Big Questions with Cal Fussman

Ryan has been a natural leader ever since he was seven years old and he was plucked out of a bunch of kids on a football team to be quarterback. He starred in high school, then moved on to college and arena league football. But his gift for guiding a team downfield has been amplified by his podcast – where he gets the most out of CEOs, coaches, entrepreneurs and others in conversations about leadership. It's called The Learning Leader Show. After 500 episodes, Ryan's mind has become an encyclopedia of leadership tools. Use them well.

Cal discovers that some of his key attributes – curiosity, creating comfortability and connecting – equally apply to negotiations. And that maybe he has talents for an area in life that he often avoided. Mori is the author of the book: Being Yourself, How To Harness The Power of Connection To Negotiate Fearlessly. She is also a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. See what this episode can do for you!

Cal is introduced to an app that pairs photos with new contacts, and immediately senses that the young founder of the company that built the app would be an ideal guide into the new landscape of technology. His name is Anjun Rai. His company is called​ ​HelloWoofy.com. If you’d like to know where tech is going, c’mon along. . . . You can see the visuals of some of Arjun’s tips by going to calfussman.com and clicking YouTube.

Cal talks with a man who many people see as the ideal banking coach to understand the recent turmoil in the banking industry. Paul McCaffery is a Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette and Woods, where he has spent more than 20 years advising in the financial sector. He explains how a perfect storm can come together when government policies, banking decisions and the speed of technology enables depositors to move billions of dollars in a short amount of time. And how that storm that can pummel even relatively strong banks. This conversation is a banking tutorial for everyone.

The podcast explores a harrowing story of two college wrestlers encountering a grizzly bear and asks listeners to consider their response in a similar situation. It delves into the profound significance of human connection and explores acts of bravery and sacrifice.

As technology connects us more and more, we tend to find ourselves more and more disconnected as humans. The numbers back this up. We’re working alone in remote locations. We’re seeing one another attacked on the internet over political beliefs. We’re spending less time with the people we love than we did years ago. Fifteen percent of males in America say they have no friends, and women who don’t know each other are meeting and walking on the streets of New York during weekends for some sense of attachment. Cal talks with the author of The Power of Ritual, Casper ter Kuile, to see if rituals are the key to restoring our connections.

Phillip Stutts, a political marketing guru who has helped engineer more than 1,500 election wins including three presidencies, had 650-million stem cells injected into his esophagus to combat Achalasia. This disorder destroys the nerves and muscles in the esophagus which normally push food down toward the stomach -- and makes it difficult to eat. Phillip’s experience gives us a look at the medical frontier at a time when stem cell treatments have reportedly cured HIV. His moonshot approach will give a lot of hope to a lot of people.​​

Everybody loves a great comeback story, and this is one of them. Rick came to Florida as a boy in a family of Cuban immigrants. His parents never made a salary of more than $11,000 a year. An elementary school teacher labeled Rick “retarded” because he couldn’t speak English. Rick went on to become one of CNN’s most viewed hosts in the early 2000s until some comments he made about the power structure of the networks sent him into an unemployable freefall. The situation was dire, but it led him into meetings with people who were starting up a health clinic with 100 patients. Cano Health is now a billion-dollar company, and Rick isn’t stopping there. Enjoy the ride!

Cal gets some lessons on positivity from the best-selling author on Yes!Attitude and couldn’t wait to pass them on. You’re guaranteed to be more positive after you listen to this one! Cal is a new man . . .

It turns out that sometimes back pain doesn’t originate in the back – it’s from a connected area. But that connection can go un-diagnosed and surgery might be recommended for the back. Dynamic Health and Fitness rehabilitates injuries and limits pain through massage, stretching and workouts. Nick Leader explains the functional science approach and points us to a free app that assesses the stability of many of our body parts. Pass this podcast on to somebody you know with back pain, knee pain or hip pain.