The Knowledge Project
Master the best of what other people have already figured out. Deep conversations with the best that go beyond the usual advice to uncover the timeless principles that drive success. If you enjoy the show, please hit the follow button.
Episodes
December 23, 2025 • 70 mins
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.
This episode features insights from world-class investor Alfred Lin, tech founder and operator Bret Taylor, behavioral scientist Logan ...
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December 16, 2025 • 60 mins
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.
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Approximate Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:00) Part 1: An Accidental Miracle
(09:29) Part 2: A Golden Horseshoe Kick
(25:49) Part 3: Building From Nothing
(38:53) Part 4: Orange Every...
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December 9, 2025 • 121 mins
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. He spent almost four decades as Ogilvy studying why people behave the way they do and how to change that behavior.
He explains why contrast drives choices and efficiency often destroys value, and how trust, friction, and design sha...
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December 2, 2025 • 63 mins
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.
This episode breaks down how she did it. You’ll learn her twenty-three leadership lessons, why pink Cadillacs outperformed raises, and the fun...
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November 25, 2025 • 77 mins
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. Brown was caught reading it on the sidelines of a NFL playoff game.
A personal coach to professional baseball players and Olympic athletes, he teaches how extra...
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November 18, 2025 • 73 mins
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.
From incentives and social proof to denial, envy, and authority bias, you’ll learn how these hidden tendencies shape behavior and how to build the mental defenses that helped Munger create one of the b...
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November 11, 2025 • 103 mins
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. He was the founder and former CEO of Panera Bread and Au Bon Pain, generating 25% annualized returns and helping define the fast casual restaurant segment. Now he's the chairman of CAVA (NYSE: CAVA). He is the author of Know What Matters.
He explains
- ...
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November 4, 2025 • 56 mins
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.
While HP rejected his design and competitors built walled gardens, Wozniak's philosophy of open architecture, the very one a young Steve Jobs fought against, is what saved Apple long ...
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October 28, 2025 • 94 mins
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.
We talk about asking better questions, reading the fine print, the role of short selling, and what it means to be wrong. We explore why AI gives you information but not insight, why cheap r...
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October 21, 2025 • 64 mins
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.
He started over and rebuilt following an unconventional playbook. He refused bad loans, vertically integrated everything, and played relentless offense during downturns.
While the home ind...
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October 14, 2025 • 104 mins
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.
In this episode, you’ll learn how she went from writing a cold letter to Buffett to being sent in to fix struggling Berkshire subsidiaries, how to evaluate real business performance, and h...
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October 7, 2025 • 46 mins
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.
She was a force that couldn't be stopped. She bought entire towns, crushed railroad barons, and became the lender of last resort during financial panics. Her s...
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September 30, 2025 • 60 mins
My guest this week is Barry Diller, one of America's most successful businessmen. At 83, he chose to publish a deeply personal book and open up about his successes and failures.
With surprising candor he details the rules he's lived by: trust first, confront directly, and make the call when the clock starts. In our conversation, he shares why success teaches you nothing, why failure is essential, and why instinct still beats algor...
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September 23, 2025 • 80 mins
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.
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Some of the things you'll learn in this episode:
Never rely on the kindness of strangers.
Your name is your biggest asset.
The person who ta...
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September 16, 2025 • 109 mins
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.
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About Lulu:
Having been CCO and EVP of Corporate Affairs at Activision Blizzard and VP of Comms at Substack, she is now the creator o...
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September 9, 2025 • 52 mins
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.
This story proves that impossible is just another word for opportunity.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(03:36) Part 1: The Boy Who Wouldn't Stay Down
(15:52) Part 2: The Impossible Company
...
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September 2, 2025 • 73 mins
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.
We talk about why everyone gets platform shifts wrong, where Google's actually vulnerable, and what real people do with AI when nobody's watching.
Evans sees patterns others don't. This conversation will change how you think about what's actuall...
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August 26, 2025 • 68 mins
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.
In this episode, we decode the counterintuitive playbook of patient capital, rural advantage, and why Bragg's refusal to sell a single share made him unstoppable.
My interview with John (#204) was the class. This is the homework.
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Approximate Timestamps:
(00...
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August 19, 2025 • 130 mins
This conversation will change how you handle your relationship starting tonight. The late Dr. Sue Johnson basically gave me a cheat code for relationships that not only last but amplify.
She breaks down the real signals to look for in a partner. Why people actually cheat (not what you think) and how to spot it coming a mile away. Plus she offers a simple framework that can turn fights from something that pushes you away to someth...
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August 12, 2025 • 58 mins
The most influential retailer you’ve never heard of. How Sol Price invented the warehouse club and a philosophy that still runs Costco and Amazon.
Have you ever wondered why you can still buy a hot dog and soda for $1.50 today at Costco? We can thank Sol Price for that. To him, keeping promises to customers mattered more than profit margins.
Sam Walton said he borrowed more ideas from Sol Price than anyone else. Jim Sinegal of C...
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