When Samina Bari lost her husband, Doug Neale, unexpectedly in 2023, she was left to navigate grief, raise their twin daughters, and manage the financial and legal responsibilities that follow the loss of a spouse. Jim Weiss knows that experience personally, having lost his wife, Audra.

In this episode of Get Real with Jim Weiss, Samina and Jim share a candid conversation about losing a spouse, parenting through grief, and how to support someone who is grieving. They discuss what to say—and what not to say—after a loss, why grief follows no fixed timeline, and the practical decisions families face while trying to move forward.

Before becoming an author and founder, Samina spent more than 30 years in biotech and healthcare, advising CEOs and boards on transactions totaling over $40 billion. She wrote Don't Call Me Widow and I Can, I Will & I Did, and founded Farewell, a platform helping families navigate major life transitions and what she calls "Life Administration." Together, Jim and Samina explore how to move forward while honoring the people we continue to love. This conversation is a must watch.

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Ethan Zohn won Survivor: Africa for $1 million. But at 35, he faced a far bigger fight: surviving cancer. On Get Real with Jim Weiss, Ethan recounts his diagnosis with a rare form of Hodgkin lymphoma, failed chemotherapy, stem cell transplants, and the clinical trial drug that helped save his life. In a remarkable twist, he learns Jim helped launch that very treatment. Ethan also shares the persistent itching that first signaled something was wrong, what it means to outlive his father, who died of cancer at 49, and why his experience completely changed how he defines endurance. Together, they explore early cancer detection, medical cannabis, the power of community, and Ethan’s work helping young people through Grassroot Soccer. From winning Survivor to facing cancer, Ethan reveals what it really means to outwit, outplay, outlast, and keep living.

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Menopause is about far more than hot flashes. It can affect sleep, weight, heart health and how women age for decades to come. Dr. Mary Claire Haver returns to Get Real with Jim Weiss to talk about menopause, HRT, GLP-1s, breast health, prevention and the gaps that still exist in women’s health care. She also opens up about building The Pause Life, becoming an entrepreneur and why, at 58, she says she’s living the best years of her life. This is a conversation about taking control of your health, advocating for yourself and rethinking what aging can look like.

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What happens when the crisis expert becomes the crisis? Jim Olson built a career helping some of the world’s biggest organizations navigate the unexpected. Then his own life veered dramatically off course. A trip to the ER for unexplained back pain led to a Stage IV metastatic melanoma diagnosis that had spread to his lung and brain. Months later, he suddenly lost much of his vision.

In this deeply personal conversation, Jim shares how he faced cancer, permanent vision loss and his wife’s own cancer diagnosis, and why the lessons he learned managing crises became a roadmap for surviving his own. He and Jim Weiss talk about early detection, knowing when to slow down, asking for help and finding purpose when life changes without warning.

It’s a conversation about what happens when the GPS stops working, the path ahead disappears and you have to find a new way forward.

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Why does healthcare keep getting more expensive, even as technology gets better? Dan Mendelson has spent his career trying to answer that question, from the Clinton White House to founding Avalere Health and now leading Morgan Health at JPMorgan Chase. In this episode of Get Real, Dan joins Jim Weiss to unpack what’s driving costs, why employer-sponsored healthcare needs more attention, and how AI, better primary care and smarter benefits could improve care. They also explore women’s health, access to breakthrough treatments and what it will take to make healthcare work better for more people.

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Alan Murray has spent decades inside the rooms where leaders make consequential decisions, from The Wall Street Journal and Fortune to today’s WSJ Leadership Institute. In this episode of Get Real, Alan joins Jim Weiss to talk about trust, leadership, AI and how technology is reshaping business and healthcare. They also explore the future of journalism, the changing role of CEOs and whether innovation could transform diseases like cancer. Then Alan gets personal, sharing how his own cancer experience changed the way he thinks about time, family, work and what matters most.

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Patrick Dempsey's non-profit, the Dempsey Center, is dedicated to offering wraparound support to cancer patients and the people around them impacted by cancer. On this episode, Jim and Patrick discuss the difference one person can make when they decide to turn a deeply personal experience into something that helps others.

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Jim sits down with Dave Fredrickson, Executive Vice President of AstraZeneca's Oncology Business Unit, to explore the breakthroughs reshaping cancer care and why this may be the most promising moment in oncology history. Dave's journey has taken him from the Pentagon to consulting, Genentech, and ultimately the leadership of one of the world's largest oncology businesses. Along the way, he's helped bring some of the most important cancer innovations to patients around the world. Jim and Dave discuss what came out of ASCO, the rise of AI in healthcare, precision diagnostics, antibody-drug conjugates, cell therapy, and the growing possibility that many cancers may one day become curable. They also tackle the perception problem facing the pharmaceutical industry, why global collaboration matters more than ever, and what it takes to lead through rapid scientific change.

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