The Knowledge Project

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.