The Knowledge Project

This is the story of K.C. Irving, the man who refused to be stopped.

When a railway raised his shipping costs, he bought a ship. When oil suppliers tried to squeeze him, he built a refinery. Whenever someone told him no, he found a way. From his father’s general store in a small New Brunswick town, he built an empire of roughly 300 companies.

How do you beat competitors with more money, more people, and a head start?

You’ll see how he won customers the big companies ignored, why he kept expa...

Steven Kotler is a bestselling author and the executive director of the Flow Research Collective, where he studies the science of peak performance.

Most of us have felt it. Hours disappear, everything else fades away, and the work seems to do itself. But what’s actually happening in those moments, and can you make them happen on purpose?

Kotler has spent decades studying flow, and he makes the case that it’s far more trainable than most people think. We talk about what brings it on, how hard a task should be before it pulls you...

Ryan Serhant is a real estate broker, founder of SERHANT., and star of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York and Netflix’s Owning Manhattan.

He explains how to sell without making people feel sold to: build a connection, help first, and earn the right to ask. He also breaks down the psychology of attention and persuasion, showing how to get people's attention, hold it, and turn it into business.

We explore why he rejects “fake it till you make it,” how he approached his Million Dollar Listing audition as the person he wanted to become, a...

I'm excited to share this previously unreleased 2022 conversation between Charlie Munger and Todd Combs.

As with any Munger talk, the subjects are both deep and wide. You'll learn how Munger recognized people worth betting on, chose problems worth solving, and turned a long attention span into an unfair advantage.

A special thank you to the Singleton Foundation, Todd Combs, and William Thorndike for giving me the permission to share this with you. You can find a link to the full transcript here.

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Chapters:

(00:00) The Unreleased Charlie Munger Recording<...

Bill Ackman is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, one of the most closely watched investment firms in the world.

In this conversation, he breaks down how he tells the difference between real innovation from hype, what he looks for before making a billion-dollar investment, and why he sold Netflix—and later bought it back. He also shares the mistakes that reshaped his investment process and his plan to build a modern-day Berkshire Hathaway.

Bill also opens up about something far more personal: his daughter Lucy’s sudden brain hemorrhage, the hours befo...

Shopify founder and CEO Tobi Lütke joins Shane Parrish to discuss AI agents, better decision-making, and the future of work. He explains how he uses an AI council to examine his hardest decisions and why taste, judgment, and responsibility become more valuable as AI becomes more capable.

They go inside Shopify’s work with River, an AI colleague with memory, personality, and permission to challenge the CEO. They explore how to choose between several good options, why the best long-term decisions often lack immediate feedback, and why building something that lasts requires pruning and rebuilding.

T...

We all know the Steve Jobs who came back in the late 1990s and saved Apple from becoming a footnote. And we've all heard the story of how, in 1985, he was pushed out of the company he'd created.

What we don't know is what happened in between.

Geoffrey Cain spent years reconstructing the decade Jobs spent outside Apple. NeXT spent years losing money. His co-founders left. His investors lost faith. His fortune nearly disappeared. At one point, he was a weekend away from shutting the company down.

Somewhere in those failures, Jobs learned...

David Baszucki is the co-founder and CEO of Roblox, a platform built around a simple idea: give people the tools and incentives to create together.

In this short conversation we discuss how a health decision saved his son's life and how it changed how he eats, why bureaucracy compounds unless you actively destroy it, monitoring your mind before making decisions, and why the best products often improve by removing complexity.

It's time to listen and learn.

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Chapters:

(0:00) How Keto Can Help Treat Bipolar Symptoms

(2:38) Connection Between...

This summer, I’m revisiting one of my favorite episodes. If you haven’t heard it, now is the time. If you have, it’s a classic and worth listening to again.

Brad Jacobs has built eight billion-dollar companies, completed more than 500 acquisitions, and created extraordinary returns for shareholders over four decades. Few people understand how great businesses are built better than he does.

This conversation is about the principles behind that success. Brad explains how he spots trends before they become obvious, why psychology matters as much as strategy, and how he thinks about acquis...

John D. Rockefeller became the richest man the world had ever known by thinking differently about business, competition, and family. 

This episode isn’t just the story of Standard Oil. It’s about the principles that built one of history’s greatest business empires and what they can teach us today. 

Along the way, you’ll see the rise of Standard Oil, the public backlash that made Rockefeller America’s most hated businessman, the breakup of his company, and the philanthropic legacy that continues to shape the world today.

Enjoy!

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Chapte...

No company decides to fail. It drifts there one comfortable lie at a time.

Kaz Nejatian took over Opendoor when it was just months away from bankruptcy and set out to rebuild it from the ground up. What happened next shocked everyone.

Most turnaround stories are told years later, by the winner, after the ending is already known. That’s why they always sound clean and polished. This one doesn’t have an ending yet, and it’s anything but clean and polished. Kaz takes us inside while it’s still happening.

We discuss...

Steve Cohen and Jack Nicklaus shared the same performance coach. For the next hour, he’s yours too.

Dr. Gio Valiante is the world’s leading performance psychologist.

We discuss why most people never reach their potential, how confidence and fear shape performance, and what separates those who consistently excel from those who stay stuck.

He shares practical strategies for building better habits, overcoming self-imposed limits, staying focused under pressure, and creating the conditions for long-term success.

If you’ve ever felt capable of more, this episode will help you understand what’s...

Dr. Giulia Enders has changed the way millions of people think about the human body.

As a physician, microbiome researcher, and bestselling author, she has spent years studying the surprising role the gut plays in everything from digestion and immunity to mood, sleep, metabolism, and long-term health.

In this conversation, Giulia explains how your gut shapes your health, how stress quietly damages it, what ultra-processed foods are doing to you, and what your body’s been trying to tell you all along.

This episode is packed with practical advice you can use right awa...

Bill Gurley spent years on Wall Street, built his career as a partner at Benchmark, worked through Uber’s hypergrowth era, and now serves on the board of the Santa Fe Institute, where he studies complexity and systems thinking.

In this episode, Bill shares the mental models he returns to most, including systems thinking, second- and third-order effects, and the importance of understanding both the bedrock of your field and the bleeding edge.

He explains what separates great founders, why storytelling and product instincts matter, how he uses AI across different models, and what he se...

Mark Pincus is the creator behind Farmville and Words with Friends. He built Zynga into one of the biggest gaming companies in the world and helped shape the early era of social products on the internet.

In this conversation, he breaks down how great founders spot winning ideas early, why most startups build the wrong thing, and how products become part of people’s daily lives.

He shares lessons from building Zynga, missing the opportunity behind social networking before Facebook took off, navigating platform risk during Zynga’s explosive growth, and rebuilding his confidence after majo...

Chung Ju-yung built Hyundai because he refused to be stopped.

He is known for turning Hyundai into an industrial force that helped transform South Korea. The company built highways, ships, cars, and entire industries. At its peak, Hyundai accounted for 16% of South Korea’s economic output.

This episode explores how Chung built Hyundai, how he helped power South Korea’s rise, and how hunger, guilt, discipline, and relentless persistence shaped a man who refused to stop when the path disappeared.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction 

(02:40) Running Away from Home

Winston Weinberg is the CEO and co-founder of Harvey, the AI platform built for the legal industry.

In this episode, Winston explains how AI is reshaping legal work, why judgment becomes more valuable as routine work gets automated, and how to build the prioritization muscle required to move faster, stay focused, and make better decisions when everything is changing.

He also shares the operating principles behind Harvey’s growth: make decisions faster, treat most choices as two-way doors, use stress to build resilience, prioritize the one thing that matters most and the Google Doc that dr...

In 2023, OpenAI’s board fired Sam Altman and told Greg Brockman he would remain at the company. He quit that day.

In this conversation with Shane Parrish, OpenAI’s co-founder recounts the crisis: the board call, the plan to start another company, and the outpouring of employee support. He also reflects on his relationship with Ilya Sutskever and what the experience taught him about leadership, loyalty, and difficult decisions.

Greg takes us back to OpenAI’s beginnings, including the Napa gathering that helped shape its technical direction. He explains why the pursuit of artificial general intell...

Mario Harik is the CEO of XPO, one of the largest trucking companies in the world, and leads a team of 40,000 people across a multi‑billion‑dollar operation.

He started as employee #3, trained under Brad Jacobs (who’s built eight multibillion‑dollar companies from scratch), and has spent the last two decades turning engineering discipline, frontline feedback, and a deep belief in human potential into a repeatable leadership system.

In this conversation, Mario breaks down how he makes decisions in real time using data and “second‑derivative” thinking, how he hires and develops A players (and the gut te...

Joe Liemandt quietly built one of the most successful software empires you’ve never heard of—then reappeared with a $1 billion bet that AI can make kids learn ten times faster and love school more than vacation.

At Alpha School, students spend just two hours a day on AI‑driven academics, consistently score in the top 1% on standardized tests, and use the rest of their time to build real‑world life skills: leadership, entrepreneurship, teamwork, and projects they actually care about. There are no lectures, no moving on without mastery, and a very different role for “teachers”—now called gui...

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. His brother Bob noticed that New Brunswick potato farmers were shipping raw potatoes to Maine for processing into frozen fries, then buying the finished product back. The McCains pooled $100,000 in family money, assembled capital from five different sources without giving up equity, and built a plant on a cow pasture in Florenceville.

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. 

In this exclusive interview, his first as CEO, we explore his approach to capital allocation, isolating variables, and building a business designed for long-term growth.

Discover why effective investing begins with minimizing losses, how waiting for perfect information can result in missed opportunities, the strategies Brookfield uses to manage market risk while maintaining upside potential, and the key insights he gained working alongside Bruce Flatt.

The world's largest hotel company spent its first 30 years without a hotel. It started as a root beer stand in 1927. The first room didn't open until 1957.

The man behind it was J. Willard Marriott.

In this episode of Outliers, we explore how Marriott turned one root beer stand into a hotel empire, without a master plan. Oh, and along the way, he invented the airline catering business.

This is the story of J.W. Marriott

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Approximate Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:58) Ice Cold Root Beer

(10:35...

In January 2021, Vlad Tenev made a decision that nearly destroyed Robinhood. Wall Street called it betrayal. Customers called it cowardice. He has never fully explained what happened — until now. Vlad Tenev built Robinhood into a financial titan, navigated the unprecedented GameStop crisis, and completely re-engineered the company to thrive after losing the vast majority of its market value. He breaks down the brutal transition from bloated hyper-growth to a lean machine, why a "juicy falsehood is more powerful than a boring truth", and the 3 distinct phases of AI integration separating the winners from the dead. Believe it or not, Ga...

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. He lived on the edge of insolvency for nearly two decades.

This Outliers episode explores belief, trust, fear, and the price of growth through the story of Nike’s founding.

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Approximate Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:07) Lessons From Phil...

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.

In this episode, we explore the intersection of massive wealth, high-speed decision-making, and the psychological traits required to survive the AI revolution.

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Approximate Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:09) What Are You Leaning Against?

(03:17) Tech Sector Evolution

(04:15) The AI Bubble

(05:44) Will AI Replace Humans in Investing?

(06:24) Lessons on Listening

(09:15) American vs. Eu...

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

In this conversation, he breaks down the operating rules that kept CAA from losing clients, and the personal disciplines that kept him grounded when the stakes got massive.

You’ll learn how to build momentum, tell the truth without hesitation, read for context instead of noise, hire people who raise the standard, and package ideas into outcomes.

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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.

This Outliers episode breaks down how standards, execution, franchising, and real estate created a business machine built to last.

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Approximate Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:46) Turning Dreams Into Action

(10:05) The Multimixer

(15:51) America's Roadside Revolution

(22:58) Building the Machine

(32:14) What Ray Kroc Really Buil...

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.

You will learn why "boring" investing beats complex strategies, how to avoid the social traps that destroy wealth, and the specific equation for finding contentment.

Morgan Housel is a partner at Collaborative Fund and the bestselling author of The Psychology of Money.

Enjoy!

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Approximate Timestamps:

(00...

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.

Peter allowed the complete talk to be transcribed and posted on FS.

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Approximate Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:49)  Why is Multidisciplinary Thinking Important?

(07:27) How The World Works

(18:39) The Biggest Blind Spots in Business

(22:05) You Only Get...

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.

In this conversation, James explains how habits shape identity, why progress often stays invisible before it compounds, and how to design your environment so good behavior becomes the default.

You will learn how to stay consistent when motivation fades, stop quitting too early, and build habits that work across different seasons of life.

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Approximate Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:56) The Role of Identity in...

What do some of the greatest outliers in business history have in common?

For the past year, I’ve been sharing the stories of history's greatest outliers like James Dyson, Estée Lauder, Sol Price, Henry Singleton, Les Schwab, Rose Blumkin, Jim Clayton, and Andrew Mellon. These are names that deserve to be studied, but rarely are.

This episode explores the mindsets, systems and patterns history’s most notable outliers used to turn adversity into long-term advantage.

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Approximate Timestamps:

(00:00) - Introduction

(01:51) - Part 1: A Taste for Saltw...

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.

This episode covers the economy, media, free speech, immigration, corporate subsidies, and more. (And before you ask, the same invite was extended to both Pierre and Prime Minister Mark Carney).

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Approximate Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:31) What is the Role of Government?

(03:31) Canadian National Identity

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 Ury, legendary NFL coach Bill Belichick, former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, disciplined value investor Anthony Scilipoti, trust and communication expert Lulu Cheng Meservey, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein, and performance coach Jim Murphy.

These are the insights...

Bernie Marcus co-founded Home Depot and served as its first CEO. 

This is the wild and crazy story of how he and his co-founders got fired and went on to build one of the best-performing businesses 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 Everywhere

(49:40) Part 5: The Legacy

(54:17) Lessons

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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 shape real-world behavior.

+Rory was previously on the show, check out episode 19.

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Approximate Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:31) AI...

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 fundamentals of incentives, recognition, and human motivation that work in any business.

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Approximate Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:25)Pa...

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 extraordinary performance and a meaningful life follow the exact same path.

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Approximate Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:01) The Three Elements of Inner...

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 best decision records in history.

You’ll hear practical examples, powerful antidotes, and lessons you can apply to business, investing, and everyday life.

...

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

- The origins of Au Bon Pain and Panera

- What you should focus...