The Knowledge Project

Geoffrey Cain spent years reconstructing the decade Steve Jobs spent outside Apple. NeXT lost money for years, co-founders left, investors lost faith, and at one point Jobs was a weekend away from shutting the company down. Cain reveals how those failures forged the leader Apple needed, covering everything from NeXT's impossible design to Pixar's rescue, Jobs's intellectual combat style, and the moment at rock bottom that changed everything.

David Baszucki, co-founder and CEO of Roblox, joins Shane Parrish to discuss the intersection of personal health and leadership. A health crisis in his family led him to explore how metabolic state affects decision-making, and he shares how changing his diet improved his cognition. The conversation covers why bureaucracy compounds if left unchecked, the counterintuitive product insight that removing features often yields better results, and a pivotal moment when the gaming world declared Roblox's new avatar a disaster—but Baszucki trusted his instinct over the data.

Shane Parrish revisits a classic conversation with serial entrepreneur Brad Jacobs, who has built eight billion-dollar companies and completed over 500 acquisitions. Jacobs reveals the principles behind his success, including how he spots trends, the psychology of contrarian bets, and his approach to acquisitions, hiring, and capital allocation. He also shares the unexpected ways that therapy, meditation, and decades of leadership experience shaped his management style and decision-making.

This episode examines the life and business philosophy of John D. Rockefeller, exploring the principles that built Standard Oil and the greatest private fortune in history. It traces his early influences, the strategic moves that consolidated the oil industry, the public backlash, the antitrust breakup, and his transformative philanthropy. The narrative surfaces lessons about family, competition, leverage, and giving that remain timely.

Kaz Nejatian, CEO who led Opendoor's turnaround from near-bankruptcy, shares the principles he used to rebuild culture, eliminate bureaucracy, and accelerate decision-making. He explains how comfortable lies sink companies, why truth must outweigh feelings, and how competent dissenters destroy organizations. The conversation covers the use of AI to flatten management, the radical meeting reduction, and the personal disciplines required for a turnaround—all while the work is still in progress.

Dr. Gio Valiante, performance psychologist to elite athletes and business leaders like Steve Cohen and Jack Nicklaus, explores why most people underperform and what separates consistent excellence from stagnation. The episode covers the central governor hypothesis, the psychology of confidence, how environment shapes behavior more than goals alone, and practical techniques for building presence, managing fear, and discovering authentic identity beyond childhood conditioning.

Dr. Giulia Enders, a physician and microbiome researcher, explores how your gut shapes health across digestion, immunity, mood, sleep, and metabolism. She explains the mechanisms behind common gut problems, why ultra-processed foods damage your microbiome, and practical interventions—from fiber intake to meal timing—that don't require extreme diets or expensive supplements. The conversation bridges the gap between cutting-edge microbiome science and actionable advice you can implement immediately.

Bill Gurley, veteran venture capitalist and Benchmark partner, explores the mental models that shaped his career in investing and startup evaluation. He discusses systems thinking, understanding both foundational and cutting-edge knowledge in your field, what separates exceptional founders, and his non-consensus views on AI regulation, stablecoins, tokenization, and the future of venture capital. Gurley reflects on lessons from Uber's hypergrowth, the craft of storytelling, and what success means after decades building companies and capital.

Mark Pincus, the creator of Farmville and Words with Friends, shares the product-building principles that powered Zynga's explosive growth. He introduces the Proven-Better-New framework, explains how to test an idea's 'heat' with minimal effort, and warns against 'death by compromise.' Pincus also reveals his personal Book of Life decision system, the power of deconstructing successful products, and why your instincts are often right even when your first idea is wrong.

This episode of The Knowledge Project tells the story of Chung Ju-yung, the founder of Hyundai and a pivotal figure in South Korea's economic transformation. Born into crushing poverty, he ran away from home as a teenager and built an auto repair shop that grew into a global industrial conglomerate. Through relentless persistence and a refusal to accept limits, Chung won massive infrastructure projects, launched a car company, and even pioneered cross-border diplomacy. His life is a case study in how personal hunger, discipline, and an insistence on proving competence over cultivating connections can reshape a nation.

Winston Weinberg, CEO and co-founder of Harvey (an AI platform for legal work), discusses how AI is reshaping the legal industry and why judgment becomes more valuable as routine work gets automated. He shares operating principles for faster decision-making, building resilience under stress, and navigating a world where the bar keeps rising. The episode covers Harvey's founding (validating GPT-3 legal answers with experienced attorneys), his decision-making framework, and the future of AI in law.

Greg Brockman, co-founder and President of OpenAI, recounts the internal crisis that nearly destroyed the company when Sam Altman was fired by the board. He details the chaotic 72 hours that followed—from his immediate resignation to the secret "Phoenix" backup company designed at Sam's house, the pivotal moment when Ilya Sutskever's tweet shifted the power dynamic, and how the company emerged fundamentally changed. The conversation extends into OpenAI's future: whether we're in a true global AI race, how AI now writes much of OpenAI's own code, and what compute constraints mean for AGI access.

How does one engineer run 40,000 people with 10 daily numbers, zero hobbies, and a $1 billion bet he made in his first year as CEO? Mario Harik is the CEO of XPO, one of the largest trucking companies in the world.

Mario Harik, CEO of XPO and former employee #3, shares how he runs a 40,000-person company with engineering precision. He explains the 10 daily KPIs that focus the entire organization, how he evaluates talent on skill, work ethic, and collegiality, and why he structures meetings so the most junior person speaks first. Throughout the conversation, Harik emphasizes continuous learning, feedback loops with frontline employees, and the dangers of ego and complacency.

Joe Liemandt is the principal of Alpha School and the founder of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital. Liemandt dropped out of Stanford to build Trilogy, made the cover of Forbes twice before thirty, became the youngest member of the Forbes 400, then vanished from public life for twenty-five years.

Harrison McCain learned salesmanship by talking his way into a pharmaceutical job at 22, then spent five formative years under K.C. Irving, absorbing lessons in vertical integration, relentless deal-capture, and "management by suggestion." He quit with no plan, two newborn kids, and no income.

Connor Teskey is the CEO of Brookfield Asset Management, one of the world’s largest investors, managing about a trillion dollars across infrastructure, power, real estate, private equity, and credit.

Connor Teskey — CEO of Brookfield Asset Management. How Brookfield builds competitive advantage through culture, capital allocation, and long-term thinking. AI infrastructure and data centers as an investment thesis.

Bill Marriott built the largest hotel company in the world. But he didn’t open his first hotel until he was 55 and he fought against it the whole way.

Robinhood's co-founder reveals the brutal reality of surviving an 80% market crash, going "founder mode" to cut corporate bloat, and what actually happened during GameStop. Vlad Tenev is the co-founder and CEO of Robinhood.

Vlad Tenev — Robinhood co-founder. Surviving the GameStop crisis, an 80% stock crash, and rebuilding from $32B to 11 business lines over $100M each. Key insight: a juicy falsehood is more powerful than a boring truth — once a narrative gets traction, facts don't refute it.

Phil Knight is the founder of Nike, the brand that reshaped sports and became one of the most powerful companies in the world. What would you do if your bank, your supplier, and your government all turned against you at the same time? Phil Knight didn’t have to imagine it.

Nicolai Tangen is the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. He is responsible for managing $2.1 trillion. That's roughly 1.7% of every listed company on earth.

Nicolai Tangen — CEO of the world's largest sovereign wealth fund ($2.1 trillion, 1.7% of every listed company on earth). Speed in decision-making, the trap of overanalysis, and why high ambitions produce great results even in failure.

Michael Ovitz co-founded CAA and helped reshape Hollywood, then took the same playbook into tech investing and advising founders.

Michael Ovitz — co-founder of CAA, once the most powerful man in Hollywood. How he built CAA into the dominant talent agency through radical honesty, a no-badmouthing culture, and the multi-agent model. Power as a lease, not an asset.

Ray Kroc turned McDonald’s from a single roadside restaurant into a system built to scale. At 52, after decades selling paper cups and milkshake machines, he opened the first McDonald’s in 1955 and helped grow it to nearly 8,000 restaurants worldwide.

Morgan Housel breaks down the exact framework he uses to build wealth, minimize financial stress, and buy freedom. While most financial advice focuses on how to get rich, Morgan explains why the skills needed to stay rich are completely different.

Morgan Housel with Shane Parrish — wealth, contentment, and the psychology of money. Core thesis: wealth isn't about accumulation, it's about the gap between what you have and what you want. Luxury quickly becomes necessity. Contrast drives happiness, not absolute levels. Saving money is buying freedom. Second appearance on the show after Ferriss #857.

Peter D. Kaufman is the Chairman and CEO of GlenAir, the editor of Poor Charlie’s Almanack, and was a decades-long friend of Charlie Munger. In a talk that was never meant to be made public, one of the world's greatest business minds reveals the secrets to multidisciplinary thinking.

James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits, a global bestseller that has shaped how millions of people think about habits, consistency, and long-term change.

James Clear — author of Atomic Habits — with Shane Parrish. Clear synthesized Duhigg (The Power of Habit), BJ Fogg (Tiny Habits), Kahneman, and Thaler's nudge theory into one extremely well-packaged book. Not the originator of these ideas but the most successful popularizer. Also covers investment philosophy, reputation, and playing to win vs. playing not to lose.

This week, we're releasing a special episode of TKP with Pierre Poilievre. While we don't often tackle politics on the show, we are trying to improve political discourse by offering a platform for both sides to speak with depth and nuance.

The Knowledge Project closes 2025 with a look back at the most meaningful conversations of the year. Featuring insights from some of our most impactful episodes, this collection brings together practical insights on decision-making, leadership, preparation, relationships, trust, and performance.

Bernie Marcus is the co-founder and former CEO of Home Depot. This is how he built a culture of ownership, kept going when everyone turned him down, nearly lost it all, and created one of the most successful retailers in history.

Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland reveals the formula for persuasion, why people make decisions and how you can use psychology to your advantage. Rory is the world’s leading advertising strategist.

How do you get ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results? Mary Kay Ash built a two-billion-dollar company by solving that specific problem. After watching men she trained get promoted above her for double the salary, she quit to build a company based on a radical idea: meritocracy.

Top Performance Coach Jim Murphy reveals how to eliminate fear, master pressure, and unlock elite performance. Jim spent 5 years writing Inner Excellence, the mental toughness manual that shot from obscurity to #1 New York Times bestseller overnight when star athlete A.J.

Charlie Munger spent his life studying one question: why do smart people make bad decisions? In his legendary talk The Psychology of Human Misjudgement, Munger outlined 25 psychological tendencies that quietly distort how we think.

Restauranteur Ron Shaich reveals how he built the fast casual industry, scale a business, and spot the trends before they happen. Ron Shaich is an entrepreneur and investor.

Steve Wozniak is the engineer who built Apple. Then he did something Silicon Valley still doesn't understand: he gave millions of his own money away to early employees, walked away from power, and refused to play the game everyone else was playing.

Anthony Scilipoti is one of the sharpest minds in investing. He's the President and CEO of Veritas Group of Companies. He called the collapses of both Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Nortel before they happened, and now he has some thoughts on AI.

The incredible story of Jim Clayton and the counterintuitive strategies he used to build Clayton Homes into a juggernaut. When the bank forced him into bankruptcy at 27, they literally seized everything, including his accountant’s calculator.

Rory Sutherland — Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, founder of their behavioral insights team. Applies behavioral economics and evolutionary psychology to marketing. Core thesis: perception matters more than reality. The circumstances of your life may matter less than how you see them. Reframing is the cheapest intervention in the world.

Warren Buffett called Tracy Britt Cool his “fireman” due to her reputation at Berkshire Hathaway for turning around struggling businesses. Today, Britt Cool is the co-founder of Kanbrick, where she applies her knowledge to the middle market.

Hetty Green was the richest woman you've never heard of. In the late 1800s, she built a fortune worth billions today in a world designed to stop her. Women couldn't vote, couldn't own property in most states, and were banned from the New York Stock Exchange floor entirely.

Jim Murphy — performance coach, author of Inner Excellence (went from obscurity to #1 NYT bestseller when A.J. Brown was caught reading it during an NFL playoff game). His framework: love, wisdom, and courage as the foundation of extraordinary performance. Selflessness is fearless. The problem is never the problem — it's how you're thinking about it.

Ed Stack built Dick’s Sporting Goods from a struggling family store into an empire of more than 800 stores and billions in sales. Along the way he nearly lost everything. Multiple times. This episode is the story of what he did, how he did it, and the lessons you can learn.

Lulu Cheng Meservey is one of the sharpest minds in communications and strategy. She has helped some of the best leaders through their hardest moments. We talk about why trust and conviction are contagious, how to win attention in a noisy world, and how to handle attacks without losing ground.

Anthony Scilipoti — President and CEO of Veritas Group. Called the collapses of Valeant and Nortel before they happened. His edge: asking better questions, reading the fine print, and short selling as a public service. Now has thoughts on AI as a potential bubble.

Fred Smith founded FedEx on an idea everyone told him would fail and built it into an $88 billion empire that changed how the world moves. In this episode, we dive into how he built FedEx and the lessons he learned along the way.

Benedict Evans has been calling tech shifts for decades. Now he says forget the hype: AI isn't the new electricity. It's the biggest change since the iPhone, and that's plenty big enough.

Tracy Britt Cool — Warren Buffett's former 'fireman' at Berkshire Hathaway, now co-founder of Kanbrick. Buffett sent her to turn around struggling businesses. Now applies those lessons to the middle market.

One man controls half the world's wild blueberries, built North America's largest private telecom, and did it all without ever leaving his hometown of 1,100 people.

Dr. Sue Johnson — creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), the most empirically validated couples therapy approach. The science of why relationships fail, what signals to look for in a partner, and why people cheat. Attachment theory applied to adult relationships. The late Dr. Johnson's work connects directly to Gottman and the Harvard Grant Study.

Barry Diller — built IAC, Expedia, and reshaped Hollywood (ABC, Fox, Paramount). A career spanning five decades of media and technology. How he spots opportunities, builds companies, and thinks about the next wave.

Lulu Cheng Meservey — VP Communications at Substack. How to grab attention in a world flooded with AI content, build trust through direct communication, and engineer loyalty. The cult-building framework: hooks get sharper, stories beat statistics, and the leader must speak directly.

Benedict Evans — tech analyst, former a16z partner. Why most people's mental model of AI is wrong. AI isn't a single technology — it's a set of capabilities being embedded into everything. The real question isn't 'what can AI do?' but 'what changes when AI is everywhere?'

Reed Hastings — Netflix founder. How Netflix scaled trust and made bold bets before the data was in. The Keeper Test, trust-based expense policies, and betting $100M on House of Cards without seeing a pilot. Treating employees like adults, not assets.

Bill Belichick — 8x Super Bowl champion, the most successful coach in NFL history. Four principles: do your job, work hard, be attentive, put the team first. 'You cannot win until you keep from losing.' Games are lost more than won. Discipline, preparation, and ignoring noise.

Elad Gil — serial entrepreneur, investor, author of High Growth Handbook. How he advises companies scaling from Series A to IPO. Market timing, fundraising, and the patterns that separate companies that scale from those that stall.

Garry Tan — CEO of Y Combinator, co-founder of Initialized Capital. How YC selects founders, what separates companies that make it from those that don't, and the evolution of early-stage investing.

Bret Taylor — former Salesforce co-CEO, co-creator of Google Maps, Chairman of OpenAI board. How AI will reshape enterprise software, the difference between AI hype and AI reality, and building products that define categories.

Bruce Flatt — CEO of Brookfield Corporation, one of the world's largest alternative asset managers. How Brookfield grew to $1T+ by investing in real assets (infrastructure, real estate, renewables) with a multi-decade time horizon. Value, discipline, and durability.

Logan Ury — behavioral scientist, Director of Relationship Science at Hinge, author of How to Not Die Alone. Why chasing 'the spark' is bad advice, the three dating tendencies that sabotage relationships, and why great relationships are built, not discovered.

Josh Wolfe — co-founder of Lux Capital, deep tech investor. What humans still do better than AI, where the real investment opportunities are in an AI world, and why the future is built at the intersection of science and entrepreneurship.

David Heacock — built and manages a $250M+ business. Operations, marketing, and the unsexy work of managing a large-scale business day to day.

Mickey Drexler — former CEO of J.Crew and Gap. The merchant prince of retail. How he built his intuition for what consumers want, why data can't replace taste, and the decline of American retail quality.

Alfred Lin — partner at Sequoia Capital, former COO of Zappos. What separates great founders from good ones, lessons from Tony Hsieh, and pattern recognition in venture capital.

Codie Sanchez — founder of Contrarian Thinking, acquires 'boring businesses' (laundromats, car washes, plumbing companies). Her thesis: buying small businesses is more accessible and less risky than starting from scratch.

Charlie Hoehn — author and marketing strategist who worked with Ferriss, Ramit Sethi, and other bestselling authors. How to write content people actually want to read, overcome creative blocks, and market non-fiction books.

Ryan Holiday — bestselling author of The Daily Stoic, Ego Is the Enemy, The Obstacle Is the Way. The modern Stoicism source. How to apply Stoic principles to daily life: discipline, self-awareness, listening to life's signals, and the war within.

Adam Karr — long-term concentrated value investor. How to build conviction in a few ideas, manage risk through position sizing, and maintain temperament when markets panic.

John Mackey — co-founder of Whole Foods Market, advocate for conscious capitalism. Built Whole Foods from a single store into a global brand, then sold to Amazon. Purpose-driven business, stakeholder capitalism, and the difference between doing well and doing good.

Rob Fraser — military leader focused on leadership and elite team building. Mission-driven leadership, building mental toughness, and mastery through deliberate discipline.

Ryan Holiday discusses how Stoic philosophy applies to modern life, parenting, and creative work. He argues that every difficulty is a message about what needs to change and that the Stoic practice of reframing obstacles is the most practical philosophy available.

John Bragg — Canadian billionaire who built Oxford Frozen Foods, the world's largest wild blueberry company, from rural Nova Scotia. Long-term compounding, community-oriented business, and building in unconventional locations.

Matthew Dicks — 59-time Moth StorySLAM champion, elementary school teacher, storytelling coach. Every great story is about a single five-second moment of transformation. 'Homework for Life' — the daily practice of noticing story-worthy moments.

Erin Wade — Stanford/Harvard-educated lawyer who left law to open Homeroom, a mac-and-cheese restaurant in Oakland. Developed the 'color system' for handling workplace harassment. Scaling a niche concept.

Brian Halligan — co-founder and former CEO of HubSpot. How to build and scale company culture from startup to public company. Culture as a product that needs deliberate management.

Maya Shankar — cognitive scientist, former Senior Advisor in the Obama White House (founded the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team), host of A Slight Change of Plans. How identity shapes decisions, why identity foreclosure is dangerous, and how to build an identity resilient to change. Her personal story: a career-ending hand injury redirected her from violin to cognitive science.

Michaeleen Doucleff — NPR science correspondent who studied parenting among Maya, Inuit, and Hadzabe communities. Her TEAM framework: Western parenting overcomplicates everything. Children are naturally motivated to contribute. Include them in real work instead of creating separate kid activities.

Brent Beshore — CEO of Permanent Equity, acquires and operates small businesses for the long term. No exit strategy. Integrating work and family, decision-making under uncertainty, and the value of boring businesses.

Dr. Jim Loehr — performance psychologist who co-founded the Human Performance Institute. Worked with elite athletes, Fortune 500 CEOs, and military special forces. Your personal narrative drives your behavior. Energy management, not time management, is the key to performance.

David Segal — co-founder of DAVIDsTEA. Annual planning frameworks, bridging the gap between big goals and daily execution, and why simplicity in planning beats complexity every time.

Morgan Housel discusses why wealth is better defined by the gap between what you have and what you want rather than the absolute amount you possess. He explores the psychology of enough, the treadmill of expectations, and why the richest people often feel the poorest.

Shane Parrish discusses the core ideas from his book Clear Thinking. He explains how most bad decisions are not made consciously but in the moments before conscious thought, when biological defaults hijack the decision-making process.

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman discusses the nature of human judgment, the difference between bias and noise, and why overconfidence is the most dangerous cognitive bias in decision-making.

Naval Ravikant discusses wealth creation, happiness, and the philosophy of living a meaningful life. He presents his framework for specific knowledge, leverage, and judgment as the foundations of wealth creation.