Tony Dokoupil Launches 'Great Question' Podcast, CBS Evening News' First Big Digital Extension

CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil is launching a podcast, Great Question with Tony Dokoupil, which the network is presenting as the first major digital extension of its evening newscast, The Hollywood Reporter reported on Friday, Oct. 23.

The show will post new episodes twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays. Each episode is built around a single question, which Dokoupil puts to journalists or experts. It will be released as video on YouTube and other podcast platforms, alongside audio-only versions, and is filmed in Dokoupil's office at CBS News.

CBS News posted a 30-second trailer for the series; its description calls Great Question an "all-new podcast" and says it is "Coming soon." The network has not announced a specific premiere date, Barrett Media reported.

First Guests and Topics

According to The Hollywood Reporter, early guests include author and podcast host Malcolm Gladwell, who will discuss whether America needs more police, and 60 Minutes contributor Gianna Toboni, who will talk about the death penalty. Other planned episodes look at why American children appear to struggle with math and whether gambling apps are designed to be addictive.

Dokoupil described the podcast as a place for questions the nightly broadcast does not have time to answer. "Over the course of a week, there'll be things that we didn't get to or that are lingering, and the hope of the podcast is you'll be able to distill that into the biggest, most urgent, most pressing, most important, or just most interesting question, and then you try to match that to a guest," he told the outlet.

Dokoupil explained the title in a statement quoted by Barrett Media: "There are many questions in a conversation. There's the first question, the tough question, the probing question, the question no one wants to ask, the follow-up question, personal question, an unexpected question, begging the question. And then there's just 'great question.'"

Reaching a Digital Audience

Dokoupil told The Hollywood Reporter that the podcast is partly aimed at people who do not watch traditional television news. "There's another group of people who are more online who genuinely believe that people on TV are just getting things fed into their earpiece, and they're basically robots with hair pieces on. That is a real meaningful part of the population," he said.

He said longer conversations give those viewers a fuller sense of who he is as a journalist, adding that a podcast "deepens that one-on-one relationship, which is what works on television, and is also I think what works in podcasts," he said.

The video set includes items from Dokoupil's career, among them his old Newsweek covers and a Rolodex he salvaged. "I rescued a Rolodex from the dump when Newsweek was on the brink of folding," he said. The Hollywood Reporter noted that the Rolodex contains Salvador Dali's phone number.

Nearly a Year in the Anchor Chair

The launch comes almost 11 months into Dokoupil's run as anchor of the CBS Evening News. He told The Hollywood Reporter that the newscast was "pretty heavy on politics" when it launched and has since found a broader mix of stories, and that he writes or revises "every single word that comes out of my mouth."

His other recent CBS work includes a town hall with Vice President JD Vance last week, and he is set to co-anchor the network's midterm election coverage next month with Norah O'Donnell, according to the report.

Explaining the timing, Dokoupil said, "we realize we had the resources and the space to fit a podcast in, and it would give us the opportunity to pursue the longer questions and answers that are often the most exciting part of journalism."