The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish
Master the best of what other people have already figured out. Each week, I learn from the best so you can apply their insights to your life. No fluff, no filler, just timeless conversations that make you smarter. If you enjoy the show, please hit the follow button.
Episodes
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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August 5, 2025 • 100 mins
Build the system behind the system. Flexport founder Ryan Petersen shows how to turn messy, multi‑party operations into a simple, scalable system that compounds growth without sacrificing trust.
He explains:
The iPhone clue: using public shipping data to predict launches—and create pull from zero
Retention is destiny: the equilibrium math that caps growth (and how to bend it)
Full‑stack or bust: customers buy outcomes,...
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July 29, 2025 • 57 mins
When Katharine Graham took over the Washington Post in 1963, she was a shy socialite who'd never run anything. By retirement, she'd taken down a president, ended the most violent strike in a generation, and built one of the best-performing companies in American history.
Graham had no training, no experience, not even confidence. Just a newspaper bleeding money and a government that expected her to fall in line.
When her editors b...
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July 22, 2025 • 72 mins
Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for proving we're not as rational as we think. In this timeless conversation we discuss how to think clearly in a world full of noise, the invisible forces that cloud our judgement, and why more information doesn't equal better thinking. Kahneman also reveals the mental model he discovered at 22 that still guides elite teams today.
Approximate timestamps:
(00:36) – Episode Introduction
(05...
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July 15, 2025 • 58 mins
They weren’t employees. They were partners. Les Schwab didn’t build a company. He built a culture.
This episode reveals how one small-town tire dealer scaled to $3 billion by turning customers into evangelists and employees into owners. Somewhere between changing his first flat tire and opening his 410th Les Schwab Tire Center, Les discovered something profound: his people weren't just working for him, they were working with him....
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July 8, 2025 • 107 mins
Shopify’s Harley Finkelstein reveals the one standard that actually scales your career and your family.
Harley shares why stepping down as COO was his hardest choice, the family motto that guides his daughters, and what makes someone good at storytelling. They discuss AI's real advantage, the calendar system that keeps him accountable, and how he maintains high standards.
If this gives you one standard to raise your team—or your...
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Jimmy Pattison still runs his $16 billion empire personally at 96 years old.
He’s built The Pattison Group over the last 63 years without outside capital or a college degree. He owns 100% of car dealerships, grocery stores, billboards, radio stations and even Ripley’s Believe It or Not—with a philosophy of: "No partners, no shareholders, no relatives."
This episode reveals the principles behind one of North America’s great priv...
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June 24, 2025 • 94 mins
On her first day as CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi fired her general counsel. Then rehired him before dinner. It wasn’t a stunt. It was a signal.
She ran a $200 billion empire the same way she ran her life: with surgical precision, uncompromising standards, and an allergy to corporate theater. But here's what separates this conversation from every other CEO interview: she tells you what her massive ambition cost her and her family. ...
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June 17, 2025 • 70 mins
The job was editor-in-chief. The goal was to become the platform. And she did.
Once she made it to the top, she didn’t just edit Vogue. She reinvented the power structures beneath it. This episode unpacks how a British girl who couldn’t type built the most bulletproof career in media, survived five decades of disruption, and made herself indispensable to fashion, politics, and culture.
You’ll hear how she weaponized speed over...
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June 10, 2025 • 70 mins
How do you build a high-performance culture without turning your company into the Hunger Games? Reed Hastings, co-founder and former CEO of Netflix, shares lessons from a career spent rewriting the rules—from severance as a management tool to “big-hearted champions who pick up the trash.” In this episode, he reveals how Netflix scaled trust, made bold bets before the data was in, and kept its edge by treating employees like adults—...
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June 3, 2025 • 82 mins
Harvey Firestone built one of America’s great industrial empires from scratch, transforming from a farm boy to Henry Ford’s key partner. This episode reveals timeless principles about building businesses through booms, busts, and technological disruptions.
This episode is based on the biography Men and Rubber: The Story of Business.
Check out The Firestone Principles: 12 Timeless Lessons from an Industrial Pioneer: https://fs....
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May 27, 2025 • 73 mins
Eight Super Bowl rings. Six with the Patriots. And a mindset that goes far deeper than football. In this rare, wide-ranging conversation, Bill Belichick breaks down the invisible factors behind sustained excellence: discipline, preparation, and the mental edge that separates contenders from champions. He shares the surprising reason he kept Tom Brady as a fourth-string rookie, why talent alone is never enough at the highest level, ...
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May 20, 2025 • 81 mins
Most people protect their identity. Andy Grove would rewrite his, again and again. He started as a refugee, became a chemist, turned himself into an engineer, then a manager, and finally the CEO who built Intel into a global powerhouse. He didn’t cling to credentials or titles. When a challenge came up, he didn’t delegate, he learned. This episode explores the radical adaptability that made Grove different. While his peers obsessed...
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May 13, 2025 • 96 mins
What if the world’s most connected tech investor handed you his mental playbook? Elad Gil, an investor behind Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase and Anduril, flips conventional wisdom on its head and prioritizes market opportunities over founders. Elad decodes why innovation has clustered geographically throughout history, from Renaissance Florence to Silicon Valley, where today 25% of global tech wealth is created. We get into why he believ...
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May 6, 2025 • 43 mins
Rose Blumkin didn’t just build a business. She revolutionized retail. After fleeing Russia with $66 in her purse, she opened a basement furniture store in Omaha at 43 years old—with no English, no education, and no connections. Her formula? Sell cheap, tell the truth, don't cheat the customer. Nebraska Furniture Mart would survive depressions, fires, lawsuits, tornadoes—and eventually become a billion-dollar empire Warren Buffett c...
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April 29, 2025 • 140 mins
Most accelerators fund ideas. Y Combinator funds founders—and transforms them. With a 1% acceptance rate and alumni behind 60% of the past decade’s unicorns, YC knows what separates the founders who break through from those who burn out. It's not the flashiest résumé or the boldest pitch but something President Garry Tan says is far rarer: earnestness. In this conversation, Garry reveals why this is the key to success, and how it c...
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April 22, 2025 • 58 mins
If Warren Buffett is the king of capital allocation—Henry Singleton is the ghost. Singleton built one of the most successful conglomerates in American history, transforming business while remaining virtually unknown. While Wall Street chased fads, Singleton, who could play chess blindfolded, quietly turned industrial conglomerate Teledyne into a business juggernaut with 20.4% annual returns over nearly three decades—outperforming B...
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April 15, 2025 • 128 mins
What happens when one of the most legendary minds in tech delves deep into the real workings of modern AI? A 2-hour long masterclass that you don’t want to miss.
Bret Taylor, current chairman of OpenAI, unpacks why AI is transforming software engineering forever, how founders can survive acquisition (he’s done it twice), and why the true bottlenecks in AI aren’t what most think. Drawing on his extensive experiences at Facebook, G...
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April 13, 2025 • 81 mins
Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, reveals a roadmap for restoring opportunity and unity across the country. From unleashing innovation by cutting red tape, to reigniting upward mobility and building a powerhouse economy, Poilievre’s message goes beyond borders. If you care about restoring opportunity, strengthening democracy, and securing a brighter future for North America, listen closely—Canada’s solutions ...
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