United States is $28 trillion in debt, and it was going to run out of money on October 18th if it couldn't borrow more. Fortunately, an agreement was reached in Congress to temporarily raise the debt ceiling and keep the government functioning. Unfortunately, the debt problem was kicked like a can into the near future, and a political solution will need to be agreed upon in December. Cal reach...

For years, Cal wanted to have a conversation with the greatest wrestler who ever lived. Dan Gable went undefeated in high school, won two national championships at Iowa State University and took a gold medal at the 1972 Olympics by beating six opponents with three pins and shutting his other opponents out by a combined score of 26-0. His dominance continued as a coach at the University of Iowa, wh...

After putting on a bunch of weight during COVID, Cal says enough is enough. Just as he does, he hears about a book that promises to bring back his six pack. The last time Cal saw that six pack was thirty years ago. But authors and personal trainers Stephen Compolo and Peter Tzemis guarantee Cal that if he follows the formula he can see that six pack once again. Plenty of great advice on calorie in...

Cal comes across the mindset of overcoming adversity when he talks with a 19-year-old who has a fatal disease called Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Elijah avoided an operation that would have straightened his curved spine with a metal rod by straightening it himself through exercise and diet. Now, with the possibilities of gene editing, he's got his sights on stopping the disease cold through his no...

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...