The Knowledge Project Podcast

Charlie Munger once asked me: ‘How can someone give away fifty percent of profits and make billions more than if he’d kept it all?’ Before I could answer, he told me about Les Schwab, a tire shop owner who understood incentives better than almost anyone.  What Schwab discovered will change how you think about business. …

What does it mean to live – and lead – with intention?  This week, I sit down with my friend and Shopify President Harley Finkelstein to explore what happens when you treat every role in your life—father, husband, leader—as something you have to requalify for, every single year.  It’s a candid look at ambition, identity, …

At 96 years old, Jimmy Pattison still runs his $16 billion empire personally. He’s built it over 63 years without outside capital or a college degree. He owns 100% of car dealerships, billboards, radio stations—even Ripley’s Believe It or Not—with a philosophy of: “No partners, no shareholders, no relatives.” This episode is based on Jimmy: …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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. Available now: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript The episode is based on his biography: Men and Rubber: The Story …

With eight Super Bowl rings, Coach Bill Belichick knows more about winning than anyone. In this conversation, Belichick explains why he kept Tom Brady as a fourth-string rookie when everyone else would have cut him. Why he sent a player home the week of the Super Bowl. And how a simple belief—’we had control of …

Most people protect their identity. Andy Grove would rewrite it 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; …

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 …