Show Notes
When Cal visits an old mentor, he's struck by two realizations. First: Some of the most profound moments in a young person's life can happen in entry-level jobs, when the right person takes you in, opens a door, and points you on the right path. Second: As artificial intelligence wipes out many of those first jobs, it will also erase those connections and moments. What disappears isn't just work. It's mentorship. It's the quiet bonds that shape confidence, character, and destiny. What will happen to a generation shaped without them? And an even bigger question: How might we be able to preserve them?
More from Big Questions with Cal Fussman
In all of Cal's years of interviewing, no guest has come in prepared quite like Sébastien Page, Chief Investment Officer of T. Rowe Price. With the help of AI, Sébastien came to share wisdom, and Cal walked away learning something about himself. They talk about leading through change, what it was like introducing an AI agent into an important recurring meeting usually reserved for humans, and lessons from Sébastien's book, The Psychology of Leadership. It all circles back to the words T. Rowe Price lived by: Change is the investor's only certainty.
Larry Cheng on AI's Unlimited Upside Last week, the call was for regulation to keep AI from going too far. This week, the other side of the tug of war. Larry Cheng, co-founder of Volition Capital, sees a company go from zero to $100 million in a week and can't help but say: Let's go! Larry has been powering up since he became Apple's youngest certified technician at 13. He survived 200 rejections launching Volition, then backed Chewy with $15 million when its founder was facing rejection of his own. That led to a $3 billion exit. Larry talks about the unlimited possibilities he's seeing in AI, the data center power needed to unleash them, why so many people don't want that power in their backyard as well as the societal implications of watching this all unfold. And more than that. Larry offers simple steps YOU can take to build out your own ideas with AI.
When a CEO who most of America wouldn't recognize on the street gets impersonated by Saturday Night Live, he stops being an expert on the news. He becomes a character in the great drama of our time. Cal starts there and then runs through the week the AI conversation changed, all curated into short clips so you can get caught up without scrolling YouTube at 2 a.m.
Cal becomes curious when he hears about a book that proves just that. He learns from The New Social Code that the most successful people aren't the ones who get the most social media likes – but the ones who have three or four powerful human connections. Authors Greg Pryor and Michael Arena show how those types of connections came together to enable Robert Prevost to become Pope Leo. And they also prove how success in our time can be attained by getting the most out of AI while doubling down on human connections that are based on deep trust.
Cal's ongoing look at how humans can get the best out of AI while avoiding the worst goes to an unanticipated place: Mentorship. In the time of a loneliness crisis, will young people rely on AI too much for guidance? Will those who refuse all interaction with AI miss out on its benefits and pay a price? It turns out there's never been a more important time for humans to find the people who can put them on the right path. A conversation with Georgetown professor Eric Koester, author of Super Mentors, shows us where ambition meets guidance in our time. And we're in luck! Eric reveals the best ways humans can connect with the right mentors and use AI as an accelerant, whether you're 18 or 52.